It was a fun evening.
Monday, June 14, 2010
WNYC airs Bimstein, Gann, Byrne
Yesterday at WNYC, John Schaefer aired a "Found" Sounds show featuring music of Phillip Bimstein from a New Sounds Live concert performed at Merkin Hall. It's fitting the show also airs music from Kyle Gann (a Starkland fan) and David Byrne (a Bimstein fan who attended this concert and chatted with us at intermission). You can hear the show here:
It was a fun evening.
It was a fun evening.
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Thursday, June 10, 2010
Paul Dresher: "Casa Vecchia" CD: now digital
Paul Dresher's "Casa Vecchia" CD is now digitally distributed. Sources include iTunes, Amazon, and eMusic. The original CD picked up some fine reviews:
The CD opens with the hypnotic "Underground," which originally appeared on Starkland's compilation CD, "From A to Z." "Atmospheric and otherworldly" (CMJ), it is perhaps Dresher's most ambient work.
The infectious "Mirrors," performed by Bang on a Can's Robert Black, deftly generates, weaves, and layers electronically processed materials within a virtuosic, real-time performance. "Other Fire" skillfully processes and combines environmental sounds into an evocative soundscape.
Fanfare’s review concluded that this "Starkland release is an excellent introduction" to "a significant emerging voice in American music."
"Four works... by one of the best and most original of post-minimalist composers."The CD presented the premiere recording of one of Dresher's strongest and most engaging works. Commissioned and premiered by the Kronos Quartet, "Casa Vecchia" (performed here by Vienna's Ensemble 9) offers convincing minimalism within an evolving, cohesive structure. In his introduction, John Diliberto writes that "There’s a solemnity... that recalls the contemplative paths of Górecki and Pärt." Here's an excerpt from "Casa Vecchia":
- Stereo Review
"Paul Dresher is perhaps the best of the postminimalist composers who learned at the altar of Reich, Riley, and Glass... A gorgeous gem."
- Wired
"Some of the most hypnotic music to come from his generation of renegade composers."
- Classical Pulse
The CD opens with the hypnotic "Underground," which originally appeared on Starkland's compilation CD, "From A to Z." "Atmospheric and otherworldly" (CMJ), it is perhaps Dresher's most ambient work.
The infectious "Mirrors," performed by Bang on a Can's Robert Black, deftly generates, weaves, and layers electronically processed materials within a virtuosic, real-time performance. "Other Fire" skillfully processes and combines environmental sounds into an evocative soundscape.
Fanfare’s review concluded that this "Starkland release is an excellent introduction" to "a significant emerging voice in American music."
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Thursday, June 3, 2010
Erling Wold: Mordake: chamber opera CD released
Erling Wold’s latest chamber opera "Mordake," starring John Duykers in the title role, has been released by MinMax Music and is distributed by Starkland.
The CD is physically available at Amazon, CD Baby, ArkivMusic, and more.
The CD is digitally available at iTunes, Amazon, eMusic, MySpace Music, and over 20 additional sources.
The opera tells the story of young Edvard Mordake, a man of high birth, secreted away in his apartments due to his disfigurement: a woman’s face on the back of his head, whose constant imprecations, heard by him alone, lead him on a terrifying course of action, one that may result in his own destruction.
The librettist of the opera is the remarkable Douglas Kearney, a teacher of African American poetry, opera and myth at CalArts, well known for his recent performance work with Anne LeBaron. This recording follows Wold’s earlier release on MinMax, the critically acclaimed opera "A Little Girl Dreams of Taking the Veil."
"Mordake packs a multi-sensory punch inside a tightly knit production... If the story of Mordake is a tragic, eerie and at times wickedly funny rumination on the split in the human ego – the violent psychic struggle to reconcile the different parts of our own porous personality – we appreciate its universal tensions because it wraps us so completely in its subject’s deeply fraught isolation,” writes SF360. The San Francisco Chronicle rhapsodizes that “[Duykers] storms, he blusters, he bewails his fate – and, when necessary, he taps into reserves of sweetly tuned lyricism... a dynamic, affecting performance.”
Wold, an eclectic composer whose teachers include Gerard Grisey, Andrew Imbrie and John Chowning, has been hailed as “the Eric Satie of Berkeley surrealist/minimalist electro-art rock” by the Village Voice. His opera Queer, on the book by William Burroughs, will be in San Francisco and New York as part of the 25th anniversary of the publication of the book. His Missa Beati Notkeri Balbuli Sancti Galli Monachi was commissioned and premiered by the Abbey of St. Gallen, Switzerland. He has collaborated with electronic and noise musicians, filmmakers (Jon Jost) and dance companies, including interactive audio and video projects with Palindrome Dance, Nürnberg.
John Duykers, an internationally acclaimed tenor, has appeared with many leading opera companies, including The Lyric Opera of Chicago, San Francisco Opera, New York City Opera, Seattle Opera, Houston Grand Opera, Royal Opera Covent Garden, Netherlands Opera, Frankfurt Opera, Santa Fe Opera, and the Los Angeles Opera. Duykers most celebrated role was Mao Zedong in the 1987 world-premiere of John Adams’ Nixon in China, which was televised (winning an Emmy Award), and recorded (winning a Grammy Award).
Visit: Starkland
Visit: MinMax
Visit: Erling Wold
The CD is physically available at Amazon, CD Baby, ArkivMusic, and more.
The CD is digitally available at iTunes, Amazon, eMusic, MySpace Music, and over 20 additional sources.
The opera tells the story of young Edvard Mordake, a man of high birth, secreted away in his apartments due to his disfigurement: a woman’s face on the back of his head, whose constant imprecations, heard by him alone, lead him on a terrifying course of action, one that may result in his own destruction.
The librettist of the opera is the remarkable Douglas Kearney, a teacher of African American poetry, opera and myth at CalArts, well known for his recent performance work with Anne LeBaron. This recording follows Wold’s earlier release on MinMax, the critically acclaimed opera "A Little Girl Dreams of Taking the Veil."
"Mordake packs a multi-sensory punch inside a tightly knit production... If the story of Mordake is a tragic, eerie and at times wickedly funny rumination on the split in the human ego – the violent psychic struggle to reconcile the different parts of our own porous personality – we appreciate its universal tensions because it wraps us so completely in its subject’s deeply fraught isolation,” writes SF360. The San Francisco Chronicle rhapsodizes that “[Duykers] storms, he blusters, he bewails his fate – and, when necessary, he taps into reserves of sweetly tuned lyricism... a dynamic, affecting performance.”
Wold, an eclectic composer whose teachers include Gerard Grisey, Andrew Imbrie and John Chowning, has been hailed as “the Eric Satie of Berkeley surrealist/minimalist electro-art rock” by the Village Voice. His opera Queer, on the book by William Burroughs, will be in San Francisco and New York as part of the 25th anniversary of the publication of the book. His Missa Beati Notkeri Balbuli Sancti Galli Monachi was commissioned and premiered by the Abbey of St. Gallen, Switzerland. He has collaborated with electronic and noise musicians, filmmakers (Jon Jost) and dance companies, including interactive audio and video projects with Palindrome Dance, Nürnberg.
John Duykers, an internationally acclaimed tenor, has appeared with many leading opera companies, including The Lyric Opera of Chicago, San Francisco Opera, New York City Opera, Seattle Opera, Houston Grand Opera, Royal Opera Covent Garden, Netherlands Opera, Frankfurt Opera, Santa Fe Opera, and the Los Angeles Opera. Duykers most celebrated role was Mao Zedong in the 1987 world-premiere of John Adams’ Nixon in China, which was televised (winning an Emmy Award), and recorded (winning a Grammy Award).
Visit: Starkland
Visit: MinMax
Visit: Erling Wold
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