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Posts tagged 'Darmstadt'

Upcoming Performances of Wollschleger, Cerrone

Schumann's Dichterliebe famously begins: "Im wunderschönen Monat Mai"—in the wonderful month of May. What follows is a masterful collection of discrete, yet interrelated compositions: a chain linked by its proximity to rebirth and spring. Schumann's song cycle is nice metaphor for what's happening with two of our PSNY composers this month: over the next few weeks, Scott Wollschleger and Christopher Cerrone will see a blooming and bountiful group of performances, all up and down the East coast. A wonderful month of May, indeed! 

Kicking things off in a lower register, Scott Wollschleger's trio for marimba, bass clarinet, and bassoon, Density is a Kind of Love, will see its New York Premiere at ShapeShifter Lab on May 9th, performed by Transient Canvas and Chris Watford. Keep an eye out for Density is a Kind of Love, which will soon be published on PSNY. 

Watford will also be performing Timothy McCormack's monumental BODY MATTER, which Watford commissioned in 2015—a nearly thirty-minute long exploration of the bassoon that pushes the instrument and its player to their limits. 

The very next day, Wollschleger's second string quartet, "White Wall", will be performed by the MIVOS Quartet alongside Helmut Lachenmann's String Quartet No. 3 ("Grido") at Roulette, as a part of the Darmstadt Institute New York's 70 Year Anniversary Celebration. Performing on a packed program that also includes the International Contemporary Ensemble performing works by Ashley Fure, Chaya Czernowin ,and Luigi Nono, MIVOS's performance of "White Wall"—a piece they commissioned from Wollschleger—will offer a "brontal" meditation on the process of becoming-sound, with quiet but intense energies circulating among the quartet members, sounding their own time. Check out MIVOS performing the first half of this quartet: 

If Wollschleger's "White Wall" plunges us into the sound-world of the instruments themselves, Christopher Cerrone's "Memory Palace", which sees two performances in the same week, brings us to the sound-world of the composer firmly rooted in space. Or, more properly, as the movement titles suggest, spaces: Harriman, the Long Island Expressway, Foxhurst. On May 8th, the Metropolis Ensemble, featuring percussionist Ian Rosenbaum, performs the Washington, DC premiere of "Memory Palace" at the Phillips Collection. Moving up the coastline, Rosenbaum will also perform the work in Baltimore at An Die Musik on May 10th, with Cerrone giving engaging in an intimate pre-concert conversation. The following week, on May 16th, Rosenbaum will again perform "Memory Palace" at the American Irish Historical Society—an innovative concert program that asks, "what would a house sound like if it could sing?". Check out Rosenbaum performing "Memory Palace" below. 

News From Ann Cleare and Timothy Andres

Ann Cleare, one of the more recently added composers on our PSNY roster, has recently been awarded the Staubach Honoraria for Composition, a prize awarded by the Darmstadt Summer Course for New Music. Chosen from over 130 applications, Ann Cleare's works were selected for this prestigious prize, which commissions composers to write a new work for one of the Darmstadt's resident ensembles, as well as awarding them a full scholarship for the summer course. Cleare will be writing a new work for the Curious Chamber Players, an avant-garde ensemble from Stockholm, to be premiered in the summer of 2014. Cleare is already working on commissions for Ensemble Nikel and New York's own Yarn/Wire for the 2014 season, so we greatly look forward to her new work in the summer! For an idea of Cleare's ensemble writing, check out a recording of her 2007 work, Dorchadas

We're also excited to announce that Timo Andres has written a new string quartet - Early to Rise - which is now available here on PSNY. The most recent in a series of Schumann-inspired pieces, Early to Rise was commissioned by The Library of Congress Dina Koston and Roger Shapiro Fund for New Music and premiered by the Attacca Quartet. 

Timo will also be releasing a new album on Nonesuch Records, entitled Home Stretch. The album will contain Timo's new work, Home Stretch, composed as a companion piece to Mozart's Piano Concerto No. 12, as well as his re-invention of Mozart's Piano Concerto No. 26 in D, "Coronation", and his Paraphrase on Themes of Brian Eno, all performed with the Metropolis Chamber Ensemble. Here's a short excerpt of Timo performing his Mozart re-invention with the Metropolis Ensemble in 2011:

Home Stretch will be Timo's second album with Nonesuch; the first, Shy and Mighty, contains pieces for two pianos, including a two-piano version of How Can I Live In Your World Of Ideas?, available on PSNY as a work for solo piano. Other solo piano works available on PSNY include At The River , Sorbet, and It Takes A Long Time To Become A Good Composer

 

 

The Summer of Alex Mincek

Who knew that one composer could be so busy in such a short amount of time? Alex Mincek, recent recipient of the prestigious Alpert Award in the Arts , is quickly gaining an international reputation for his work, both written for chamber ensembles and for orchestra. His String Quartet No. 3, "lift - tilt - filter - split", has been recently performed by both the MIVOS Quartet and the JACK Quartet, MIVOS giving the Canadian premiere of the piece last month, and JACK performing it alongside the Arditti String Quartet at Wigmore Hall. JACK's performance garnered favorable reviews in The Guardian and severalblogs, and a live recording is available through Wigmore Hall's in-house record label. (The live recording, by the way, also includes recordings of Ligeti's Second String Quartet, as well as Matthias Pintscher's Study IV for Treatise on the Veil!)

The JACK Quartet have also recorded Mincek's String Quartet No. 3 on an album released by Carrier Records, which also has recordings of his Pendulum V, Pendulum III, Poco a Poco, and Nucleus. Be sure to follow us on twitter (@Schott_NY) where we'll be giving away two free copies of Alex's Carrier Records album!

For those of you who can't wait to get your hands on that beautifully recorded and crafted CD, here's a video of the MIVOS quartet performing the work at the Darmstat Summer Course for New Music last year: 

And in addition to the activity surrounding Mincek's String Quartet No. 3, the Ensemble Cairn, which in March commissioned a new chamber work from Mincek entitled "donegal", performed that work for a second time at the Hippodrome Douai-- an archived recording of which is still avaialble from Radio France

What's that? You demand even more work from this already-busy, internationally-accoladed composer? Well-- be on the lookout for loadbang, New York's bleeding-edge ensemble for "lung-powered instrumentation" (bass clarinet, trumpet, trombone, and baritone voice), performing Mincek's also-recently-commissioned piece, "number may be defined." And, if you find yourself at the Ostrava Days institute/festival this summer, keep your ears out at the final concert of the festival, which will include an excerpt from a brand-new large orchestral work, to be affiliated with Mincek's Pendulum works. So, keep Mincek's other pendulum works—two of which are available through PSNY— in mind!  

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