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Momenta Quartet premieres Sparr AVALOCH

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Momenta-Quartet

D.J. Sparr’s new string quartet, Avaloch, was given it’s premiere by the Momenta Quartet at the Tenri Cultural Institue.

New York Classical Review’s George Grelia reported:

“Avaloch set the aesthetic tone for the entire concert, the unique sound of American homespun experimentation, free of ideology and full of curiosity. The piece revolves around an agitated, yearning tune, and the music has a rough-hewn quality, like shape-note singing, particularly in the counterpoint. There is also pre-recorded music that played asynchronously from smart phones held inside ceramic pots by each musician.

Avaloch has a fulfilling sense of waywardness, disregarding obvious formal considerations and searching for a shape organic to itself. That quality, and Momenta’s weighty, lyrical playing gave it a social quality that is fundamental to the Ivesian conception of music making.”

Read the full review here.

Brantley commissioned to write a Cello Concerto

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Paul Brantley has been commissioned by Maestro Kenneth Kiesler and the Grammy Award winning University of Michigan Symphony to compose The Royal Revolver, a concertino for solo cello and 15 instruments.

Eric Jacobsen, cellist and conductor of The Knights, will be the cello soloist. This will be premiered in the 2017-2018 season in Ann Arbor. Details TBA.

Brantley writes: “As a composer/cellist, this cello concertino is a piece I’ve literally been thinking about writing since I was about sixteen. And so with Maestro Kiesler’s invitation, the time feels ripe to finally bring it to fruition. The Royal Revolver borrows its name from Finnegans Wake – one of Joyce’s many catch phrases such as “Here Comes Everybody” and “The Here We Are Again Gaities” – all of which evoke our mutually, psychically interdependent selves in that extraordinary dreamscape he created. I’m trying to emulate a fragment of this world by the solo cello constantly interfacing with and morphing into the other instruments of the ensemble, all in my best neo-baroque/psychedelic fashion. But on a pretty modest scale: with just a chamber ensemble of 15 instruments, in three movements, and all about 15 minutes in duration.”

If you would like to learn a little more about this Finnegans Wake inspired piece, and possibly even contribute to the consortium-styled commission, please see our Fractured Atlas project page.

 

Fung at the Vancouver Biennale

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Vivan Fung’s new Biennale Snapshots was premiered at the Vancouver Biennale on the Vancouver Symphony’s opening concert. Inspired by artwork in the outdoor exhibition, the piece was a vivid reminder of Fung’s fresh and engaging orchestra composition.

Read more here:

Vancouver Biennale

Review

Vancouver Classical Music

Fung was featured on the cover of Boulevard Magazine in connection with the events.

 

Washington Post’s Lovable New Operas

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The Washington Post lists contemporary operas that audiences responded to favorably (“Readers’ Guide to Lovable New Operas“), and several BHM operas were included:

Dead Man Walking

Moby-Dick

Silent Night

The Manchurian Candidate

As One

There are also 10 operas on this list that we’ve engraved in our production department.

Congrats to Jake Heggie, Kevin Puts, Terrence McNally, Laura Kaminsky, Kimberly Reed, and the indefatigable Mark Campbell who wrote 3 of these librettos.

West Edge Opera brings AS ONE to the West Coast

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WEAs One illuminates the brave and painful growth of a transgender person, whose identity is still deemed “abnormal” and, more shamefully for our world, is barely recognized. The deeply normal need to unite body and soul within the boundaries of accepted human interactions has much to reveal to all of us.

As One premiered at The Brooklyn Academy of Music just this past September. It is based on the life experience of noted filmmaker Kimberly Reed.

Two singers, a baritone and a mezzo-soprano, together portray the character Hannah. The two singers embody a young boy who knows he is different but can’t understand how or why. The 70-minute opera traces the life of young Hannah through her eventual gender reassignment. It examines the life of a transgender person through poetry, movement, beautiful music and film in a new and especially touching way.

New York Classical Review called its premiere this past September a “rich addition to the repertoire … formidable on all fronts … As One is everything that we hope for in contemporary opera: topical, poignant, daring, and beautifully written.”

The New York Times wrote: “As One forces you to think, simultaneously challenging preconceptions and inspiring empathy…[with] winning humor and a satisfying emotional arc.”

Bunch Symphonies in Chicago

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Kenji Bunch descends on Chicago this month with a performance of his Symphony No. 1 with the Chicago Philharmonic, and the world premiere of his Symphony No. 3: Dream Songs with The Grant Park Orchestra and Chorus.

Bunch writes about the Symphony: “In 1879, the Smithsonian Institution created the Bureau of American Ethnology, an ambitious field research program to preserve a record of the native cultures decimated by a century of conflict and oppression. Ethnomusicologists and anthropologists working for the BAE spent months at a time on Native American reservations, painstakingly recording and notating tribal folk songs and translating their uncredited texts and poetry. Abstracted from their original voices and ceremonial use, these terse, plain-spoken texts offer timeless wisdom and emotional insights that feel hauntingly relevant in today’s precarious times.

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Symphony No. 3: Dream Songs is a song cycle scored for full orchestra and chorus, adapted from these translations, (particularly the work of Frances Densmore). I organized the eight songs of the cycle into three parts: songs of anxiety and unrest, songs of war and its aftermath, and ultimately, a prayer of healing.”

At ca. 40 minutes, it represents a major new work for Bunch and is one of many large-scale works the composer is creating over the next 2 seasons.

San Antonio Symphony premieres Daugherty Rio Grande

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San Antonio Symphony commissions and gives world premiere of “Rio Grande” for orchestra by Grammy® Award-winning composer Michael Daugherty in San Antonio, Texas on June 5, 2015

Rio Grande for orchestra was commissioned and premiered by the San Antonio Symphony, Sebastian Lang-Lessing, music director, on June 5, 2015.  The work is scored for piccolo, 2 flutes, 2 oboes, English horn, 2 clarinets, bass clarinet, 2 bassoons, contrabassoon, 4 horns, three trumpets, 3 trombones, tuba, timpani, 3 percussion and strings. Duration is 8 minutes.
Rio Grande

I have composed concert music inspired by American landscapes such as Niagara Falls (1997) for symphonic band, Route 66 (1996) for orchestra, Gees Bend (2009) for electric guitar and orchestra, Mount Rushmore (2010) for choir and orchestra, Lost Vegas for orchestra or symphonic band (2011) and Reflections on the Mississippi for tuba and orchestra or symphonic band (2013).  I continue my exploration of creating unique aural landscapes with Rio Grande (2015) for orchestra.

Rio Grande is a 1,250 mile river, which flows from the mountains of Southern Colorado to the Gulf of Mexico near Brownsville, Texas. The river forms a natural boundary between the USA and Mexico as it winds its way through El Paso, Texas down to Big Bend National Park. It is at Big Bend, one of the largest, most arid and remote areas of the United States, that one experiences the magical canyons and spectacular rock formations that line the “Big River” or, as it is know in Mexico, “Rio Bravo”.

In my Rio Grande for orchestra, I have composed a dynamic, expansive musical landscape that is stark, haunting, agitated and majestic.  The percussion section, comprised of timpani, bongos, woodblocks, tom-toms and bass drums creates a rhythmic undercurrent to an angular motif, first heard in the woodwinds, which emerges high above the precipice. This jagged motif is passed on to individual instruments, such as tuba, and eventually in various colorful guises to the entire orchestra. Reminding us of the long cultural history associated with the Rio Grande, we also hear ghostly Mexican mariachi music echoing faraway through the canyons. In the coda, I combine all the musical material heard throughout the composition to create a majestic ending to our journey down the timeless Rio Grande.

 Michael Daugherty

A Day in the Life of Kimberly Reed, co-librettist of AS ONE

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As One co-librettist and transgender filmmaker Kimberly Reed has created a video for the Op Ed page of The New York Times showing a day in her life – specifically April 7, when As One opened at Utah State University. In the video, Reed shows glimpses of the various ways she has attempted “to dispel misunderstanding and increase empathy” by introducing the quotidian stories of transgender individuals – through documentaries, news interviews, spoken word performances, and most recently through her work on As One.