Local Boys Make Good (OR, "Sashay; Chanter")

Hey look! Yale School o' Music alum Paul Jacobs is apparently the first artist ever to win a Grammy™ for a solo performance on the organ! JoJo fondly remembers Jacobs's recital of Messiaen and Hindemith on the Holtkamp organ at Battell Chapel, and the obsessed fan who sat in the front row, "conducted" from his seat, cheered loudly after every piece, and tried to talk to Jacobs during his pre-concert remarks. Ah, organ-lovers! Yikes! Anyway, he certainly deserves his little golden horn for that Messiaen double-disc, Livre du Saint Sacrement, which incidentally was JoJo's birthday present last year, because I am very selfish and only buy people gifts that I secretly want for myself.

But also, listen to this!



That's from the score Timo Andres will be playing at Frank Tell's Fall '11 show tomorrow night. Nice, right?? Wouldn't you buy the living shit out of some post-apocalyptic outfits if that was playing in the background?? You'll recall that Chanel's Karl Lagerfeld used some Andres on the runway not too long ago—



—but this is an actual commission for actual new music to be actually performed live at the show. Should be very cool.

First, the Bad News

Alex Ross points to this terrific summary of the situation regarding the Hungarian government, media and arts, by Iowa-based commentator Bernard Sherman. András Schiff, one of the finest musicians on this earth, has been singled out by anti-Semitic demagogues over there, and of course he has! What better way to protect your nation's cultural heritage, after all, than by shitting all over the human treasures it has produced? And if someone's going around saying he's troubled by political developments in his home country, you should DEFINITELY call him a dirty Jew, because that'll get him to change his tune real fast.

Ahem.

In much happier news, Ross also has some brief but excellent commentary on the recently unveiled New York Phil season. (Here's the season; here's the full press conference.) A few stories here: this year's can't-miss new-music bonanza is a performance of Stockhausen's Gruppen at the Park Avenue Armory; there's a new amazing digital archive of Philharmonic materials and lore; the season has no female composers on it at all.

I'm really not dismayed, should I admit this?, by the orchestra's ongoing championing of living European composers. Who in the heck else is playing European new music in this country? How else are we going to hear it? But I do think Amanda Ameer is right that the brilliant German violinist Frank Peter Zimmermann was maybe not the most exciting choice for NY Phil artist in residence—he's replacing Anne-Sophie Mutter, after all, a German violinist of the very same generation, and it would appear that his programming choices are pretty dull: Brahms, Bach, Beethoven, Berg, and somehow a D (Dvorak) slipped in there by accident. Now, I love all these pieces, I love Zimmermann's playing, and these concerts are going to be fantastic, but he's playing NO new works?

And now, here is a picture of Alan Gilbert that I have doctored so that it looks like he took it with an iPhone.

Thank you.

The L.A. Phil's new season is up, too, and the big news there is (for me anyway) the premiere of a new sacred oratorio by John Adams, entitled The Gospel According to the Other Mary. Maybe he gave it that title to distinguish it from a forthcoming work by Mark Adamo.

What? No, I meant because Mark Adamo's writing The Gospel of Mary Magdalene for the San Francisco Opera! Why, what "mary" did YOU think I was referring to?

Speaking of whom, is there anyone else who really, really misses Mark Adamo's blog? Because I sure do. I spotted him before the premiere of Bernstein's Quiet Place last year, and afterwards I was DYING to know what he thought of it. And now Nixon in China's up at the Met, and I'm dying to know what he thinks of that! Somebody lean on him, would you?? I'll put up my own take on Nixon soon (spoiler: it's a fucking awesome piece), but the operatic blogosphere ain't the same without his POV.

Alright, I'm outta here—now all y'all get on that train and go see Nixon in China, tonight.

Okay Okay Here Is One More Bitchin' Viral Video

Angie Dickinson and Lee Marvin perform Steve Reich's Clapping Music. Video by George Manak and Peter van der Ham (via @amandaameer).

Classical Music Reaches New Audiences

Here are two EXCITING NEW FRONTIERS in classical crossover!

Via @werttrew, this one is already a VIRAL SENSATION, combining a beloved internet meme with an immortal work of classical genius:


Via loyal reader Greg, this SOON-TO-BE VIRAL clip is a "mashup" of classical technique with a couple of those songs the kids love so much:

Get Pierced Tonight

Hey, but so, New Havenites, I'm gonna go to this New Music New Haven concert at Sprague tonight, and you probably should too! I stupidly failed to mention Daniel Wohl's excellent Aorta for piano & electronics in my writeup of the Ecstatic Music Festival, even though it was one of the marathon's most successful uses of electronics, and he's got a piece on tonight's program, too (Pixelated for piano, toy piano, and glockenspiel—sounds cool); the headliner is David Lang, whose Pierced I don't know but am very much looking forward to. Other composers: Paul Kerekes, Garth Neustadter, Loren Loiacono, and the always reliable Jordan Kuspa. 8pm tonight, free.

Oh, and if you're NOT in New Haven, you can get watch high-quality streaming video here, also free! Hooray!

Two Turntables and a Microphone Two Pianos, Four Hands

New Yorkers, and I know you're reading this, after work tonight you should probably all go to LPR and check out this crazy thing! Bruce Brubaker, whose records you really need to hear (I have listened to his Glass/Cage CD, Glass Cage, MANY MANY TIMES, and he also has a very cool CD of himself playing the music of Philip Glass and William Duckworth, Time Curve Preludes, and really just check out everything he's recorded, I don't think there's a dud out there and you'll get to know some great composers you never heard of before such as Duckworth and Alvin Currin) is putting on a very unusual sort of recital, which is that he and his student Francesco Tristano are both going to play solo piano pieces by different composers AT THE SAME TIME. Here's them doing the same thing at a different show, so that you can hear Philip Glass's Mad Rush with an atonal melody on top of it: It kind of makes sense, right?? It's a little like the Rambler's Bloggariddims mixes, but LIVE. ANyway this is completely great, and next year everyone will be doing it. Right?

Two Pieces of Experimental Music

No. 1

No. 2

both via Boing Boing.

It Seems Idiotic

I have a few friends who just don't understand why I love the comic strip Mary Worth so intensely. Maybe they will understand after clicking here:

via The Comics Curmudgeon.

One More Thing

I mentioned that Bang on a Can All-Star Ashley Bathgate and All-Star emerita Lisa Moore are playing at today's Ecstatic Music Festival marathon opener; I didn't mention that they'll also be playing (as "TwoSense") a set in Manhattan Friday night (when, conveniently, the Festival has nothing scheduled) at "The Little Church Around the Corner" (1 E 29th): Bresnick, Chopin, Janacek, Prokofiev, Schnittke, $25 ($15 students)(suggested!), 7:30 pm.

Take Ecstasy with Me

Look I know I haven't mentioned this before and I REALLY SHOULD HAVE but you guys kind of have to go to the Ecstatic Music Festival that Judd Greenstein is curating at Merkin. It starts tomorrow, Monday afternoon, Jan. 17 (Martin Luther King, Jr. Day, so you're off work!), and runs for freakin' MONTHS. Here's the program for tomorrow's FREE marathon, which starts at 2 and for seven hours, with lots of breaks and refreshments and whatnot so you're not being held prisoner or something:

Ne(x)tworks plays a piece by Julius Eastman (no not THAT piece, it is MLK Day, do you want to get us all in trouble)
Timo Andres plays Ives and Andres
Face the Music plays Missy Mazzoli and Christine Southworth
So Percussion plays So Percussion
Chiara String Quartet plays Jefferson Friedman
NOW Ensemble plays Greenstein
John Matthias, Adrian Corker & Andew Prior play Matthias
Julianna Barwick sings Barwick
Vicky Chow plays Daniel Wohl
Corey Dargel (w/ NOW Ensemble and Nathan Koci) sings Dargel (Other People's Love Songs, complete!)
Ashley Bathgate & Lisa Moore play Kate Moore
Ashley Bathgate plays Michael Gordon's Industry
Gabriel Kahane sings and plays Gabriel Kahane
Nadia Sirota & Nico Muhly play Muhly
and Buke & Gass collaborate with Mazzoli's Victoire on some awesome new thing.

That's just the first day! I kind of CAN'T NOT go to this.

Here's the whole page for the extended festival. I hope you'll reconize some incredibly serious names here: Dan Deacon, Darcy James Argue, Vijay Iyer, Doveman, Owen Pallett, Clogs, Sarah Kirkland Snider, John Medeski, AND MANY MORE.

Hilary Hahn Has Commissioned a Shitload of New Encores

So over my Xmas vay kay in Cali (don't you hate people who say vaykay) (or Cali) I had a nice conversation with my violinist brother about Hilary Hahn's playing, possibly because both I AND a student of his bought him her recording of the Tchaikovsky/Higdon concerti for Xmas. I told him he has to watch this
  and he talked about how he heard from a friend about how even when she was just a kid her work ethic was utterly ridiculous, like just HOURS spent in a practice room, and now that's probably how come she has some of the strongest, cleanest technique in the biz. Now I played violin for many years, but if you ever heard me drag bow across string you'd understand that I don't necessarily have a terrific grasp of the finer points of violin technique, so it was gratifying for me to hear somebody who knows more about these things than I do say that yup, she has an incredibly strong left hand ("Just as I suspected!" —Einstein over here), and it was also interesting to hear his take on the Higdon concerto, namely that he did NOT believe, as I did, that it was likely to take off as a part of the violin repertoire, just because it's so damn difficult: "There are parts of that piece I listen to," (I'm paraphrasing) "and I think to myself, I could never play that! Which isn't a feeling I get when I listen to Ysaÿe or Paganini."

BUT ALL OF THESE SPARKLING INSIGHTS ARE JUST LEADING UP TO THE BIG ANNOUNCEMENT that following the awesome success of her Higdon concerto commission, Hilary Hahn has commissioned TWENTY-SIX MORE PIECES from twenty-six different composers, short works for violin and piano. There will also be a twenty-seventh commission later this year, to be awarded according to some unorthodox scheme yet to be announced; I hope that this scheme will be somehow YOUTUBE-related, because of course the one thing classical music needs right now is one more YouTube Symphony or YouTube Choir or some shit like that. Or maybe it will be Crowdsourced or Wiki'd or Tumblr'd or something similarly WEB TWO POINT OH. Hilary H: jackin' her strat.

I TEASE, but seriously, but no but seriously, what's really interesting here is not the HOW of the commissions but the WHO. I mean I don't even know who all of these people are, but LOOK:

Franghiz Ali-Zadeh
Post-Soviet, Mugham-influenced, prepared piano–playing Azerbaijani lady

David Del Tredici
Neo-Romantic American gay

Jennifer Higdon
Pulitzer-winning composer of concerti for Hilary Hahn and eighth blackbird

James Newton Howard
Bigshot Hollywood film composer dude

David Lang
Pulitzer-winning Bang on a Can person

Edgar Meyer
Bluegrass/jazz/classical bassist (you may remember him from such Yo-Yo Ma collaborations as APPALACHIA WALTZ)

Michiru Oshima
Japanese composer for cartoons, which sounds like I'm being dismissive if you're not a total nerd for these things and therefore aware that they are a REALLY BIG DEAL in the enormous parallel universe that exists right next to the world of concert music but seldom overlaps it

Krysztof Penderecki
If you're reading this you already know who Penderecki is (actually I'm sure that goes for David Lang too, but)

Einojuhani Rautavaara
If you're reading this and know who Penderecki is you should probably also go find out who Rautavaara is

Max Richter
Pianist/composer, formerly of Piano Circus, who has also put out some pretty boss solo records—think "ambient"?

Somei Satoh
Extremely awesome Zen-influenced Japanese composer guy

Elliott Sharp
Improv guitarist and experimental composer

Valentin Silvestrov
Arvo Pärt's favorite composer, one of my favorites too, you REALLY REALLY need to get into him

And the rest:

Lera Auerbach
Richard Barrett
Mason Bates
Tina Davidson
Avner Dorman
Søren Nils Eichberg
Christos Hatzis
Bun-Ching Lam
Paul Moravec
Nico Muhly
Mark-Anthony Turnage
Gillian Whitehead
Du Yun

Going down the list, that's a pretty good breakdown, right there, of "serious" vs. "popular" traditions, ladies vs. gents, "Western" vs. non-, and so forth. This is a shockingly well-rounded commissioning program for a mainstream classical artist! Even if you hate 24 of these composers with a passion, there are gonna be two on here whose music you just live for. I'M GOING TO ALLOW THIS, y'all, and I am very much looking forward to hearing what comes of it.