Richard Carrick, Uptown & Downtown

by Ted Gordon on Jan. 29, 2015, 12:57 p.m.

Who says that the Uptown/Downtown divide still exists? Richard Carrick's music might be proof that the entire island of Manhattan (and Brooklyn, too) are truly open territory for new music. This week, on January 29th, Carrick will see his string quintet, Adagios, performed by the Toomai String Quintet at Spectrum NYC, a biotech office-by-day, new music space-by-night, on the Lower East Side. Carrick is also curating a series at Spectrum called Friday Night LOUD, for "full-volume contemporary music", which kicks off with virtuoso electric guitarist Dan Lippel on February 6th. 

Taking the F train uptown will get you to closer to the West End Theater, where Catherine Tharin and three other contemporary dancers have created choreography set to Carrick's Stone Guitars. Their performance will run from February 5th-8th. 

Check out Tharin's choreography below! 

Timo Andres at the Phillips Collection

by Ted Gordon on Jan. 19, 2015, 10:31 a.m.

Pianist-composer Timo Andres has been busy in 2015: in the first three weeks of this new year, he's already performed five times, across the nation. These include performances at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, Meymandi Concert Hall in Raleigh, NC, The Slowdown in Omaha, Nebraska, and also the Phillips Collection in Washington, DC. 

Known for its collection of impressionist and modern art, the Phillips has been holding concerts in its intimate galleries that speak to its curatorial mission of combining old and new, presenting works from the 19th century next to 20th century works, creating an emergent dialogue across time.

In his performance on January 11th, Timo Andres achieved a similar feat: he performed works by Franz Schubert and Philip Glass, along with his own work, "At The River". No stranger to the interplay between the European canon and contemporary composition (see his updated version of Mozart's "Coronation Concerto"), Andres "approached these works [...] gingerly, as if they were part of a living dialogue," wrote Anne Midgette in the Washington Post. 

Check out Andres performing "At The River" in his Brooklyn home: 

Ann Cleare Performances in New York, Europe

by Ted Gordon on Jan. 7, 2015, 10:35 a.m.

Composer Ann Cleare has had a spate of successful concerts recently, featuring premiere performances of her work I should live in wires for leaving you behind by Yarn/Wire, who commissioned Cleare to write it. This piece, for prepared piano and percussion, was premiered at ISSUE Project Room on October 9th, and performed again at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute's EMPAC on November 15th. I should live in wires for leaving you behind begins with all performers 'inside' the piano, playing carefully arranged crystal bowls set inside the piano; it gradually moves out to a second 'outside' space, where the instruments called for include modified salad spinners, flower pots, and more. Both the sonic and the visual coordination of this piece make it a stand-out for Yarn/Wire, and a successful collaboration with Cleare. 

Other recent performances include anchor me to the land, performed in Darmstadt, Germany by the Curious Chamber Players. This premiere was the fruit of Cleare's Staubach Honorarium, a prestigious composition prize awarded each year to composers for premieres at the Darmstadt International Summer Course for New Music. 

Just down the road from Darmstadt in Mannheim, Cleare saw the premiere of another new work, luna (the eye that opens the other eye), for solo alto saxophone, which was performed by Patrick Stadler at the Popakademie (University of Popular Music). 

Farther south in Karlsruhe, Cleare's eyam iv (Pluto's farthest moons) was premiered by Richard Craig and The Experimental Ensemble at the IMATRONIK Fesitval of Electronic Music. eyam iv, part of Cleare's eyam series for contrabass wind instruments, pairs a contrabass flute with a electronically spatialized ensemble of winds, strings, and percussion. The piece was commissioned and written as part of a research residency at The EXPERIMENTALSTUDIO of the SWR.   

Cleare was also featured in the Bludenzer Tage zeitgemäser Musik (Bludenzer Days of Contemporary Music) Festival in Vienna. Her work, luna | lithe | lair was commissioned and premiered by Ensemble Mosaik, a new music ensemble based in Berlin, conducted by Enno Poppe. 

Check out her work Dorchadas, for ensemble, which is also available from PSNY!