Introducing the PSNY Greenroom

by Ted Gordon on April 21, 2014, 11:24 a.m.

We're thrilled to announce the launch of the PSNY Greenroom; a new series which makes it easier than ever to discover new music and see what ensembles across the country are listening to and performing.

The Greenroom highlights the ensembles and artists who are defining the landscape of contemporary music. Each month, an ensemble or artist will select works from the PSNY catalogue that they are excited about performing, listening to, or both. The Greenroom is your backstage pass into the ears and creative minds of your favorite artists; a place of discovery for anyone interested in contemporary music, driven by artists, for artists. 

Our first visit to the Greenroom is with Present Music, and features director Kevin Stalheim's favorite selections from the PSNY catalog. Based in Milwaukee since 1982, Present Music has just been awarded an NEA Art Works grant for its 32nd season finale concert, Home Place, in collaboration with Milwaukee artist Reginald Baylor's Typeface Project. As part of Home Place, Present Music partners with Milwaukee Opera Theatre to present a major public concert event on June 21, featuring Shelter by David Lang, Julia Wolfe, and Michael Gordon, which is accompanied by a film by Bill Morrison. The concert also includes a performance of Ahyem by Bryce Dessner, as well as a performance of original music and art by students and senions in Milwaukee. 

So, needless to say, Present Music is on the cutting edge of commissioning new music, along with developing innovative performance opportunities that reach out to the wider community. Have a listen to director Kevin Stalheim's favorite PSNY works below, and stop by the Greenroom to read more about his selections. 

Three Premieres for PSNY Composers

by Ted Gordon on March 26, 2014, 12:35 p.m.

Only a week after announcing the publication of works by Marcos Balter, we're excited to spread the word about his upcoming World Premiere with the American Composers Orchestra on April 4th at Carnegie Hall's Zankel Hall! Balter's work, Favela, was commissioned by the ACO and draws sonic inspiration from the favelas of Brazil, Balter's home country. Check out Balter himself talking about this piece, his first for a full orchestra:

For those in New York, be sure to check out the Czech Center's 80th birthday celebration for Christian Wolff on March 27th. The program features the American premiere of Alex Mincek's Subito: No. 2, which premeired at the Ostrava Days fesitval last year. Musicians featured in the concert include Mincek himself, Christian Wolff, Philip Glass, Thomas Buckner, and many more. Mincek's Nucleus will also be performed on the second half of the concert. Check out an excerpt of Subito: No. 2 here:

For those in Boston, be sure to attend the Boston Modern Orchestra Project's concert on Friday, March 28th, which includes the American premiere of Lei Liang's Saxophone Concerto "Xiaoxiang", for saxophone and orchestra. The piece is an orchestration of his earlier work, Memories of Xiaoxiang, for saxophone and tape, available here on PSNY. Listen to a recording to be transported to the intersection of the rivers Xiao and Xiang during the cultural revolution, where Liang "search[es] for memories of realities, fragments of the truths in this broken, fractured, and scattered soundscape."

If you happen to be in Texas, Houston's Da Camera hosts Loadbang on April 8 for a performance of Christopher Cerrone's How to Breathe Underwater, Adrian Knight's 20 Maj, as well as works by Hannah Lash, Charles Wuorinen and Andy Akiho. 

Welcome, Marcos Balter, To PSNY!

by Ted Gordon on March 19, 2014, 11:38 a.m.

Marcos Balter seems to be everywhere these days: based in Chicago, in the past year he's composed new works for ICE, Dal Niente, the ACO, yMusic, Nadia Sirota, Ryan Muncy, Claire Chase, and has appeared in venues from New York to Curitiba, Brazil. One could say, without exaggeration, that he's one of the hardest working people in new music, a true collaborator who works with ensembles and perfomers to compose chamber works with his unmistakable voice, which is at once intricately emotional and intrinsically complex. 

In a compositional lineage ranging from Chopin to Sciarrino, Balter's compositions work on numerous levels, engaging listeners with immediate, visceral emotion, but also on a deeper level, with an embedded structure that rewards contemplation and deep listening. One such work is Ignis Fatuus, for solo violin, composed in 2008 for the Holland/America Music Society International Violin Competition. A meditation on timbre, the sonic qualities of the violin, and the paradox of polyphony on a monophonic instrument, this work draws the listener into its sound-world while expanding the boundaries of its own sonic possibilities. 

And yet Ignis Fatuus also uses Paganini's Caprice No. 6 as source material, linking the instrument with the diatonic trace of its inherent history. At once immediately acessable, the deep structure and historicity contained within Balter's work makes it a transcendent experience for both listener and performer. 

Another such work is delete/control/option, for alto flute and cello. Balter's collaborative mode of composition comes to the fore: the piece is as much composed by the performers as the composer, as they physically embody the taxing demands of the written score, which acts not as the "ur-text" of the composition, but rather as tablature for performance. Using the language of computer commands, this work is as much about syntax as it is the transcendance of syntax: the real, affective language that is translated, modified, and encoded by re-presentation.  

Balter's textural language shines in this piece, blending the timbres of alto flute and cello to create an emergent, organic body, re-imagining his compositional voice through the projected voice of the chamber ensemble. This effect is even more present in his work for saxophone quartet, Intercepting a Shivery Light, premiered by the Anubis Saxophone Quartet in 2012. In this work, the quartet is rendered as a single voice, with the appearance of Ligeti-like micropolyphony and timbral transformations. Again, the score acts as tablature for live, embodied performance: these visceral effects emerge from embodiment, again projecting a spectral, single voice into the polyphony of the quartet. And, like in Ignis Fatuus, the piece works on two (or more) levels: the immediate affective response is transformed when the listener learns that the title of the piece is an anagram of Radiohead's "Everything in its Right Place."   

From the colors in Balter's head to the tone-colors of the composition, this piece works on a wordless, affective level, creating a texture in the saxophone quartet approaching that of a modular synthesizer, granular in its machinations of sound. There's no wonder why Balter is such an in-demand composer: his works are an ecstatic embodiment of the possibilities of instruments and their players, written with performance in mind. We're thrilled to make these works available to the public through PSNY, and look forward to more in the future!