Kettle Corn New Music Presents Scott Wollschleger's "Brontal Symmetry"

by Ted Gordon on Feb. 9, 2017, 12:24 p.m.

On February 11th, Kettle Corn New Music presents a concert at New York City's Scandinavia House that features Scott Wollschleger's Brontal Symmetry for piano trio, alongside works by Hans Abrahamsen, Kaija Saariaho, Ingraham Marshall and Anna Thorvaldsdottir. The Longleash Piano Trio will perform Wollschleger's work, and will be joined later by violist Anne Lanzilotti. Composer and presenter Alex Weiser sat down with Wollschleger to discuss his compositional practice and his concept of "brontal", which is obliquely etymologically related to "brontasaurus."

"Brontal" speaks both to the paleolithic nature of certain modes of being and to the absurdities of urban life. Wollschleger specifiies a "brontal motion" as an ascenscion from low to high (recalling, and inverting, the Schenkerian claim of high-to-low movement); but rather claiming this quality as a universal feature of nature, Wollschleger links it to cryptic and contingent compositional practice, a repetition that spins out in his music from the middle to both beginning and end. Wollschleger describes Brontal Symmetry as a kind of static unfolding of brontal musicality, with the composer directing the listener to hold micro- and macro-levels of attention throughout the piece. Yet the kind of repetition in this piece doesn't only happen in the dimensions of pitch and timbre; Wollschleger's "Brontal" repetition emerges in performance as fragmentary, and leaves the listener with a similarly fragmented memory.  

Third Coast Percussion Premieres Christopher Cerrone's "Goldbeater's Skin"

by Ted Gordon on Feb. 7, 2017, 10:27 a.m.

On February 4th, Grammy-nominated Third Coast Percussion and mezzo-soprano Rachel Calloway premiered a new work byChristopher Cerrone at the University of Notre Dame's DeBartolo Performing Arts Center entitled Goldbeater's Skin. Goldbeater's Skin, which was commissioned by Elizabeth and Justus Schlichting and the DeBartolo PAC, sets poems by G.C. Waldrep from the book of the same name.

Waldrep lived for many years in an Amish community in North Carolina, and his poems reflect that "earthy mysticism"; Cerrone takes the percussive title of Waldrep's collection and realizes it with his signature blend of poeticism, lyricism, and texture. In the South Bend Tribune, Third Coast Percussionist David Skidmore notes that "There are a lot of ways to describe what [Cerrone] does, but it's best described as 'beautiful music,' which is saying a lot."

Cerrone has set many American poets' work to music, and he is the third member of the Sleeping Giant collective to work with Third Coast Percussion, which has previously commissioned works by Timo Andres (Austerity Measures, available on PSNY) and Ted Hearne (Thaw). Check out the world premiere of Austerity Measures below. 

Anthony Cheung in Residency at 113 Composers Collective

by Ted Gordon on Feb. 3, 2017, 2:51 p.m.

On February 4th and 5th, Minneapolis' 113 Composers Collective hosts two performances by the Chicago-based Fonema Consort, featuring works by Anthony Cheung, James Dillon, Bethany Younge, and more. Before the concerts, which take place at the University of Minnesota's Ted Mann Concert Hall and St. Paul's Studio Z, Anthony Cheung will give a colloquium at UMN's Feguson Hall. (Note well that Cheung's contribution to the program is a work entitled après une lecture, in addition to his classic Roundabouts.) Cheung and the Fonema Consort represent two dynamic examples of Chicago's vibrant new music community, which has recently been growing with the arrivals of Alex Mincek and Sam Pluta. Check out movement 2 of Cheung's Roundabouts below: