Accolades for David Brynjar Franzson & Yarn/Wire

by Ted Gordon on Jan. 5, 2015, 3:49 p.m.

Happy new year from the PSNY blog! 2015 is a promising year for new music, just as 2014 was; though so much has happened in the previous season that we haven't been able to tell you about it!

So, briefly, we'd like to call your attention to David Brynjar Franzson. Ever since we started publishing his works back in 2013, David has proven to be a singular, strong voice in contemporary music. Last year, his ambitious recording project with Yarn/Wire resulted in a CD on the Wergo record label, which has won numerous accolades and ecstatic reviews— in Gramophone, Tempo, 5against4, and The Wire, which called it "a visceral recording that makes sounds inside and outside the pianos vividly present...a pungent performance, full of drama and unrest."

The success of this CD has been noted not only in America, but also internationally; it also was nominated for a 2014 Icelandic Music Award. 

Check out an excerpt from the CD here. Also, check out an interview with Yarn/Wire's Ian Antonio and Russell Greenberg discussing the recording process at EMPAC:

Kate Soper in the New York Times

by Ted Gordon on Dec. 11, 2014, 10 a.m.

The New York Times' "In Performance" series is a regular feature of their Culture section's video archive. Recently they've chosen to feature composer Kate Soper performing a section of her own work, "Only the Words Themselves Mean What They Say," along with flutist Erin Lesser. A three-part piece based on texts by Lydia Davis, it explores tensions and serendipities between written text, spoken text, the human voice, and the voice as played through instruments. Soper writes, "Lydia Davis' words suggested an unhinged virtuosity and idiosyncratic, multi-layered musical reading that took me from screwball comedy to paired musical gymnastics: the flute becomes a kind of Iron Man suit for the voice, amplifying it to new planes of expressivity, intensity, and insanity as the two players struggle, with a single addled brain, to navigate the treacherous labyrinth of simple logic."

Click below to see the video at the New York Times.

Keeril Makan's Composer Portrait at Miller Theatre

by Ted Gordon on Dec. 1, 2014, 8 a.m.

Columbia University's Miller Theatre has been a singular venue in New York for their Composer Portrait series, which explores the works of single composers in depth. Recent Composer Portraits have featured the works of Chaya Czernowin and Bernard Rands, both performed by the International Contemporary Ensemble. On Friday, December 5th, the Either/Or Ensemble, led by Richard Carrick, will perform an evening of works by Keeril Makan, including the World Premeire of If We Knew The Sky, composed in 2014, and the New York Premeire of Letting Time Circle Through Us, commissioned and premiered in 2013 by Either/Or. 

Either/Or and Makan have enjoyed numerous collaborations, with the ensemble's sensitive, virtuosic playing nurturing Makan's compositional focus on stillness, flow, timbre, and reverberation. Makan has written eloquently in the New York Times about his compositional process, and we have featured his work here on the PSNY Blog. Check out a performance of Makan's The Noise Between Thoughts by Either/Or: 

Don't miss The New Yorker's portrait article on Makan, writen by Russell Platt, in anticipation of his Miller Theatre concert on Friday.