Posted by Daniel Garrick »
1 Comment »
Last October, I CARE IF YOU LISTEN featured a video of the freshly deployed new music ensemble Hotel Elefant as they were preparing a work of composer Michael Gordon for their upcoming concert titled Dia De Los Muertos. Their Concert II was to focus on the theme “remembrance,” featuring new works by notable young composers as well as two compositions by Gordon. Unfortunately, Hurricane Sandy prevented concert from occurring on its originally planned date. Undaunted, Hotel Elefant eventually presented concert on Saturday, January 12, 2013.
Contemporary music ensemble Hotel Elefant (photo credit: hotelelfant.org)
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Posted by Marina Kifferstein »
1 Comment »I don’t think there is any other place in the world quite like the Oberlin Conservatory of Music. Its unique atmosphere of collaboration, support, and experimentation sparks innovation that creates space for all kinds of eccentrics to gather and make great music. As an Oberlin grad, I had some anxiety about writing a review of the Oberlin Contemporary Music Ensemble (CME) with International Contemporary Ensemble (ICE) concert on January 18, 2013 at the DiMenna Center for Classical Music. What if my memory of playing in CME was too idealized, tainted by nostalgia? What if I was expecting too much? After seeing the concert, my conclusion is that you can take the ensemble out of Oberlin, but you can’t take the Oberlin magic out of the ensemble. The DiMenna Center was flooded with the spirit of Obies past and present, and their performance was sublime.
Violin soloist David Bowlin (photo credit: Will Roane)
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Posted by Sam Reising »
Add Comment »coLABoratory: Playing It UNsafe (Workshop I) | American Composers Orchestra
This season, coLABoratory will include a unique incubation process of workshops, public readings, collaborative feedback, and laboratory performances of music, open to the public, taking place from November 2012 through April 2013. Each composer’s work is developed with the orchestra over the course of the season in a process that includes ACO’s Music Director George Manahan, ACO’s artistic leadership Robert Beaser and Derek Bermel, mentor composer Morton Subotnick, plus ACO advisors and members of the orchestra.
Tuesday, November 13 at 2 PM
FREE
Mannes College, The New School, 150 W. 85th St., New York, NY
..:: Website
120 Years of Solo Piano | Lisa Moore
Lisa Moore – Photo by Matthew Fried
Lisa Moore performs works for solo piano by Alexander Scriabin, Leos Janacek, Martin Bresnick, Hannah Lash, Paul Kerekes, and Philip Glass as part of Miller Theatre’s Pop-Up Concerts series.
Tuesday, November 13 at 6 PM
FREE
Miller Theatre at Columbia University, 116 Broadway Manhattan, NY
..:: Website
NYFOS Next | Carla Kihlstedt
The New York Festival of Song (NYFOS) opens a new season of its contemporary music mini-series NYFOS Next. Collaborative composer, singer, and violinist Carla Kihlstedt hosts and curates an hour of music showcasing the work of a diverse range of mostly female artists and composers: Lisa Bielawa, Sarah Kirkland Snider, Susan Botti, Errollyn Wallen, Nicola Lefanu, Eden MacAdam-Somer, Lautaro Mantilla, Nils Frykdahl, Matthias Bossi, as well as her own intriguing works. Several of the composers will perform their own works including Kihlstedt and her husband Matthias Bossi, who together form the duo Rabbit Rabbit, as well as fellow violinist-vocalist Eden MacAdam-Somer.
Tuesday, November 13 at 7 PM
FREE
Mary Flagler Cary Hall at the DiMenna Center for Classical Music, 450 West 37th Street, New York, NY
..:: Website
Requiem aeternam
Presented by Park Avenue Christian Church The Latin Requiem Mass has inspired composers throughout the ages. This distinctive program juxtaposes the elegant, chant-inspired setting of Maurice Duruflé with a remarkable new setting by New York composer, Gregory Spears.
Wednesday, November 14 at 8 PM
Tickets $50/$25, Senior & Students $20
Park Avenue Christian Church, 1010 Park Avenue at 85th Street New York, NY 10028
..:: Website
[INTERPRETATIONS] Camilla Hoitenga & Taavi Kerikmäe // Erik Griswold’s “Wallpaper Music”
Taavi Kerikmäe and Camilla Hoitenga
American born, Australian-based composer and improviser Erik Griswold presents the New York premiere of his prepared piano tour-de-force “Wallpaper Music,” and the duo of Köln-based flutist Camilla Hoitenga and Estonian pianist Taavi Kerikmäe present new works framed by the classic avant-garde of Niccolò Castiglioni’s “Gymel”.
Thursday, November 15 at 8 PM
Tickets General Admission: $15, Members/Students/Seniors: $10
Roulette, 509 Atlantic Avenue Brooklyn, NY 11217
..:: Website
Fred Ho: World Premiere Of Burning Sister! The Fire This Time
Fred Ho – Photo by Rainer Fehringer
Don’t miss the world premiere of a new Fred Ho piece, a duet between cellist Seth Woods and Ho himself. David Pearson interviewed Ho last year for I CARE IF YOU LISTEN…
Friday, November 16 at 8 PM
Tickets $15, Students with ID $10 | At the door
The DiMenna Center for Classical Music, 450 West 37th Street, New York, NY 10018
..:: Website
Storybook, an evening of new vocal music
The New York-based composers’ collective Random Access Music presents Storybook, an evening of new vocal music by composers Gilbert Galindo, David Fetherolf, Stefan Weisman, Manly Romero, Jonathan Pieslak and Wang Jie.
Sunday, November 18 at 8 PM
Tickets $20
Greenwich House Music School, 46 Barrow Street, New York, NY
..:: Website
Posted by Thomas Deneuville »
Add Comment »We met with composers Leaha Maria Villarreal and Mary Kouyoumdjian as their ensemble, Hotel Elefant, was about to rehearse Michael Gordon’s For Madeline for their upcoming Dia de Los Muertos concert. Learn more about them, and the challenges that a young ensemble faces in New York City.
For more information, visit: http://www.hotelelefant.org.
Embedding is cool. Crediting is really cool.
Video + Editing: Thomas Deneuville
Opening animation: DTWebart (http://www.dtwebart.com)
Posted by Thomas Deneuville »
1 Comment »Composer Kevin James will be presenting a Cage related project (modelled on Cage’s own 49 Waltzes for the Five Boroughs), 100 Waltzes for John Cage at the DiMenna Center for Classical Music from August 21, to the 23rd. He kindly took some time to answer 5 questions about it…
What is 100 Waltzes for John Cage?
100 Waltzes for John Cage is an homage written on the centennial of this iconic figure, and it is a tenderly rendered postcard to him from the city he loved so much. More specifically 100 Waltzes for John Cage is a randomly-evolving soundscape made up of 9 transient iPad-equipped musicians, 100 waltzes, quad speakers & audio from 147 New York City locations in a sublime expression of “the 10,000 things”.
OK, so let’s break that down a little. Cage actually didn’t like the word “random”. He preferred “indeterminacy” and “chance operations”. But we’ve got these nine musicians with ipads (that’s three trios worth). And on their ipads are slides with fragments of music from 100 different waltzes. (The fragments were chosen using chance operations of the i-ching – it involves zillions of coin tosses. We did it using a computer). So before the slides were made, the i-ching determined the page number, bar number, staff number, and number of bars to be included. Here’s where we get to the “random” part – the slide show on the ipad is controlled by a randomizing algorithm (I swear I didn’t make that word up) which determines how long that particular slide remains visible to the individual musician and the order that the slides appear.
Kevin James on a field recording trip to Time Square
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Posted by Elias Blumm »
1 Comment »The Norman S. Benzaquen Hall at the DiMenna Center for Classical Music has the appearance of a spruced up practice room, a tall, raw space with instruments piled in the corner. This was no less effective of an environment for Hotel Elefant, a group overflowing with young, dedicated musicians (seventeen in all) who have banded together in order to—as their press kit affirms—interpret the music of “innovative, living composers.” There is something in the collaborative camaraderie within the group, despite its largesse, that speaks to the delight each member takes up in this goal, and in that way the charm of the hall only added to the affect: a bunch of crazy kids lovingly playing a bunch of crazy music, some of it written from within the clique, all of it sounding totally personal in their hands.
Meg Zervoulis conducting Ung’s … still life after death
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