Posted by Thomas Deneuville »
Add Comment »According to the band itself,
“Big Farm is a place where serious counterpoint can meet burlesque, earnestness meet abandon; a place where they can kick it or take it to tea, reflect, attack, mourn, dance, pray, or mock with ease or determination, joy or fervor, using any and all means necessary. This world is a big farm – lots of different crops, changing weather, livestock, and a duck pond for good measure.”
Big Farm
Big Farm is Grammy winner and Pulitzer Prize finalist vocalist-lyricist Rinde Eckert; electric bassist Mark Haanstra; Grammy winner and pioneering composer/guitarist Steven Mackey; and celebrated percussionist Jason Treuting (So Percussion). Thanks to our friends at New Amsterdam Records, we are able to offer an exclusive album preview on I CARE IF YOU LISTEN! The eponymous debut album will be out on May 28, and this preview will stream until May 27, midnight EST.
Let your friends know about it!
Posted by Daniel Kushner »
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Nadia Sirota may very well become known as the most important violist of her generation.
With elite technical prowess and a hyper-attentive ear for the composer’s intent, her musical presence can be regularly heard in new music ensembles such as ACME and yMusic, and in collaboration with numerous bands. Her passionate advocacy of contemporary classical music has extended to her award-winning WQXR radio show “Nadia Sirota on Q2.” Perhaps most significant of all is the growing body of work for solo viola that Sirota has commissioned from composers.
Nadia Sirota – Photo by Samantha West
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Posted by Arlene & Larry Dunn »
1 Comment »When composer Marcos Balter heard the news that Superstorm Sandy had ransacked the headquarters of New Amsterdam Presents (and its recording label subsidiary New Amsterdam Records) in Red Hook, Brooklyn, he was beside himself with concern for his friends and colleagues. But he didn’t just fret over their devastating loss. He sprung into action. In the modern day equivalent of “hey kids, I know what we can do, let’s rent out the old barn and put on a show!” Balter fired off a post to Chicago’s new music interest group on Facebook. “I’m starting to gather interest about organizing a Chicago fundraising event to help my friends at New Amsterdam in NY, who lost pretty much everything during Hurricane Sandy,” he wrote on November 4. Within days, he had heard from nearly every Chicago new music organization and artist, as well as several supporters, wanting to know how they could help. A plan began to emerge. Doyle Armbrust offered to organize a benefit concert, leveraging his (Un)familiar Music Series infrastructure, including his relationship with The Empty Bottle club. By November 14, (Re)New Amsterdam Benefit Presented by (Un)familiar Music, co-produced by Armbrust and Balter, was announced for Sunday, December 16, 2012, at 1:00 PM at The Empty Bottle.
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Posted by Thomas Deneuville »
Add Comment »Do you consider yourself coming from avant-rock, folk, classical, or it really doesn’t matter?
I feel like my music is informed by all kinds of styles and traditions. I’m really interested in the approaches and techniques that make each idiom unique, the specifics of posture that dictate aesthetics. I’m also excited to discovery similarities–the magical places where overlaps occur. I was at a concert the other day and heard a beautiful performance of Landscape I by Toru Takemitsu, and I remember thinking that the piece was somehow complimented by the fact that I was listening to The Shaggs in headphones on the train ride over. Totally different approaches to music, but I thought “Wow! sometimes contrast reveals similarity.” Even if only in emotional content.
Aaron Roche
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Posted by David Pearson »
3 Comments »Every so often an album comes out with the right combination of substance and edge that you know represents something new, arising, and here to stay. That perfect mix of experimentation and popular appeal has created watershed albums like Wu-Tang Clan’s Enter the 36 Chambers, Nirvana’s Nevermind, or M.I.A.’s Arular. It’s been tough to find much in the way of contemporary classical music that possesses this substantive quality. The plethora of new material, the post-modern lack of meaning, and the predilection for technique or innovation for its own sake over musicality have made it difficult for the coherently new to emerge. In this way, New Amsterdam Records’ release of the Chiara Quartet‘s recording of Jefferson Friedman’s Second and Third String Quartets stands as a breath of fresh air.
Jefferson Friedman – Photo Liz Linder (please forgive the cropping)
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Posted by Jeremy Howard Beck »
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yMusic and New Amsterdam Records put on a release party earlier this month for their debut album, Beautiful Mechanical, at Rockwood Music Hall on the Lower East Side. The hip and charming-but-smallish venue was packed to the gills with twenty- and thirty-somethings and quite a few recognizable new music composers and performers.
Every once in a while an album is assembled, or a live concert is programmed, in such a graceful way that one’s jaw drops. The different musics are sufficiently different to keep the listening experience fresh and forward-moving, while having enough in common to not end up the aural equivalent of a buffet. The release party for yMusic’s Beautiful+Mechanical at Rockwood Music Hall on the Lower East Side was both that rare album and that rare concert, and as I left I found myself marveling at how well it all worked. The music, and the performances, were full of the energy, fun, and vibrancy that has become New Amsterdam Records’ trademark. Even violist (and Q2 radio host) Nadia Sirota’s casually graceful and funny emceeing was impressive.
yMusic – Photo by Ilya Nikhamin
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