I got to write a really overly-technical post over at the Music 10 blog recapping the presentation I made there about the vielle a roue. I feel like such a rock star getting asked to write on someone else’s blog. So go have a look. (Music 10 being the festival/composition workshop I’m presently attending)
An addendum to that post - last night I played in Louis Andriessen’s Workers Union free-for-all. It was way harder than the Philip Glass.
On that note, my trio for violin, cello, and piano is getting its premiere tonight here in Blonay. Exciting!
Tomorrow, Wednesday, June 16, stop what you’re doing at 10:30pm France time (4:30pm EDT, 1:30pm PDT, etc.) and turn on France Musique and listen to Couleurs du Monde. At some point during the show, they’re going to play Thibaut Frasnier’s, Alvaro Martinez’s, Fabrice Richaud’s, Gabriel Rigaux’s, and my arrangement of Algerian songs. Perhaps they will even announce our names, though this is far from certain. In case not, mine, Yelha Wurar, is the up-tempo, crowd-pleasing number that they’ll probably play at the end?
If you’d like to avoid any confusion with the France Musique site, go straight HERE.
OK, so my compositional career basically began in Sulzberger Parlor, the venerable Barnard College meeting room that is also one of the main musical performance spaces on campus because of the presence of a reasonably nice piano, in about 1997. The last time I had a concert there was in December 2001, in an epic airing of three of my Notes from the Subway.
Tomorrow, Nissim Schaul’s music returns to Sulzberger Parlor, as part of a Worldmuse concert, being sung by people who mostly were in middle school in 2001. (Or were they in elementary school? Oh my god?!). I’m trying not to be too reflective about it, and somewhat fortunate that I can’t be there, since I won’t be hit over the head with my lost youth or something.
However, you should go, because the program is incredible. There’ll be the world premiere of possibly the entirety of Rising, or at least the New York premiere of the first section. There’ll also be premieres of pieces by Joseph Rubinstein and Ursula Kwong-Brown, Indonesian, Indian, and Philippine dancing, and “an improvised soundscape by composers Jeff Yang and Sarah Wald.” I don’t know what the last part means exactly, but that makes me even more upset that I’m going to miss it.
So, first a reminder:
* March 26, 2009, noon: Nuevos Misterios (slightly truncated), performed by Flying Forms, at the Schubert Club Courtroom concerts in St. Paul, Minnesota. That’s in Courtroom 317 of the Landmark Center in downtown St. Paul, 75 West 5th Street.
* March 29, 2009, 4pm: Nuevos Misterios, performed by Flying Forms, at House of Hope Church in St. Paul, Minnesota. House of Hope is at 797 Summit Avenue. map!
Rehearsals are going nicely, and the electronics are coming along…
Second, Marc, Tami, and I will be on the radio on Friday! We’ve been asked on Minnesota Public Radio Classical’s afternoon show with Steve Staruch. We’ll be on sometime between 3 and 5 pm.
If you’re in the great state of MN, you can find the station to listen to here. If you’re not, you can listen online.
[This post will stay at the top until February 13, 2009. Scroll down for other stuff]
UPDATE (Feb 11):
On February 13, Omie Speaks will be premiered, along with other works for classical saxophone and electronic means. It’s a very varied concert: my classmates Pierre Berndt and Marie Reynauld will sing some popier stuff - Pierre has an epic rock tune and Marie some chanson francaise, but there’s also a bunch of “contemporary classical” music, from my piece to an In C inspired score by Jonathan Pontier, political music by Jean-Luc Degioanni, and also pieces by Jean-Yves Bernhard and Gregoire Lorieux. The performers are students of Ronan Baudry.
Omie Speaks is for saxophone quartet and quadraphonic tape. The tape part is based on the voice of my great-grandmother, as recorded by my cousin in the midlate-70’s*. She’s talking about her (our) family history, and I’ve taken three location words from the tape, disguised them, and turned them into the bed for a 10-minute sax quartet. I’m hoping to take some more of her voice and make a whole “Omie Suite” for several ensembles and tape, but that’s not for a while.
The concert will be on Friday, February 13, 2009, at l’Espace Renaudie, 30 rue Lopez et Jules Martin in Aubervilliers, at 8pm. It’s near the Fort d’Aubervilliers Metro station. Here’s a map:
View Larger Map
The concert is part of the 3rd edition of Saxophones en fete, a classical saxophone festival throughout the Paris region run by the incomparable Nicolas Prost.
The show costs 10 euros / 5 euros reduced
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*thanks for cousinly correction on this…
Isn’t that cool? I get to go to beautiful Croatian Istria, and it’s a business trip. I’d say that of the places I’ve gotten to travel as a composer, it’s the top so far - Berlin and NYC aren’t bad, but Berlin’s a little cold in winter, and New York is familiar; it doesn’t so much feel like a vacation. Croatia’s sure way better than the Hague.
Anyway, the point of all this is to announce the impending premiere (and seconde) of Rising, the tentative title for the piece I referred to back here and here. The piece is a gloss on the Sanctus in Hebrew, Old Church Slavonic, and Arabic, sung in a quasi-Gregorian chant style, accompanied by an active drone, just about any instrument will do. The premiere is planned for June 20, as part of a street performance festival in Groznjan, and it we’re also planning to perform it on June 23 in Izola - still Istria, but across the border in Slovenia. The project was commissioned and abetted by Jane McMahan, who runs her International Vocal Arts Workshop in Groznjan. I’m particularly excited that this piece is being presented outside of the confines of the concert hall, and will reach an audience of locals and random, unsuspecting vacationers.
Natasha came and sat on my head this morning as I was trying to get up - because of the delay that the cat engendered (how can get out of bed if the cat is sitting on your head?), I got to listen to the radio-alarm longer than normal, nearly half-an-hour, actually. They, RTL, were doing a feature on a French singer, Bernard Lavilliers, and played a song called “On the Road Again” - entirely in French except the chorus. It’s very eighties, somewhere between Don Henley and Richard Marx, with lots of synthetic everything, though quite pretty nonetheless. It’s in a nice minor and nicely proportioned. The second chorus has a nifty Gainsbourg-ian (Gainsbourien) flourish, with women’s chorus backing up the melody in twisted harmonies.
(I’d like to embed the video from youtube, but I’m having some technical problems. For now, just head here)
But in my current dual roles as setter-of-French-text and teacher-of-English, what stood out to me was his setting of the English text. Spoken French lacks the inherent accents that we have in English. This is one of the reasons English is a so much more efficient language - the English “that thing” becomes, in spoken French, “ce truc-là” - the added word, là, providing the emphasis that in English would be provided by verbally accenting “that.”
What’s problematic with the song is that it is set as though it were French - without clear accentuation. (more…)
I am delighted to announce that on November 1, QNG - Quartet New Generation, my favorite recorder quartet, is going to perform the revised version of Everybody’s Going There. The show appears to be at the Nightingale Concert Hall at the University of Nevada Reno - though I haven’t been able to confirm this with the group yet… (scroll down for the blurb, or go here. The concert is at 7:30pm and costs $20 (also student/senior/staff discounts)
So if any of you happen to be in Reno, check it out!
Also, sorry for not posting this month. I’ve been cogitating about all sorts of things, from my trip last month to Sasha Frere-Jones to Monkey: Journey to the West (that is, indeed, more of SFJ) to rugby, to basset horn malfunctions but I also have to finish a piece by like tomorrow, so I’ve been preoccupied. Hopefully I can do some posting from the Raleigh next week, I won’t have much else to do…
