Starkland's new Keeril Makan "Target" CD Now Available at Amazon, iTunes, more

Starkland has released Keeril Makan’s “Target” CD, which is now available at: Amazon, CD Baby, and iTunes. (You can hear previews at both iTunes and CD Baby).



Makan has been described as “an arrestingly gifted young American composer” by The New Yorker, and has already received some impressive commissions, including the Kronos Quartet, Carnegie Hall, Bang on a Can All-Stars, American Composers Orchestra, and the Other Minds Festival. The CD has premiere recordings of four works: 2, Zones d’accord, Target, and Resonance Alloy.

At New Music Box, Alexandra Gardner comments that the music gives "the ears a workout with timbral complexity drawn from a remarkably spare amount of material that sneaks up and delivers a whollop of powerful emotional content," adding "the recording is of excellent quality."

At Sequenza21, Jay Batzner writes, “The quartet of pieces on Target serve as excellent examples of what makes Makan’s compositions approachable and mesmerizing... Makan makes what should be simple and mundane captivating and engrossing.”

At The Glass, Chris McGovern writes, “Keeril Makan is definitely a composer that is destined for greatness, and this recording is proof of that.”

David Lang, co-founder of the Bang on a Can festival and a Pulitzer-winning composer, wrote the CD’s Introduction. He remarks that when he first heard Makan’s music he was “blown away [by works] so strong and so smart.”

The title piece emerged from Makan’s participation in the John Harbison/Dawn Upshaw Workshop for Composers and Singers. Commissioned by Carnegie Hall, Makan collaborated with poet Jena Osman to create Target for soprano and chamber ensemble. Regarding Target’s premiere at Carnegie Hall, The New York Times observed:

“‘Target,’ is a moody, ruminative and volatile setting of a text assembled from poems by Jena Osman and phrases taken from leaflets dropped over Afghanistan in the wake of Sept. 11, scored for mezzo-soprano and four instrumentalists, including a percussionist. It is meant as a stinging political commentary on American military intervention abroad. Mr. Makan responded to the earthy, rich and poignant qualities of Ms. Rubin's voice by writing music thick with sliding, moaning figurations for the voice and all the instruments… she gave a courageous performance of difficult music that clearly speaks to her.”

Lang attended the premiere of the “muscular and terrifying” Target, “a scary, aggressive juggernaut of invention.” He remarks that the disturbing text captures “a kind of violent, psychological damage that takes place deep beneath the surface layer of ordinary words.” The CD’s performance features Rubin and the California E.A.R.Unit.



The CD opens with 2, performed by the Either/Or duo of percussionist David Shively and Ethel violinist Jennifer Choi. 20th Century Music writes, “This was a masterful piece, one of the best heard this year. Far from music in the abstract, 2 is a work-it-out-in-the-raw-sounds kind of piece that revels in its sonic splendors.”

Zones d’accord is performed on the CD by Alex Waterman from Either/Or. Sequenza21 comments, “The virtuosity of Waterman’s right hand is truly stunning… [and he]draws out Makan’s ecstatic emotional arc throughout the performance.”

The CD ends with Resonance Alloy (commissioned by Other Minds), recorded by percussionist David Shively in an astonishing, single, unedited performance of the 29 minute work.

Lang concludes that “the emotionality of it all, the drama, the depth of feeling, percolating way down deep, never boiling over and yet never going away” is “strangely powerful, and all his own.”


Tom Steenland and Keeril Makan (and Louis Andriessen)

All the original recordings were made at high-resolution (24-bit,48k/88.2k sampling) audiophile standards. The three non-vocal works were recorded by the Grammy-winning Silas Brown.

Makan’s only other CD, "In Sound" (Tzadik), received impressive reviews: “Top 10 CDs for 2008” (New Music Box); “An amazing disc” (Sequenza21); “frontiers are crossed in this music” (American Record Guide).

David Lang: "warmth" at BOAC Marathon

David Lang introduces his "warmth" piece, followed by the opening section performed by electric guitarists Taylor Levine and James Moore. From the Bang on a Can 2011 Marathon.

Bang on a Can: Marathon 2010

I think I've attended every Bang on a Can Marathon concert since 1993, and it's a pleasure to report that this year's offering was one of the best so far. From start to finish of this 13 hour event, the varied music was mostly interesting and attractive.

For me, the best was last. Jointly composed by the BOAC triumvirate of Michael Gordon, David Lang, and Julia Wolfe, Shelter was co-commissioned by BAM and originally seen at their Next Wave Festival in 2005. The music is strong and effective throughout. Adding the dreamy, at times surreal videos of Bill Morrison and Laurie Olinder to the superb performance by SIGNAL produced a wonderful, impressive experience.



One standout for me was Tim Brady's live electric-guitar work which was heavily processed and accompanied by excellent videos from Martin Messier. (The cumulative conclusion of the increasingly multiplied John Lennon guitar was mesmerizing.)



Another virtuoso performer was Moritz Eggert, who attacked the keyboard with not only the standard 10 fingers, but also his left foot, chin, and butt. Of course he also roamed inside the piano, produced handheld noise-makers, slapped the the piano's surfaces, banged the keyboard lid, tossed in some body percussion, and more. Somehow, the choreographed expertise and an appropriate brevity made the music more than mere novelty.

Fausto Romitelli, a new name to me, died in 2004 at age 41. His Professor Bad Trip apparently has received considerable European acclaim. The fine performance here by the Talea Ensemble skillfully presented this 45-minute work, which blends "distorted colorations of acoustic and electric instruments as well as accessories like the mirliton and harmonica," and was inspired by "Henri Michaux's writings under the influence of psychedelic drugs." I liked it.

Outstanding performers played for the appreciative audience from both the main stage in front as well as an elevated landing towards the rear, from where we heard an excellent performance of Xenakis's Tetras by the JACK Quartet.



Early on, two folk musicians from Kyrgyzstan, Kambar Kalendarov and Kutman Sultanbekov, presented lovely performances on the main stage, a haunting recorder and electronic-sounding jaw-harps resonating nicely in the setting's reverberant acoustics. Later, they emerged on the rear stage to dazzle us with showy performances on lute-like instruments.

I also enjoyed music from Tristan Perich, Seung-Ah Oh, Evan Ziporyn, Mary Ellen Childs, Fred Frith, Buke and Gass, and Kate Moore.

David Lang listens to the sartorially enhanced Evan Ziporyn

discussing his upcoming piece.

Also noteworthy, the teenaged group Face the Music, directed by Jenny Undercofler, gave a fine performance of Graham Fitkin's Mesh.

The Dutch percussion group Slagwerk Den Haag offered several top-notch performances, including a work using blackboards outfitted with contact mikes that triggered samples when "played" by the chalk-writing performers, providing entertaining visual theatrics. This piece, I Delayed People's Flights By Walking Slowly in Narrow Hallways, can be viewed on YouTube.



There are pluses and minuses in the Winter Garden's unusual venue. It suits the free-to-come-and-go-as-you-please nature of this long event, as well as taking place in a nontraditional public setting far removed from the standard uptown concert hall. On the other hand, this noisy, highly reverberant space favors certain styles of music and diminishes the impact of some pieces. For example, the important vocal samples in Vernon Reid's Ghost Narratives were unintelligible, and the vocal contributions of the uncredited Theo Bleckmann with a performance by SIGNAL were unheard (as if his mike was turned off).

About 30 photos, taken over the 13 hour concert, are here.

Overall, this was an extraordinary event. Bang on a Can remains one of the most important forces in new music.

Phil Kline’s "Around the World in a Daze" reviewed in Philadelphia Inquirer

In the Philadelphia Inquirer, David Patrick Stearns writes about Phil Kline’s Around the World in a Daze DVD:

“Musically, Kline's 10-part Daze is like those Olivier Messiaen orchestral works that are suites of free-standing tone poems, all from different sound worlds, that impulsively eschew the traditional notions of symmetry, proportion and structure.”

The article focuses on the use of visual content on DVDs that present new music. Regarding Daze, Stearns comments:

“Visual illustrations - still photographs from family pets to a grassy stream - often seem so unconnected that Kline is working with a John Cage-style faith in the accidental poetry of randomness.”

Stearns also discusses a Frank Scheffer film that accompanies Brian Eno's 1978 ambient Music for Airports, as arranged by Bang on a Canners Michael Gordon, David Lang, Julia Wolfe, and Evan Ziporyn. Unmentioned is that this release also contains a second film, In the Ocean, a documentary by Scheffer about the history of the wonderful Bang on a Can festival. There are spoken contributions from and excerpts of music by John Cage, Philip Glass, Steve Reich, Elliott Carter, Louis Andriessen, as well as the can-bangers themselves.

Finally, the Stearns article mentions The BQE, with both video and music from Sufjan Stevens. Commissioned by Brooklyn Academy of Music, this cinematic suite was inspired by the Brooklyn-Queens Expressway and the Hula-Hoop. The visual here (which include “three attractive, scantily clad women” hula-hooping) seems to be the dominant element, with music that is “far less radical than Kline's; it's like a traditional film score… Offenbach to Kline's Beethoven.”

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New York Magazine calls Phil Kline’s Daze “Sensational”

The current issue of New York Magazine covers two new-music releases: David Lang’s Pulitzer-winning The Little Match Girl Passion and Phil Kline’s Around the World in a Daze DVD. Justin Davidson (himself a Pulitzer recipient for his music criticism) notes that Kline’s surround sound piece is also “beguiling in old-fashioned stereo” and concludes that Daze is “a set of sensational études.” Here’s the Kline excerpt:



The full review is here.

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