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For great Jazz WPRB
Dan Buskirk Spinning Jazz Mondays 11:00AM-1:00PM
Will Constantine Jr, Blues Bop and Beyond Thursdays 11:00AM-2:00PM featuring Latin Jazz
Jerry Gordon Serenade to a Cookoo Fridays 11:00AM-2:00PM with Jerry’s Room at 1:00Pm
Jeannie Becker Sunday Jazz 10:00AM-1:00PM
Invisible Anatomy is a composer-performer ensemble that explores the human body as the most fundamental aspect of music creation and performance. Incorporating elements from classical, jazz, experimental rock, performance art and theater, Invisible Anatomy (IA) creates performances that combine an omnivorous stylistic palate, virtuosic physicality, and dramatic visual presentation. IA’s inaugural show BODY PARTS dismembered, manipulated, and reanimated bodies in performance – creating a chattering chorus of woodblock teeth and screaming eyes on TV screens. After the group’s 2015 debut concerts in New York City, they were invited to China for three shows, including a featured solo concert at the Beijing Modern Music Festival. IA’s second season opened with an intimate house concert of BODY PARTS hosted by David Lang, followed by the world premiere of Dissections at Brooklyn’s National Sawdust, which was the subject of a full-length feature in the Village Voice. IA performed DISSECTIONS at Pomona College and The Blue Whale in Los Angeles in February 2016, and appeared on Heartbeat Opera’s Collaboret Series; at Roulette Intermedium in Brooklyn; at the Yale School of Music in New Haven; and at Ars Nova’s ANT Fest in Manhattan. The group was the runner-up in the 2016 SAVVY Chamber Competition at the University of South Carolina School of Music, and recorded their debut studio album in June.
On Halloween 2016, IA produced FUNHOUSE, an immersive presentation of art installations and performances in a prewar Victorian Harlem brownstone. Upcoming engagements include a gala performance hosted by Pulitzer Prize-winning composer Aaron Jay Kernis, an evening-length show at Roulette in Brooklyn, as well as appearing on the Detroit Institute of Art’s Friday Night Live series in March 2017.
IA’s members have been awarded honors from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, ASCAP, American Composers’ Forum, and the China National Arts Fund. IA is fiscally sponsored by Bang on a Can, and is the recipient of a 2017 Foundation for Contemporary Arts Grant.
For great Jazz WPRB
Dan Buskirk Spinning Jazz Mondays 11:00AM-1:00PM
Will Constantine Jr, Blues Bop and Beyond Thursdays 11:00AM-2:00PM featuring Latin Jazz
Jerry Gordon Serenade to a Cookoo Fridays 11:00AM-2:00PM with Jerry’s Room at 1:00Pm
Jeannie Becker Sunday Jazz 10:00AM-1:00PM
Incorporating elements from classical, jazz, experimental rock, performance art and theater, Invisible Anatomy creates performances that combine an omnivorous stylistic palate, virtuosic physicality, and dramatic visual presentation. Dissections is an album of works that premiered at National Sawdust in 2016, featuring six works created by the group’s members from a collaboratively generated text and numerous workshops.
National Sawdust
Invisible Anatomy is a composer-performer ensemble that explores the human body as the most fundamental aspect of music creation and performance. Incorporating elements from classical, jazz, experimental rock, performance art and theater, Invisible Anatomy (IA) creates performances that combine an omnivorous stylistic palate, virtuosic physicality, and dramatic visual presentation. IA’s inaugural show BODY PARTS dismembered, manipulated, and reanimated bodies in performance – creating a chattering chorus of woodblock teeth and screaming eyes on TV screens. After the group’s 2015 debut concerts in New York City, they were invited to China for three shows, including a featured solo concert at the Beijing Modern Music Festival. IA’s second season opened with an intimate house concert of BODY PARTS hosted by David Lang, followed by the world premiere of Dissections at Brooklyn’s National Sawdust, which was the subject of a full-length feature in the Village Voice. IA performed DISSECTIONS at Pomona College and The Blue Whale in Los Angeles in February 2016, and appeared on Heartbeat Opera’s Collaboret Series; at Roulette Intermedium in Brooklyn; at the Yale School of Music in New Haven; and at Ars Nova’s ANT Fest in Manhattan. The group was the runner-up in the 2016 SAVVY Chamber Competition at the University of South Carolina School of Music, and recorded their debut studio album in June.
On Halloween 2016, IA produced FUNHOUSE, an immersive presentation of art installations and performances in a prewar Victorian Harlem brownstone. Upcoming engagements include a gala performance hosted by Pulitzer Prize-winning composer Aaron Jay Kernis, an evening-length show at Roulette in Brooklyn, as well as appearing on the Detroit Institute of Art’s Friday Night Live series in March 2017.
IA’s members have been awarded honors from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, ASCAP, American Composers’ Forum, and the China National Arts Fund. IA is fiscally sponsored by Bang on a Can, and is the recipient of a 2017 Foundation for Contemporary Arts Grant.
Dissections explores intimacy and the potentially damaging experience of being vulnerable with others, but also the beautiful and unexpected results that can happen when that risk is taken. The close-knit group has experienced this first-hand, collectively and individually working through health issues, conflict, distance and more, and baring themselves to each other during the process. The pieces on Dissections reflect the deconstruction and reconstruction inherent in peeling away human surfaces.
Each piece on Dissections fixates on one element of a musical phrase or text, repeating — or dissecting — it until it becomes unrecognizable. Vocalist Fay Wang’s piece “Facial Polygraph XVIA” is a poetic study of facial expressions, dissecting tics, “tells,” and subtle changes of emotions. Guitarist Brendon Randall- Myers’s songs “Permission” and “Othering” focus explicitly on the discomfort and dangers of opening up to someone — navigating difference and similarity, and the disconnect between who we imagine people to be and who they actually are. Musically, the pieces attempt to capture a feeling of beautiful discomfort in being pulled apart, splitting rock-derived phrases across multiple instruments playing at different tempos.
Cellist Ian Gottlieb’s two-movement piece, “Threading Light”, symbolizes the piano as flesh and the cello, guitar and vibraphone as the knife, teasing strands of notes out of decadent chords. Pianist Paul Kerekes’s piece “Pressing Issues” explores the constant shuffling of small musical gestures into a kaleidoscopic listening experience.
Pianist Dan Schlosberg’s piece “A Demonstration” is inspired by Leonardo da Vinci’s relentless examinations of human cadavers in search of the human soul, exploring every facet of man he could think of along the way. Fittingly, the pieces features players coaxing sounds from the strings of a grand piano through inflictions from screwdrivers and knives, in a sense exploring a familiar body in new ways.
credits
releases March 30, 2018
1. Facial Polygraph XVIA video
2. Permission
3. Threading Light (i)
4. Pressing Issues
5. Threading Light (ii)
6. Othering
7. A Demonstration i – the cause
8. A Demonstration ii – where the soul is
Invisible Anatomy is: Ian Gottlieb, cello; Paul Kerekes, piano/keyboards; Brendon Randall-Myers, guitars; Daniel Schlosberg, piano/keyboards; Benjamin Wallace, percussion; Fay Wang, vocals.
Dissections was recorded at Oktaven Audio in Mt. Vernon, NY by Ryan Streber, with additional recording by William Gardiner at Turtle Sound in Brooklyn, NY. The album was mixed and mastered by William Gardiner with additional mixing by Ryan Streber. Album artwork for Dissections was created by John Moore, with layout and design by Jordan Kasten-Krause.
William Gardiner provided additional arrangements and electronics on tracks 1, 6, and 7.
For great Jazz WPRB
Dan Buskirk Spinning Jazz Mondays 11:00AM-1:00PM
Will Constantine Jr, Blues Bop and Beyond Thursdays 11:00-2:00 featuring Latin Jazz
Jerry Gordon Serenade to a Cookoo Frdays 11:00AM-2:00PM with Jerry’s Room at 1:00Pm
Jeannie Becker Sunday Jazz 10:00AM-1:00Pm
New Amsterdam is excited to celebrate A Dance That Empties, the debut album from new two-musician ensemble Subtle Degrees, consisting of Travis Laplante (tenor saxophone) and Gerald Cleaver (drums).
The album is now available on digital + CD formats via NewAm, and on vinyl via NNA Tapes.
A Dance That Empties is the culmination of a very long musical relationship. In 2001, when he was only 18 years old, Laplante played a concert at New York’s Knitting Factory, then a pre-eminent mecca for adventurous music of all kinds. Cleaver was in the audience, and came up to Laplante afterwards, handed him his phone number and said they should play together sometime. They soon did, “and I felt a very intimate and spiritual connection with Gerald that feels more alive than ever today,” Laplante says. “I’ve learned a tremendous amount from Gerald and have long considered him one of my favorite living improvisers.”
The two have performed together various times over the ensuing 17 years, but Laplante never felt he was quite ready to record with Cleaver. “It got to the point where I took a multiple-year break from playing with him because I felt like I didn’t have enough to bring to the table,” says Laplante. “I needed to practice so I could have more to give to our musical relationship.” Then, in the fall of 2016, Laplante received a commission to compose a piece to be performed at Roulette in Brooklyn the following spring. “I knew that this was the perfect opportunity to return to this relationship with Gerald.” And so Laplante began composing an epic-scale work work with Cleaver’s rhythmic virtuosity in mind.
Inspired by the longer durational forms of spiritual ceremonies, A Dance That Empties is a continuous journey that unfolds over 43 minutes, with musical motifs that foreshadow, recur, and evolve. The piece refines sonic territory that Laplante has pioneered in his celebrated saxophone quartet Battle Trance, as well as his solo saxophone work, utilizing long passages of circular breathing and other extended techniques to create specific and yet ineffable emotional and sonic resonances. A Dance That Empties, as the title implies, adds the distinctly new element of complex rhythmic pulses precisely and expressively executed by Cleaver, that compel listeners to lose themselves in the hypnotically repetitive yet subtly shifting grooves.
With A Dance That Empties, Laplante and Cleaver throw themselves into unknown territory, delving further into the devotional intensity that has long distinguished both their work.
Travis Laplante on Subtle Degrees:
“Playing in this duo with Gerald is by far the most exposing musical experience I’ve ever had. I think it feels so raw and vulnerable because it has a similar nakedness to playing solo, while at the same time I’m completely relying on and needing to stay connected with Gerald, no matter what. It requires 100% trust in another person, as well as myself. Our respective parts in A Dance That Empties are so meticulously interwoven that it can potentially be disastrous if one of us makes even a tiny mistake. It feels like the riskiest piece I’ve ever written in terms of the psychological, emotional, physical and sensory demands.”
Travis Laplante is a saxophonist, composer, and qigong practitioner living in Brooklyn, New York and southern Vermont. He leads Battle Trance, the acclaimed tenor saxophone quartet; he is also known for his solo saxophone work and his longstanding ensemble Little Women. Laplante has recently performed and/or recorded with Trevor Dunn, Ches Smith, Peter Evans, So Percussion, Gerald Cleaver, Michael Formanek, Buke and Gase, Darius Jones, Mat Maneri, and Matt Mitchell, among others. He has toured his music extensively and has appeared at major international festivals such as Moers Festival (Germany), Jazz Em Agosto (Portugal), International Jazz Festival Saalfelden (Austria), Hopscotch (Raleigh, NC), Earshot (Seattle, WA), and many others.
Popmatters hailed Laplante’s compositions as “an achievement not just for the saxophone, but for avant garde composition as a whole” while the New York Times called Battle Trance’s debut album Palace of Wind “mesmerizing… a floating tapestry of fascinating textures made up of tiny musical motifs, and a music that throbs with tension between stillness and agitation, density and light.”
Laplante has served as guest faculty at the Royal Academy of Music (Aarhus, Denmark), Dartmouth College, and The New School. As a qigong student of master Robert Peng, Laplante has undergone traditional intensive training. His focus in recent years, under the tutelage of Laura Stelmok, has been on Taoist alchemical medicine and the cultivation of the heart. Laplante is passionate about the intersection of music and medicine. He and his wife are the founders of Sword Hands, a qigong and acupuncture healing practice based in Brooklyn, New York and Putney, Vermont.
Gerald Cleaver is one of the New York jazz scene’s leading drummer and composers, who covers a wide range of stylistic ground. Having played with jazz masters Tommy Flanagan, Barry Harris and Ray Bryant as well as the leading lights of the AACM, Roscoe Mitchell, Muhal Richard Abrams, Wadada Leo Smith and Henry Threadgill, he is a product of many traditions within creative music.
Cleaver is known for his associations with Roscoe Mitchell, Charles Gayle, Miroslav Vitous, Mario Pavone, William Parker, Michael Formanek, Joe Morris, Jeremy Pelt, Craig Taborn and Yaron Herman. He is also the leader of the bands Uncle June (a reflection on the personal and familial challenges of Black Americans during The Great Migration featuring Tony Malaby, Andrew Bishop, Mat Maneri, Craig Taborn and Drew Gress), Violet Hour (a tribute to Detroit featuring Jeremy Pelt, JD Allen, Andrew Bishop, Ben Waltzer and Chris Lightcap), Black Host (a noisy avant-garde group featuring Pascal Niggenkemper, Cooper-Moore, Darius Jones and Brandon Seabrook) and Farmers By Nature (a free-improvising collective co-led with bassist William Parker and pianist Craig Taborn).
For great Jazz WPRB
Dan Buskirk Spinning Jazz Mondays 11:00AM-1:00PM
Will Constantine Jr, Blues Bop and Beyond Thursdays 11:00-2:00 featuring Latin Jazz
Jerry Gordon Serenade to a Cookoo Frdays 11:00AM-2:00PM with Jerry’s Room at 1:00Pm
Jeannie Becker Sunday Jazz 10:00AM-1:00Pm
presented by Kaufman Music Center at Merkin Concert Hall
featuring poets Imani Davis and Ramya Ramana
Buy 2 or more EMF concerts and save 20%!
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The artists join forces for an incredible one-of-a-kind collaboration that exemplifies the spirit behind the creation of the Ecstatic Music Festival, now in its eighth year. On the first half of the show, the artists will perform their own works chosen for the occasion. Dronechoir Miracle, the second half of the evening, is a spontaneous set of powerful vocal performances addressing Black Lives, gender equity and racial equality. The work of celebrated poet and spoken word artist Mahogany L. Browne is central to the collaboration.
Dronechoir is the latest innovation by Arone Dyer of Buke and Gase, the band Pitchfork calls “never anything less than absolutely thrilling.” Dyer has assembled a group of talented women from completely different musical backgrounds to engage in spontaneous performance that bridges the gaps between them. Mahogany L. Browne is Cave Canem Fellow and Programming Coordinator of Black Lives Matter Pratt @ Pratt Institute.
A collaboration between New Amsterdam Records and Kaufman Music Center, the acclaimed Ecstatic Music Festival® returns in 2018, bringing together composers and performers from different musical genres for nine one-night-only performances featuring world premieres, new arrangements and the exclusive opportunity to hear artists discuss their work. Starting Jan. 27 and running through April 26, 2018, the festival, hailed as “the alt-classical world’s main showcase” (The New York Times), a will feature collaborations from more than 75 artists, including Kronos Quartet, the Bang on a Can All-Stars, Margaret Leng Tan, Glasser, Xenia Rubinos, Mantra Percussion, Mahogany L. Browne, Carla Kihlstedt, Patrick Zimmerli, Ethan Iverson, Buke & Gase’s Arone Dyer, and many more.
Click here for more information and tickets to the 2018 Festival and for the complete festival line-up.
featuring live performance of album
+ opening set by Operator Music Band
Sunday, April 27 – 8:00pm
LPR Presents at Elsewhere
Brooklyn, NY MORE INFO & TICKETS
“…an imaginative, distinctive, hypnotic yet kinetic blend of
indie classical, minimalism, post-rock and drone music.”
— New York Music Daily
New Amsterdam Records is excited to announce Strange Paradise, the sophomore album from Brooklyn-based composer-performer percussion trio Tigue. Co-released by NewAm (CD + digital) and NNA Tapes (vinyl), the album follows the group’s widely-celebrated debut album, Peaks (2015) and is now available for pre-order via Bandcamp.
The band will also celebrate the album’s release on Friday, April 27 with a performance at Brooklyn’s Elsewhere, a new multi-room venue from the owners of the now-defunct venue Glasslands. The performance is presented by LPR Presents and Operator Music Band will open. Tickets are on sale now here.
Tigue is a group of three percussionists with a fluid musical identity. Praised for their energetic and focused performances, the members of Tigue (Matt Evans, Amy Garapic and Carson Moody) have continued to to develop their own language of instrumental minimalism while simultaneously performing in collaborative endeavors over the past five years. Strange Paradise sees them creating as a unit, pushing each other to transcend the limits and expectations of their percussion instrumentation through the construction of long-form, radiant hypnotic soundscapes described by the group as “rendered in ecstatic complexity.”
The music on Strange Paradise flows directly from the hands and minds of the members, the result of a deep human connection that can only come from playing music together for nearly a decade. The group wrote the music with a sense of immediacy — everyone together in a room, with vibraphones, drums, synthesizers, gongs and garbage — with every sound maintaining an intimate connection to its creator. The members’ distinct musical voices interlock seamlessly, and the pieces radiate with warmth.
As a result, Strange Paradise is a luminous, abstract, non-narrative world that funnels inspiration from patterns, objects, and relationships. Built on an intricate patchwork of tones where instrumental lines and textures shift in and out of alignment to produce a vibrating landscape, Strange Paradise is designed for a mode of “extended listening” — asking listeners to explore slow gradations of change between rhythm and texture. The album creates a sound environment that envelopes the listener but continually defies expectation — shapeshifting at each point it seems understood. Though the music floats from the serene to the uncanny, Strange Paradise is perhaps most notable for providing a distinct sensation of interconnectedness.
Strange Paradise was produced by Tigue & Seth Manchester, and recorded at Machines with Magnets in Pawtucket RI and Brooklyn NY. The album was engineered and mixed by Seth Manchester, and mastered by Heba Kadry at Timeless Mastering. Special guests on “Triangle” include: Benedict Kupstas (guitar); Seth Manchester (guitar); Tristan Kasten-Krause (bass); Trevor Wilson (Wurlitzer); and Eliot Krimsky (OP1).
Tigue
Top to bottom: Matt Evans, Amy Garapic, and Carson Moody
Photo Credit: Catalina Kulczar
“drawn only once represents the NewAm debut for accomplished duo Due East (Erin Lesser, flute; Greg Beyer, percussion) and innovative new music composer John Supko. The album contains two pieces, Littoral, written for the duo, and This window makes me feel, both coupled with cutting-edge videography by Kristine Marx and Don Sheehy, respectively. The pieces explore, among other things, Supko’s interest in field recordings, and computer-generated randomness of harmonies and melodic material. The multimedia pieces are presented in both CD and 5.1 surround sound DVD formats.
Littoral melds the lustrous timbres of flute, electronics, and an impressive array of percussion with texts by contemporary Dutch writer Cees Nooteboom and 16th Century English writer Richard Hakluyt. Supko calls Littoral ‘music of shifting terrains, each with its distinct sense of time and color and space… more alluring than any destination plotted on a timetable.’ These impressions are realized by flute, alto flute, piccolo, an array of unorthodox percussion instruments, and synthesized field recordings of the sea, Supko’s voice, and the voice of a poet. Marx’s entrancing video accompanies the piece with rapidly changing geometric forms superimposed over transient oceanic landscapes. This window makes me feel is based on Robert Fitterman’s brilliant poem of the same title, which makes use of completions of the poem’s title based on hundreds of Google searches, chronicling a vast range of humane poetic sensibilities. The work includes pre-recorded mezzo-soprano (Hai-Ting Chinn), keyboards (David Broome), and other electronics. Sheehy’s video accompaniment captures the hysteria of the congested cityscape with short clips clandestinely captured on the streets of New York that visually amplifies the pre-recorded poetic whispers of Fitterman’s poem.
The album will be released November 15th, followed by a record-release performance of Littoral at Galapagos Art Space on November 21st, alongside a piece by composer Gregory Spears.”
Purchase: Amazon | iTunes | eMusic
Gregory Spears Requiem
New Amsterdam
“Gregory Spears is a composer of refined and ‘astonishingly beautiful’ (New York Times) instrumental and vocal works. His recording debut is marked by Requiem, an otherworldly album-length composition scored for six voices, baroque viola, harp, troubadour harp, recorders, and electric organ, containing vastly eclectic influences. While the piece’s title and instrumentation suggest a characteristically baroque structure, these indices are juxtaposed with Feldmanesque harmony, Reichian repetition, and motet-like vocal stylings, liberating the piece from a particular musical era. The music is wedded to an array of time- and place-exclusive languages, including Latin, Middle French, and Breton, allowing for further multi-referentiality and conceptual intricacy.
The piece premiered in in June 2010 as an opera an opera/dance collaboration with choreographer for Christopher Williams for his dance production Hen’s Teeth. The performance enhanced the collage-esque sonic references with the disparate imagery of 19th century Breton fairy tales, Greek mythology, and middle age relics. The interdisciplinary realization was called ‘splendid…’ and ‘the jangling together of singing voices, violin, harp, recorder, chimes, and electric organ is magical, like feathers stroking the back of your neck’ (Village Voice). The New York Times called Spears’ score ‘the most distinguished component of the evening,’ the instrumentation evoking a ‘shimmering medieval aura,’ and New Yorker critic Alex Ross described it as ‘cooly entrancing.’
The album will be released November 15th, followed by a performance at Galapagos Art Space on November 21st, alongside a piece by composer John Supko performed by the dynamic duo Due East.”
First, the New Am web site has been re-designed and it is really spiffy.
Second, there is a new site, New Amsterdam Presents, about which we are told, “…For up-to-date information about the New Amsterdam community, including our recording artists as well as our ever-expanding list of concerts and other events, please visit NewAmsterdamPresents.com.
And, oh yes, some music!!
Jody Redhage – of minutiae and memory
“As the recipient of the 2005 Hertz Grant, Jody began developing her “singing cellist” project–writing and also commissioning a repertoire for her voice and cello from some of New York’s most talented emerging composers. All Summer in a Day, the CD culmination of this commissioning/recording project, was originally released in 2007 on New Amsterdam Records and has been called “a freewheeling, slightly edgy and altogether ‘different’ kind of musical experience…highly rewarding and worthwhile” (Dave Lewis, All Music Guide). Jody spent 2009 going in and out of the studio, recording more pieces for her voice, cello, and electronics. The updated album, of minutiae and memory (featuring a few tracks from the original 2007 release and many new compositions) is the compelling result.
The album includes eight immersive, nuanced premiere recordings of compositions from some of today’s most talented young “indie classical” composers: Missy Mazzoli, Ryan Brown, Anna Clyne, Stefan Weisman, Paula Matthusen, Wil Smith, Derek Muro, and Joshua Penman. The tracks have been carefully curated by Redhage to flow effortlessly from piece to piece, and the album’s extremely high production value lends an alluring sheen to each track.”
itsnotyouitsme – everybody’s pain is magnificent
“itsnotyouitsme consists of two prolific, highly regarded New York musicians: violinist/composer Caleb Burhans and guitarist Grey McMurray, each of whom has an extensive musical output in a variety of ensembles and musical idioms. They formed the ensemble itsnotyouitsme in 2003, fusing and distilling their eclectic mutual inspirations, including the likes of J.S. Bach, Brian Eno, and Pink Floyd. Since its inception, the duo has carved out a unique niche at the intersection of chamber music, jazz, and post-rock musical scenes with their breathtaking, genre-defying instrumental soundscapes.
Following itsnotyouitsme’s first two critically acclaimed albums is everybody’s pain is magnificent, an 88 minute double-disc album that serves as a mature and well-honed artistic statement. Like the duo’s first two albums — walled gardens and fallen monuments — which were lauded by critics for their idiosyncratic ambient sound worlds generated by copious melodic looping, everybody’s pain is magnificent enraptures the listener with its dense textural landscapes. The emphasis on slowly shifting harmonies and polished timbres represents a marked departure away from the group’s earlier Philip Glass-inspired additive process minimalism and toward a more abstracted soundworld of flowing textures.”
yMusic – Beautiful Mechanical
yMusic is a group of young performers who are actively engaged and equally comfortable in the overlapping classical and pop music worlds (Alex Sopp, Hideaki Aomori, CJ Camerieri, Rob Moose, Nadia Sirota, and Clarice Jensen). Its unique instrumentation includes a traditional string trio as well as the distinctive combination of flute, clarinet and trumpet. This exciting composite of sounds has sparked a burgeoning repertoire of commissions from some of today’s most important artists.
Beautiful Mechanical, the group’s focused and stunning debut album, features compositions by indie- classical all-stars Annie Clark (St. Vincent), Shara Worden (My Brightest Diamond), Ryan Lott (Son Lux), Gabriel Kahane, and New Amsterdam Records co-founders Sarah Kirkland Snider and Judd Greenstein. The compositions are assured and fervent yet tender and humane, the performances delicate yet fiercely virtuosic, making for a cohesive album that stands as a manifesto of what music-making in the 21st century can – and should – be.”
Please give yourself a lift by visiting the new web sites.
Toy Pianos, accordion, electronics and bandsembles take over the L&L Festival. Sunday, August 21, 2011
“Cease the last full month of Summer with the Look & Listen Festival running through August here on Cued Up. For the fest’s third concert of four, enjoy two world premieres by the delightfully unclassifiable drummer/composer John Hollenbeck and his group The Claudia Quintet with Theo Bleckmann, a world premiere by past Q2 composer-portrait Angélica Negrón and works by toy piano wiz Phyllis Chen and textural magician Zibuokle Martinaityte.
You can enjoy the first two concerts here (Part I) and here (Part II) for more exciting new works from this year’s L&L Festival, but tune in this Sunday to marvel at Part III’s fireworks: The Claudia Quintet reconciles sputters of pointillist post-jazz with heartfelt lyricism via Bleckmann’s crooning and Hollenbeck’s writing; Chen plays a mélange of housewares, mixing bowls, and toy piano to produce a one-woman orchestra that winks at Gamelan music; Ms. Martinaityte teases at Eastern-Euro modality, while conjuring up some breathtaking swells that sound more like a synthesizer than the sax/bass trombone/accordion trio.
Cued Up On Q2 streams Sundays at 2PM on Q2; encores Tuesdays at 8PM and Thursdays at 4PM on Q2
“New Amsterdam is proud to announce the August 30th release of Jody Redhage‘s new recording project, of minutiae and memory. Praised for her “exceptional technical command,” (Steve Smith, Night After Night), Redhage’s album demonstrates her evolution as both cellist and vocalist, building upon what was represented in her first NewAm CD, All Summer In A Day. That disc, which first brought New Amsterdam Records to public attention, was the culmination of her original commissioning/recording project, heralded as “a freewheeling, slightly edgy and altogether ‘different’ kind of musical experience…highly rewarding and worthwhile” (Dave Lewis, All Music Guide).
Jody Redhage
Redhage’s new album includes eight immersive, nuanced premiere recordings of compositions from some of today’s most talented young composers: Missy Mazzoli, Anna Clyne, Stefan Weisman, Paula Matthusen, Wil Smith, Joshua Penman, and Derek Muro. The tracks have been carefully curated by Redhage to flow effortlessly from piece to piece, and the album’s extremely high production value lends an alluring sheen to many of the tracks.
Redhage, fresh off a tour with Esperanza Spalding, will appear at the exciting new venue DROM in New York’s East Village on 9/12/11 to celebrate the of minutiae and memory’s release. Helping her in her cause will be art-pop composer Corey Dargel and violinist Cornelius Dufallo of ETHEL performing a short set of songs. Doors at 6:30, showtime at 7:30. DROM is located at 85 Avenue A between 5th and 6th.”
New Amsterdam Records is at the heart of the New Music environment
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