What's going on...

It's been a busy time, and I've neglected this space even as several interesting events have come and gone. Onward, to the future then! More amazing things are on the horizon:

If you're in New York City on September 28th, you really must head to the Kaufman Music Center and catch this performance by the Da Capo Chamber Players featuring the music of Chinary Ung. It features the premiere of "Singing Inside Aura, for amplified singing violist and chamber ensemble." This is a completely re-composed version of a recent work for viola solo and chamber orchestra.

Southern California/Baja: the Chamber Opera collaboration "Cuatro Corridos," which premiered in San Diego this past spring, will be presented in Tijuana on September 28th. It features Susan Narucki, soprano, Steven Schick, percussion, Aleck Karis, piano, and Pablo Gomez, guitar.

On October 4th, "Cuatro Corridos" will be played in Dallas. See more here.

Boston area friends, please make an effort to attend a portrait concert featuring my friend Curtis Hughes. Concert is September 29th at Boston Conservatory.

Apparently Lisa Cella still hasn't gotten tired of playing my piece "Ripples." Evidence? Well, she's playing October 4th in Milwaukee, as well as November 13th in San Diego, and November 16th in Atlanta. Lisa has recently recorded the piece, and I'm really looking forward to hearing how the work has developed since she's been playing it now for several months.

October 4th is shaping up to be a big night for New Music. The only excuse for not going to a concert that evening is if you happen to be going to bed early because you're running the St. George Marathon the next morning.

That weekend gets a head start at the Kennedy Center, where the National Symphony premieres a new multi-media work by Roger Reynolds based on the writings of George Washington. Performances are on Oct. 3-5. It's quite a remarkable project. Here's some recent press about the work.

This should keep us busy for a few weeks, at least.

The Flute Project...

Lisa Cella is coming back to San Diego for a two-day festival of flute music. It looks to be a fascinating overview of contemporary music for flute, both solo and ensemble. The concerts are at the Atheneum in La Jolla, and information about the programs can be found here.

 Of course, I'm particularly excited that Lisa will be playing Ripples, my piece for alto flute. When I wrote it I was interested in (or maybe even obsessed with) the connection between the performer and the instrument, the embouchure in particular. Several performance techniques are chained together, linked according to whether they are played with a closed or open embouchure. The act of moving the flute toward or away from the lips -- a small physical motion -- has dramatic sonic consequences.

The piece assumes a critical distance from the traditional bel canto voice of the flute, delving into the basic connection between the performer's breath and the instrument. When the usual methods of sound production are disrupted or altered the result is fragile and mysterious. The unstable territory that emerges depends upon a sensitive collaboration between the performer and listener.

While Lisa's extraordinary technical skills will serve this piece well, it is her humanity and depth of spirit that will be on display Friday night.

Back to Boston, for the week...

This week is an arctic blast from the past, as I travel to Boston just after the giant snow storm to do some editing, lecturing, and coaching with Chinary Ung, whose new work for viola and orchestra will be premiered by Boston Modern Orchestra this Friday at Jordan Hall. Today at Boston Conservatory we will be giving a joint lecture, along with Chinary's wife, the violist Susan Ung. We will discuss Chinary's work featuring vocalization and how it has led to this new exploration of its potential in an orchestral context.

Elliott Carter, RIP

News came today that Elliott Carter, one of the most significant figures in American music for the past sixty years, has died -- one month before what would have been his 104th birthday. His remarkably long life was remarkably full of musical works, having composed somewhere in the neighborhood of fifty pieces in the last fifteen years. This outburst of productivity would be remarkable for anyone, let alone someone of his age, but it also stands in contrast to earlier periods in his career when his output was slow and the work was characterized by sustained periods of extraordinarily dense textures, complex instrumental behaviors, and extensive, audacious formal schemes. In order to accommodate a more fluid compositional output, Carter streamlined these approaches: they still feature strongly in the recent work but they are simplified, to some extent. Whereas works such as the Third String Quartet or the Double Concerto demanded a vast amount of charting and planning, by most accounts his recent works were less intricately structured, albeit highly logical and rigorous. The degree to which the composer internalized the procedures he had developed over a period of decades of work was remarkable, and it led to a fluency which was one of the great achievements of his late career.

This photo was taken in February 2006, in Minnesota. I had met Mr. Carter on two previous occasions, dating back to 1992. His music plays a spectacularly important role in my own work, and it remains a consistent source of inspiration, puzzlement, and beauty.

Writing, thinking, imagining the unimaginable...

I'm busy finalizing materials for my presentations on the music of Chinary Ung, the first of which happens at Northern Illinois University at the Cambodia Studies Conference. My paper is a portrait of the composer, and it's an awesome responsibility to be tasked with introducing and exploring Ung's life and work. But mainly, I'm reeling from the broader context of this conference, while thinking of the calamity that was the Cambodian Holocaust. An estimated 2.5 million people were killed. Ung lost half his family. The scale of the tragedy is so immense, yet it is also personal and human, and pervasive to the contemporary Cambodian experience.

Culture is not free...

The term "Free Culture" is new to me, but the concept is something each one of us living in contemporary society has encountered. Recently, a college student who interns at NPR indicated that of the 11,000 songs on her iTunes playlist, she has only purchased 15 CDs in her lifetime. I won't unpack this admission here because it is done so well already in this post by David Lowery. It's a thoughtful post, but it also includes some zingers:

The existential questions that your generation gets to answer are these:

Why do we value the network and hardware that delivers music but not the music itself?

Why are we willing to pay for computers, iPods, smartphones, data plans, and high speed internet access but not the music itself?

Why do we gladly give our money to some of the largest richest corporations in the world but not the companies and individuals who create and sell music?

This is a bit of hyperbole to emphasize the point. But it’s as if:

Networks: Giant mega corporations. Cool! have some money!
Hardware: Giant mega corporations. Cool! have some money!
Artists: 99.9 % lower middle class. Screw you, you greedy bastards!

Congratulations, your generation is the first generation in history to rebel by unsticking it to the man and instead sticking it to the weirdo freak musicians!

While this is oriented to 'pop' (or 'indie') music, the implications are clear for concert music as well. Indeed, since the ceiling for commercial prospects in concert music is considerably lower than that of pop music perhaps the issue is even more important.

In a related matter, is anyone satisfied by the Spotify royalties?

San Diego New Music...

Before I forget, I should write a word or two about some other recent concerts I was able to attend, as well as a concert series that is coming soon.

My old friend and colleague David Shiveley came to town to perform a solo concert at the Space4Art. David is an amazing percussionist and is co-director of the ensemble Either/Or, based in NYC. It had been an appallingly long time since I'd been able to attend one of David's concerts, and I was really pleased that he made it so convenient as to show up in my little town to play. Understated, elegant, enigmatic, yet precise, his approach is always engaging and captivating, as is his repertoire. Among the works on his concert was Resonance Alloy, by Keeril Makan. Here's an excerpt:

The concert ended with Max Neuhaus’ Fontana Mix: Feed (after John Cage), in which David played a double set of crotales. All that metal took its toll, eventually: the enthusiastic applause that the audience gave David after the performance sounded oddly muffled, as if I had a pillow over my head.

This is not a complaint -- it was fantastic, and the aftermath was an unexpected phenomenological surprise.

On Friday I was finally able to hear Jory Herman's solo contrabass recital in which he played the first three Cello Suites by J.S. Bach. This was quite a feat, and a very interesting lesson in the bass. Jory played the first two movements at the original pitch, so he was very high on the fingerboard indeed. Yet it sounded perfectly well-suited for the instrument, and he navigated some bewildering looking fingerings impeccably. This was the third outing of Jory's recital, and I hope he has more opportunities to bring this work to a broader public.

Sunday I attended the La Jolla Symphony concert, which featured Aleck Karis playing Barber's Piano Concerto. I never quite understood why the Symphony hasn't done more concerti over the years featuring the performance faculty at UCSD. It seems as if someone has finally acknowledged a most valuable resource. Aleck's playing was as incisive and fluent as ever.

Finally, this week begins the soundON Festival of Modern music, which features the NOISE ensemble, the Formalist Quartet, and more. I'm looking forward to hearing their latest offerings. It looks as if some very full days of concerts and catching up with old friends are in store.

I recently caught up with the great Mary Oliver, who was in town to visit family. She remarked that San Diego is a good place to get some work done since one isn't likely to be too distracted by a tantalizingly full slate of must-not-miss concerts. To some degree, this is true, but lately I feel like I'm back in Boston in the early '90s.