New Music from Christopher Cerrone

by Ted Gordon on Feb. 5, 2015, 10:32 a.m.

2015 has already been a busy year for PSNY composer Christopher Cerrone: a residency at EMPAC, a successful Kickstarter campaign with percussionist Owen Weaver, and on February 6th, the premeire of a new Violin Concerto at a new music venue in New York (new!) called Subculture. Jointly commissioned by violinist Rachel Lee Priday and pianist David Kaplan, with funding from the Fromm Foundation, this new piece will have its first performance on a program curated by Cerrone that centers around the relationship between contemporary music and 19th century Germany. Cerrone's work, a violin sonata, retains the formal sections of classical Sonata form while wildly reimagining its boundaries. Also on the program is Hannah Lash's Liebesbrief an Schumann which draws intertexts from Robert Schumann's Davidsbündlertänze [League of David Dances], instrumental works he wrote at the height of his compositional powers, which pit the fanciful league of David against the "Philistines"—Schumann's vision of (1830s) mass culture. Rounding out the program are new works by Samuel Carl Adams and PSNY's own Scott Wollschleger. 

Part of MATA's Interval series, the concert is jointly produced by Issue Project Room, and was curated by Cerrone. Check out a sneak preview of Priday and Kaplan rehearsing Cerrone's new sonata below. 

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! 

Kate Soper's "Cipher" Now Available on PSNY

by Ted Gordon on Jan. 28, 2014, 2:28 p.m.

Kate Soper's Cipher, for soprano and violin, is now available on PSNY. Composed for violinist Joshua Modney, Cipher is a meditation on language, timbre, text, and intelligibility, melding texts by Jenny Holzer, Ludwig Wittgenstein, Guido d'Arezzo; the work "[exposes the inherent ambiguity of musical temperament, ensemble hierarchy, and lyric comprehension." Presented in four movements (with each movement's name reminiscent attribution on hip hop albums), Cipher is an "exotic score" [NYTimes], a feast for the eyes (and mind) as well as the ears. Check out Soper and Modney performing it at ISSUE Project Room in 2012: 

Soper has been developing her interrogation of language, embodiment, and the seduction of song with her new opera project, "Here Be Sirens," which is currently running at Dixon Place, presented by Dixon Place and Morningside Opera. With a great review in the New York Times, and an in-depth feature on I Care if You Listen, this work is not to be missed. Check out this video of Soper discussing the work during her 2013 MacDowell Colony residency: