Metropolis Ensemble welcomes its 2009-10 Youth Works fellow, Brad Balliett. Over the next year, Brad will work with elementary students at PS11 in Manhattan to teach them about composition and music appreciation... which culminates in a concert featuring the students' work. Brad is an accomplished composer, avid bassonnist, and active teaching artist. In addition to his work at PS11, he is part of Carnegie Hall's The Academy, in residency at PS315 in Brooklyn.
Youth Works is made possible thanks to a generous grant from the van Otterloo Foundation.
Show your support for Metropolis Ensemble and experience inspiring musical performances! If you become a member today, you'll be invited to attend a private concert hosted by June Wu at her Upper West Side apartment (Friday, December 11 at 7pm). The concert will feature the popular "Composing and Cocktails" and "Music from Air" programs from our New Music 101 concert with composer Jakub Ciupinski and Metropolis Ensemble musicians.
You can help sustain the future of Metropolis Ensemble and the vitality of classical and contemporary music in our society by becoming a member today! Contributions are tax deductible and benefit the ensemble throughout the upcoming year.
This post was written by Timo Andres, one of Metropolis Ensemble's featured composers in Spring 2010, for the upcoming Reverb concerts at (Le) Poisson Rouge.
There's a long tradition of composers finding inspiration in Balinese music, from Poulenc and Britten to Evan Ziporyn and Ingram Marshall. A trip to Bali was also the genesis of Vivian Fung's piano concerto, subtitled Dreamscapes. She traveled there in the summer of 2008 to study traditional music and dance, play in a gamelan orchestra, and indulge her voracious appetite for Asian folk music of all kinds. But don't call her an ethnomusicologist: "I'm less concerned with replicating anything akin to an exact version of these works than with the way I have internalized the shimmering harmonies and interlocking rhythms of their traditions into my own original voice."
I asked Vivian about formulating a voice, which she says is one of the most difficult aspects of a composer's development. Growing up in Edmonton, Alberta and later studying at Juilliard, she was steeped in the canon of Western 20th-century music: Stravinsky, Debussy, Schonberg. It was not until she reached her mid-twenties, at the urging of a friend, that she undertook a comprehensive exploration of Chinese art and music, which also became an important method of self-discovery. Her listening soon widened to the music of other Asian countries. Eventually she found something which she'd felt had been missing from her "musical vernacular" all along: a connection to her ethnic roots.
The origins of her musical material were not a primary concern when Vivian conceived of Dreamscapes; rather, she turned first to her Western models to see how they structured and developed their materials (planning ahead, she says, is key). She ended up with less a traditional piano concerto than a series of vignettes. Each paints a unique sonic portrait, like a travelogue. To this end, the musicians sometimes become foley artists, calling upon a pile of toys and effects: a chorus of bird whistles (purchased from a street vendor in Ho Chi Minh City), a piano "prepared" to imitate the sound of a gamelan orchestra, and, at the end, musical use of a familiar household object which Vivian intends to keep a surprise.
Dreamscapes is scored in bold and brilliant colors, and never settles in one place for too long. Like a tourist's first visit to an unfamiliar city, there's a sense of needing to cover a lot of ground, take in a great many sights, try unrecognizable foods, and somehow have it all take on personal meaning. Vivian writes that "the sounds of Bali haunt my dreams... getting up in the early morning and seeing the morning mist covering the rice paddies [and] hearing a symphony of birds, some of which actually chirp in a gamelan-like rhythm. Occasionally, one also hears frogs and cicadas. Those moments I have remembered and are the inspiration of the opening of the concerto."
This post was written by Timo Andres, one of Metropolis Ensemble's featured composers in Spring 2010, for the upcoming Reverb concerts at (Le) Poisson Rouge.
The title of this concert, Reverb, seems especially meaningful to composer Jakub Ciupinski. "I absolutely love churches for their long reverb. Very often in my music I use a thin, hocket-like texture full of single, short notes that almost never overlap. Harmonic structures can only emerge through reverb or the listener's memory." Jakub favorite musical space is an abandoned salt mine near Cracow, in his native Poland, where "irregular shapes create the most smooth and perfect reverb I've ever heard."
Le Poisson Rouge is also underground, but seems better suited toward one of Jakub's other obsessions: electronics. Many of his recent works are written for acoustic instruments augmented and supported by electronic textures ("like the back row of an orchestra"). His approach to writing this kind of music is architectural, focusing on soundscapes, timescales, and overall continuum rather than the details of a notated score.
Electronica provides more than just a backing track - it also informs content and structure. Jakub's music is built on "loops": short musical phrases that repeat, layer, and evolve - and, like electronic dance music, it often has a very strong groove. This tended to be a source of discord with his composition teachers when he was studying at Juilliard. "For traditionally-oriented composers, having a regular 'beat' seems too casual, [like a] profanation of high art." On the other hand, he appreciates New York's artistic pragmatism, which is refreshing. In Poland, he says, artists are more appreciated for being "original and sometimes weird."
Jakub's art testifies to his easygoing demeanor. He's been straddling musical cultures for several years now, and perhaps realizes it's just as well not quite fitting into any of them. Instead, he strives for "acoustic experiences. I try not to think or analyze." That's not to say he has no time for craft; quite the contrary. "Writing quasi-minimal music... is about finding these little unique jewels with potential so great that even after many repetitions they sound equally fresh... they can resist the destructive power of time."
This post was written by Timo Andres, one of Metropolis Ensemble's featured composers in Spring 2010, for the upcoming Reverb concerts at (Le) Poisson Rouge.
As a composer, Erin Gee seems to have emerged fully-formed. She's reluctant to ascribe any personal experiences or motivations to her work; quite the opposite, in fact. This is unexpected, even contradictory, because she plays an irreplaceable role in her pieces: as vocal soloist, performing in a made-up non-language constructed out of disconnected phonemes, vowels, sung tones, clicks, whistles, and sighs- a style she calls Mouthpiece.
To hear her describe it in precise, almost scientific terms might lead one to believe that Erin is not her music's best salesperson; that is, until she gets on stage. She is a dynamo, unleashing torrents of non-words, at once somehow familiar and foreign-sounding. Emotionally and dynamically restrained, she nonetheless conveys a Pierrot-like dichotomy; playful, acrobatic, even funny, but with underlying melancholy (her brother, it just so happens, is a performer with the Cirque du Soleil). "As much as possible," she says, "I wanted to try and remove the ego, identity, or character... moving in the direction of voice as a pure instrument."
The process of formulating her unique vocal style appears to have been similarly dispassionate. "The Mouthpiece series grew out of a search on my own voice for possible sounds... looking most intently for timbral possibilities within a soft dynamic, and ways of quickly interspersing percussive sounds with disjointed and sparse sung tones." What resulted from this search is a series of 19 works (so far), all titled Mouthpiece and all featuring Erin's own voice. Though some are structured based on existing texts (some refer to ancient Japanese or Sanskrit), Erin uses those structures linguistically, divorced from any literal meaning. She's re-thought a process humans execute without thinking - the formulation and vocalization of language - and put it in a blender.
Erin grew up in Iowa, but has studied and lived in Germany and Austria. The active surfaces of her music refer to a certain contemporary European sound, composers like Beat Furrer and Brian Ferneyhough, who write music of such complexity that it becomes a kind of minimalism. Yet one comes away from a piece such as Mouthpiece X with a sense of relentless stasis. Details fly by at an uncountable rate; but zoomed out, they become a heterophonic entity, like a stew with a vast number of ingredients, or a midwestern prairie viewed out the window of a speeding car. Erin describes it as "The shift between human and mechanical, psychological and physiological... an experimental non-language, containing the virtuosity of a native speaker."
This post was written by Timo Andres, one of Metropolis Ensemble's featured composers in Spring 2010, for the upcoming Reverb concerts at (Le) Poisson Rouge.
For Cristina Spinei, writing music is inextricably linked to dance, her study of Brazilian folk music, and, at times, the sounds and rhythms of her commute on Metro-North railway ("Does that make me sound too much like a dorky composer?" she wonders aloud). Dork or not, Cristina hardly conforms to the stereotypically cloistered life of a composer. She's more likely to be found salsa dancing at the Copacabana or Sounds of Brazil, covertly taking notes on the bands she hears. "For me, the best way to learn about music is to participate in it."
Cristina studied composition at Juilliard, beginning when she was a teenager. She grew up listening not just to Latin dance music, but also to Italian opera; her favorite composer was Rossini (she attributes both tastes to a flair for the dramatic). Though her pieces exist as fully notated scores, she's refreshingly unconcerned about the details. "I'd rather the musicians be freed from the exact notation... and learn how to better embody the feel of it." This is contrary to much conservatory training. "Classically-trained musicians... aren't used to making something 'swing' or adding a certain amount of groove... they are so bound by wanting to execute precisely what the composer wants."
Perhaps for this reason, Cristina is happy to pick and chose from different worlds when she chooses musicians to write for. She befriended the members of Ogans, the Sounds of Brazil's house band, and has written for Meia Noite, who plays berimbau (a tall, single-stringed instrument resembling a bow and arrow with a resonating chamber). Malian kora player Toumani Diabate is another favorite. "I'd love to write a concerto around him... it's better to let the traditional player perform what they know and compose a piece around what they're playing."
Despite her conservatory training, Cristina's music shares more of the fundamental structure of jazz. Jolt, which she originally wrote for a small band of piano, percussion, bass, and traditional Brazilian instruments, moves along briskly in groove-based sections, including improvisatory episodes highlighting individual players' virtuosity. A new version, which will be premiered on Reverb, augments the band with strings and winds, creating a more concerto-like setting for the percussion and piano parts. But it's still far more salsa band than Rachmaninoff.
A teacher once voiced concern that Cristina's music was "always moving, it never sits still for a moment," imploring her to write something "calm, suspended." But staying in one place doesn't seem to come naturally; "So far," she says, "that hasn't happened."
With four completely different voices, the composers in our fall concert, REVERB, have summed up their thoughts on what new music can express. Here's some excerpts from the program notes.
I am not an ethnomusicologist and am less concerned with replicating anything akin to an exact version of these works than with the way I have internalized the shimmering harmonies and interlocking rhythms of their traditions into my own original voice.
My interest in integrating percussion with orchestra comes from varying sources, each stemming from dance. I constantly immersed myself in sounds that shared one common principal: rhythm as the driving force of music that inspires and compels movement.
Avant garde composers were trying to find new solutions by rejecting the past. They were really trying to find something new. Whereas our generation is trying to find something new by incorporating elements that already existed. So this is an entirely new philosophy.
And some parting thoughts from Metropolis Ensemble Music Director Andrew Cyr on his curation of this concert of commissions and premieres:
In getting to know these composers and the nuances of their compositional styles in the process of developing these new commissions, I realized over time that they shared something in common that I found to be artistically fascinating and vital: an open and deep curiosity for exploring diverse source material and developing new and highly individual systems of compositional techniques to absorb these modes of representation.
Photo and video highlights from New Music 101: Intro to Electronica are now live on the site, including behind-the-scenes photos from Le Poisson Rouge and full-length videos of the world premiere performance of Street Prayer, Jenny Lin's encore performance of Morning Tale, and Jakub Ciupinski's demonstration series Music from Air, his gesture-controlled system built out of two theremins and a laptop. Here's one of the demos:
You can also explore our archived concerts in our new photo and video galleries... an endless supply of inspiring musical works from the past three years!
One of the highlights of our upcoming concert, New Music 101, is a segment we're calling "Composing and Cocktails." Here's how it works. Music "waiters" (composer Jakub Ciupinksi and conductor Andrew Cyr) will greet you with an iPhone that serves as a real-time composition system, networking wirelessly to Metropolis Ensemble musicians on laptops.
Jakub elaborates:
They can suggest certain choices from the "menu" of melodies, textures, dynamics, and the audience can choose whatever they would like to hear from the live musicians in any given moment.
Interested in a preview? We invite you to download the music menu and get a sneak-peak at our selections. The possibilities are truly endless!
To celebrate our upcoming concert, New Music 101: Intro to Electronica, Metropolis Ensemble and composer Jakub Ciupinski are delighted to offer the mp3 of an inspiring electro-acoustic work by Jakub. "The Architect's Brother" premiered in 2006 at the Juilliard School's Peter Jay Sharp Theatre accompanying the choreography of Adam Weinert. You can download it here, absolutely free, for a limited time.
The Architect's Brother as performed by Vassilis Varvaresos (piano), Marko Pavlovic (celesta), Rachel Brandwein (harp), and Eugene Lifschitz (cello).
We've done a bit of spring cleaning around the Metropolis website in preparation for our 2009-2010 season, and we're excited to announce six upcoming events:
Complete details about each program will be unveiled in due time. Be sure to RSVP for Glimpses on May 6 at the stunning Americas Society for an evening of music demonstration and wine tasting sponsored by Miro Cellars!
The Groanbox Boys released their new album Gran Bwa at Metropolis Ensemble's concert, GROANBOX on January 28, 2009 at Le Poisson Rouge. The worldwide CD release party for Gran Bwa followed intermission at the concert, with a special performance by The Groanbox Boys. Get the album today on iTunes and CD Baby.
Gran Bwa is named after the Haitian Vodou loa (spirit) of the woods. Creole for great wood (from the French grand bois), Gran Bwa is the great spirit who resides deep in the woods and is associated with the gateway between the spirit world and the living world, the management of time, and medicinal healing. Read more...
Looking for more of The Groanbox Boys? The trio invites you to a special concert at Jalopy Theatre in Brooklyn, on January 24 (10:30pm, $10 cover). Check out their official site, MySpace, and YouTube.
Composer David Bruce shares insights about his new work, Groanbox, featuring Michael Ward-Bergeman on accordion, The Groanbox Boys, and the Metropolis Ensemble:
As a composer whose music has long incorporated folk elements, it has been an incredibly exciting challenge to write a piece for these two groups of outstanding musicians. I titled my piece simply Groanbox, (itself an old American term for the accordion), and wrote a piece which is not at all like a traditional 'concerto', but rather a piece in which the two groups merge as one, along with the two styles of music. I suppose it's a sort of imaginary folk-music I'm writing, played by the largest and most virtuoso village band you've ever seen. Read more...
This past year, David introduced A Bird In Your Ear, a new opera based on an old Russian folk tale originally published in 1903 called "The Language of the Birds," which received its world premiere in March 2008. In this scene below, a Bird with Golden Plumage (soprano Yulia Van Doren) arrives to thank Ivan (tenor Sungeun Lee) for saving her children. She offers to grant him a wish, and so he asks to understand the language of the birds.
You can watch more from this performance of A Bird in Your Ear by Bard College Orchestra and Choir conducted by James Bagwell, and learn more about the work. The opera will also be presented at the NYC Opera VOX Festival on May 1-2, 2009.
Looking for more from David Bruce? Carnegie Hall is featuring his commissioned work Piosenki, which is available as a free download. The work reflects on snapshots of childhood found in the poems of the Polish poet Julian Tuwim, and features a lagerphone similar to the Freedom Boot used by The Groanbox Boys in their upcoming concert with Metropolis Ensemble on January 28, 2009.
Metropolis Ensemble welcomes its 2009-10 Youth Works fellow, Brad Balliett. Over the next year, Brad will work with elementary students at PS11 in Manhattan to teach them about composition and music appreciation... which culminates in a concert featuring the students' work. Brad is an accomplished composer, avid bassonnist, and active teaching artist. In addition to his work at PS11, he is part of Carnegie Hall's The Academy, in residency at PS315 in Brooklyn.
