Monotonous Forest

Cage springs eternal

Music of John Cage at the Avant Music Festival. MusicWeb International, February 25, 2011

Tonight at 8:00 at Greenwich House Music School, Ne(x)tworks features Cage's Song Books, Vols. I-II, with Joan La Barbara and Miguel Frasconi.

Why I could live in Ohio

Franz Welser-Möst and the Cleveland Orchestra at Carnegie Hall. MusicWeb International, February 25, 2011

The Cleveland Orchestra will return to New York in July 2011 as part of the Lincoln Center Festival, playing Bruckner (Symphonies Nos. 5, 7, 8, and 9) and works by John Adams.

 

The intrepid sextet

eighth blackbird at Zankel Hall. MusicWeb International, February 25, 2011.

More comments to come, on eighth blackbird's mightily impressive work during last week's Tune-In Festival at the Armory.

Total immersion at the Armory

It would be hard to overstate the impact of Sunday afternoon's thrill ride provided by John Luther Adams, the renowned composer from Fairbanks, Alaska, who provided the finale to last week's highly successful Tune-In Festival. Scattered inside the massive Park Avenue Armory, 72 percussionists made a bit of New York music history in the first indoor performance of Inuksuit (2009), with over 1,000 listeners milling around the sonically charged space. The 85-minute voyage began with performers aspirating through paper megaphones and conch shells, then built to a near-deafening tidal wave of drums, tam-tams and sirens, before gradually receding into a soft tinkle of glockenspiels, triangles, and ultimately, silence. I have never heard anything like it, and the aircraft hangar-sized space of the Armory was ideal.

Alex Ross posted photos and comments here and here, and Steve Smith has additional photos, plus his New York Times review here.

Half and half

Karita Mattila with Alan Gilbert and the New York Philharmonic. MusicWeb International, February 16, 2011

55-year creative streak

Focus! 2011, Polish Modern: New Directions in Polish Music Since 1945, Concerts I and VI. MusicWeb International, February 11, 2011

My apologies to Tadeusz Wielecki: I'd intended to mention in the article that he is the current director of the renowned contemporary music festival, Warsaw Autumn.

Transmission from outer space

TimeTable Percussion and Talujon in Grisey's Le Noir de l’Étoile. MusicWeb International, February 11, 2011

In an unusual and happy coincidence of programming, there will be another performance of this piece on March 4 by Les Percussions de Strasbourg, as part of the new Tully Scope Festival.

Levine loves Mahler—but swings to Mozart

The Met Orchestra at Carnegie Hall. MusicWeb International, February 8, 2011

La det sne, la det sne, la det sne*

Talea Ensemble in Danish Counterpoint at Scandinavia House. MusicWeb International, February 4, 2011

*(with thanks to Steve Smith for the Tweet)

Snowbound serendipity

After their Chicago concert was canceled (thanks to the overwhelming snow), musicians from the Cleveland Orchestra found themselves in Ann Arbor, Michigan for an extra evening. Some had planned to hear Wynton Marsalis and the Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra, until that was scrapped as well. So under the aegis of Classical Revolution, a national organization dedicated to presenting classical music in non-traditional ways, lucky patrons of Silvio's Organic Pizza got to hear members of the orchestra play chamber music, helped by equally lucky Ann Arbor student musicians. Zachary Lewis of The Plain Dealer has the whole story here.