Lei Liang Portrait Concert at Miller Theatre

by Ted Gordon on Nov. 14, 2016, 2 p.m.

(Lei Liang, photo: Howard Lipin)

On November 17th, Miller Theatre at Columbia University will present a Portrait Concert of composer Lei Liang. With performances by the JACK Quartet, loadbang, bassist Mark Dresser and with Steven Schick conducting, this concert will feature the New York premiere of Liang's concerto for double bass and ensemble Luminous (2014), as well as the World Premiere of Lakescape V, a new work commissioned by Miller Theatre and dedicated to loadbang. 

(Excerpt from Luminous, performed by Mark Dresser, San Francisco Contemporary Music Players, Steven Shick, conductor)

Liang's work is often influenced by traditional Chinese music—from Opera, to Mongolian throat singing, to instruments such as the guqin, an ancient zither—and brings these influences to bear on decidedly idiosyncratic, flexible concepts such as "one note polyphony", shadows, breathing, and transformation. As Paul Griffiths writes, "he breaths, so to say, from both of his lungs." The concert program features works from throughout Liang's career that illustrate and sonify these conceps, including Ascension, for brass quintet and percussion, and Serashi Fragments, for string quartet, along with Luminous and Lakescape V. 

                
(pages from Lei Liang's Luminous)

The Lakescape series encapsulates many of Liang's diverse interests. At a Mahayana Buddhist monastery in upstate New York, Liang observed a beaver swimming through a lake's placid surface; this led him to realize, in his words, that "underneath the music I write is a profoundly deep silence upon which I seek to inscribe my signature through sound."

In anticipation of the portrait concert, check out a video from the world premiere of Liang's recent string quartet Song Recollections, performed by the Formosa Quartet: 

Tim Munro's "Recounting" Features Soper, Cerrone

by Ted Gordon on Nov. 8, 2016, 5:02 p.m.

The flutist Tim Munro has recently described his work as an artist as storytelling: communicating from one person to another using the media of instrument, sound, and performance. After a long tenure with the Grammy-award-winning ensemble eighth blackbird, Munro has been developing a solo performance practice which explores the boundaries of his instruments—flute, breath, voice, speech. His upcoming solo performance at Columbia's Miller Theatre, entitled "Recounting", focuses on the moments between wakefulness and sleep, featuring works that weave between these two states. 

Christopher Cerrone's Liminal Highway, commissioned by Munro with assistance from New Music USA to be premeired on November 10th, is written for flute and four-channel electronics, and begins from the moment of "falling asleep in transit." This work serves as the impetus for the entire program, which includes five additional works—featuring appearances by soprano and composer Kate Soper, vocal ensemble Face the Music, and lighting designer Mary Ellen Stebbins. Soper and Munro will perform her 2011 work, Only the Words Themselves Mean What They Say, which sets text by Lydia Davis. Echoing Cerrone's evocation of an "altered state", Soper's work questions the one-ness of the performer, turning a single "instrument" into a site of multiplicity. 

Alex Mincek: "On The Outside, Looking Out"

by Ted Gordon on May 13, 2016, 9:46 a.m.

PSNY Composer Alex Mincek has recently been featured by the journal Music & Literature. Writer George Grella moves seamlessly from Mincek's Pendulum series to his relationship with jazz to his admiration of fellow PSNY composer Alvin Singleton.  Grella recalls his first encounter with Mincek's music—a performance of Pendulum VII at Zankel Hall. After beginning with a "skronking" saxophone, 

"[T]hen, like a pendulum, the piece swung into a different, but related, structural concept. The level of activity remained the same, but the sense of time and motion was entirely different. The music was like a frothing suspension, holding still via sustained pitches, but simmering through tremolos, rebowings, flutter-tonguing. There was the feeling that the music contained some sort of strange, awesome power."

(excerpt: Alex Mincek String Quartet No. 3 lift–tilt–filter–split)

(Other works in the Pendulum series available on PSNY include Pendulum III, for alto saxophone and piano, and Pendulum VI: Trigger for piano four-hands and two percussionists.)

Be sure to check out the full feature at Music & Literature!