Beat Furrer in New York

by Ted Gordon on May 23, 2013, 3:18 p.m.

Beat Furrer, the Swiss composer and founder of Klangforum Wien, has just ended a week-long residency in New York with the Talea Ensemble. The residency included lectures, open rehearsals, and several concerts, including a non-staged performance of Furrer's opera, FAMA, which included the vocal ensemble Ekmeles, at the Bohemian National Hall. The week also included the US premiere of Furrer's 2011 Studie für Klavier, available from PSNY, on May 14th at the Austrian Cultural Forum. We're excited to be able to make available several of Furrer's works, which are notoriously difficult to get a hold of. In addition to the Studie für Klavier, Furrer's a due for violin and piano, presto for flute and piano, and Spur for string quartet and piano are all available for download. 

Katharina Rosenberger Earns Praise for "Texturen"

by Ted Gordon on Nov. 27, 2012, 1:55 p.m.

Katharina Rosenberger's latest album, "Texturen," performed by Wet Ink and released by Hat Hut, has just won the 2012 Deutsche Schallplattenkritik Preis (German Record Critics Prize)! We extend our warmest congratulations to Katharina, though we can't say we're surprised. Helmut Rohm, of the awarding jury, described her album thusly:

"Sinister force-fields rumble in Katharina Rosenberger's finely-worked 'Texturen'. Here blooms the poetry of magic sounds, overwhelmed by the tingling thrill of the numinous. The presence of the musical performers potentiates the tiniest spark of noise, and its echo of alien worlds: a psychedelic trip through a multimedia event space."

More Swiss press has heaped praise on the album, which features fellow PSNY composers Alex Mincek and Kate Soper as performers. For those in New York, be sure to attend the performance of "torsion", recorded on the album, on December 17th at the Austrian Cultural Forum performed by pianist Taka Kigawa. 

Katharina is hard at work on the culmination of her three-year project, "Viva Voce", an interactive sound and visual installation, which will premiere at the Human Resources gallery in Los Angeles in January. See a preview of what this project will look like here.

Texturen, for solo piano, is the central piece on Katharina's acclaimed album and will soon be available to purchase here on PSNY -- stay tuned for more information! 

Seda Röder Plays Lei Liang & Ken Ueno at UC Davis

by Ted Gordon on Nov. 15, 2012, noon

West Coasters, it's your lucky day: Turkish pianist Seda Röder is performing an evening concert of works inspired by John Cage (who else?) on Friday, November 16th at UC Davis' Mondavi Center! The program includes Lei Liang's "Piano, Piano" and Ken Ueno's "Volcano", both of which Röder premiered at the Goethe-Institut Boston in April, alongside works by Cage, Morton Feldman, and Röder herself. 

"Piano, Piano" (slowly, gently, softly in Italian) was written during Liang's residency at the American Academy in Rome (where our composers Robert Beaser, Andrew Norman, and Anthony Cheung have also all been fellows). It is scored for an improvising pianist, and consists of two sets of sheet music: one printed, and one to be projected as a transparency. The work was written specifically for Röder as a part of her "Tales From the Silent Lands..." project.

For a taste of Liang's writing for solo piano, check out this video of Joanna Chao performing a movement from his 2007 work, "My Windows", available on PSNY:

Röder interviewed Liang about "Piano, Piano", and the video can be seen below:

We hope you all can be able to attend! Stay tuned for more upcoming news and interviews in the weeks ahead!