Sweet beard, Arvo Pärt

                                                        He's ready for SXSW, are you?

John Luther Adams: Inuksuit at the Armory

 

Three weeks ago I had the chance to perform Alaskan composer John Luther Adams’s expansive work Inuksuit.  On its own, the piece provided the final concert for the weeklong Tune-in festival curated by eighth blackbird and held at the cavernous and historic Park Avenue Armory.  It was my second time playing the piece, having performed in it Texas last April.  Doug Perkins flexed his considerable organizational muscle to oversee both performances.  For this, the New York premiere, I joined an ensemble of 72 percussionists from around the country and a complement of 6 piccolo players (can’t leave them out!).  Doug handpicked a crack team that proved to be a percussive super group with plenty of serious ringers.  Admittedly, I was a little star struck playing alongside the likes of Steve Schick, Jan Williams, and eighth blackbird.  Also representing were So Percussion, Mantra Percussion, red fish blue fish, students from the Hartt School, Peabody, Stonybrook, Yale, and many more.  From the first moment of the rehearsal process (a meeting to discuss the events and flow of the piece) it was clear I was at a large gathering of really sharp drummers.  It was the ultimate drum circle.

What resulted was a realization of Adams’ hour plus score that unfolded in an organic, sensitive, and mature manner shocking for an unconducted band of that size.  More akin to a living organism than a percussion orchestra, we listened patiently, played our notes, and took gradual cues to slowly wade through the music.  Even better than being a part of this uncommon experience was that around 1,200 people showed up to hear this massive exploration of sounds with all its wailing sirens, crashing cymbals and gongs, pummeling of drums, stone rubbing, whistle tube whirling, and conch shell horn blasts.  People came out for this thing and it was well received.  It also garnered some really nice press, further acknowledging the Herculean effort invested for it to be presented.

Here’s the New York Times review and a video excerpt that provides an idea of the spatial arrangement of the players and the controlled cacophony happening under a very large roof.

Haters Gonna Hate

Everyone knows that the internet is the rudest place on earth.  Anyone can say anything to anyone while remaining unidentified (and often spineless).  So, January's award for fighting anonymous jerkdom goes to Adam Sliwinski of So Percussion.  When one of my go-to blogs for music (ok, mostly for free metal downloads), Brooklyn Vegan, posted a somewhat misinformed but honest review of So's recent concert/collaboration with Dan Deacon at Merkin Hall as a part of the ongoing Ecstatic Music festival things got a little dumb in the comments section.  And by a little dumb, I mean Youtube level.  Adam responded in the comments thread with a well reasoned (and well written) rebuttal to the covert assailants.  At first I thought "oh no dude, don't even dignify these clowns with a response," but shortly thereafter the comments became suddenly civil and thoughtful.  Well, mostly.  
So, good on you, Adam!  I think we can all agree that if you're going to talk shit, say it to our collective faces.

winter preview...

As this particularly snowy winter drags on, here's a couple of fun things to look forward to.

The Gershwin Presents 
Gershwin Hotel: Thursday, January 20th @8pm

This show features a set of acoustic and electro-acoustic solo percussion music as part of a new and exciting concert series by the Gershwin Hotel and curated by Vicky Chow.

The program will include:

The Anvil Chorus by David Lang
Composed in 1991 for God of Percussion on Earth Steven Schick, this demanding piece invokes the sounds of many blacksmiths working at a single anvil and the resulting rhythmic (and melodic!) patterns inherent in their trade.

A Watched Pot by Steven Snowden
Scored for a tea kettle, mixing bowls, and electronics, A Watched Pot explores the sonic possibilities of some everyday objects.  Coupled with a complex electronic counterpart, these repurposed kitchenwares set the stage for a dream within the mundane.

Ritual by Daniel Wohl
Ritual, for solo vibraphone, stands as a refuge of quiet and serenity in a noisy, dense world populated with noisier, denser percussion music.

Silver Streetcar for the Orchestra by Alvin Lucier
In this work of near stasis, the oft underestimated triangle is given a chance to show off its full timbral spectrum.  Aided by amplification, the instrument's resonance and overtones are slowly manipulated over time brushing the border between music and sound art.

Temazcal by Javier Alvarez
The title is an Aztec word for "water that burns" and this piece for solo maracas and electronics takes the folkloric Joropo traditions of Venezuela on a dark and twisted ride.

Momentary Expanse by Tristan Perich
Local composer, visual artist, and gadgetrist Tristan Perich is at the height of his powers following the release of his acclaimed 1-Bit Symphony.  Where his symphony is highly active and incessant, Momentary Expanse utilizes the same technology paired with a vibraphone to create a feeling of openness and suspension of time.

The cost is $10, and $5 for students.
map here.


Tune-in Music Festival: Inuksuit 
Park Avenue Armory: Sunday, Feb. 20@ 4pm

The Tune-in Music Festival is curated by eighth blackbird.  This is reason enough for discerning music fans to take note, but more details are in order!  The festival runs from February 16th-20th and includes performances by new music luminaries eighth blackbird, red fish blue fish, Steve Schick, Newspeak, Sympho, Argento Chamber Orchestra, among others.  The festival closes with a performance of John Luther Adams' hour-plus long Inuksuit for 9 to 99 percussionists.  Last Spring, I had the opportunity to perform this piece with a full complement of 99 drummers dispersed throughout the central Texas woods of Round Top'sFestival Hill.  It was wild, there are videos.
For the New York premiere, the vault of the sky will be replaced with the soaring ceiling of the Park Avenue Armory and its 38,000 square feet will be filled with 72 musicians and their drums, gongs, horns, conch shells, toy pianos, etc.
Big thanks to Doug Perkins who organized both the TX and upcoming NY performances of this massive-scale work.

we want the airwaves

Last night's show at the Southern Theater couldn't have been more fun.  Here's a preshow writeup and radio spot from MPR News.

Listen hear.

Also, joropo maraca playing as it relates to fist pumping.

I just realized I've been in a lot of bands

I tell you what, I've had a lot of fun playing solo music lately via working on my one man band.  I'm working on booking shows, bugging people to write music for me, starting to write my own music--I even have a blog where I can be as self-bepuffed as I want to be about the whole thing. 

But,

I never really saw myself performing music onstage by...myself.  As long as I've held drum sticks it was for the purpose of playing music with other people, and I've always been in bands ever since (let me think how many*).   Since I've only been at the solo thing for a little over a year now, I still feel super awkward when I finish a song and people clap and it's just me up there.  I look around for band mates I could high five or toast with my drink-ticket-scammed beer.  But it's just me so I do the sort of half-bow that doesn't really make sense for the recital hall or the club.  Not to mention that I went from being in the back behind a bunch of drums to being right up there in the Collective Grill with nowhere to hide.  At least my music school solo recital requirements gave me some practice with that but man, it's not the same.

However, as much as I miss the camaraderie I've found that being the only member in a band streamlines a lot of the process.  No coordinating everyone's work schedules for band practice--it's just me!  No arguments over which direction the band should take--it's still just me, and what I say goes.  And since being in a band is like having 3 girlfriends (or boyfriends) no dramz or personality clashes except for my internal struggles, but we don't have to talk about that. 

But when I watch bands really nail it--like Propagandhi, TOOL, the recent Bang on a Can Allstars' concert, or So Percussion with Meehan Perkins Duo a few weeks back--and remember how mind-meldingly tight sofakingdom could be in our heyday I have to concede that's where it's at.  "For now, though, I'm having fun focusing on the Me Show," he said, sitting in an airport by himself waiting 5 hours for a delayed flight on the way to a gig. 



*OK, here's what a brief dredging of my brain found: 
sofakingdom 
Written Off
Elisa Ferarri 
The Tea Merchants 
Cobretti 
Sargeant Parkinson's Platoon 
G8 
Erik Espe
The Vinyl Collection
Ah, Venice! 
The Pan-Metropolita Trio 
Rattletree Marimba 
The Aries Project 
Needs No Chill 
Racketball 
Undertow 
5 Mile Chase
Hips Don't Lie
probably more that I'm spacing right now...

If you don't talk to your kids about Steven Snowden, who will?

Me, that's who. 

Steve is an unbelievably creative and hard working artist.  He's a wizard when it comes to music technology and uses his fluency in several software programs to make sounds I've never even thought about before, and use them in musically meaningful ways.  He also rides a Harley everywhere.  Which is way kickass.  He's the kind of guy that would write you a Max MSP patch in the morning, change your oil in the afternoon, and then cook up a dynamite chorizo stew for 20 of his friends like it was no big deal (he even made a special vegetarian bowl of it for me).    

I mean, check out this piece for trombone and live electronics which uses field recordings of cattle auctioneers (Steve Parker, trombone).
Or this breathtaking piano quintet performed by Austin's Aeolus Quartet and Kevin Garnica, piano.

Steve and I had been friends for a year and a half, batting around ideas for a percussion piece before we began working on the project below.  I had worked with dancer/choreographer Rosalyn Nasky twice before, once in a truly epic staging of George Crumb's Music for a Summer Evening and again in an eerie setting of Temazcal by Javier Alvarez.  Naturally, I was really excited when I was able to get all three of us together to talk about a possible collaboration.

The premiere was in June, 2010 at Big Range Austin, an annual dance festival organized by the tireless Ellen Bartel.  This was a particularly fun project in that it was a three headed collaborative process between Steve, Roz, and myself.  Based on our schedules we had collectively about one month to put this together and for the first couple weeks Steve worked at an astonishing rate.  

After deciding the instrumentation (tea kettle and mixing bowls) he and I came into the studio and recorded every single sound we could get out of those things.  Steve then took all the sampled sounds and wove them together into a midi mockup mosaic of what the piece would become, meanwhile composing/building the complex electronic component.  As he worked he uploaded his progress onto a blog he created specifically for our project so Rosalyn and I could witness the creative process unfold, offer feedback, and in her case find Inspirado.

Then we had couple weeks for me to try and learn the piece  and for Rosalyn to work out her (and my) steps. 

Steve had the presence of mind to record the live instruments through the soundboard, later syncing it with his electronic audio, AND getting multiple HD camera angles in on the action (oh, and he edited the video, too). 

So, what you can watch here is our super hot off the presses performance from last summer's Big Range Austin.

A Watched Pot from Steven Snowden on Vimeo.