Avant Music News

On Thursday Mr. Schulz will open the first Unsound Festival New York, a 10-day series of concerts, film screenings, panel discussions and exhibitions in spaces throughout the city, in the David Rubenstein Atrium at Lincoln Center. The festival’s attractions will include Mr. Schulz’s personal sound postcard collection, mounted for curiosity seekers to see and hear at the Devotion Gallery in Williamsburg, Brooklyn.

The wide range of offerings in Mr. Schulz’s inaugural New York event shows how far Unsound has developed from its start as a relatively modest electronic-music festival

Adam Rudolphs Go Organic Orchestra
Mon Mar 8, 15, 22, 29 – 8:30 PM
Composer Adam Rudolph returns with another series for Go: Organic Orchestra. In concert he will conduct between 20 – 35 musicians in a spontaneous way, using a newly created score of music/letter grids, language themes, tone rows, traditional and synthetic scales, diadic and intervalic harmonies, The compositions will also utilize Rudolph’s rhythm concept of “Cyclic Verticalism” to generate form and weave what he calls an “audio syncretic music fabric”. The music is “organic” in the sense that the compositions and conducting exist as an inspiration and context for the musicians to express themselves by using their instruments as an amplifier for their inner voice.

Denman Maroney Quintet: Udentity and other works
Thu Mar 11 – 8:30 PM
The Denman Maroney Quintet comes to Roulette with a performance of Maroney’s extended work Udentity, which was created with support from Chamber Music America’s New Works: Creation and Presentation Program, funded through the generosity of the Doris Duke Charitable Foundation. Denman Maroney is known for his “hyperpiano” style, which involves playing the keys with one hand and the strings with the other using copper bars, brass bowls and other objects, and his system of temporal harmony, which he uses to compose and improvise in multiple tempos.

Jenny Chai – between-interval
Fri Mar 12 – 8:30 PM
Intervals are not only the physical distances between pitches. What worth contemplating is the different use of intervals by composers: its succession; its variety of intensity; its colors, etc. Contemporary pianist Jenny Q Chai presents the music of great composers with their unique treatments of intervals, thus showing expression, emotion and even ecstasy. After one follows and explores the depth of intervals, one might discover the final result: between-interval. Chai has performed in major concert halls in the U.S. including Carnegie Hall, Steinway Hall and Rockefeller Center in New York, Kimmel Center, Academy of Music, Field’s Hall in Philadelphia, Kneisle Hall in Maine, Kennedy Center in Washington D.C. and Kravis Center in Florida. Her awards include Logos Award 2008, Kil’s International Piano Competition in Sweden; Steinway Young Artist International Competition and Five Towns Art & Music Foundation International Piano Competition in New York, among many others.

Maria Chavez
Sat Mar 13 – 8:30 PM
Born in Peru, avant-turntablist Maria Chavez currently resides in Brooklyn, New York. With a collection of new and broken needles that she calls “pencils of sound” and a selection of records, she creates electro-acoustic sound pieces. Chavez made her New York City debut in a duet with Thurston Moore, collaborated with Otomo Yoshihide as part of the 2007 Wien Modern Festival, and recently shared a stage with Pauline Oliveros and Lydia Lunch during Vienna’s Phonofemme Festival 2009. Having also performed at such internationally acclaimed venues as STEIM (Amsterdam) and Sonoteca (Lima, Peru), she was awarded a Jerome Foundation Emerging Artist Grant by New York’s Roulette Intermedium in 2008 and was recently selected to be a recipient of the Van Lier Fellowship which is generously offered to young sound artists by The Edward and Sally Van Lier Fund of the New York Community Trust.

Mary Halvorson Quintet
Thu Mar 18 – 8:30 PM
Guitarist/composer Mary Halvorson premieres a set of new pieces for the Mary Halvorson Quintet as well as material from her upcoming release on Firehouse 12 Records. Halvorson has been active in New York since 2002, following jazz studies at Wesleyan University and the New School. In addition to her own band, The Mary Halvorson Trio, she co-leads a chamber music duo with violist Jessica Pavone and the avant-rock band, People, with drummer Kevin Shea. A veteran of the ensembles of esteemed saxophonist/composer Anthony Braxton, she has also performed with groups led by Tim Berne, Taylor Ho Bynum, Trevor Dunn, Tomas Fujiwara, Curtis Hasselbring, Tony Malaby, Myra Melford, Nicole Mitchell, Jason Moran, Marc Ribot, Matana Roberts, Elliott Sharp, John Tchicai and Matthew Welch among many others.

Tom Swafford
Fri Mar 19 – 8:30 PM
Lately violinist/composer Tom Swafford has felt adrift in a sea of musical genres, each one with its own set of aesthetic criteria and performance practice. Tom has reached the point where he wants to define exactly what his compositional voice is. This concert uses this well-worn cliché (The Real Me) as a unifying theme for the variety of his compositions presented. The centerpiece of the concert, This is the Real Me, a distilled opera written for vocalist/performer Gelsey Bell, addresses the issue of not just musical but personal self-definition through extended vocal techniques, a variety of musical styles, facial expressions and physical gestures. The text of Your (so called) Music (for spoken word artist Lee Todd Lacks and 12 piece string orchestra) is a vitriolic piece of hate mail Tom received after his last composition concert. Hecklepiece, for solo performer and hecklers, deals with some of the issues faced by musicians and composers-for-hire who must tailor their art to the demands of others. In this concert, Swafford is asking: “When given absolute freedom to create the music I want, without being subject to anyone else’s aesthetic criteria, what would that music be?” Also on the program is music for woodwind quintet, solo piano, banjo and string orchestra.

Childrens Concert with David Grollman
Sat Mar 20 – 2:00 PM
Sock puppets converse and intermingle with the sounds of drums, trumpet, cello, balloons, toys and voices in this exciting concert for kids! David Grollman, Brad Henkel and Valerie Kuehne are a trio of all-purpose drums, trumpet and cello who perform freely improvised musict, supplemented by happy environmental hazards, noisemaking toys and found objects, including audience members, children, and unknown animals. Anything is game. Anything may be a participant as they fearlessly experiment, all but self-flagellating if the musical conversation calls for it. Artist, instrument, audience, and environment become ambiguous terms, conspiring in a theatrical exploration of chance dynamics and serendipitous exchanges, enabled by the skillful ease with which David, Valerie and Brad play.

Deviant Shakti: LaDonna Smith & Michael Evans
Sat Mar 20 – 8:30 PM
Dedicated music moving in the moment. LaDonna Smith, well known as a “devilish” fiddler and exponential avant-gardist on the viola, a forceful proponent of the American free improvisation movement in the South. She is not only a riveting performer, but also an active producer, presenter, and publisher, with plans to host a regional festival celebrating the 30 year anniversary of “the improvisor” in 2010. Michael Evans is an improvising drummer/percussionist/thereminist/composer whose work investigates and embraces the collision of sound and theatrics. As well as being a drum set player, his work with unusual sound sources includes found objects, homemade instruments, the theremin and various digital and homemade analog electronics. His work with the theremin varies the quality of its sound through set-up and technique. LaDonna Smith and Michael Evans, present their joyful collaboration, DEVIANT SHAKTI.

INTERPRETATIONS: Sean Heim / Chinary Ung
Thu Mar 25 – 8:00 PM
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.

Childrens Concert with Ivan Rodriguez
Sat Mar 27 – 2:00 PMBronx native, Ivan Rodriguez studied Jazz drumming with Kenwood Dennard and Charlie Persip while attending A.C.S.M at Queens College. His interest in Latin Percussion led him to the Johnny Colon school and later to the Boys Harbor conservatory where he took lessons with John Berdeguer and Jerome Goldschmidt. In 2001, he had the opportunity of studying drumset and percussion with master cuban percussionists through the Chuck Silverman Project. Ivan has worked with Alex Cuba, the Toasters, the Interns, Peter Fluid Foundation, 3 Clock Prophet, Carl Royce and many others. He has shared the stage with such acts as a Tribe called Quest, Oingo Boingo, The Wailers, Toots and the Maytals, Third World, Lady Blacksmith Mombazo and has enjoyed performing in a variety of Dance and Theater productions as well. Ivan continues to perform and record regularly with various artists and conducts drum clinics, workshops and children’s concerts.

William Hooker – The Keys (with Adam Lane, Dave Ross, and Chris Dimeglio)
Sat Mar 27 – 8:30 PM
William Hooker presents: The Keys, a multi media piece using music, video and word. Inspired by “A Father’s Law” by Richard Wright, the compositions all represent major characters in the novel through diverse timbre and sonic abstraction. William Hooker is an artistic whole, a vast circle of vision and execution. A body of uninterrupted work beginning in the mid-seventies defines him as one of the most important composers and players in jazz. Tonight William Hooker is joined by Adam Lane, Dave Ross, and Chris Dimeglio.

AMERICAN COMPOSERS ORCHESTRA (Friday) This adventurous ensemble, conducted by Anne Manson, offers an intriguing lineup of new works, including the world premieres of Roger Zare’s “Time-Lapse” and Sebastian Currier’s “Next Atlantis” for String Orchestra, Video and Pre-Recorded Sounds. The concert also includes the New York premiere of Paquito D’Rivera’s “Conversations With Cachao,” inspired by Cuban traditional music. Mr. D’Rivera performs on clarinet and alto saxophone. At 7:30 p.m., Zankel Hall, Carnegie Hall , (212) 247-7800, carnegiehall.org; $38 and $48. (Schweitzer)20100128

AMERICAN SYMPHONY ORCHESTRA (Friday) The pioneering California-born composer Henry Cowell was creating and performing works for “prepared pianos” (pianos with objects stuck in the strings) 30 years before John Cage. Cowell (1897-1965) also did breakthrough and influential explorations of Asian music and electronic resources. He left a large body of stunningly original orchestra works, several of which will be performed in an all-Cowell concert by the conductor Leon Botstein and the American Symphony Orchestra. Where else can you hope to hear Cowell’s 1962 Concerto for Harmonica and Orchestra? Or two of his 21 symphonies? And all seats cost just $25. At 8 p.m., Avery Fisher Hall, Lincoln Center , (212) 868-4444, americansymphony.org. (Tommasini)20100128

BOSTON SYMPHONY ORCHESTRA (Monday) Elliott Carter composed “Dialogues,” a single-movement concerto in the form of a conversation for piano and orchestra, way back in 2003, when he was only 94. The scintillating French pianist Pierre-Laurent Aimard plays the piece at Carnegie Hall with James Levine and the Boston Symphony Orchestra. Expect Mr. Carter, now 101, to attend. Mr. Aimard will also play Ravel’s Concerto for the Left Hand. Mr. Levine’s generous program includes Ravel’s “Daphnis et Chloé ” Suite No. 2 and Berlioz’s “Harold in Italy,” with the violist Steven Ansell as soloist. At 8 p.m., 20100128

UNSOUND FESTIVAL NEW YORK (Thursday) Unsound Festival, an experimental-music series founded in 2003 and based in Krakow, Poland, presents its first New York incursion with the help of several local partner organizations, including Wordless Music, the Bunker, Issue Project Room and the Goethe-Institut New York. The opening event indicates the expansive terrain Unsound covers: tshe Finnish electronica musician Vladislav Delay collaborates with Lillevan, a German video artist; and Sebastian Meissner, a German electronic musician also known as Klimek, joins the exciting Polish new-music quartet Kwartludium in a project inspired by the seminal American punk-rock record label SST. (Through Feb. 14.) At 8:30 p.m., David Rubenstein Atrium, Lincoln Center , (212) 875-5000, unsound.pl/en; free. (Smith)