New Works on PSNY: Knight, Wainwright, Cerrone

by Ted Gordon on July 5, 2016, 11:03 a.m.

One characteristic about the idea of "New Music" is that it is always, in some way, new. But this newness is spread out over a few key milestones: a "double bar-line", when the composer finishes the work; a first performance; a recording release; regional premieres across the world. A major milestone, often overlooked, is the availability of performance materials—a score and parts—so that the work can travel. We're featuring here newly published works by three composers—Adrian Knight, Rufus Wainwright and Christopher Cerrone. 

A few months ago, we wrote about Adrian Knight's Obsessions, a long-form commission by pianist R. Andrew Lee that was released on Irritable Hedgehog records before two East-coast performances in New York and Boston. Knight's work echoes Feldman, Dennis Johnson, and even hints of Bartok's Mikrokosmos in its simplicity and peripatetic repetition. And now, the full score of this mesmerizing work is available to the public. 



We have also recently published another work that is intimately connected to its composer and performer: Rufus Wainwright's Five Shakespeare Sonnets, in both a piano/vocal score and a score of the full orchestration made for the San Francisco Symphony in 2010. Wainwright first set Sonnet 29 in 2002, and in 2009 was asked to set several more for a collaboration with director Robert Wilson at the Berliner Ensemble. (Wainwright also recorded several of these sonnets on his 2010 album, All Days Are Nights: Songs for Lulu.) Most recently, Wainwright has released a full studio album of sonnet settings to mark the 400th anniversary of Shakespeare's death. Needless to say, the ability to read through Wainwright's genius songwriting and lush orchestration is a true gift, for singers and fans alike. Check out Wainwright performing Sonnet 20, part of the published set, below: 

We end this post by featuring two works by composer Christopher Cerrone: South Catalina and The Branch Will Not Break. Commissioned by eighth blackbird for their remarkable Hand Eye album, South Catalina finds Cerrone reflecting on the city of Los Angeles and the installation-art piece Swarm, by rAndom International. The Branch Will Not Break was commissioned by Present Music for their annual Thanksgiving Concert, and features seven movements for vocal ensemble and ten instrumentalists that pull from the poems of James Wright and from Cerrone's own experience with the midwest. 

Check out eighth blackbird's premiere recording of South Catalina below. 

Jennifer Koh's "Shared Madness"

by Ted Gordon on May 27, 2016, 11:31 a.m.

The New York Philharmonic's second Biennial is underway, bringing new music programming to venues across the city. In addition to Lincoln Center, the NY Phil is programming concerts at venues in Brooklyn like National Sawdust, a venue that is quickly becoming a vital center for contemporary music. Following its first installment on May 24, violinist Jennifer Koh returns to National Sawdust on May 31 for the second part of her commissioning project entitled "Shared Madness". The program is indeed a bit of a mad idea: 30 virtuosic show-pieces, commissioned and premiered by Koh, all performed over two evenings. As Koh puts it, her program seeks to explore "the meaning of virtuosity in the 21st century." 

Among the composers Koh chose to commission are Timo Andres, Christopher Cerrone, Anthony Cheung, Vijay Iyer, Phil Kline, and Andrew Norman. Koh's recent "Bridge to Beethoven" project saw close collaboration between her and Iyer, Norman, and Cheung, in addition to Jörg Widmann. Be sure to stop by National Sawdust to experience the "shared madness"!

Upcoming Performances of Wollschleger, Cerrone

by Ted Gordon on May 6, 2016, 10:22 a.m.

Schumann's Dichterliebe famously begins: "Im wunderschönen Monat Mai"—in the wonderful month of May. What follows is a masterful collection of discrete, yet interrelated compositions: a chain linked by its proximity to rebirth and spring. Schumann's song cycle is nice metaphor for what's happening with two of our PSNY composers this month: over the next few weeks, Scott Wollschleger and Christopher Cerrone will see a blooming and bountiful group of performances, all up and down the East coast. A wonderful month of May, indeed! 

Kicking things off in a lower register, Scott Wollschleger's trio for marimba, bass clarinet, and bassoon, Density is a Kind of Love, will see its New York Premiere at ShapeShifter Lab on May 9th, performed by Transient Canvas and Chris Watford. Keep an eye out for Density is a Kind of Love, which will soon be published on PSNY. 

Watford will also be performing Timothy McCormack's monumental BODY MATTER, which Watford commissioned in 2015—a nearly thirty-minute long exploration of the bassoon that pushes the instrument and its player to their limits. 

The very next day, Wollschleger's second string quartet, "White Wall", will be performed by the MIVOS Quartet alongside Helmut Lachenmann's String Quartet No. 3 ("Grido") at Roulette, as a part of the Darmstadt Institute New York's 70 Year Anniversary Celebration. Performing on a packed program that also includes the International Contemporary Ensemble performing works by Ashley Fure, Chaya Czernowin ,and Luigi Nono, MIVOS's performance of "White Wall"—a piece they commissioned from Wollschleger—will offer a "brontal" meditation on the process of becoming-sound, with quiet but intense energies circulating among the quartet members, sounding their own time. Check out MIVOS performing the first half of this quartet: 

If Wollschleger's "White Wall" plunges us into the sound-world of the instruments themselves, Christopher Cerrone's "Memory Palace", which sees two performances in the same week, brings us to the sound-world of the composer firmly rooted in space. Or, more properly, as the movement titles suggest, spaces: Harriman, the Long Island Expressway, Foxhurst. On May 8th, the Metropolis Ensemble, featuring percussionist Ian Rosenbaum, performs the Washington, DC premiere of "Memory Palace" at the Phillips Collection. Moving up the coastline, Rosenbaum will also perform the work in Baltimore at An Die Musik on May 10th, with Cerrone giving engaging in an intimate pre-concert conversation. The following week, on May 16th, Rosenbaum will again perform "Memory Palace" at the American Irish Historical Society—an innovative concert program that asks, "what would a house sound like if it could sing?". Check out Rosenbaum performing "Memory Palace" below.