DOCSLIB.ORG

Contact: a Journal for Contemporary Music (1971-1988) Citation

Total Page：16

File Type：pdf, Size：1020Kb

Download full-text PDF Read full-text
Contact: a Journal for Contemporary Music (1971-1988) Citation Contact: A Journal for Contemporary Music (1971-1988) http://contactjournal.gold.ac.uk Citation Anderson, Virginia. 1985. ‘Almeida 1984’. Contact, 29. pp. 42-44. ISSN 0308-5066. ! 42 Richard Bernas. Sopranos Linda Strachan, Jenny Albon, and Rosamund Sykes among them took the Virginia Anderson roles of the four characters. Satie called Socrate a 'drame symphonique avec voix'; it is an attempt to Almeida 1984 capture the qualities of an ancient music and the soloists are instructed to sing as if reading. This understated style (reinforced at the festival by the Almeida Festival, London, 14 June-8 July 1984 stark performance space of the Almeida Theatre, with its three brick arches framing the soloists) The Almeida is a strange festival, more a festival of results in an almost completely flat landscape of festivals. This one, the fourth, included series of feeling-so restrained, in fact, that the power of the French and Russian music and film, a weekend event last scene (Socrates' death) is almost surprising. The presented by the Electro-Acoustic Music Association work lacks the immediately endearing character- of Great Britain (EMAS), experimental and avant- istics of much of Satie's music, the noises of Parade, garde English music and film, and even a musical and the wit and charm of many of the piano pieces, but is a concert of 19th-century spirituals (given, approp- nonetheless impressive. riately enough, on 4 July). I can speak only of those The second half of the concert consisted of some of events that I attended, which were by no means all as I Satie's shorter works. John White, who considers arrived in London only on the 23rd, in time for some of Satie a major influence upon his own music, accom- the Satie Weekend, and was later involved in panied Michael Chambon in several cabaret songs rehearsals for the final concert, Cornelius Cardew's and the violinist Alexander Balanescu in Choses vues The Great Learning. a droite et a gauche (sans lunettes) (1914), then Vexations (1892-3) dominated the Satie Weekend performed the solo piano works Prelude de la porte of 23-24 June, if only through its length. The 840 heroY.que du ciel (1894; used by White in his own repetitions of the work were performed at crotchet = Sonata no.53, 1972), Le deMeduse (1913), and 60, which resulted in a 24-hour version. 1 21 pianists, the early Ogives (1886). It was refreshing to see the with few exceptions all major figures in English piano pieces performed in a deadpan manner, experimental and avant-garde music, each took at without the emphasis on the humorous elements that least an hour's shift; they included John Tilbury, Elliott other pianists seem to feel the need to introduce; Schwartz, Richard Bernas, Tim Souster, Phillip Mead, White certainly understands his spiritual mentor and Michael Nyman, Susan Bradshaw, Stephen Montague, should record these works. Christopher Hobbs, Andrew Charity, John White, The retrospective concert of Tim Souster's music Howard Skempton, Dave Smith, and Keith Potter. The on the 26th highlighted Souster's concern about performers seemed to be divided between those who political and social events. 3 His subjects are worthy of made the repetitions as alike as possible and those treatment, but a serious subject does not guarantee who chose to vary their interpretation for the sake of musical quality. Spectral (1972) was written at a time interest. All the experimentalists were of the former when almost everyone in popular and art music persuasion and even took the purist approach so far seemed to be using whale-song as source material. as to avoid the use of the pedals. Among those Souster adopted a different approach by transcribing looking for a personal style, some opted for a variety the whale-song into coloured graphic notation to be ofpedallings, some for alternating dynamics. It would realised by viola, leaving the tape part to provide have been interesting to hear a performance un- watery echoes. However, as the American composer cluttered (as far as possible) by personality, but Barney Childs said in a concert review, no one would perhaps this is irrelevant. John White interprets have written these pieces 'if, in common belief, Satie's instruction, 'Pour se jouer 840 fois de suite ce malevolent whales were wantonly slaughtering motif, il sera bon de se preparer au prealable, et dans millions of innocent plankton'.4 The Music Room le plus grand silence, par des immobilites serieuses'' (1976) is a theatre piece about the British army's use not as an injunction to play the work 840 times but as of white noise in the interrogation of prisoners an instruction to be followed if one were to attempt suspected of being members of the IRA. In this per- such a thing. 2 However, while it is possible to give a formance the doctor/interrogator Stephen Montague performance of Vexations that consists of a single forced a hooded James Fulkerson to stand to attention rendering of the 'motif', there is no escaping the fact and play the trombone while a tape provided white that the work has come to be regarded as consisting noise; this seemed to me a silly evocation of a serious of 840 evenly and expressionlessly played repeti- problem. tions. Measured against this standard, the Almeida The only one of these works in which the musical performance failed. interest matched the gravity of the issues that The topics dealt with in the Satie symposium that inspired it was Zorna (1974), Souster's response to followed, given by Wilfrid Mellers, Patrick Gowers, the problem of heroin traffic. It uses a subtle Antony Melville, and Gavin Bryars, were changing pageantry of three drummers in white, who march attitudes to Satie's music, an appraisal of Socrate from the rear of the hall to the front, where a soprano (1918) in the light of contemporary reactions, trans- saxophonist plays in conjunction with a tape-delay lations of Satie's writings, and the Rose+Croix music. system, imitating the sound of the Turkish oboe or To have scheduled the symposium after such a long zurna. All elements are uncoordinated until a given and draining work as Vexations was the only point, which results in an unrelenting, high-energy thoughtless decision taken by the organisers of the music. Also enjoyable was a work with resonances in festival; even Dr Mellers's dancing during a musical Souster's own past, Heavy Reductions (1977) for tuba example did little to rouse the audience. Possibly in and taped tubas, based on the opening of Das consideration of flagging stamina, the promised open Rheingold. Its title and use of source material are discussion did not take place, despite the fact that reminiscent of 1970s 'readymades' and the systems methodological differences seemed to indicate a used by the PTO (Promenade Theatre Orchestra). possible divergence of thought between the partici- The Contemporary Chamber Orchestra's concert, pants. given on 27 June, consisted mostly of works by On the evening of the 24th Socrate (1918) was the English mainstream avant garde. In Harrison performed by Music Projects/London, conducted by Birtwistle's Carmen Arcadiae mechanicae 43 perpetuum (1978) the compositional mechanisms represented southern Californian music; it was circumvented any possibility of exploiting the written in a tonal, quasi-popular style and formed a characteristic sounds of the low instruments scored pleasant contrast to other events of the day, which for. 5 Nigel Osborne's Concerto for flute and chamber included the presentation of a delightful play-it- orchestra (1980) offered a little more, but Sebastian yourself installation by Hugh Davies. Much hoopla Forbes's Sonata for 21 (1975-6) was full of academic surrounded the closing performance, the London cliches such as long notes ending in a flurry of strings. premiere ofXenakis's Bohor (1962). As it turned out, Newcomer Steve Martland's Lotta continua is all the drama concerned th,e multitrack tape machine influenced by Glass, but unlike most minimal or and whether it would be fixed in time for the concert. systems works it runs into some rather surprising and The music, as promised, was very loud, with over 20 delightful corners, including a lovely jazz-like section. speakers in the room, but it was not worth risking Interestingly, Martland describes this work as one for one's hearing for. student orchestra; from this I must conclude that The only part of the Russian festival I attended was student orchestras in England (at least in Liverpool the concert of Soviet music given by Capricorn on University, where Martland was a student) are Tuesday 3 July. The interest of the programme lay not incredibly competent, as this work is not easy to in the works of Edison Denisov, who writes in a kind coordinate and the high brass parts are not easy in of cosmopolitan avant-garde style and who, in any any respect. event, is fairly well known in the West, but in Sofiya On Saturday evening 30 June at the Bloomsbury Gubaydulina's Garden ofjoy and Sorrow (19), which Theatre works by Marius Constant and Iannis had a haunting flute ritornello and used mildly Xenakis were performed by Constant's ensemble extended harp techniques, and Gabriel Popov's Ars Nova, with the soloists Silvio Gualda, Elisabeth Septet (1926-7), a delightfully mismanaged mixture of Chojnacka, and Patrice Fontanarosa. Constant's 103 Hindemith and Milhaud. regards dans l'eau (1982-4, being given its British Gavin Bryars's concert on 6 July consisted of three premiere on this occasion) groups small sections into older works, My First Homage (1978), Out of four 'movements'; its echoes of the traditional violin Zaleski's Gazebo (1977), and Hi Tremolo (1980) with concerto-ordering of contrasts, tempos, cadenzas, The Vespertine Park (1980), played by Bryars and etc.-were brought out by Fontanarosa and the others, including former members of Garden chamber orchestra.
Load more

Recommended publications
  • The Scratch Orchestra and Visual Arts Michael Parsons
    The Scratch Orchestra and Visual Arts Michael Parsons Leonardo Music Journal, Vol. 11, Not Necessarily "English Music": Britain's Second Golden Age. (2001), pp. 5-11. Stable URL: http://links.jstor.org/sici?sici=0961-1215%282001%2911%3C5%3ATSOAVA%3E2.0.CO%3B2-V Leonardo Music Journal is currently published by The MIT Press. Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of JSTOR's Terms and Conditions of Use, available at http://www.jstor.org/about/terms.html. JSTOR's Terms and Conditions of Use provides, in part, that unless you have obtained prior permission, you may not download an entire issue of a journal or multiple copies of articles, and you may use content in the JSTOR archive only for your personal, non-commercial use. Please contact the publisher regarding any further use of this work. Publisher contact information may be obtained at http://www.jstor.org/journals/mitpress.html. Each copy of any part of a JSTOR transmission must contain the same copyright notice that appears on the screen or printed page of such transmission. The JSTOR Archive is a trusted digital repository providing for long-term preservation and access to leading academic journals and scholarly literature from around the world. The Archive is supported by libraries, scholarly societies, publishers, and foundations. It is an initiative of JSTOR, a not-for-profit organization with a mission to help the scholarly community take advantage of advances in technology. For more information regarding JSTOR, please contact [email protected]. http://www.jstor.org Sat Sep 29 14:25:36 2007 The Scratch Orchestra and Visual Arts ' The Scratch Orchestra, formed In London in 1969 by Cornelius Cardew, Michael Parsons and Howard Skempton, included VI- sual and performance artists as Michael Parsons well as musicians and other partici- pants from diverse backgrounds, many of them without formal train- ing.
    [Show full text]
  • Experimental
    Experimental Discussão de alguns exemplos Earle Brown ● Earle Brown (December 26, 1926 – July 2, 2002) was an American composer who established his own formal and notational systems. Brown was the creator of open form,[1] a style of musical construction that has influenced many composers since—notably the downtown New York scene of the 1980s (see John Zorn) and generations of younger composers. ● ● Among his most famous works are December 1952, an entirely graphic score, and the open form pieces Available Forms I & II, Centering, and Cross Sections and Color Fields. He was awarded a Foundation for Contemporary Arts John Cage Award (1998). Terry Riley ● Terrence Mitchell "Terry" Riley (born June 24, 1935) is an American composer and performing musician associated with the minimalist school of Western classical music, of which he was a pioneer. His work is deeply influenced by both jazz and Indian classical music, and has utilized innovative tape music techniques and delay systems. He is best known for works such as his 1964 composition In C and 1969 album A Rainbow in Curved Air, both considered landmarks of minimalist music. La Monte Young ● La Monte Thornton Young (born October 14, 1935) is an American avant-garde composer, musician, and artist generally recognized as the first minimalist composer.[1][2][3] His works are cited as prominent examples of post-war experimental and contemporary music, and were tied to New York's downtown music and Fluxus art scenes.[4] Young is perhaps best known for his pioneering work in Western drone music (originally referred to as "dream music"), prominently explored in the 1960s with the experimental music collective the Theatre of Eternal Music.
    [Show full text]
  • A More Attractive ‘Way of Getting Things Done’ Freedom, Collaboration and Compositional Paradox in British Improvised and Experimental Music 1965-75
    A more attractive ‘way of getting things done’ freedom, collaboration and compositional paradox in British improvised and experimental music 1965-75 Simon H. Fell A thesis submitted to the University of Huddersfield in fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy The University of Huddersfield September 2017 copyright statement i. The author of this thesis (including any appendices and/or schedules to this thesis) owns any copyright in it (the “Copyright”) and he has given The University of Huddersfield the right to use such Copyright for any administrative, promotional, educational and/or teaching purposes. ii. Copies of this thesis, either in full or in extracts, may be made only in accordance with the regulations of the University Library. Details of these regulations may be obtained from the Librarian. This page must form part of any such copies made. iii. The ownership of any patents, designs, trade marks and any and all other intellectual property rights except for the Copyright (the “Intellectual Property Rights”) and any reproductions of copyright works, for example graphs and tables (“Reproductions”), which may be described in this thesis, may not be owned by the author and may be owned by third parties. Such Intellectual Property Rights and Reproductions cannot and must not be made available for use without the prior written permission of the owner(s) of the relevant Intellectual Property Rights and/or Reproductions. 2 abstract This thesis examines the activity of the British musicians developing a practice of freely improvised music in the mid- to late-1960s, in conjunction with that of a group of British composers and performers contemporaneously exploring experimental possibilities within composed music; it investigates how these practices overlapped and interpenetrated for a period.
    [Show full text]
  • A Clear Apparance
    A Clear Apparence 1 People in the UK whose music I like at the moment - (a personal view) by Tim Parkinson I like this quote from Feldman which I found in Michael Nyman's Experimental Music: Cage and Beyond; Anybody who was around in the early fifties with the painters saw that these men had started to explore their own sensibilities, their own plastic language...with that complete independence from other art, that complete inner security to work with what was unknown to them. To me, this characterises the music I'm experiencing by various composers I know working in Britain at the moment. Independence of mind. Independence from schools or academies. And certainly an inner security to be individual, a confidence to pursue one's own interests, follow one's own nose. I donʼt like categories. Iʼm not happy to call this music anything. Any category breaks down under closer scrutiny. Post-Cage? Experimental? Post-experimental? Applies more to some than others. Ultimately I prefer to leave that to someone else. No name seems all-encompassing and satisfying. So Iʼm going to describe the work of six composers in Britain at the moment whose music I like. To me itʼs just that: music that I like. And why I like it is a question for self-analysis, rather than joining the stylistic or aesthetic dots. And only six because itʼs impossible to be comprehensive. How can I be? Thereʼs so much good music out there, and of course there are always things I donʼt know. So this is a personal view.
    [Show full text]
  • Christopher Hobbs, Word Pieces
    Christopher Hobbs Word Pieces 1966-70 Experimental Music Catalogue www.experimentalmusic.co.uk WORD PIECES 1966-70 This collection brings together all the pieces I have written using solely words or typography. These were busy years; in 1967 I started at the Royal Academy of Music, studying composition with Cornelius Cardew. By 1970 I had left the Academy, and was a member of the Scratch Orchestra, AMM, and the Promenade Theatre Orchestra. Before 1966 I had written music using either graphic scores or conventional music notation, or a mixture of both. One Note 1966 was originally fully written out using chance operations - it was Cardew who suggested that it would be more effective as a verbal score, and words seemed an interesting and challenging way of expressing musical ideas. The pieces here represent the greater part of the work I produced over these years, though there were some conventionally notated pieces, whose proportion grew through 1969 until by 1970 they became predominant. I have written no word pieces since 1970. The publishing history of the pieces is as follows; all the works up to and including The Friesian Cow were issued by the Experimental Music Catalogue in 1969 as Word Pieces 1966-69. For that publication I retitled several pieces. They now appear with their original titles as “Composition [Date]”. Various pieces then found their way into the Anthologies which the Catalogue began issuing in 1972: 1, 2, 3, 5, 6, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12 and 13 in the Verbal Anthology , The Castle Keep in the Vocal Anthology , Walk Event in the Visual Anthology, Voicepiece and The Friesian Cow in the Scratch Anthology.
    [Show full text]
  • City Research Online
    View metadata, citation and similar papers at core.ac.uk brought to you by CORE provided by City Research Online City Research Online City, University of London Institutional Repository Citation: Pace, I. ORCID: 0000-0002-0047-9379 (2019). The Historiography of Minimal Music and the Challenge of Andriessen to Narratives of American Exceptionalism (1). In: Dodd, R. (Ed.), Writing to Louis Andriessen: Commentaries on life in music. (pp. 83-101). Eindhoven, the Netherlands: Lecturis. ISBN 9789462263079 This is the published version of the paper. This version of the publication may differ from the final published version. Permanent repository link: http://openaccess.city.ac.uk/22291/ Link to published version: Copyright and reuse: City Research Online aims to make research outputs of City, University of London available to a wider audience. Copyright and Moral Rights remain with the author(s) and/or copyright holders. URLs from City Research Online may be freely distributed and linked to. City Research Online: http://openaccess.city.ac.uk/ [email protected] The Historiography of Minimal Music and the Challenge of Andriessen to Narratives of American Exceptionalism (1) Ian Pace Introduction Assumptions of over-arching unity amongst composers and compositions solely on the basis of common nationality/region are extremely problematic in the modern era, with great facility of travel and communications. Arguments can be made on the bases of shared cultural experiences, including language and education, but these need to be tested rather than simply assumed. Yet there is an extensive tradition in particular of histories of music from the United States which assume such music constitutes a body of work separable from other concurrent music, or at least will benefit from such isolation, because of its supposed unique properties.
    [Show full text]
  • Icebreaker: Apollo
    Icebreaker: Apollo Start time: 7.30pm Running time: 2 hours 20 minutes with interval Please note all timings are approximate and subject to change Martin Aston looks into the history behind Apollo alongside other works being performed by eclectic ground -breaking composers. When man first stepped on the moon, on July 20th, 1969, ‘ambient music’ had not been invented. The genre got its name from Brian Eno after he’d released the album Discreet Music in 1975, alluding to a sound ‘actively listened to with attention or as easily ignored, depending on the choice of the listener,’ and which existed on the, ‘cusp between melody and texture.’ One small step, then, for the categorisation of music, and one giant leap for Eno’s profile, which he expanded over a series of albums (and production work) both song-based and ambient. In 1989, assisted by his younger brother Roger (on piano) and Canadian producer Daniel Lanois, Eno provided the soundtrack for Al Reinert’s documentary Apollo: the trio’s exquisitely drifting, beatific sound profoundly captured the mood of deep space, the suspension of gravity and the depth of tranquillity and awe that NASA’s astronauts experienced in the missions that led to Apollo 11’s Neil Armstrong taking that first step on the lunar surface. ‘One memorable image in the film was a bright white-blue moon, and as the rocket approached, it got much darker, and you realised the moon was above you,’ recalls Roger Eno. ‘That feeling of immensity was a gift: you just had to accentuate the majesty.’ In 2009, to celebrate the 40th anniversary of that epochal trip, Tim Boon, head of research at the Science Museum in London, conceived the idea of a live soundtrack of Apollo to accompany Reinert’s film (which had been re-released in 1989 in a re-edited form, and retitled For All Mankind.
    [Show full text]
  • Booklet Tilbury.Qxd:Booklet DROUET
    John Tilbury - Piano John Tilbury has given concerts and broadcasts of new music, including first performances, in many countries around the world. His solo recordings include Cage's Sonatas and Interludes for Prepared Piano, from the seventies, and more recently the music of Cornelius Cardew, Howard Skempton, Christian Wolff and the complete solo piano works of Morton Feldman. He is also well known as an improvising musician, through his membership of AMM, one of the most distinguished and influential free improvisation groups to have emerged in the sixties. In preparation for a talk I was to give on Feldman and Skempton, I wrote down the following notes as a kind of aide-mémoire. John Tilbury 1996 On Softness Softness – also length, and brevity. But 'not for its own sake’. ‘Virtuosity of restraint’ (Skempton). Alice (in Wonderland) had to accustom herself to new dimensions. Soft 'as possible'. Relative. Degree and quality of softness depends on the acoustical and the psychological. Awareness of this dynamic quality within softness creates an extraordinary variety. Softness draws the audience into the music - it encourages attentiveness and alertness. It also demands a ‘transcendental’ listening in its search for a revelatory experience. Softness heightens consciousness; also enhances the consciousness, for example, of the idiosyncrasies of the instrument at which one sits. On the unintended This respect for the unintended embodies the notion for the interpreter of nowness, of uniqueness. Accidentalness is an active component, to be convincingly contextualized. The music responds to the contingencies of venue, of temperature, etc. etc. This, together with an emphasis on the sensual and physical qualities of the art of performance, creates an indivisibility of musician and instrument and at best of music and audience; an at one-ness.
    [Show full text]
  • Erik Satie's Vexations—An Exercise in Immobility Christopher Dawson
    Document généré le 23 sept. 2021 22:49 Canadian University Music Review Revue de musique des universités canadiennes Erik Satie's Vexations—An Exercise in Immobility Christopher Dawson Volume 21, numéro 2, 2001 Résumé de l'article La pièce pour piano Vexations d’Erik Satie comporte une « Note de l’auteur » URI : https://id.erudit.org/iderudit/1014483ar où le compositeur demande apparemment aux interprètes de répéter le DOI : https://doi.org/10.7202/1014483ar morceau 840 fois. Les opinions des biographes de Satie divergent quant à savoir si Satie voulait ou non une exécution « complète » de la pièce. Dans cet Aller au sommaire du numéro article, l’auteur évalue comment une interprétation littéraire de la Note peut jeter un éclairage sur les intentions de Satie. Il conclut que Vexations n’est pas tant un morceau de bravoure qu’un exercice : un moment musical conçu pour Éditeur(s) dégager les interprètes des notions occidentales conventionnelles de développement linéaire et de réception cumulative, en faveur d’un style Canadian University Music Society / Société de musique des universités musical personnel d’où est absent le développement, et pour les préparer à canadiennes jouer d’autres pièces, telles une Gymnopédie ou une Gnossienne. ISSN 0710-0353 (imprimé) 2291-2436 (numérique) Découvrir la revue Citer cet article Dawson, C. (2001). Erik Satie's Vexations—An Exercise in Immobility. Canadian University Music Review / Revue de musique des universités canadiennes, 21(2), 29–40. https://doi.org/10.7202/1014483ar All Rights Reserved © Canadian University Music Society / Société de musique Ce document est protégé par la loi sur le droit d’auteur.
    [Show full text]
  • Philip Glass
    DEBARTOLO PERFORMING ARTS CENTER PRESENTING SERIES PRESENTS MUSIC BY PHILIP GLASS IN A PERFORMANCE OF AN EVENING OF CHAMBER MUSIC WITH PHILIP GLASS TIM FAIN AND THIRD COAST PERCUSSION MARCH 30, 2019 AT 7:30 P.M. LEIGHTON CONCERT HALL Made possible by the Teddy Ebersol Endowment for Excellence in the Performing Arts and the Gaye A. and Steven C. Francis Endowment for Excellence in Creativity. PROGRAM: (subject to change) PART I Etudes 1 & 2 (1994) Composed and Performed by Philip Glass π There were a number of special events and commissions that facilitated the composition of The Etudes by Philip Glass. The original set of six was composed for Dennis Russell Davies on the occasion of his 50th birthday in 1994. Chaconnes I & II from Partita for Solo Violin (2011) Composed by Philip Glass Performed by Tim Fain π I met Tim Fain during the tour of “The Book of Longing,” an evening based on the poetry of Leonard Cohen. In that work, all of the instrumentalists had solo parts. Shortly after that tour, Tim asked me to compose some solo violin music for him. I quickly agreed. Having been very impressed by his ability and interpretation of my work, I decided on a seven-movement piece. I thought of it as a Partita, the name inspired by the solo clavier and solo violin music of Bach. The music of that time included dance-like movements, often a chaconne, which represented the compositional practice. What inspired me about these pieces was that they allowed the composer to present a variety of music composed within an overall structure.
    [Show full text]
  • Contact: a Journal for Contemporary Music (1971-1988)
    Contact: A Journal for Contemporary Music (1971-1988) http://contactjournal.gold.ac.uk Citation Potter, Keith. 1977. ‘New Music Diary’. Contact, 16. pp.29-33. ISSN 0308-5066. ! NEW MUSIC DIARY work) with being Musical Director at the Birmingham Arts Laboratory. This, the sole survivor of the 60s Lab scene, has, KEITH POTIER incidentally, recently started music publishing in a small way with Emmerson's Variations. Three months (November 1976 to the beginning of February 1977) to cover in this issue, as opposed to only just over one month in Monday November 16 Contact 15, so my comments will be somewhat briefer, even though the density of events attended was quite a lot lower for this The first of two concerts entitled 'Boulez at The Round House' put period. on by the BBC. In spite of recent, and not so recent, flops in So many of the 'established' ('establishment'?) new music audience attendance at this BBC new music series, there was quite concerts attract so many of the same type of audience(or rather, so a good crowd for this one, at any rate (the other, on November 29,1 many of the so few) that one comes to accept this state of affairs as didn't attend, nor did I catch its broadcast later: it included the perfectly natural. Surely it shouldn't be? No wonder that many of British premiere of the young Italian Giuseppe Sinopoli's Drei the more experimental musicians have for some years now been Stiicke BUS Souvenirs ale Memoire and Elliott Carter's A Mirror on seeking venues other than, for example, the South Bank and even which to Dwell, as well as Schoenberg's Serenade, Op.24).
    [Show full text]
  • Third Coast Percussion
    Third Coast Percussion Start time: 8pm Running time: 1 hour 45 minutes – including interval Please note all timings are approximate and subject to change Ruth Kilpatrick delves into tonight’s programme, and the ensemble’s passion for collaborative new composition. Chicago’s Third Coast Percussion is a Grammy Award winning ensemble, world renowned for their impressive arrangements of classic works, powerful new pieces and always inspiring performances. This concert sees them at the Barbican for the first time, with a programme celebrating the wealth of possibility that comes from open, honest collaboration. Featuring four UK premieres, the evening begins with Philip Glass’s Madeira River; re-named after the Amazon River and its tributaries by Brazilian group Uakti for their own custom-made instruments back in 1999. For their 2017 album Paddle To The Sea, Third Coast Percussion took inspiration from both the original piano works and the Uakti arrangement, to create their own six-minute piece. Perhaps their most well-known work to date, the classically trained quartet released an album of Steve Reich’s works in celebration of his 80th birthday in 2016, on Cedille Records, winning the Grammy for Best Chamber Music / Small Ensemble Performance. Reich’s influence on modern composition is vast; with Mallet Quartet offering a more melodic take on his perhaps more minimalist past. Scored for two marimbas and two vibraphones, the three movements over fifteen-minutes offer rhythmic energy and room for reflection all at once. The last piece of the first half is Perpetulum; composed for and in collaboration with Third Coast Percussion by Philip Glass.
    [Show full text]