It goes without saying that we live in complicated times. At first impulse we probably want to ask ourselves why? Taking a different approach might be to look at the past as a way of understanding who we are today. Cellist Seth Parker Woods takes that concept one step further by exploring the past – and by extension his own identity – through the lens of predominantly modern classical composers on his album Difficult Grace, which is being released on April 15th by Cedille Records.

The album is a recording of much of the material that appeared in his stage show, also called Difficult Grace, which had its world premiere at the 92nd Street Y in New York in November of last year. In this project Woods performs works by Monty Adkins, Frederick Gifford, Ted Hearne, Nathalie Joachim, Coleridge-Taylor Perkinson and Alvin Singleton.

On Difficult Grace Woods serves as narrator through stories about the Great Migration, selections from The Chicago Defender (an African-American newspaper launched in 1905) and poetry by Kemi Alabi and Dudley Randall.

It’s a massively ambitious and impressive project. In early March I spoke with Woods about the project, distilling a multi-media stage project into a recording and how he hopes to get audiences to embrace what he calls “modern classical music.” What follows are excerpts from our conversation that have been edited for length and clarity. To see the full interview, please go to our YouTube channel.

In a story from late 2021 that was published at University of Buffalo you said, “I haven’t taken an easy route, but it has allowed me to tap into a wide variety of fields and areas that most people never get to because they stay siloed.” Is that diversity of fields you speak about crucial to how we look at music today, where traditional labels and definitions need to perhaps be relics of the past?

I think so. I don’t think there’s been as many artists that have truly lived or existed or created inside of a singular label. A&R people, how do they sell us as artists to the general public? And how does one talk about the art and the music we make? I don’t think it can be boiled down to just a singular label, a singular silo. Maybe it’s just easier to put it within that.

I try to think of it sometimes [as] modern classical music as we are living in the modern times. Not necessarily contemporary music, but just the modern times of creating this. I feel like they are possibly just relics of the past. But we, as I have said before, love to hold on and revel in that which has long gone and sometimes not necessarily support enough of what’s happening right now.

Difficult Grace is certainly a project that’s going to challenge us to move forward. It started as a multimedia project that you perform on stage with dancers and projections. What modifications did you have to make for this to become a recording that lived and breathed just by virtue of its sound?

There are so many visual components to the work. That was the hard part. For those that have never seen the live show Difficult Grace, how do I still convey that sense of vividness and adornments in a sonic format? How do we reposition it and allow it to kind of really soar and ride many waves in different formations was the trickiest part of putting it all together beyond how I sculpted it in the live show. Trying to use the live experience as a way of sharing it similarly to how I feel it when I’m doing it live. 

Having the liner notes also helps since we don’t get to see the words that were projected on you. The ability to see what’s being said certainly helps us fill in a few of the blanks as well.

This day and age so many people gravitate directly towards digital streaming downloads. I still love a CD. I still love an LP – the actual physical thing. So for those that do buy the physical album, you get to see a lot of the visuals of Barbara Earl Thomas, of Jacob Lawrence; the words and text of Dudley Randall and Kemi Alabi and the texts from The Chicago Defender as well. It’s all very much so woven inside of the actual album and the booklet that comes with it.

You were talking about this project with the Gothamist last year and you said that Difficult Grace examines, “stories that [the body] holds and it needs to tell.” As you prepare for the release of this album and you have future performances of this work, how has your need to tell these stories shifted? Do the different ways of telling this story in live performance versus recording allow for any form of catharsis or better understanding of why your body holds these stories? 

I guess in that way we are born – as we’re born – maybe questions come up along the way as we make our journeys. Maybe more questions that we still need to ask, but we don’t necessarily ask. So this is a way, through these people, through their narratives, especially with like the work, the race 1915 to embody these real live lines from journalism that were coming exclusively from The Chicago Defender.

These stories, these journeys, are so deeply connected to my family and my grandmother. My mother’s mother was making the journey just two decades after 1915. So it’s not autobiographical, but it’s kind of semi-autobiographical by lineage and connection to my grandmother in that way. So it felt so close to home to be feeling as if there was a deep importance for me to talk about it at this point.

It was a lot to to swallow. I remember the first live performance I did of it was February 9th, 2020, just before everything shut down. I was nervous because I made it a point that when I take on such performative works in this way I’m not just the cellist. I have to figure out what the characters are. What more are they trying to say beyond what’s just kind of topical. Same with music; reading between the lines.

There was so much heartache, but also there is so much perseverance. It’s not as if I was reading fiction. These are historical lines, historical documents, objects that are recounting times that were happening across the country in the beginning of the Great Migration. 

You’ve described yourself as a vessel for these people’s stories in Difficult Grace. How does being that vessel impact you physically and emotionally? 

I was shouldering a lot because I think this project is so personal and so special for me. When one is commissioning or one finds new work, old work, whatever it is, you don’t really know what it is until after you perform it. You may not know what it is for a few performances. There is a risk in even choosing. There’s even more risk in daring to perform. Do these works work together? What is their throughline? Even after the first performance I didn’t know. But I remember there being a sense of electricity that was going through me, but also because I was just trying to get this thing right.

Now I’m not so scared of the material. These works have changed me. I think it’s allowed me to show more of my humanity, even more of it, and more vulnerability on stage and to be okay with that and not feel overly perfect or have to search to find the perfect performance or deliver the perfect performance.

Composer John Adams and I discussed how much of the work that’s being created now is going to be remembered in the future. He said it was important to remember that Beethoven had a lot of contemporaries, but we don’t really hear a lot of the works they did because they just didn’t hold up. When you’re collaborating with as many composers as you are, do you ever have a sense of how history might look at these pieces or any belief that they are going to have a life span beyond this moment in time?

It’s hard to know. I don’t think there is a direct answer for that. Did Beethoven know symphony number five would be the biggest hit and would be played centuries later? No, he didn’t. You take a risk, but you’re also writing so much.

I don’t know if I have a direct answer as to whether the work I have been involved in creating or championing will stand the test of time. And I don’t know if I’m necessarily interested in that. What I am interested in is really trying to tell their stories now and doing the best I can to give them as many legs as possible. That it is beyond one performance. If I can get ten performances over a few years that says a lot. 

I think it’s at least important for me to be able to continue to broaden and widen your palette so you don’t stay closed off to the idea [of] this is what I really like and this is all there is out there and that’s all I’m going to ever pay attention to. There’s so much that’s being made daily and weekly. It’s just finding the sonorities, the storytelling, that really resonates with you. Which, I guess in some ways, is why I wasn’t one of those musicians that was trying to prove myself or push myself to learn every single piece in the canon.

When you’re talking about the canon you’re typically talking about the 5 to 10 pieces that everybody knows.

Exactly. But that, even of itself, is a gate-kept situation. I’ve prided myself and pushed myself to pull from the composers that I really love and the pieces that I really love from those composers and pair them alongside new works being created now. Or at least in the last 50-60 years that I find to be really powerful that can have conversations across timelines.

A composer like Ted Hearne, whose work I admire greatly, there are people who are going to say that work is too difficult for them. What are the challenges for you in hopefully winning over those skeptics who think that this is just an intellectual exercise and not an emotional one?

I think it’s important to talk to your audiences first and foremost. There was a time where I was coming up and I wasn’t taught how to engage audiences. The idea of engaging audiences was just playing to them – at them. I want to actually talk to them and guide them through what they’re going to experience and hear.

I think that’s always an issue when concertgoers are thinking about or going to concerts of contemporary music. They are not in the know; something’s being kept from them, hidden from them. They don’t know the formula or it’s not the formula that they’re used to experiencing.

I don’t really like program notes in that way. I would rather just talk from my heart about what this work is, what it means to me, connections to the composer – whether alive or dead – and where this work is now and and also how it links curatorially to the rest of the program. 

Artist Jacob Lawrence, whose 60-panel The Migration Series helped inspired Difficult Grace, said about his creativity, “If at times my productions do not express the conventionally beautiful, there is always an effort to express the universal beauty of man’s continuous struggle to lift his social position and to add dimension to his spiritual being.” How important is it for your work to do the same thing, and to what extent do you believe, or at least hope you’ve been successful in that effort?

Jacob Lawrence coming in heavy. Long ago my mother said to write your life in pencil. And I stand by those words. Those have been words that have guided me for all these decades because I truly believe in the idea of trying to be as open as possible. Have your your goal, your bucket list, your plan, but also be open to other things. Aligning with that or converging with that can expand or re-route what you thought you would ultimately only be doing, but may be this plus.

When people ask me would you describe yourself as a cellist I always say, cellist plus. Because I’ve taken on so many other things and things that I realized that I really do love or that I am really good at. For me it has been a grappling of how far do I want to take this career? How far do I really want to take myself? The cello, in and of itself as an expressive vehicle, has taken me around the world.

I have been in conflict with the idea of should I have just taken the easier route and just solely dedicated my life to just playing just classical music? Or at one point just doing only early music. Or have I done the right thing in choosing to do the old and also to do the new and find ways for them to talk to each other. Therefore, lifting myself further up and kind of immortalizing even more of my humanity and being able to be that vulnerable in front of so many others; if and only when it holds and leaves space for others to be vulnerable too.

It’s a gift to be an artist because we are of the few that really are mirrored reflections of society. We are the ones that set the trends. We are the ones that tell the stories that are hard to be told or that are hidden in many ways. It’s a privilege for me to have arrived where I am now. To be able to actively choose the stories, regardless of timeline that I want to, and to champion them in the best possible ways that I can. The ways in which I see those stories and the ways in which I see myself connected to them will evolve. I can keep practicing and continue to get better at telling those stories.

To watch our full interview with Seth Parker Woods, please go here.

The post Cellist Seth Parker Woods Storyteller appeared first on Cultural Attaché.

Our top pick, previewed yesterday, is a reading of Larry Kramer’s The Normal Heart on Saturday. We also have some great jazz music for you (both traditional vocals and a very contemporary performance), a London production of Chekhov that earned rave reviews, a tribute to two of Broadway’s best songwriters, chamber music and a contortionist. After all, it’s Mother’s Day weekend. Don’t all mothers just love contortionists?

Here are the Top 10 Best Bets: May 7th – May 10th

*TOP PICK* PLAY READING: The Normal Heart – ONE Archives Foundation – May 8th – 8:00 PM ET/5:00 PM PT

We previewed this event yesterday as out Top Pick, but here are the pertinent details:

Director Paris Barclay has assembled Sterling K. Brown, Laverne Cox, Jeremy Pope, Vincent Rodriguez III, Guillermo Díaz, Jake Borelli, Ryan O’Connell, Daniel Newman, Jay Hayden and Danielle Savre for a virtual reading of Larry Kramer’s play.

The reading will be introduced by Martin Sheen.

There will be just this one live performance of The Normal Heart. It will not be available for viewing afterwards. There will be a Q&A with the cast and Barclay following the reading. Tickets begin at $10 for students, $20 for general admission.

PLAY READING: Rachel – Roundabout Theatre Company’s Refocus Project – Now – May 7th

Angelina Weld Grimké’s 1916 play Rachel, is the second play in the Refocus Project from Roundabout Theatre Company. Their project puts emphasis on plays by Black playwrights from the 20th century that didn’t get enough attention or faded into footnotes of history in an effort to bring greater awareness to these works.

Rachel tells the story of a Black woman who, upon learning some long-ago buried secrets about her family, has to rethink being a Black parent and bringing children into the world.

Miranda Haymon directs Sekai Abení, Alexander Bello, E. Faye Butler, Stephanie Everett, Paige Gilbert, Brandon Gill, Toney Goins, Abigail Jean-Baptiste and Zani Jones Mbayise.

The reading is free, but registration is required.

JAZZ: Joel Ross & Immanuel Wilkins – Village Vanguard – May 7th – May 9th

You’d be hard-pressed to find a more compelling pairing of jazz musicians than vibraphonist Joel Ross and alto saxophonist Immanuel Wilkins.

The two have been collaborating for quite some time. Wilkins is a member of Ross’ Good Vibes quintet.

Nate Chinen, in a report for NPR, described a 2018 concert in which Ross performed with drummer Makaya McCraven this way. “Ross took one solo that provoked the sort of raucous hollers you’d sooner expect in a basketball arena. Again, this was a vibraphone solo.“

Wilkins album, Omega, was declared the Best Jazz Album of 2020 by Giovanni Russonello of the New York Times.

I spoke to Wilkins last year about the album and his music. You can read that interview here. And if you’re a fan, Jason Moran, who produced the album, told me that this music was “just the tip of the iceberg.”

Tickets for this concert are $10.

PLAY: Uncle Vanya – PBS Great Performances – May 7th check local listings

Anton Chekhov’s Uncle Vanya is performed by a cast headed by Richard Armitrage and Toby Jones. Conor McPherson adapted the play for this production which played at the Harold Pinter Theatre in London and was directed by Ian Rickson.

Arifa Akbar, writing in her five-star review for The Guardian, said of the production:

“Ian Rickson’s exquisite production is full of energy despite the play’s prevailing ennui. It does not radically reinvent or revolutionise Chekov’s 19th-century story. It returns us to the great, mournful spirit of Chekhov’s tale about unrequited love, ageing and disappointment in middle-age, while giving it a sleeker, modern beat.

“McPherson’s script has a stripped, vivid simplicity which quickens the pace of the drama, and despite its contemporary language – Vanya swears and uses such terms as “wanging on” – it does not grate or take away from the melancholic poetry.”

CHAMBER MUSIC: Beyond the Horizon – LA Chamber Orchestra – Premieres May 7th – 9:30 PM ET/6:30 PM PT

This is the 12th episode in LACO’s Close Quarters series and definitely one of its most intriguing. Jessie Montgomery, the composer who curated the previous episode, curates this episode as well. She is joined by her fellow alums from Juilliard, mezzo-soprano Isabel Leonard (who directs) and music producer Nadia Sirota.

The program features Alvin Singleton’s Be Natural (a pun any music major will understand); Mazz Swift’s The End of All That Is Holy, The Beginning of All That is Good and Montgomery’s Break Away.

The performance portion of Beyond the Horizon is conducted by Christopher Rountree of Wild Up! Visual artist Yee Eun Nam contributes to the film as does art director James Darrah.

There is no charge to watch Beyond the Horizon.

CHAMBER MUSIC: MusiKaravan: A Classical Road Trip with Delerium Musicum – The Wallis Sorting Room Sessions – May 7th – May 9th

Music by Johannes Brahms, Charlie Chaplin, Frederic Chopin, Vittorio Monti, Sergei Prokofiev, Giacomo Puccini and Dmitri Shostakovich will be performed by Delerium Musicum founding violinists Étienne Gara and YuEun Kim. They will be joined for two pieces by bassist Ryan Baird.

The full ensemble of musicians that make up Delerium Musicum will join for one of these pieces? Which one will it be? There is only one way to find out.

This concert is part of The Sorting Room Sessions at The Wallis.

Tickets are $20 and will allow for streaming for 48 hours

MOTHER’S DAY OFFERINGS: MOMentum Place and A Catalina Tribute to Mothers – May 8th

Will Geer’s Theatricum Botanicum is celebrating Mother’s Day with MOMentum Place, a show featuring aerial artists, circus performers, dancers and musicians. The line-up includes circus artist Elena Brocade; contortionist and acrobat Georgia Bryan, aerialist and stilt dancer Jena Carpenter of Dream World Cirque, ventriloquist Karl Herlinger, hand balancer Tyler Jacobson, stilt walker and acrobat Aaron Lyon, aerialist Kate Minwegen, cyr wheeler Sarah Moser and Cirque du Soleil alum Eric Newton, plus Dance Dimensions Kids and Focus Fish Kids. The show was curated by aerlist/dancer Lexi Pearl. Tickets are $35.

Catalina Jazz Club is holding A Catalina Tribute to Mothers at 9:00 PM ET/6:00 PM PT. Headlining the concert are singers Jack Jones, Freda Payne and Tierney Sutton. Vocalist Barbara Morrison is a special guest. Also performing are  Kristina Aglinz, Suren Arustamyan, Lynne Fiddmont, Andy Langham, Annie Reiner, Dayren Santamaria, Tyrone Mr. Superfantastic and more. Dave Damiani is the host. The show is free, however donations to help keep the doors open at Catalina Jazz Club are welcomed and encouraged.

JAZZ: Love in Exile – The Phillips Collection – May 9th – 4:00 PM ET/1:00 PM PT

There is no set program for this performance by pianist/composer Vijay Iyer, vocalist Arooj Aftab and bassist Shazad Ismaily. The website says Love in Exile performs as one continuous hour-long set.

Having long been a fan of Iyer, spending an hour wherever he and his fellow musicians wants to go sounds like pure heaven to me.

Iyer’s most recent album, Uneasy, was released in April on ECM Records and finds him performing with double bassist Linda May Han Oh and drummer Tyshawn Sorey. It’s a great album. You should definitely check it out.

There is no charge to watch this concert, but registration is required. Once Love in Exile debuts, you’ll have 7 days to watch the performance as often as you’d like.

DANCE: Past, Present, Future – ALL ARTS – May 9th – May 11th

ALL ARTS, part of New York’s PBS stations, is holding an three-night on-line dance festival beginning on Sunday.

If We Were a Love Song is first up at 8:00 PM ET on Sunday. Nina Simone’s music accompanies this work conceived by choreographer Kyle Abraham who is collaborating with filmmaker Dehanza Rogers.

Dancers (Slightly Out of Shape) airs on Monday at 8:00 PM ET. This is part documentary/part dance featuring choreographer Pam Tanowitz as she and her company resume rehearsals last year during the Covid crisis. It leads to excerpts from Every Moment Alters which is set to the music of Pulitzer Prize-winning composer Caroline Shaw.

One + One Make Three closes out the festival on Tuesday at 8:00 PM ET. This film showcases the work of Kinetic Light, an ensemble featuring disabled performers. This is also part documentary/part dance made by director Katherine Helen Fisher.

All three films will be accompanied by ASL and Open Captions for the hearing impaired.

BROADWAY: Broadway Close Up: Kander and Ebb – Kaufman Music Center – May 10th – 7:00 PM ET/4:00 PM PT

You know the work of John Kander and Fred Ebb: Cabaret, Chicago, Flora the Red Menace, Kiss of the Spider Woman, New York New York, The Scottsboro Boys and Woman of the Year.

Their work will be explored, discussed and performed with host Sean Hartley.

He’s joined by Tony Award-winner Karen Ziemba (Contact) who appeared in two musicals by the duo: Curtains and Steel Pier. The latter was written specifically for her.

Any fan of Kander and Ebb will want to purchase a ticket for this show. Tickets are $15

Those are our Top Ten Best Bets: May 7th – May 10th (even if we cheated a little bit by having two options listed together). But there are a few reminders:

The Metropolitan Opera has their own view of mothers with their theme of Happy Mother’s Day featuring Berg’s Wozzeck on Friday; Puccini’s Madama Butterfly on Saturday and Handel’s Agrippina on Sunday.

Puccini returns for the start of National Council Auditions Alumni Week with a 1981-1982 season production of La Bohème. We’ll have all the details for you on Monday.

LA Opera’s Signature Recital Series continues with the addition of a recital by the brilliant soprano Christine Goerke.

One rumor to pass along to you: word has it Alan Cumming will be Jim Caruso’s guest on Monday’s Pajama Cast Party.

That completes all our selections of Best Bets: May 7th – May 10th. I hope all of you who are mothers have a terrific weekend. For those of you celebrating with your moms, I hope we’ve given you plenty of options to consider.

Have a great weekend! Enjoy the culture!

Photo: Larry Kramer (Photo by David Shankbone/Courtesy David Shankbone)

The post Best Bets: May 7th – May 10th appeared first on Cultural Attaché.

This weekend the first of two episodes of Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra’s Close Quarters series she curated makes its debut. Sonic Shift, featuring the work of composers Marcos Balter, Anna Meredith and Alyssa Weinberg premieres on Friday, April 23rd at 6:30 PM PDT.

The second episode, Beyond the Horizon, featuring the work of composers Alvin Singleton, Mazz Swift and one of Montgomery’s own compositions debuts on May 7th.

Last month I spoke by phone with Montgomery about her collaborations with LACO on this project, bringing in mezzo-soprano Isabel Leonard to direct Beyond the Horizon and the future for Black composers in classical music. What follows are excerpts from that conversation that have been edited for length and clarity.

The programming you’ve put together is not the kind of material typically associated with LACO. What was their response to the repertoire you selected?

I’m happy to say there was really a lot of support. I basically used the guidelines LACO uses for their Sessions programming which I ended up transitioning from into this Close Quarters format. Sessions is part of their programming where they stretch beyond their usual repertoire and often includes a lot of new music. I already knew that I was going to be doing a program that was all living composers – so that was already understood. Then from there they gave me free rein. What is your aesthetic? What is your vision? What do you want to hear more of? I thought that was a great directive.

What did you want to accomplish with each episode?

My first instinct was I wanted to choose music I felt attracted to – all identity politics aside. There are two separate programs. Sonic Shift is playing with the balance and transition between acoustic and electronic or electro-acoustic sound worlds. So there’s a progression that happens through from beginning to end with that program. I really wanted to include a nice assortment of chamber wind players so that there was a balance of instrumentation.

The second program was the one I wanted to make more geared around certain aspects of my own music I’m working with and continuing to explore – which is the realm of improvisation. The other two artists are also African American artists. The cross-exploration of improvisation and jazz exists within that second program. And also total avant-garde experimental music through Alvin Singleton. I thought that was an interesting way to frame the broad range of styles and approaches of Black classical musicians.

Isabel Leonard was a surprising choice to direct Beyond the Horizon, particularly for a program about improvisation. The opera world is not exactly where you find improvisation welcomed.

I’m really excited to see what she’s going to do with it. The spirit of spontaneity may be something that she jumps on. We talked a little bit about how she might bring in that quality of surprise and spontaneity.

I love the idea of a performing artist designing and directing the visuals. I think that’s a really awesome and interesting angle for LACO to take. I’m really excited to work with her. Isabel, Nadia [music producer Nadia Sirota] and myself were at Juilliard together. It’s a reunion collaboration in a way.

What gives you faith in this moment in time that Black composers, both dead and alive, will continue to be embraced by major institutions in the long run?

I can say that I’m seeing it happen just in the invitations and the places I’m involved in. I’m seeing more Black artists brought into the decision-making roles whether they are on artistic planning committees or curator roles or even within higher CEO and director positions. There are definitely organizations that are bringing in Black artists and not necessarily letting them do what they want, which is all too common and other organizations that are completely resisting it all together.

It was deliberate that I did a program of all-Black artists, but it was guided mainly by the music and then the fact I wanted to make a contribution in terms of the direction things are moving. There’s as much range amongst Black artists as there is any group of people. I think it’s really interesting in this context to show that range as well. So I would say I have to stay optimistic that these changes and attitudes and the interest we’re seeing is genuine in most cases and that will prevail to keep our ears open and our eyes open.

In a 1936 Chicago Defender* article, composer Florence Price** was quoted as saying, “Keep ideals in front of you; they will lead to victory.” Does that resonate with you and if so, does it inspire you?

Absolutely. I think Florence Price is an incredible example of somebody who really fought that fight. She was told she couldn’t achieve what she achieved. She was rigorous in her writing and in the amount of music she wrote. She was so determined to work within the classical music structure: orchestral pieces, concertos, organ pieces, piano pieces, string quartets – really traditional models. It speaks to her determination and her sense of I’m going to do this because I know it’s possible no matter what happens.

I think we all have to have that attitude as artists – that we can create what we want when we want to create it. Just being a human being and having the right and freedom to create what you want is a natural human right and ability we all possess and develop in different ways. That should be the case for everybody.

*Chicago Defender is an African-American newspaper founded in 1905 by Robert S. Abbott. It ceased print publication in 2019 and is an online only publication today.

**Florence Price was the first Black American woman to be recognized as a symphonic composer. Her Symphony in E Minor was given its debut by the Chicago Symphony Orchestra in 1933, marking the first time a work by a Black female composer was performed in the United States by a major classical orchestra.

All photos of Jessie Montgomery by Jiyang Chen (Courtesy MKI Artists)

The post Composer Jessie Montgomery: Classical Music’s Sonic and Seismic Shift appeared first on Cultural Attaché.

This year’s Bang on a Can Marathon takes place on Sunday, October 18th. The performances begin at 3:00 PM EDT/12:00 PM PDT and run through 9:00 PM EDT/6:00 PM PDT. There is no charge to watch the performances. However, like most institutions and musicians, donations are happily accepted. Tickets/donations can be purchased here.

Bang on a Can was founded by David Lang, Michael Gordon and Julia Wolfe.

The six hour festival gets started by celebrating the 91st birthday of composer George Crumb. Awarded the 1968 Pulitzer Prize for Music for his composition Echoes of Time and the River. He won a Grammy Award in 2000 for Star-Child.

Here is the line-up for the Bang on a Can Marathon 2020:

3:00 PM

Susan Grace performs selections from A Little Midnight Music by George Crumb

Ken Thomson performs the world premiere of Curveballs and Asteroids by Annie Gosfield – Thomson is a clarinetist, saxophonist and composer. Gosfield collaborated with Yuval Sharon on War of the Worlds in Los Angeles in 2017.

Composer Christina Wheeler gives the world premiere performance of her work A Coda for the Totality of Blackness Trilogy – Wheeler’s Totality of Blackness is described on her website as “a four-part tone-poem suite for a recumbent audience listening in color-spectrally controlled virtual darkness through a multi-speaker array sound system.”

Seth Parker Woods performs Argoru II by Alvin Singleton – Woods is a cellist and Singleton’s composition had its world premiere in 1970.

4:00 PM

Haushka is the pseudonym for Volker Bertelmann who has composed the scores for such films as Hotel Mumbai and Lion. His work credited as Haushka is primarily focused on music for prepared piano.

Mark Stewart gives the world premiere performance of Santuario by Jeffrey Brooks. Guitarist Stewart is a member of Bang on a Can. Brooks is a regular collaborator with the ensemble.

Mazz Swift will perform her work Give up the world – Swift, a member of Silkroad Ensemble, is a violinist and vox performer in addition to being composer.

David Cossin gives the world premiere of John Paul George and Ringo Pry Open the Gates of Hell by Greg Saunier – Cossin is a percussionist and member of Bang on a Can. Saunier is also a drummer and is a founding member of Deerhoof.

Nathalie Joachim gives the world premiere of Fear of Flying by Gemma Peacocke – Joachim plays flute and piccolo, sings and composes. Peacocke’s work is for flute and mixed electronics.

5:00 PM

David Longstreth, guitarist and lead singer for Dirty Projects, open the hour.

Mike Harley performs Come Closer by John Fitz Rogers – Harley is a singer/pianist/bassonist. Come Closer was written by Rogers in 2011 and is scored for four low winds and four click tracks.

William Parker gives the world premiere performance of his Hum Spirituals – Parker is a jazz bassist and composer.

Andie Tanning performs The Warmth of Other Suns by Leaha Maria Villarreal – Tanning is a violinist and Villarreal is the co-founder of Hotel Elefant in addition to being a composer.

6:00 PM

Tyshawn Sorey opens this hour with performances of his own work. He’s a multi-instrumentalist and composer.

JIJI performs Paisanos Semos! and Bailarín by Tania León – JIJI is a classical guitarist and León is a composer and founding member of Dance Theater of Harlem.

Anna Webber is a flutist, saxophonist and composer who primarily works within avant-garde jazz and experimental classical music

Tim Munro performs the first two movements of Liminal Highway by Christopher Cerrone – Munro is a flutist whose new album features a complete performance of Limnal Highway. Cerrone wrote the music for the opera Invisible Cities

7:00 PM

Vicky Chow gives the world premiere performance of Brevis by Valgeir Sigurðsson – Chow is the pianist with Bang on a Can All-Stars and Sigurðsson has collaborated with Björk and created the Bedroom Community label in 2006 with Nico Muhly and Ben Frost.

Nels Cline & Yuka C. Honda – Cline has a new album due from Blue Note Records and Honda is a director/producer/animator. The couple is married.

Arlen Hlusko gives the world premiere performance of Why Did They Kill Sandra Bland? by Daniel Bernard Roumain – Hlusko is a bassist with Bang on A Can All-Stars and Roumain is a violinist and composer.

Du Yun – Du Yun is a Pulitzer Prize-winning composer (Angel’s Bone) and recently collaborated with The Industry on Sweet Land.

8:00 PM

Robert Black gives the world premiere performance of Arise by Krists Auznieks – Black is a bassist with Bang on a Can All-Stars and Auznieks is a composer whose work has been performed all over the world.

Bill Frisell, guitarist and composer, closes the marathon.

Photo: Bang on a Can (Photo by Peter Serling/Courtesy Bang on a Can website)

The post 2020 Bang on a Can Marathon Goes Online appeared first on Cultural Attaché.