Alex Mincek at the Avant Music Festival

by Ted Gordon on Feb. 19, 2014, 3:05 p.m.

On February 28th, New York's Avant Music Festival presents an evening of premieres and recent works for percussion and saxophone by Alex Mincek, featuring Mincek on saxophone, Ian Antonio on percussion, Greg Chudzik on bass, as well as members of Talujon percussion ensemble. The program includes four works: V (2012), Nucleus (2007), Out of Thin Air (2013), and the world premiere of Trio (2014). Many more of Mincek's works for small ensembles are available through PSNY, including Stems for solo piano, now available in print. 

In 2013, Mincek won the Herb Alpert Award, awarded by the Herb Alpert Foundation and CalArts; now he heads to CalArts for a residency, culminating with a portrait concert in early March. Check out a recording of Nucleus on his 2011 CD on Carrier Records: 

New Works from Ingolf Dahl, Pierre Jalbert, Fred Lerdahl, and More...

by Ted Gordon on March 26, 2013, 11 a.m.

For the first time ever, the full score for Ingolf Dahl's "Concerto for Alto Saxophone and Wind Ensemble" is available for sale! Previously only available as a piano reduction, the full score for this work can now be purchased and used by conductors, educators, and scholars alike. Dahl's concerto-- among the most performed of his repertoire-- was commissioned and premeired in 1949 by Sigurd Raschér, who was instrumental in integrating the Saxophone into the classical repertoire. After escaping Nazi persecution, Dahl had settled as an ex-patriot in California, among many other European composers and intellectials, including Arnold Schoenberg, Thomas Mann, Ernst Krenek, and others. His students-- including Michael Tilson Thomas-- carry on his legacy as a composer, conductor, pedagogue, and all-around Musikant. We are extremely happy to make this full score available, and hope that it fosters more awareness and performances of this masterwork for saxophone. 

Pierre Jalbert's "Icefield Sonnets" for soprano, baritone, and ensemble, and "Trio" for clarinet, violin, and piano are also now available. This new version of Jalbert's "Icefield Sonnets" includes settings of these poems to spectacular effect: 

Fred Lerdahl's "Time After Time" and "Fantasy Etudes" are also now available. "Time After Time", which was a Pulitzer Prize finalist in 2001, employs Lerdahl's signature process of expanding variations on singular musical units, often to surprising new multiplicities. Throughout these processual, inevitable-sounding evolutions and mutations, melodic lyricism remains a vital part of this piece, especially in the second movement. 

Also among new works now available on PSNY: Douglas Cuomo's "A Far Playground" for cello and piano, and his work for solo cello, "...and Disbelievers". The first of these works was originally written for viola, and is now expanded; listen to an excerpt of the original here: 

And, last but not least, are three works be Lei Liang (bringing the total number of his works available on PSNY to twenty-seven!): "Lakescape Trio", "Lakescape II", and "Dialectical Percussions"; Hannah Lash's "Glockenliebe"; Joseph Schwantner's "Dream Drapery"; and Keeril Makan's "Cut" and "Bleed Through". Keep an eye out for more on Makan's music later this week! 

Late Summer News from Keeril Makan, Annie Gosfield, and Pierre Jalbert

by Ted Gordon on Aug. 31, 2012, 5:40 p.m.

The dog days of summer are upon us, though you wouldn't know it from the activities of our PSNY composers! Annie Gosfield has just released her fourth album on John Zorn's Tzadik label, entitled Almost Truths and Open Deceptions. New York City audiences will be able to hear new works from the album, as well as other works by Gosfield, performed on September 14th at the Bohemian National Hall at the Czech Center, as a part of the Austrian Cultural Forum's annual Moving Sounds Festival. For those unfamiliar with Gosfield's music, here's a clip of the MIVOS Quartet performing The Blue Horse Walks on the Horizon, available on PSNY:

On the other side of the Atlantic, BBC Radio 3 has recently broadcast two works by Keeril Makan on Max Reinhardt's Late Junction show: The Noise Between Thoughts and Resonance Alloy, both available on PSNY. Sample the beautiful recording of Resonance Alloy here: 

Finishing up this week's news, we have recently published Pierre Jalbert's The Invention of the Saxophone on a poem by Billy Collins, for alto saxophone, percussion, and optional narrator. Listen to a sample of the piece here: 

Keep tuned for our next post next week with some exciting announcements for the new season!