Everyone Must Go Hear EVERY THING MUST GO

I already "tweeted" this on the "Twitter" but just in case you don't use the "Twitter," TONIGHT at (Le) Poisson Rouge you can go hear music off of Martin Bresnick's new CD, Every Thing Must Go, out today. Performers include our friend Wei-Yi Yang, and of course Prof. Bresnick's people Lisa Moore, plus Ashley Bathgate (cello), Abigail Nims (voice), and the Preludio Saxophone Quartet (duh). Buy tickets here, now.

Tomorrow Night in New Haven

This week's article for the New Haven Advocate was more stressful to write than usual. I think I've configured my Gmail settings in some moronic fashion such that my messages just get sucked straight into spam filters and die there, and so I found myself sending repeated, increasingly crazed emails to the composers involved (Martin Bresnick, Ted Hearne, Polina Nazaykinskaya, Andrew Norman, Naftali Schindler), culminating in a last desperate phone call to a composer's house on Sunday morning, just before this issue went to press. So, yeah, MANY thanks to all of the above for their patience. (The best part was when I wrote to another composer, bitching that I hadn't heard from him, and then discovered that he had in fact responded in time, but HIS response had been eaten by MY spam filter. Er, sorry about that.) I'm also sorry this piece is so short—the conversations I did manage to have with those involved were incredibly rich, and I wish I could have presented them in full. If you get a chance to go to the concert I wrote about, tomorrow night at 8 in Sprague Hall, it should be pretty exciting. Lisa Moore and So Percussion are playing Bresnick's recent Caprichos Enfáticos, which you can preview here. Ted Hearne wrote a piece, Eyelid Margin, for a consort of outdoor instruments (brass and double-reeds), which should be interesting to experience in an medium-sized recital hall; Polina Nazaykinskaya's presenting a trio of Blok songs for mezzo and piano; Andrew Norman will play a new piano piece, called I think Make Believe; and Naftali Schindler has written a Violin Duet, one of my secretly favorite combination of instruments—see B. Bartók, H. Górecki, D.H. Jóhnson—which claims to be influenced by both klezmer and Tuvan throat-singing, so, awesome.

"I Was Lisa Moore's People"

Over at ye New Music Box, Frank Oteri conducts fascinating and revealing interview with two of our favorites, new-music power couple Martin Bresnick and Lisa Moore. If you don't know their work, Bresnick is an underrated composer and an enormously important teacher; Moore is one of these unstoppable superpianists who can play with one hand and spin plates with the other while yodeling and smashing bricks with her forehead. We've had a request for more Rzewski, so here she is playing Rzewski's Piano Piece No. 4 (she also discusses issues in Rzewski interepretation in the interview): And here she is playing some Bresnick. The funniest part of the interview is probably this bit—

We debated at some point whether it might be an interesting idea if I became Lisa's manager and she became my manager. So if you called up, we had "people." You'd call to speak to Lisa Moore, and I was Lisa Moore's people. And I'd say we'll get back to you or something.

—which they didn't literally do, but wouldn't that have been great! It would be like the story about that actress (which one?) who impersonated a pushy agent in order to get herself work. The whole conversation has some great insights on the composer/performer relationship, from a couple that lives it. Obviously, she gives gives him feedback on how to write idiomatically for piano, and he gives her feedback on how to interpret his scores; less obviously, she gives him a performer's perspective on how to write for any player, arguing—

I think you should put "no rubato" if you want no rubato. If you want it rhythmic, you've got to put in "tempo giusto." You've got to write something, like "insistent." Louis Andriessen writes "non vibrato." I mean otherwise, you're going to get vibrato.

—and he brings a composer's analytical eye to every score she reads ("Martin's ... coached me on basically everything that I play. And I really trust his instincts"). Unfortunately, the part of the interview where Moore says the word "meshuggaas" with an Australian accent has not been included on the accompanying QuickTime video, so you'll just have to imagine that.

Consider Yourselves Warned

The music of Martin Bresnick can be hazardous to your health! Tim Munro of eighth blackbird reveals the hidden dangers, here. He's all right, thank goodness.

Lives of the Great Composers: György Ligeti

Apropos of the Conlon Nancarrow conversations going on at The Overgrown Path and Sequenza 21, I'm going to steal an anecdote from Ligeti's student Martin Bresnick.

LIGETI: "Martin, who would you say is the greatest living composer?" BRESNICK: "The greatest living composer? Er--other than yourself, of course--" LIGETI: "--yes, of course, other than myself."

Ligeti was fond of such questions; he had a Top Three for the twentieth century, for instance, that went something like

1. Bartók, 2. Janáček, 3. Stravinsky.

And sure enough, Ligeti had his own answer all ready: the greatest living composer, in his opinion, was Conlon Nancarrow.

BRESNICK: "Conlon Nancarrow?" LIGETI: "Conlon Nancarrow. I really think he is the greatest living composer." BRESNICK [polite, but still dubious]: "Nancarrow? I mean, yes, the player-piano studies are great. They represent quite an achievement--but such a narrow achievement! If I had to choose between Schumann and Chopin, for instance, it would be difficult, but I would still choose Schumann every time. For while Schumann offers a great cello concerto, great symphonies, a body of indispensible songs, Chopin's highest masterpieces are limited almost exclusively to a narrow body of work, his pieces for solo piano--and Nancarrow's body of work is narrower still, limited to player piano!" LIGETI [thoughtfully]: "Hmm. Maybe, maybe he is not the greatest living composer."

(NOTE: Be sure and read the comments below to see how I completely screwed this story up when I first posted it. Christ, I do the same thing at parties, too.)