Tours

Music for percussion by John Luther Adams.

Featuring:
Qilyaun
…and bells remembered
Always Very Soft

Free with gallery admission

Shifting patterns rise and fall in hypnotic arcs in Steve Reich’s exuberant Music for Pieces of Wood (1973), performed entirely on pitched claves. A clear homage to Reich’s piece, Bryce Dessner’s atmospheric Music for Wood and Strings suspends similarly intricate patterns in clouds of reverb. The evening culminates in David Lang’s breakthrough percussion quartet, the so-called laws of nature, which reveals an entirely new realm of music through a whimsical orchestra of invented instruments, many constructed by the performers themselves.

As part of the Mizzou International Composers Festival, Alarm Will Sound performs: 

Oscar Bettison - Livre des Sauvages

Erin Gee - Mouthpiece XI

Stefan Freund - Three Urban Images

Program:

Matthew Shlomowitz - Popular Contexts, Volume 9 (2015-16), solo for cello and samples 

1. Walking to the Blue Train 2. 70 degrees 3. Random Text Setting 

Liza Lim - Spirit weapons - part 1, for solo cello 

Kate Moore - Rebellion (2016), world premiere 

Peter Sculthorpe - Threnody

Double Sextet and Music for 18 Musicians by Steve Reich with Ensemble Signal + Lisa Moore.

The acclaimed quartet Sō Percussion brings their “impressive vitality” (Washington Post) to Reich’s 1971 breakthrough work, Drumming. Considered one of the first minimalist masterpieces, Drumming marks a major shift in Reich’s early work, when he applied processes he’d been developing with looped tapes to live performance. With kaleidoscopic textures that bloom from a single repeated rhythm, this major, four-part percussion work continues to intrigue and impress audiences 45 years after its premiere.

On Saturday, July 9 at 1 p.m. So Percussion will present a program of music and talk about their work at Summerfest, Chatham Village’s annual summer street fair. They’ll be at the stage in the village parking lot on Main Street. This program is free.

Jeff Quartets is a concert-length set of fifteen new works for four voices, presented as a journey over an evening. Unlike many of the works we sing, with divisi ranging from 8 to 24 voices, the quartets will be for 4 parts only; a simple tribute to a musical form Jeff loved. Our composers: Louis Andriessen, Benjamin C.S. Boyle, William Brooks, Robert Convery, Eriks Esenvalds, Paul Fowler, Ted Hearne, Bo Holten, Gabriel Jackson, David Lang, Lansing McLoskey, Santa Ratniece, David Shapiro, Kile Smith, and Lewis Spratlan.

The title, ‘Memorial Ground’ has a double meaning. It refers to the battlefield itself, but a ‘ground’ in music is also a chord sequence that repeats over and over, on top of which you can add extra lines. David Lang’s ground will be a few minutes long and will repeat as needed, the way that hymns repeat. This will serve as a ‘bed’ for solos that will be sung or spoken over it. These solos are one place where every choir can bring their own choices to bear: David will provide melodies without words so each choir can choose and set words that reflect their own thoughts on the battle centenary. This could be a poem, a prayer, a roll call of the fallen from the local War Memorial; other texts such as letters, diaries or personal accounts.

The 2016 CMF Presenting Series opens with a stunning program by Brooklyn based ensemble, Sō Percussion, current Ensemble-in-Residence at Princeton University.  Described by the New Yorker as “an exhilarating blend of precision and anarchy, rigor and bedlam,” a performance by Sō Percussion is guaranteed to have you on the edge of your seat!  

Based on actual 18th-century texts, Anatomy Theater follows the astonishing progression of an English murderess: from confession to execution and, ultimately, public dissection before a paying audience of fascinated onlookers. Through the miracle of opera, she sings through it all.

Anatomy Theater conjures a time when “specialists” traveled from town to town in pre-modern Europe, conducting public dissections of the corpses of executed criminals, seeking evidence of moral corruption in the interior of the human body. Written by Pulitzer Prize–winning composer David Lang and world-renowned visual artist Mark Dion, Anatomy Theater is a joyous, tuneful and grisly theatrical event.

Pianist Tomoko Mukaiyama gives the world premiere of a new piano concerto by Michael Gordon with the Seattle Symphony.

Michael Gordon's new bassoon concerto gets its premier by Peter Whelan and the Orchestra of hte Age of Enlightenment at the Southbank Centre.

Northwestern University premieres a new work by David Lang.

Kronos performs works by Karin Rehnqvist, Fodé Lassana Diabaté, Aleksandra Vrebalov, and Yotam Haber

Glenn Kotche is joined by singer/songwriter/mult-instrumentalist Sam Amidon in Boston, MA.

eighth blackbird performs at the Kennedy Center as a part of the Fortas Chamber Music Festival.

Julia Wolfe's 2015 Pulitzer Prize-winning 'Anthracite Fields' receives its West Coast premiere with the LA Master Chorale and the Bang on a can All-Stars.

eighth blackbird presents "Contempo: Focus on Europe" with Agata Zubel, vocalist.

The All Stars perform their version of Brian Eno's "Music for Airports" in Burlington, VT.

eighth blackbird performs 'Hand Eye' at UC Berkeley's Hertz Concert Hall.

“Through a mix of consummate skill and quirky charm, this mercurial quartet has helped to ignite an explosive new enthusiasm for percussion music old and new,” says The New York Times about Sō Percussion. This program includes a new piece by former rock drummer Glenn Kotche, whose works combine impeccable rhythms with fleeting, haunting melodies. “The range of colors and voices that Sō Percussion coaxes from its menagerie is astonishing and entrancing” (Billboard). 

Part of Late Nights at Zankel Hall.

Alarm Will Sound presents a concert of music by György Ligeti