Avant Music News

From NY’s Interpretations:

January 21 – Roy Campbell’s Akhenaten / Matana Roberts’ Illumination
Creative ensemble music from two of the downtown scene’s most distinct horn players.Trumpeter and composer Roy Campbell’s Akhenaten performs music from their recent Aum Fidelity release, Live at the Vision Festival 12, with vibraphonist Bryan Carrott, bassist Hilliard “Hill” Greene, and drummer Michael Wimberly. Saxophonist and composer Matana Roberts presents her compositional configuration Illumination, based on ongoing research related to the questions, history, and conundrums of the universal creative act of dreams. Featuring cornetist Graham Haynes, pianist Gabriel Guerrero, harpist Shelley Burgon, and drummer Damion Reid.

January 23, 9PM – BAM Café: Big Red Media and Mutable Music Present Fred Ho & The Green Monster Big Band CD Release Party
Hosted and co-sponsored by BAM Café, Fred Ho debuts the 21 member Green Monster Big Band, and their debut CD, The Celestial Green Monster, on Mutable Music. Featuring Ho’s inimitable compositions and arrangements, including an epic “In-A-Godda-Da-Vida”, Jimi Hendrix’s “Purple Haze”, and “Very, Very Baaad: The Michael Jackson Medley Tribute” (featuring Aaron Sherraden, guest bassist and arranger, and Leena Conquest, guest vocalist).

February 25 – Thomas Buckner Premieres New Works by Earl Howard, Matthias Kaul, Eckart Beinke, and Bun Ching Lam
Baritone Thomas Buckner presents an evening of new works, including Earl Howard’s Frond, for baritone, violin, bass saxophone, and live electrtonics, Bun Ching Lam’s Trois Cadeaux, for baritone, harp, and piano, and Matthias Kaul’s Zappa-esque The Mellow Quark. With French harpist Isabelle Courret, the German ensemble L’Art Pour L’Art, Mari Kimura (violin), JD Parran (bass saxophone), and Earl Howard (saxophone, live electronics and processing).

March 16 – The Paula Cooper Gallery World Premiere: Somei Satoh’s The Passion
Co-sponsored by the S.E.M. Ensemble, The Paula Cooper Gallery hosts the premiere of The Passion, by Japanese composer Somei Satoh, whose works are fragile in their clarity and simplicity, representing a sculptural minimalism infused with the lyrical sense of Romanticism. Featuring baritone Thomas Buckner and an ensemble including oboe, clarinet, two harps, percussion, violin, viola and cello, Satoh’s innovative setting of The Passion of Christ has all roles performed by one singer, with each character represented by a different vocal style, including Syomyo and Biwa song and Nagauta from Japan, along with traditional western singing and Gregorian chant.

March 25 – Sean Heim / Chinary Ung
Challenging and deeply personal contemporary solo and chamber music from a distinguished and renowned elder composer and an acclaimed former protégé. Chinary Ung is the first American composer to win the highly coveted International Grawemeyer Award (sometimes called the Nobel prize for music composition). The evening’s works include Ung’s Seven Mirrors and Heim’s In The Between (Reflections On The Six Bardos), both for solo piano. Ensemble works include Ung’s Spiral IX baritone, viola, percussion and Heim’s Holomovements, for oboe, violin, viola, double bass, and piano.

April 15 – “Blue” Gene Tyranny / Miguel Frasconi
Engaging electro-acoustic music performed on both traditional instruments and imaginative sound objects. Avant-garde composer and pianist “Blue” Gene Tyranny and Conrad Harris perform electro-acoustic works for piano and violin by Philip Krumm and George Cacioppo, including Cacioppo’s Cassiopeia and Krumm’s Four Nations, as well as world premieres by “Blue” Gene Tyranny and Paul Reller. Composer and improviser Miguel Frasconi uses glass objects, electronics, keyboards, and “de-evolved” instruments to create music from a uniquely imagined tradition.

April 29 – Joan La Barbara / Yael Acher With Irina Kalina-Goudeva
Two very different dramatic excursions into the theatrical side of contemporary music. Joan La Barbara and Ne(x)tworks will be performing excerpts from Angels, Demons and other Muses, her opera in-progress exploring inner secrets of the artistic mind. Inspired in part by the dreams of Joseph Cornell, intricate word turnings of Virginia Woolf, and psychological twists of Poe. With Kenji Bunch, Shelley Burgon, Yves Dharamraj, Cornelius Dufallo, Miguel Frasconi, Stephen Gosling, Ariana Kim, and Chris McIntyre. Flutist and composer Yael Acher and contrabassist Irina-Kalina Goudeva, whose work also incorporates voice, drama, and movement, present Two – Walk, a multimedia electro-acoustic performance.

May 25 – Yasunao Tone / Adachi Tomomi
Contemporary music from two generations of Japan’s experimental music community. Yasunao Tone became active in the Fluxus movement in the 1960s and moved to the United States in 1972. Tone will premiere his MP3 Corruption Piece, a new system for live performance, based on the real-time corruption of mp3 files to generate data that controls the playback of various audio materials. Adachi Tomomi is a performer/composer, sound poet, and installation artist living in Japan. He has performed improvised music and contemporary music with voice, computer, sensor system and self-made instruments.

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