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Evan Ziporyn Leads Steve Martland Memorial Concert in Boston

Oct. 08, 2013

Evan Ziporyn Leads Steve Martland Memorial Concert in Boston

On October 11, Bang on a Can All-Stars co-founder Evan Ziporyn presents a concert in memory of the late Steve Martland at Kresge Auditorium in Cabridge, Masachusetts. A boundary-pushing British composer who was dedicated to questioning the function of composers in contemporary society, Martland developed a unique compositional voice that fused elements of rock, pop, and classical idioms. He tragically passed away this past spring, age 53. The concert features the debut of Ziporyn’s Critical Band, an 11-piece ensemble specializing in “loud music for winds and amplified instruments.”

While his work as a composer was rarely performed in the US during his lifetime, Martland inspired a generation of young American musicians and ensembles to bridge aesthetic gaps of modern music, including New York-based groups like the Bang on a Can All-Stars and Alarm Will Sound. The Critical Band, carrying on Martland’s legacy of “equal parts brass band and rock group,” performs a program of Martland’s most influential chamber works, including Remix, Kick, and Dance Works, alongside pieces by Ziporyn and Joel Roston. Tom Service, for The Guardian, shares the following thoughts on Martland:

Like the man himself, Martland’s music is joyfully, willfully energetic, it’s riotously noisy, and brazenly, brilliantly brash; it’s occasionally complex, but more often than not it’s gleefully approachable, and it’s never anything but engagingly, viscerally compelling.

For more information on Steve Martland, please visit www.schott-music.com.

Detail on the Critical Band program can be found at www.criticalband.org. 

Steve Martland
Remix (1986)
for jazz ensemble
asax.tsax.barsax-flugelhn.tbn-synth. or elec hpd-drums/perc(ad lib.)-vn(amplified).db(amplified or ebgtr)
5’

Kick (1996)
for eleven players
ssax.asax.barsax-tpt.tbn-mar.drum kit-pno.egtr(gtr).bgtr with low B-vn
8’

Dance Works (1993)
alternative version for 9 players
fl.asax.tsax.barsax-hn.3Ctpt.3tbn-egtr.bgtr.pno-vn
25’

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