Joan La Barbara Begins 70th Birthday Celebration at Roulette

by Ted Gordon on May 23, 2017, 2:44 p.m.

Now in her 70th year, Joan La Barbara has continued her life's work of composition, collaboration, and performance, and shows no signs of slowing. 2017 has already seen La Barbara performing at ISSUE Project Room, music directing a new production of Robert Ashley's Dust, touring with the "Music for Merce" celebration in Minneapolis and Chicago, and overseeing performances of her piece A Murmuration for Chibok, commissioned by the Young People's Chorus of New York City and performed at the 30th annual Bang on a Can Marathon. 

To continue this multi-faceted year, La Barbara will premiere her new song cycle, The Wanderlusting of Joseph C., performed by the composer herself alongside Ne(x)tworks at Roulette in Brookyln, NY. This new song cycle explores Joseph Cornell's concept of "wanderlusting"—which articulates both the desire to wander and the desire to lust—with text by Vietnamese-American writer Monique Truong. 

Check out a recent interview with Red Bull Music Academy below. 

Mario Diaz de Leon: New Album, Residency at The Stone

by Ted Gordon on Aug. 9, 2015, 10:40 p.m.

Mario Diaz de Leon is a composer who explores the dark: dark emotion, dark affect, dark sounds. Equally at home in the world of instrumental composition as he is with metal, noise, and ambient drone music, Diaz de Leon truly embodies the spirit of the collaborative musician of today. In addition to composition, Diaz de Leon also performs under the alias Oneirogen, and has collaborated and performed with Nate Young of the legendary noise outfit Wolf Eyes. These collaborative and genre-crossing projects bring Diaz de Leon into a special category of "composer-performer" that knows no boundaries—neither aesthetic nor social. 

It's no surprise that Diaz de Leon would be connected to John Zorn, New York's Avant-Garde ringleader; his first album Enter Houses Of was released on Zorn's record label, Tzadik, and features performances from members of the International Contemporary Ensemble. Diaz de Leon has continued his close relationship with ICE to produce his latest album, The Soul is the Arena, recently released on Denovali Records. Check out the first track, Luciform, below. 

Writing in Pitchfork, Seth Colter Walls calls the album "the best introduction to his refined feel for instrumental extremity"; in Luciform, Claire Chase's relentless virtuosity rubs up against bass-heavy electronic textures. (Make sure to listen with headphones!). Along with Luciform, the title composition of this album, The Soul is the Arena, will be available for immediate download from PSNY. 

ICEstorm: Joshua Rubin - Mario Diaz de Leon: The Soul is the Arena from ICE on Vimeo.

If you're lucky enough to live in the New York area, Diaz de Leon will be performing the album in its entirety at The Stone on August 11th, along with ICE members Claire Chase, Joshua Rubin and Kivie Cahn-Lipman. This concert kicks of Diaz de Leon's residency at The Stone: a week of concerts that will include collaborations and performances with cellist/noise musician MV Carbon, the violin duo String Noise, Bloodmist, and more. Get there early—the first 50 audience members will receive a free copy of the CD.

Later in the week, on August 15th, the Mivos Quartet will perform Moonblood and Psalterion, two string quartets, and pianist Stephen Gosling will perform Cosmogony, a new work for piano and electronics. More information about the entire week of concerts can be found here.

Keep an eye out for The Soul is the Arena, as well as all five compositions from Enter Houses Of on PSNY soon! 

Ann Cleare's "I should live in wires for leaving you behind" on PSNY and Yarn/Wire/Currents

by Leif Larson on June 11, 2015, 12:12 p.m.

We are thrilled to announce the addition of Ann Cleare's I should live in wires for leaving you behind to the PSNY catalogue. Scored for piano (two players) and two percussionists, the piece is full of intricate and beautiful notation. With extensive playing inside the piano along with a unique selection of percussion, this is arguably Cleare’s most percussive work yet. Cleare writes,

The piece simultaneously traces two processes: one of growth and one of evanescing, and aims to sonically and visually depict the energy and psychology between these transformative states.
 

Percussion is a fitting instrumentation for exploring sonic and dramatic elements. With percussion’s natural choreographic dimension, the visual energy is apparent. The use of a "prepared" salad spinner filled with loose marbles, coins, and nails surprisingly and brilliantly explores the growth and evanescing of timbre and visual/aural drama. There are moments of beauty and stillness throughout as well. Cleare imagines the colorful sounds of glass bowls placed on the strings of the piano during the beginning of her piece as “an organ made of crystal. 

I should live in wires for leaving you behind was commissioned by Issue Project Room and the ensemble Yarn/Wire who gave its premiere in October 2014 at Issue Project Room in Brooklyn, NY. In conjunction with the publication of the work on PSNY, Yarn/Wire has featured Cleare’s piece as part of the digital release of Yarn/Wire/Currents Volume 2. The series, inaugurated at Issue Project Room in 2013, serves as an incubator for new experimental music and explores the intersections of composition, technology, installation, live performance, music theater, and more. Visit Yarn/Wire's Currents Volume 2 album page and check out their recording of Ann Cleare's I should live in wires for leaving you behind: