Lerdahl and Carrick Performed by Sound Icon in Boston

by Ted Gordon on Sept. 26, 2016, 10:06 p.m.

Fred Lerdahl, composer, music theorist, and long-time professor at Columbia University, will be the composer-in-residence at the Boston University Center for New Music twice in the upcoming season: first in September, and later in January 2017. To kick off the residency, Boston's new music sinfonietta Sound Icon will perform Ledahl's Time after Time in their season opening concert on September 30 at Boston University's CFA Concert Hall.

Bridge Records, which has released numerous recordings of Lerdahl's work, including Time after Time, calls Lerdahl "one of the least known among "major" American composers." Of his singular style, Bridge writes that "a Lerdahl composition might at any moment be tonal or atonal, it might luxuriate in Lerdahl's rich melodic and harmonic gifts, or it might make reference to various musics of our past." 

            
(pages from Time after Time)

Time after Time, scored for Pierrot ensemble (flute, clarinet, violin, cello, piano, percussion), was commissioned and premiered by the Washington Square Contemporary Music Society in 2000 and a finalist for the 2001 Pulitzer Prize in Music. The work employs Lerdahl signature "spiral form", in which simple ideas become deeply elaborated and more complex with each cycle. Listen to an excerpt:

Sound Icon's program also includes a performance of PSNY composer Richard Carrick's dark flow, a double quartet for saxophone, trombone, acoustic guitar, percussion, violin, piano, cello and cibalom. Carrick takes inspiration for this work from the "hypothetical and unexplained flow of galaxy clusters toward a particular point in deep space," a phenomenon described as "dark flow." Carrick elaborates: 

In astrophysics, dark flow refers to the hypothetical and unexplained flow of galaxy clusters toward a particular point in deep space.  Interestingly, some speculate this influence on galaxies comes from a part of the universe that no longer exists, but somehow still carries an influence on matter.  This "invisible pull" is something that exist deep in music as well, something strongly felt but not easily defined.

Check out a performance of dark flow with the Either/Or Ensemble: 

The program, presented by the Boston University Center for New Music on September 30, also includes performances of works by Rick Burkhardt and features soprano Jennifer Ashe.

Keeril Makan's "Persona" Premieres at National Sawdust

by Ted Gordon on Oct. 15, 2015, 12:57 p.m.

Keeril Makan's ambitious opera project, Persona—based on the Ingmar Bergman film of the same name—will see its world premiere at National Sawdust, New York's newest venue for new music. Produced by Beth Morrison Projects, Persona is directed by Jay Scheib, and features musical direction by Evan Ziporyn conducting members of the Either/Or ensemble. 

Cited by Broadway World as "a provocative, highly cerebral, and artistically complex depiction of human frailty, cruelty and identity", Persona is described by Makan and Scheib as "at its core, a duet — but for one. A kind of monodrama with the briefest of interruptions, performed by a sole soprano who sings the role of Alma. Alma is a young nurse who has been assigned to care for actress, Elisabet Vogler, who in the middle of a performance, suddenly ceased to speak and remained sunken utterly in an apparently self-imposed silence.”

This world-premiere production will run for two nights, on October 23rd and 24th, 2015. Makan will also present a workshop performance of Persona on October 17th at MIT, where he is an Associate Professor of Music. After the October 23rd performance, National Sawdust will also present a concert of Makan's works performed by the AEOLUS Qartet, featuring The Noise Between Thoughts, Washed by Fire, and Return—all available from PSNY.  

Richard Carrick Named 2015 Guggenheim Fellow

by Ted Gordon on April 20, 2015, 10:25 a.m.

Richard Carrick has been named a 2015 Guggenheim Fellow in Music Composition, joining the historic ranks of fellow composers such as Aaron Copland, George Antheil, and countless other American composers throughout the years. Carrick has been hard at work in the past year, releasing a new album on New World Records entitled "Cycles of Evolution", which features instrumentalists from a who's who of contemporary music ensembles in New York: the New York Philharmonic, Either/Or, Hotel Elefant, the String Orchestra of Brooklyn, and the Toomai String Quartet. The album features several works available through PSNY, including Sub-merge and Adagios, in an arrangement for string orchestra. Check out the String Orchestra of Brooklyn performing Adagios live at St. Ann's Church: