Announcing Two New PSNY Composers

by Ted Gordon on Sept. 27, 2012, 12:08 p.m.

We're back with some very exciting news-- did you miss us? Today, PSNY announces the publication of works by two new composers, Ann Cleare and Erin Gee!

Ann Cleare hails from county Offaly in Ireland, where she attained a B. Mus and M. Phil from University College Cork, and has been in America studying with Chaya Czernowin and Hans Tutschku at Harvard towards a PhD in Composition. (That is, of course, by way of the Akademie Schloss Solitude in 2007 and IRCAM from 2008 to 2009.) Ann's music for instruments and electronics is singularly powerful, and we're extremely honored to publish several of her works on PSNY, complimenting our growing catalogue of chamber and electro-acoustic compositions. 

For a taste of what Ann's music is like, here's a sample from her 2009 work, I am not a clockmaker either, for accordion and electronics. 

Ann gave a great interview with the Contemporary Music Centre in Ireland, talking about the work and its recording, made available through the CMC: 

Erin Gee is an American composer and vocalist who recieved her BA and MA in Music at the University of Iowa in 2002, where she studied with Réne Lecuona, Lawrence Fritts, and Jeremy Dale Roberts. From there, she went on to study with Chaya Czernowin, Beat Furrer, Richard Barrett, Steve Takasugi, and others in Germany and Austria, earning her PhD in Music Theory from the Universität für Musik in Graz, Austria in 2007. Like Ann, Erin also studied at the Akadmie Schloss Solitude, and like our composers Andrew Norman and Anthony Cheung, she recieved the Rome Prize, in 2007. 

But unlike any of our other composers, Erin writes music that has an incredibly unique sense of vocal performativity, even in her instrumental works. Listen to the vocal qualities of the wind instuments in her PSNY work, Mouthpiece: Segment of the 4th Letter:

We're extremely excited to have Erin join our roster of composers- in addition to Mouthpiece: Segment of the 4th Letter, be sure to listen to Mouthpiece VI, also newly available, and be on the lookout for more of her works soon!

Coming up in October: the Deadalus Quartet performs the complete string quartets of Fred Lerdahl, all available on PSNY, at the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum in Boston! The JACK Quartet performs Alex Mincek's String Quartet No. 3 "lift-tilt-filter-split" on Sept. 30th at the Festival Music ain Strasbourg, France! And, last but not least, check out our other new works by PSNY composers: Adrian Knight's Bon Voyage, Chris Cerrone's The Night Mare, Alex Mincek's Flutter, Pierre Jalbert's Dual Velocity, and Hannah Lash's Three Movements for Horn Trio.

Also, if you haven't noticed yet, you can now subscribe to our PSNY blog via our new RSS Feed. Click on the RSS icon on the upper right corner of this page to subscribe!

The OPERA America Songbook is Here!

by Ted Gordon on Sept. 14, 2012, 12:10 p.m.

Good news for opera lovers across America: the OPERA America Songbook is here! The Songbook is a new publication by Schott Music, co-edited by Scott Wollschleger and fellow PSNY composer Christopher Cerrone, to commemorate the launch of OPERA America's National Opera Center. The Songbook is now available for sale, in advance of the opening of the Center, and contains songs by PSNY composers Christopher Cerrone, David T. Little, Gregory Spears, and Stewart Wallace, as well as other prominent composers such as David Lang, Nico Muhly, Tod Machover, Howard Shore, Derek Bermel, and many more.

And if you'd like a taste of what kind of music the Songbook contains, American Public Media has featured one of the songs on their weekly program, Performance Today: That Night With The Green Sky, by Christopher Cerrone. That Night is a setting of text by Tao Lin, featuring soprano Melissa Hughes with pianist Thomas Bagwell. (Yes, that Tao Lin.) Check out the archived recording here.

For those of you in the NYC area, be sure to check out Loadbang performing Cerrone's How to Breathe Underwater, as well as a work by Adrian Knight, at (Le) Poission Rouge on September 18th, 2012. Stick around for The Respect Sextet performing works by Rahsaan Roland Kirk! 

Two Weeks, Four Concerts

by Ted Gordon on May 18, 2012, 3:04 p.m.

As the '11-12 season comes to a close, late May sees four terrific events in New York, featuring PSNY composers from around the country. 

First up: Red Light New Music presents their season-closing concert on May 21st at Symphony Space in New York. Music in Layers features both new and newly arranged chamber music works, written by John Cage and Red Light New Music composers Christopher Cerrone, Adrian Knight, Vincent Raikhel, Liam Robertson and Scott Wollschleger, performed by the core Red Light New Music Ensemble. The program includes the NYC Premeire of Adrian Knight's Trio, available on PSNY:

On the heels of that Monday night concert is a Wednesday night with Wet Ink with the Peter Evans Quintet at Roulette, performing Alex Mincek's "Pendulum VII," forthcoming from PSNY. (We're working as fast as we can to get everything ready for publication!)

The next day, May 24th, sees the premiere of Histories, by the composer collective Sleeping Giant, which includes our composers Andrew Norman, Christopher Cerrone and Timo Andres, along with Ted Hearne, Jacob Cooper, and Robert Honstein. Premiering the work will be the Deviant Septet, formed around the core instrumentation of Stravinsky's L'HIstoire du Soldat, here performing a work described as a "companion piece" to that great masterwork of the early 20th century. The performance will take place at Brooklyn's Issue Project Room.

And, finishing out the month of May, Bang on a Can pianist Vicky Chow performs Christopher Cerrone's Hoyt-Schemerhorn at The Stone on May 29th. (If you haven't been to The Stone yet, now's your chance!)