Ann Cleare Performances in New York, Europe

by Ted Gordon on Jan. 7, 2015, 10:35 a.m.

Composer Ann Cleare has had a spate of successful concerts recently, featuring premiere performances of her work I should live in wires for leaving you behind by Yarn/Wire, who commissioned Cleare to write it. This piece, for prepared piano and percussion, was premiered at ISSUE Project Room on October 9th, and performed again at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute's EMPAC on November 15th. I should live in wires for leaving you behind begins with all performers 'inside' the piano, playing carefully arranged crystal bowls set inside the piano; it gradually moves out to a second 'outside' space, where the instruments called for include modified salad spinners, flower pots, and more. Both the sonic and the visual coordination of this piece make it a stand-out for Yarn/Wire, and a successful collaboration with Cleare. 

Other recent performances include anchor me to the land, performed in Darmstadt, Germany by the Curious Chamber Players. This premiere was the fruit of Cleare's Staubach Honorarium, a prestigious composition prize awarded each year to composers for premieres at the Darmstadt International Summer Course for New Music. 

Just down the road from Darmstadt in Mannheim, Cleare saw the premiere of another new work, luna (the eye that opens the other eye), for solo alto saxophone, which was performed by Patrick Stadler at the Popakademie (University of Popular Music). 

Farther south in Karlsruhe, Cleare's eyam iv (Pluto's farthest moons) was premiered by Richard Craig and The Experimental Ensemble at the IMATRONIK Fesitval of Electronic Music. eyam iv, part of Cleare's eyam series for contrabass wind instruments, pairs a contrabass flute with a electronically spatialized ensemble of winds, strings, and percussion. The piece was commissioned and written as part of a research residency at The EXPERIMENTALSTUDIO of the SWR.   

Cleare was also featured in the Bludenzer Tage zeitgemäser Musik (Bludenzer Days of Contemporary Music) Festival in Vienna. Her work, luna | lithe | lair was commissioned and premiered by Ensemble Mosaik, a new music ensemble based in Berlin, conducted by Enno Poppe. 

Check out her work Dorchadas, for ensemble, which is also available from PSNY! 

Accolades for David Brynjar Franzson & Yarn/Wire

by Ted Gordon on Jan. 5, 2015, 3:49 p.m.

Happy new year from the PSNY blog! 2015 is a promising year for new music, just as 2014 was; though so much has happened in the previous season that we haven't been able to tell you about it!

So, briefly, we'd like to call your attention to David Brynjar Franzson. Ever since we started publishing his works back in 2013, David has proven to be a singular, strong voice in contemporary music. Last year, his ambitious recording project with Yarn/Wire resulted in a CD on the Wergo record label, which has won numerous accolades and ecstatic reviews— in Gramophone, Tempo, 5against4, and The Wire, which called it "a visceral recording that makes sounds inside and outside the pianos vividly present...a pungent performance, full of drama and unrest."

The success of this CD has been noted not only in America, but also internationally; it also was nominated for a 2014 Icelandic Music Award. 

Check out an excerpt from the CD here. Also, check out an interview with Yarn/Wire's Ian Antonio and Russell Greenberg discussing the recording process at EMPAC:

Yarn/Wire Records David Franzson for WERGO

by Ted Gordon on May 16, 2014, 4 p.m.

WERGO Records, one of the foremost international record labels for new music, has just released a new album of works by PSNY composer David Brynjar Franzson, performed by the New York-based ensemble Yarn/Wire. Recorded at the state-of-the-art Experimental Media and Performing Arts Center at the Renssalaer Polytechnic Institute, this album features three related compositions by Franzson under the title The Negotiation of Context. All three of the works of this series - parts A, B and C - are available through PSNY. These three independent works examine the topographies of musical contexts: the histories of instruments, the social dynamic between performers, and the negotiation of contextual meaning between performers and their audience. 

The CD also includes a performance video of Yarn/Wire in the process of recording—a document that adds to the contextual fabric of Franzson's meta-exploration.  

Check out an excerpt from The Negotiation of Context (A) here: