OME ZINE v1.2
October/November
"oh, my ears!" (OME) is an organization dedicated to new music and living composers
IN THIS ISSUE: Glass/Reich Concert Review October/November New Music Calendar EPIC MAKER INSTRUMENT CHALLENGE Comp Comp II: a review New Music with the Phoenix Symphony Pulitzer Prize Winning Composer Crossword
ohmyears.com
Reich A review of the September 11th Philip Glass Ensemble & Steve Reich and Musicians concert at the Brooklyn Academy of Music. by Emily Praetorius emilypraetorius.com REICH Clapping Music Performed by Steve Reich and Russell Hartenberger
GLASS Music in Similar Motion Performed by the Philip Glass Ensemble with Steve Reich
Piano Phase/Video Phase (1967/2002) Performed by David Cossin
Glassworks: “Floe,” “Façades,” and “Rubric” Performed by the Philip Glass Ensemble
Symphony No. 1 "Low": II, “Some Are” WTC 9/11 Performed by Steve Reich and Musicians Performed by the Philip Glass Ensemble Einstein on the Beach: Act 4, Scene 3, Sextet Performed by Steve Reich and Musicians “Spaceship” Performed by the Philip Glass Ensemble A few weeks ago I had the pleasure of attending one of the Philip Glass-Steve Reich concerts at Brooklyn Academy of Music (BAM) as part of their 2014 Next Wave Festival. Admittedly, a small part of me was just excited to witness the two rivals playing the same show (even the same piece) for the first time in over 30 years.* But all historymaking aside, what truly made me glad to have gone was that I had the chance to be completely surprised by my own reactions. I had never been the biggest fan of minimalism and it was a humbling reminder of how easy it is to pre-judge music you've never heard, especially when dealing with stylistic labels. Most of my musical knowledge weighed heavier on the Reich side of things, and I do enjoy a couple of his pieces. When it came to Glass, I had a limited outlook of his music which I had refused to expand after hearing Violin Concerto No. 1 and "The Hours" soundtrack. At some point it just became easier to say "Oh sorry, I don't like minimalism" because hey, musicians love a good tenacious opinion. So really I walked into BAM thinking I would more or less enjoy some of the Reich, irritably endure all of the Glass, and leave the show fairly uninspired. To elaborate, I remembered my first encounter of WTC 9/11 in undergrad as being an intriguing and gripping affair, however sitting in BAM Thursday evening the piece began to feel irksome. For all of the gravity and severity of the piece's subject matter, the experience itself felt sterile. I mean, I get the piece. I understand what was constructed musically with the samples to convey those suspended moments of shock and horror, but something about the anchoring of the piece to that relentless click track really bothered me in a way that it never had before. I wanted some space. I wanted some breath, some expansion, some room to feel amidst all the intensity. Needless to say, Sextet also tried my patience as the Reichian grooves in their standard instrument combinations began to wear me out.
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Glass This was totally unexpected, and at intermission I felt disappointed and unsettled by my own reactions. I prepared myself reluctantly for a long second half of Glass...
And got sucker-punched in the face by Music in Similar Motion. This was no cinematic 1-3 scale degree oscillations over static chord progressions. This was a gnarly, reedy, gritty combination of timbres moving rapidly in unison and unfolding unexpectedly through uneven note patterns. This was rockin.' The left hook came when they played Act 4, Scene 3 "Spaceship" from Einstein on the Beach. Hearing the music live was astounding. I couldn't get over how such a clunky mass of sound could move so damn fast. When I started getting fidgety from the repetition, I closed my eyes to stay focused and immediately the sound became visual--I could see the individual instruments in their places within the texture and how each would pop out here or duck in there while moving up and down their respective registers. So contrary to my own predictions, I actually disliked the Reich, really enjoyed some Glass, and left with my mind quite abuzz from the whole ordeal. Not bad for someone who claimed to "not like minimalism." Now I could sit here all day and analyze how my love affair with texture or my gravitation toward rapid unison lines just made me easy prey for Similar Motion and Einstein, but at the end of the day that's not the point. The point is, I would have never been as captivated as I was if I had never gone to the show in the first place. Over the past few years I've slowly become fed-up with unnecessarily hostile conversations bent on upholding one stylistic camp while ignorantly bashing all opposing camps. It's so easy to wrap ourselves up in these stylistic niches to feel validated about what we do as contemporary musicians in the mess that is "new music." But doing things easily leaves no room for you to challenge your own assumptions--no room for growth. Don't get me wrong, strong, opposing opinions are what keep innovation f lowing in all arts, but I do think the most legitimate of musical opinions and stances stem from being able to draw on as many musical experiences as possible, regardless of stylistic preference. Only then can you analyze why you like or dislike this or that and, in turn, understand yourself more as a musician in this crazy contemporary music world. Now that I’ve tricked you into reading that preachy paragraph, I’ll leave you with this awkward return to the BAM concert: The performers were amazing. That is all. *check out Wall Street Journal article online, "Giants of Modern Music Play Nice after 40 Year Feud"
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NEW MU S I C OCTOBER-
DOUBLERS COLLECTIVE
Oct 9th, Thursday, 7:30p, The Nash, $10/$5 student Doublers Collective: 8 people, 30 instruments
LITTLE WOMEN: AN OPERAIN TWO ACTS Oct 10th-19th, Ethington Theatre, $5-12 Louisa May Alcott's tender coming-of-age story is set masterfully to music by Mark Adamo (b.1962) in an opera The New York Times calls a "...masterpiece." Call for tickets (602) 639-8880
SUPERSTITION JAZZ ORCHESTRA PLAYS OLIVER NELSON Oct 15th Wednesday, 7:30, The Nash, $10 or $5 student
EVENT: JOHN CAGE'S 49 WATZES FOR THE 5 BUROUGHS OF NEW YORK Oct. 16th, Thursday, 3p, ASU Art Museum, FREE The ASU Art Museum presents a audio-visual installation of a version of Cage’s 49 Waltzes for the ASU Tempe campus realized by 23 students from the School of Music and Arts, Media and Engineering. In 1977 the American composer John Cage created 49 Waltzes for the Five Boroughs of New York. The work’s score is a map of New York City and features 49 superimposed triangles. Each triangle symbolizes a waltz. Cage obtained each point of the triangles via chance operations to pin down a specific location. Performers of 49 Waltzes visit each identified location to capture its sounds and sights to experience, treasure and document the acoustic ecology of a place.
HALLOWEEN WITH THE TETRA STRING QUARTET Oct. 24th, Friday, 7p, Tempe History Museum, FREE
Tetra performs Doug Harbin's "Red on Black" as part of their Halloween show.
ONEBEAT 201 4 TOUR
Oct. 28th, Tuesday, 7p, Arcosanti, AZ, FREE Free, but RSVP required: arcosanti.org/node/13516 OneBeat is an initiative of the U.S. Department of State’s Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs, administered by Bang on a Can's Found Sound Nation, led by Chris Marianetti, Jeremy Thal, and Elena Moon Park. Hailing from Egypt to Venezuela, this year’s fellows include DJs and
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C ALEND AR NOVEMBER
traditional instrumentalists, experimenters, indie-rockers, and more. This cohort includes: Lara Klaus, a percussionist and educator from Recife, Brazil; Fidel Kilic, a singer-songwriter and composer from Istanbul, Turkey; Peni Rini, an experimental vocalist from Java, Indonesia; Abdellah Hassak, a producer and organizer from Casablanca, Morocco; Dahlak Brathwaite, a Los Angeles-based MC and educator; and 20 other innovative musicians from an incredibly wide breadth of genres and backgrounds.
MUSICA NOVA ORCHESTRA Oct. 26th, Sunday, 4p, Central United Methodist Church, $20 Award-winning violist Milena Pajaro-van de Stadt makes her MusicaNova Orchestra debut as a soloist, playing Sir Edward Elgar’s “Viola Concerto” Op. 85. Also on the program are Tchaikovsky’s Orchestral Suite No. 2 and the world premiere of a new work Gaslight from MusicaNova Composition Fellow Nicholas Landrum.
OTOACOUSTIC EMISSIONS
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SEE PAGE 6
Oct. 31st, Friday, St. Augustine's Episcopal Parish
SOLIS CAMERATA CHAMBER CHOIR: SONGS OF THE SAINTS Nov 6th, Thursday, Chapel of Our Lady (Xavier Prep) 7:30p, place, $25 Every piece of music features texts written by and about saints, ranging from the music of the early Renaissance to two world premieres and concluding with Britten's masterpiece, Hymn to Saint Cecilia
CLASSICAL REV PHX REVIEW
Nov. 14th, Friday 7:30p, Date day, time, place, $ The Paradise Winds are performing with Clarinets for Conservation (C4C), Piano & Sax Duo (Chris Charbonneau and Hanah Vutipadadorn), a pick-up string quartet called CR Phx String Quartet and Jennifer Bindel, pianist.
OME'S EPIC MAKER INSTRUMENT CHALLENGE - SEE PAGE 7 Nov. 22nd, Saturday, All-dayy, TechShop Chander
ASU COMPOSITION STUDIO RECITAL Nov. 24th Monday, 7:30p, Katzin Concert Hall (ASU School of Music), FREE Join the School of Music Composition Studio for an evening of new works written by undergraduate and graduate student composers.
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Otoacoustic Emissions The 7th annual Otoacoustic Emissions will take place this Halloween night. Either as performer or spectator, all are invited to participate in this powerful drone experience, a sonic meditation on life in this bizarre and beautiful universe. Come to get lost in a voluminous ocean of sound conjured by circumambient organs, a battery of percussion, a choir of singers, clouds of strings and winds, amplified computers and other harmonic machinery. When: 9pm on Friday, October 31 Where: St. Augustine's Church, 1735 S. College Ave, Tempe (NE corner of College/Broadway) Admission: Free Performers: Arrive at the sanctuary of the church at 7:30pm. Invite your friends to join. Memorize the harmonic series: C-G-E-Bb-D-F#-G#-B. If you have questions, send a message to jacobadler@gmail.com. "we f lourish for a moment, achieve a bit of singing and dancing, a few memories we would carve in stone, then we wither, twist out of shape." - allen wheelis
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OME's 1st Annual Fall Fundraiser:
EPIC MAKER INSTRUMENT CHALLENGE and
BAKE SALE Saturday, Nov. 22nd 5-9pm TechShop in Chandler, AZ 249 E Chicago St, Chandler, AZ 85225 Entry Fee for Challengers: $12, day of $15 enter at ohmyears.com Entry Fee to Watch: $5 or free with baked good OME seeks makers, hackers, DIY-ers, crafts people, and mad scientists to bring forth their finest musical inventions. Prizes will be awarded to the top several instruments, as chosen by the audience. The prizes are provided by TechShop*, and several other local businesses. Winners will also receive day passes to the “oh my god, my body, my ears!” marathon concert in February, where their instrument will be on display (if the winers so choose). Depending on the nature of the instrument, winners might also be invited to perform at the “oh my god, my body, my ears!” marathon concert. The compensation for performing at the concert is $25 (this is an at-least guarantee). The Challenge: -Create an epic new instrument -Name your creation -Prepare a TL;DR style presentation -Play your instrument. Prove to us its worthiness. -Bring friends to vote for you -Win awesome prizes -Party, ear cupcakes Timeframe: Online applications (go to ohmyears.com) will be accepted up until midnight on Friday, Nov. 21st or until all slots are filled. Presentation times are granted on a first-come basis. You must present your instrument to be considered for any prizes. Set-up (you need to bring your instrument and confirm your entry) is 10a-4p on Saturday, Nov. 22nd. Presentations (“The Challenge”) start(s) at 5p and will last until 9p. Winners will be announced at 10p. The after party will start promptly... after. Entry fee per person OR team (up to 3 names may be placed on an instrument) is $12. Day-of entry fee is $15. New entries will not be accepted on Saturday, but payment
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will be accepted up until 4p, which is the end of instrument set-up time. For payment options, please visit ohmyears.com. This event supports the 2nd annual “oh my god, my body, my ears!”, a 10-hour marathon concert of music written by living composers. The “oh my god, my body, my ears!” marathon concert will be held at the Trunk Space, Feb 21st, 12-noon to 10p. *TechShop is a community-based workshop and prototyping studio on a mission to democratize access to the tools of innovation. Packed with cutting-edge tools, equipment and computers loaded with design software featuring the Autodesk Design Suite, TechShop offers the space to make, and the support and camaraderie of a community of makers. Contact: Elizabeth Kennedy Bayer ekbayer@gmail.com
Comp Comp II: A Review by Elizabeth Kennedy Bayer This is the second Composition Competition hosted by the Phoenix chapter of Classical Revolution. Ensembles are very literally drawn out of a hat, composers are given two weeks to write for their ensembles, performers have a few more weeks to work ot the kinks, and then all works are performed twice in front of a judges panel and audience. Two awards are given, one chosen by the panel and one chosen by the audience. The last Comp Comp was held in celebration of Arizona's 100th year as a state, and this year's competition had an added twist: composers were to somehow make note or incorporate 50th anniversary of the passage of the Civil Rights Act into their work. The first piece, and my personal favorite of the three, was 'Constant Struggle' written by Gil Dori. Mournful, almost blues-like fragments emerged from an overall sparse texture. Gil related his own experience of being in a wheel chair to the daily struggle face by anyone striving for equality. Not knowing this context (yes, the title should be a big hint), I would have pegged this piece as stagnant and uninteresting, but after hearing what Gil was going for, his piece was spot on. The music was reserved- fragments never quite becoming melodies, trills and sharp punctuations only temporarily adding to the texture- but somehow it did not feel weighed down or joyless. This was the only piece out of the three I enjoyed more on the second perforance. Jeremy Muller presented next with 'Agona'. 'Agona' used a recently-devised notation system based on constellations and the performers seemed a little uncomfortable. It wasn't reading the stars that caused any minor hitches, but the complicated system of trading cards between sets. I would absolutely love to experience this piece again with a camera on the cards/score. I would also like to experience this work with different ensembles. The two performances were oddly similar. I'm assuming the lack of varied vocabulary came from working with both a new score and a new ensemble. I would also like to see how this notation system evolves. The last work, "Nov. 23rd, 1963: The Day After" was from Michael Muchnij. The piece was inspired by the sense of loss felt after the day Kennedy was shot. An interesting topic coming from a 20-something. The piece began with a truly captivating viola melody performed by Allyson Wuenschel. Brass chimed in with a bass clarinet expertly blended into the ensemble. There was even a small bit of spoken word, which I didn't find took away from the piece. That being said, the beautiful brass chorus quickly turned into a mess. Awkward lines with stubborn repeated notes made the piece suddenly awkward. As stunning as the viola line was (really, it was beautiful), the entire pice was basically a viola solo with accompaniment. That's not inherently a bad thing, I just feel that with such a specific subject matter as weighty as JFK's assassination, the work deserved more attention.
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Classics, Claps, and Pops: The New Energy of Tito Time by Tom Peterson tompetersonmusic.com
Program:
Gould: Spirituals John Williams: "Escapades" from Catch Me If You Can Higdon: Soprano Sax Concerto Copland: Suite from Appalachian Spring
Count me among the supporters of the Phoenix Symphony’s new music director, Tito Muñoz. In just his second weekend at the helm, he presented a program of allAmerican, alltwentieth century music in which the orchestra, while hardly flawless, was more energetic and nuanced — engaged — than I’ve heard them in quite a few years. The star of the evening was the opener, Morton Gould’s Spirituals. A relatively simple work, Spirituals is the sort of music that is easy for an orchestra to read once and bring to a concert. That’s probably how it is treated for most of its performances. But Muñoz invested a great deal of care and attention to its ebb and flow, its intent, its tiny, detailed phrase endings — the things that make otherwise forgettable music come alive. His hand quivered when a phrase needed more energy, and the ensemble responded, rapt, tuned in. It sounded like a rehearsalintensive performance (given an orchestra’s breakneck rehearsal schedule, I mean that a high compliment), and that notion was confirmed by the performance of the next two works, Jennifer Higdon’s Soprano Sax Concerto and John Williams’ Escapades from Catch Me If You Can. Here, the full plate of new repertoire (much of which is more intricate and solodriven than the orchestra’s standard fare) began to take its toll, putting both soloist and orchestra — and thus the audience — in an uncomfortable position. But they returned to form with an assured and earnest performance of Copland’s Appalachian Spring. As I left the concert hall, two thoughts had my attention. One: I can’t wait to see more of Tito’s relationship with the orchestra. They seem to like him, to respond to him, and his confident musicianship makes it easy to see why. I hope it’s not just a honeymoon. And Two: John Williams on a Classics concert? Now don’t get me wrong — I love me some John Williams, and his piece was arguably more ‘classical’ in nature than Copland’s yawninducing yarn — but the issue of populism was nodoubt front and center in Symphony Hall. This was about as safe a program as one could make while still technically fitting the description “allAmerican, alltwentiethcentury” (only Rhapsody in Blue and maybe some dances from West Side Story were missing), but was presented with all of Beethoven’s tux tails trappings. Adding to this odd contrast was Muñoz, who seemed nervous or flustered when the audience applauded between movements. This trend — applause between movements — is neither new nor endemic only to Phoenix, and if one wants to offer a populist platter of recent music, perhaps its reasonable to lighten up and acknowledge an audience’s enthusiastic response. And if a more serious tone is really the intent, then I’m looking forward to seeing that energy poured into some more serious music.
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ACROSS 1. wrote a Star Song in 2007 2. free jazz and Sound Grammar 3. not to be confused with JLA 4. Red Violin DOWN 1. the other John Adams 2. She who bangs on cans 3. made Tzadik, Arcana 4. dude wrote Sparrows 5. "Fanfare for the Uncommon Woman" 6. "Partita for 8 Voices" 7. "Dear Diary... Love, N.R."
Editors and Contributors
Elizabeth Kennedy Bayer Tom Peterson Margaret Anne Baer Emily Praetorius
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