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. 

New Music Mondays: Morton Subotnick, Mario Diaz de Leon, & Scott Wollschleger

by Ted Gordon on Dec. 9, 2013, 12:03 p.m.

With snow piling up across America, it's a great opportunity to spend some time indoors practicing... new music! This week we're excited to feature three newly-pubilshed works: Morton Subotnick's "Trembling", Mario Diaz de Leon's "Luciform", and Scott Wollschleger's "America".

Morton Subotnick's "Trembling" is scored for violin, piano and "ghost score" technology, Subotnick's interactive electro-acoustic software which autonomously spatializes and reacts to acoustic phenomena. Taking a recording of Joan La Barbara speaking the word "trembling," Subotnick "recorded, synthesized, and transformed" this utterance and used it as the basis for his composition. Check out a sample of the recording below: 

Mario Diaz de Leon's "Luciform", for solo flute and electronics, also plays with the interaction between performer and software, but in a different way; the work is a "journey inward, a movement through a series of vision states. A difficult path, a rite of passage, hovering between diabolical intensity and lucid wakefulness." Recently recorded by Claire Chase for her fantastic album "Density," "Luciform" is a complex, intensely virtuosic work with a profound depth of both acoustic and electronic textures. 

Though Scott Wollschleger's "America", for solo cello, does not include electronics, it remains connected to Subotnick's and Diaz de Leon's works through its exploration of "timbre, virtuosity, and differential repetition." Not bound to pitch-space or harmonic structures, Wollschleger's work explores the timbral possibilities of the cello with extended technique with both instrumentation and sonic organization. 

Mivos Quartet Performs Mincek and Franzson

by Ted Gordon on Nov. 25, 2013, 11:47 a.m.

November has been a great month for new CD releases-- just in time for holiday gifts. (Who wouldn't want a new CD of new music?) In addition to the debut album by The Living Earth Show, which we previously wrote about, Carrier Records has released "Reappearances" by the Mivos Quartet performing works by Alex Mincek, Davið Brynjar Franzson, Wolfgang Rihm and Felipe Lara. 

On this new album, Mivos, whose consistently masterful performance of contemporary repertoire has brought them to the forefront of the new music scene, perform Mincek's String Quartet No. 3 ("lift - tilt - filter - split"), as well as Franzson's On Repetition and Reappearances, both available from PSNY. Mincek's quartet can also be heard performed by the Wet Ink Ensemble from a 2011 album, also on Carrier. Check out a video of Mivos performing Franzson's work in October 2013:

Mivos may be one of the busier string quartets in New York right now, having also recently released a full-length album of works by Patrick Higgins, but they still find time to perform live; they will play an album release concert on December 19th at the DiMenna Center in New York, also featuring a new work by Scott Wollschleger.