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.

Denver: rare new music concert features Andy Akiho, Lukas Ligeti's Burkina Electric, Evan Ziporyn, Michael Harrison, Sö Percussion

This weekend, Denver area audiences will have a rare opportunity to hear some leading-edge "downtown" new music. And the venue is not some funky alternative space, but rather the distinguished Newman Center at University of Denver.You can get tix at Ticketmaster.

The Mile High Voltage Festival features artists of the Cantaloupe Music Label who show the evolving notions of what can be offered as classical music. Performers surprise with new instruments, video as an integral part of music, and boundary-crossing composition. As part of the audience, you may eat, drink and surf the net while you view the concert through live simulcast in our Cantaloupe Café, where signature food and drink will be offered, or you may choose to enjoy the concert in June Swaner Gates Concert Hall as part of a new culture of listeners, a freer, more interactive audience, or do a bit of both. There are 2 concerts on Fri-Sat Feb. 19-20, including:

Andy Akiho - award winning young composer and steel pan performer. Recently featured on PBS News Hour with Jim Lehrer.

Burkina Electric - Led by Artistic Director Lukas Ligeti, this band from West Africa mingles the traditions and rhythms of Burkina Faso with contemporary electronic dance culture, making it a trailblazer in electronic world music.

Evan Ziporyn - Composer/clarinetist Evan Ziporyn is a founding member of the Bang on a Can All-stars. He is Kenan Sahin Distinguished Professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

Michael Harrison - One of the present day masters of alternative tuning creates mystical and memorable piano soundscapes. A long-time collaborator of minimalist masters Terry Riley and LaMonte Young, Harrison also brings his own aesthetic point of view into a deeply reflective and emotionally powerful composition.

Sö Percussion - Since coming together at the Yale School of Music in 1999, Sö Percussion has performed its music all over the world. Sö will perform its new work "Imaginary City," which will be played on a transforming percussion instrument constructed on stage during the work and will include video featuring reflections and images of the co-commissioning cities.

The Playground - Made up primarily of graduates of the University of Denver's Lamont School of Music Masters Program, The Playground expands common conceptions of both contemporary music and the chamber ensemble.

Tom Moon - Festival Moderator (Award-winning music journalist Tom Moon is the author of 1000 Recordings to Hear Before You Die: A Listener's Life List, a New York Times bestseller. He is a regular contributor to National Public Radio's All Things Considered as well as Rolling Stone, Blender and other publications.)

Lukas Ligeti writes this will be "my first performance ever in Colorado!" He does have a local connection, however. Boulder's Starkland label commissioned a surround sound piece from Lukas that premiered on Starkland's first-of-its-kind Immersion DVD, released in 2000.

We hope Denver audiences will pack the hall and café for these superb performers and the worthwhile 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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