Bang On A Can All-Stars Big Beautiful Dark and Scarey
Cantaloupe CA21074 releases 02/28/12

“The Bang on a Can All-Stars have recorded their first studio album in five years and is the first to include the All-Stars’ current line-up: Ashley Bathgate, cello; Robert Black, bass; Vicky Chow, piano; David Cossin, percussion; Mark Stewart, electric guitar; and Evan Ziporyn, clarinets. With Big Beautiful Dark and Scary, the Bang on a Can All-Stars show off their blazing speed, polyrhythmic virtuosity and all-world versatility in a return to the core Bang on a Can sound – an uncategorizable supermix of classical and electric instruments that is part classical ensemble, part rock band.

The album is the first in a decade that features the All-Stars exclusively, rather than as part of a collaborative project. Each of the pieces on the double-CD calls upon a different kind of virtuosity, demonstrating the range of musical abilities and experiences arguably unique to this ensemble. Recorded in New York City, all of the music on Big Beautiful Dark and Scary (including the arrangements of the works by Conlon Nancarrow) were written for and premiered by the Bang on a Can All-Stars.”

Cantaloupe Music is the recording arm of Bang On a Can, the original New Music DIY organization.

David Lang This Was Written By Hand
Cantaloupe CA21073 (11.15.11)

“Although Lang is known for his fearless innovation and daring experiments, a certain amount of introspection and longing is not unknown in his work. His latest album, this was written by hand, is the perfect marriage of the composer’s relentless need to expand the forms of classical music and his desire the recover lost memories. The CD is made up of two compositions, the title work this was written by hand and memory pieces, both performed by Andrew Zolinsky. Zolinsky and Lang have a history of collaboration, as Zolinsky gave the first performances of both the works on this disc, as well as the premiere of fur, commissioned by the BBC, and the ensemble works how to pray and forced march.

David Lang

this was written by hand is a 10-minute piece for solo piano. The inspiration for the piece came from the physical process of writing music. ‘Writing music [used to be] an intensely physical activity,’ Lang muses in the album’s liner notes. ‘I got my first computer in 1993, and I have not written music with a pencil ever since, but I wonder how – or if – the means of my writing had any effect on the writing itself. I wrote this piano piece to find out.’ The second part of the release is the eight-sectioned ‘memory pieces.’ Each was written to honor a friend of the composer who have passed away. They serve, however, less as monument than as an attempt to enclose a specific memory about the loved one. Lang explains, ‘Each of these little pieces highlights some aspect of my relationship with each friend. I hope this will help me hold on to these memories just a little while longer.’”

“On November 5 the Bang on a Can All-Stars take the stage at Carnegie Hall’s Zankel Hall in their first New York performance of Bang on a Can @ 25 Years!

At the centerpiece of the program is the New York premiere of Life by the revolutionary Louis Andriessen, with film by Marijke Van Warmerdam. Also on the program is the quiet and poignant for Madeleine by Bang on a Can co-founder Michael Gordon; the hard-driving sunray by Bang on a Can co-founder David Lang; the poly-rhythmic Glamour Girl by Lukas Ligeti (founder of Burkina Electric); the sizzling Instructional Video, Matt Damon, Breakfast at J&M by David Longstreth (of the Dirty Projectors); and the dramatic and mesmerizing Ridgeway by Australian composer Kate Moore.
And stay tuned for the upcoming All-Stars two-CD set titled Big Beautiful Dark and Scary featuring work by Louis Andriessen, Michael Gordon, David Lang, David Longstreth, Kate Moore, Conlon Nancarrow, Julia Wolfe, and Evan Ziporyn to be released on Cantaloupe Music in early 2012.”

Martin Bresnick Caprichos Enfaticos
Cantaloupe CA21075 Releases 10/25/11

Martin Bresnick

Composer Martin Bresnick returns to follow up his first Cantaloupe release, The Essential Martin Bresnick (2006) with Caprichos Enfaticos (Emphatic Caprices). A concerto in eight movements for piano/keyboard and percussion quartet, Caprichos Enfaticos was commissioned by Meet the Composer for Cantaloupe artists Lisa Moore, pianist, and So Percussion. The 8 movements are accompanied by interpolated DVD projections (available on Youtube), created by Johanna Bresnick based on Francisco Goya’s book of etchings Los Destastres de la Guerra, or The Disasters of War, a piece that laments the excesses and tragedies of war.

Lisa Moore

So Percussion

Says Bresnick, ‘The titles of the eight movements are either by Goya himself, or suggested by his ideas. A farandula, or farandole, was a chain dance popular in Provence, although it’s origins are much older. The dance is often in 6/8 time, with a moderate to fast tempo. In modern Spanish, a farandula is a company of actors.’

Martin Bresnick is presently the Professor of Composition and Coordinator of the Composition Department at the Yale School of Music. His principal teachers of composition include Gyorgy Ligeti, John Chowning, and Gottfried von Einem.

Lisa Moore Lightning Slingers and Dead Ringers
Cantaloupe CA21061 Releases 10/25/11

Lisa Moore is back with her second EP, Lightning Slingers and Dead Ringers, written specifically for her by composer Annie Gosfield, who is described as ‘…a major figure of the downtown scene with pieces that use nonmusical sounds in a strikingly expressive manner.’

Annie Gosfield

Wondering where such an eclectic title comes from? A “Lightning Slinger” is an archaic term for a telegraph operator, and an apt simile for a pianist who translates musical ideas into an electric medium. This piece is performed on a piano and a keyboard sampler simultaneously, so that the pianist can use piano techniques and interpretive skills in both the acoustic and electronic realms. A “Dead Ringer” literally means an exact substitute of something. The dead ringers in this case are samples of piano sounds: the detuned, retuned, pinging, sliding, and rattling sounds are altered piano, prepared piano, and inside the piano techniques, which sometimes resemble guitar, bass, and even synthesizer sounds.

The last track, Brooklyn, October 5, 1941 was inspired by the 1941 Dodgers vs. Yankees World Series, and is performed with two baseballs and a catcher’s mitt. The baseballs are rolled, rubbed and struck on the keys, strings, and soundboard of the piano, and the mitt provides an expanded span for giant clusters and chords.

Lightning Slingers and Dead Ringers was commissioned by Lisa Moore with funding provided by Meet the Composer’s Commissioning USA and The Argosy Fund for New Music.

The Bang on a Can All-Stars take the stage at Carnegie Hall’s Zankel Hall on Saturday, November 5 to perform the New York premieres of Louis Andriessen’s Life with film by Marijke Van Warmerdam and David Lang’s sunray. Also on the program is Michael Gordon’s for Madeline, Kate Moore’s Ridgeway, three pieces commissioned by Bang on a Can from David Longstreth of the Dirty Projectors, and Lukas Ligeti’s Glamour Girl. Get your tickets here.

Recordings of these works and more appear on the All-Stars’ first studio album in five years: a two-CD set titled Big Beautiful Dark and Scary to be released on Cantaloupe Music in January 2012.

Original article is here.

Florent Ghys Baroque Tardif
Cantaloupe Records CA21052 (09/27/11)

“Following his 2009 EP release, Baroque Tardif: Soli (CA21051), Florent Ghys is back with a full-length album, Baroque Tardif, revealing the various directions his work has taken him the last four years.

F.G.

The answer to the common question musicians often get – “what kind of music do you play?” – is summed up neatly in this title (meaning “late Baroque”). Says Florent, ‘When I was a teenager I had an odd classical guitar teacher who was convinced that baroque music would come back one day and would crush all other kinds of music. I remembered this peculiar idea while working on the first draft for this album since the pieces in it are often very dense and contrapuntal. Baroque Tardif could be like the resurrection of a very late baroque’

Baroque Tardif encompasses a diverse medley of multimedia experimentation. Phase parisienne features some contrapuntal experiments while Quatrieme implores an extended canon technique. Pull blanc , chemise rouge, always remaining playful and modal, brings out an accessible pop side to Florent’s music. The album also unveils Florent’s personal vocal technique, as in Simplement, in which his voice sings on top of a speech sample. Even more compelling is the dominate use of solfege (do re mi…) as lyrics, leading the listener to consider voice as an instrument.

As with his first EP, Florent has recorded this album using a unique and personal tuning of the double bass, bringing the instrument nearer from the cello and extending the range of possibilities of his virtual “multiple-me ensemble” made of basses, guitars, voices and percussion.”

Here is Bang On A Can’s 25th Anniversary news:

“When we started Bang on a Can in 1987 in an art gallery in SoHo, we never imagined that our one-day, 12-hour marathon festival of mostly unknown music would morph into a big international organization dedicated to the support of experimental music. But it has, and here we are in 2011 about to launch our 25th Anniversary Season!

We have a tremendously exciting year planned for this milestone season. The calendar features the Bang on a Can All-Stars in a dizzying array of collaborations with friends old and new, joining forces with Norwegian superstars Trio Mediaeval (in Steel Hammer by Julia Wolfe); with percussion legend Steven Schick (in an evening of music by Steve Reich in Los Angeles); with an all-new expanded live tour of the Brian Eno ambient classic Music for Airports; and with a host of composers, visual and sound artists (in the premiere of a new evening-length touring project, Field Recordings, a collaborative program created from found sounds, images, and voices featuring works by Tyondai Braxton, Nick Zammuto, Christian Marclay, Mira Calix, Michael Gordon, David Lang, Julia Wolfe, and Evan Ziporyn ).

The season also includes the premiere of a newly staged show featuring the avant marching band Asphalt Orchestra, new CD releases on Bang on a Can sister-label Cantaloupe Music, and more. See the full season calendar online. We are so gratified to still be hard at work, all these years later. The reason is really clear to us: we started this organization because we believed that making new music is a utopian act, that people needed to hear this music and they needed to hear it presented in the most persuasive way, with the best players, with the best programs, for the best listeners, in the best context. Our commitment to changing the environment for contemporary music has kept us busy and growing for the last 25 years, and we are not done yet. We hope to see you this season.”

David Lang

Julia Wolfe

Michael Gordon

Bang On a Can All-Stars

Asphalt Orchestra

So Percussion, Steve Mackey It is Time
Cantaloupe CA21076 Release 09/27/11

Songs

1 Metronome
2 Steel Drums [ MP3 ]
3 Marimba
4 Drums
5 Epilogue

“It Is Time will be released on September 27, 2011. The physical release will include CD and full-length performance DVD.

‘It Is Time marshals the virtuosity of the individual members of So Percussion to speed, slow, warp, celebrate and mourn our perceptions of time. Each of the four sections of the piece is a mini-concerto for one of the players. First Eric Beach leads the music in a multi-percussion set up composed of metronome with delay, pump organ, bells, china cymbal on hi-hat stand and a few other assorted toys. Josh Quillen follows on steel drums, Adam Sliwinski on marimba, and Jason Treuting on drumset.

So Percussion

It Is Time was inspired by my young son Jasper (now 30 months old). As an older father (now 664 months old) I felt, for the first time in my life, saddened by the immutability of time and the finite limits to how much of It I will be able to spend with my young family. It Is Time fantasizes that we might have agency with respect to time. An African poet named Isaac Maliya wrote a poem called ?Time is Time.? The first stanza ? ?Time sits, Time stands, Time is Time? ? suggested a terse melody that became a dominant lyrical element in the piece. It is first unveiled in the Steel Drum movement but shards of it permeate much of the music.”
-Steve Mackey

Michael Gordon Timber
Cantaloupe CA21072 (08/30/11)

“Musical pioneer and Bang on a Can co-founder Michael Gordon’s subtle rhythmic investigations and fearless compositional inventions have led WNYC to note, ‘ Gordon’s music is an outgrowth of his underground New York rock band experience combined with formal music training from Yale, so it’s no surprise that he’s obsessed with the nature of rhythm. ?[He] has built his career on exploring rhythm and what happens when different rhythms are piled on top of each other, to mesmerizing effect.’ For his most recent composition, Gordon has ventured outside the realm of traditional instrumentation to achieve an evening-length tour de force.

M.G.
His new work, Timber, is scored for six wooden 2x4s, each cut into different sizes, giving each one a slightly different pitch. Called a ‘simantra’, this percussion instrument was first devised by composer Iannis Xenakis. Far from a gimmick, the instrumentation allows Gordon to create the impression that the sound is traveling around and through the room by subtly shifting the accent of sound from one player to another. The result is a meditation on sound and rhythm, bringing the physicality, endurance and technique of percussion performance to a new level.”
See the full article here.

“Composer’s Notes by Arnold Dreyblatt

On “Resonant Relations”

With support from the Irish Arts Council in 2004, I was commissioned by the Crash Ensemble, Dublin to compose a new work. During a series of intense working visits over a one and half year period, members the ensemble was introduced to the Dreyblatt tuning system. The Crash Ensemble is the only group outside of my own previous ensembles which has learned to perform in my intonation of 21 unequal tones based on the first eleven partials of the harmonic series and their multiples. The resulting work, Resonant Relations was composed for flutes (wooden and metal), trombone, violin, viola, cello, contrabass, harpsichord, and percussion (timpanies, snare and bass drum, metal pieces).

The work was first performed at the Sugar Club in Dublin on 27 October 2005 in a program co-curated with Crash artistic director Donnacha Dennehy which included performances of compositions by my two composition teachers La Monte Young and Alvin Lucier.”

Crash Ensemble

Arnold Dreyblatt Resonant Relations
Cantaloupe CA21046

Release date: 06/28/11

From Cantaloupe on Arnold Dreyblatt:

“Among the second generation of New York minimal composers, Arnold Dreyblatt has developed a unique and original approach to composition and performance. He has invented a set of new and original instruments, performance techniques, and a system of tuning. Working closely with various ensembles and in theatrical and installation projects, he creates a music with exciting rhythms and rich textures, an exploration of the potential inherent in the natural overtone series. The musicians who have performed with Dreyblatt generally come from vastly varied musical backgrounds and interests – in common, however, is a sensitivity for an approach to music making, sonority and hearing which Dreyblatt has been developing together with musicians over the last twenty-five years. In his former Orchestra, all the members contribute to this music with their own ideas and performance techniques, gradually forming an individual musical role within the ensemble dynamic. Just as this music essentially exists only in performance, the combined acoustic effect results from a sum which is greater than its parts. Arnold Dreyblatt’s compostions involve a re-thinking of sound making tools; modified and newly created acoustic instruments are utilized for specific timbral effect and perform in an unusual tuning system. Traditional and non-traditional percussion instruments accentuate the rhythmic character of the music.

Arnold Dreyblatt was born in New York City in 1953. He has been based in Europe since 1984 and is presently living in Berlin. Dreyblatt studied Film and Video Art at the State University of New York at Buffalo (M.A. from the Institute for Media Studies) with Woody and Steina Vasulka and later Music Composition with Pauline Oliveros (1974), La Monte Young (1974-76) and with Alvin Lucier at Wesleyan University where he received an M.A. in Music Composition in 1982.

From 1979-1997 he was director and composer for his music ensemble, The Orchestra of Excited Strings. The ensemble performed extensively in the United States from 1979-83 and recorded an LP for India Navigation Records in 1982 entitled, Nodal Excitation (IN 3024). In 1984, Dreyblatt moved his base of operations to Berlin where he formed a new ensemble while composer-in-residence at Künstlerhaus Bethanien. This ensemble has performed throughout eastern and western Europe as well as in the States at numerous festivals, museums, galleries and other music venues. An LP entitled Propellers in Love was issued by Künstlerhaus Bethanien in 1985. This recording was reissued by Hat Art Records in 1986 on compact disc along with newly recorded material. In composing a performance opera entitled Who’s Who in Central & East Europe 1933, Dreyblatt formed a new ensemble in 1991. The ensemble also recorded a number of pieces in New York with clarinetist Andy Statman which appeared on A Haymish Groove, issued by Extra Platte, Vienna, 1992. In 1995, recordings by the ensemble were released by Zaddik Records (produced by [the great] John Zorn) under the title Animal Magnetism.

In 1998, his first recording, Nodal Excitation, was re-mastered by Jim O’Rourke and was released by his Dexter’s Cigar label. Also in 1998, Table of the Elements Records released a compilation of Solo and Ensemble pieces entitled The Sound of One-String. In 2000, the Bang On A Can All-Stars recorded a version of Dreyblatt’s Escalator for Cantaloupe Records. A complete CD entitled The Adding Machine, also involving musicians from the Bang On A Can All-Stars, was issued by Cantaloupe in 2002.

In 1991, Dreyblatt composed Who’s Who in Central & East Europe 1933 as a co-production between Inventionen ’91/DAAD, Berlin and Wiener Fest Wochen, Vienna. He has received commissions from among others: “Ars Electronica”, Linz (1988), Oeyvaer Desk, Den Haag (1989), Prime Foundation, Groningen (1989), DAAD- Inventionen ’91, Berlin (1990), Werkstaat Berlin, 1991, Podewil/US Arts Festival, Berlin (1993), Bang in A Can All-stars Ensemble, New York (1996), Saarlandischer Rundfunk (2002) and Academy of Art, Berlin (2003), Crash Ensemble Dublin (2005); Austin New Music Coop (2007).

He has been a guest composer at The Music Gallery, Toronto; STEIM, Amsterdam; Het Apollohuis, Eindhoven; K?nstlerhaus Bethanien, Berlin and has received numerous Grants and Stipendiums including: Creative Artist Public Service Program, New York (1979-80); Overbrook Foundation, New York (1983-85); Luftbrückendank Stiftung, Berlin (1985); Philip Morris Art Prize (1991); Kunstfonds e.V., Bonn (1992), Kulturfonds e.V., Berlin (1995), Foundation for Creative Performance Arts, N.Y.C. (1998) and Förderpreis, Akademie der Kunste, Berlin (2000).

In recent years, Dreyblatt has been increasingly involved in integrating archival and biographical texts with his sound work in performance and installation. In 1997, he disbanded The Orchestra of Excited Strings, which had been performing continuously in New York and then in Europe since 1979. He began a period of commissioned compositions on the one hand, and occasional solo and smaller group projects. He has worked with the Bang On A Can All-Stars in New York and founded a new Orchestra in 2000 with the assistance of Evan Ziporyn and David Weinstein which resulted in the Cantaloupe CD: The Adding Machine. Recent Commissions include a String Quartet (Music for 16 Strings) for the Pellegrini Quartet in Freiburg (2003); Resonant Relations for the Crash Ensemble Dublin (2005); and Kinship Collapse for the Austin New Music Coop (2007). He has recently been touring with a new solo performance version of Nodal Excitation (1979) and continues to lead composition and performance workshops, such as at the “Music Gallery”, Toronto, 2007.