Feast of Music

Rockstar

It was a less-than-full house at the final People's Symphony Concert of the season Saturday night, which probably had a lot to do with the bill: an unknown pianist with a funny-looking name. But, after hearing Mihaela Ursuleasa, a young Romanian based in Vienna, I can assure you that you'll be hearing that name (for the record, it's pronounced "UR-soo-lee-AY-sa") a lot more in the next few months. So, get practicing.

Ursuleasa started out with the New York premiere of Aaron Jay Kernis' Ballad(e) Out of the Blues: a ten-minute piece full of jazzy chords and rhythms, of which she gave the world premiere in Minneapolis less than a week before. Kernis, who was present to introduce the piece, described it as a memorial to his father, who loved blues and ballads.

Ursuleasa followed it up with Brahms' uber-romantic Fantasies, Op. 116. It went down like a big, soft Cabernet, full of richness and warmth.

After intermission, Ursuleasea marched onto the stage while patrons were still making their way back to their seats and  launched straight into Rachmaninoff's Etudes-Tableaux for Piano, Opus 39. Immediately, the room fell silent: no easy feat at these concerts, where the mostly-senior audience doesn't hesitate to shout down offending performers with their disapproval. Piano playing doesn't get more exciting than this: with her long brown hair flying, Ursuleasa went from bombastic to gentle, then back again, not once seeming pushed or strained. Watch out, folks: this girl's got fire.

After exploding through the final section, Ursuleasa leapt to her feet, and much of the room immediately stood with her, cheering wildly. (The only ones who didn't stand seemed to be those reaching for their canes and walkers.) She rewarded us with the Toccata by her countryman Georges Enescu, full of bouncing rhythms that sounded a lot like gypsies dancing.

Ursuleasa will be back in town this summer to perform at the Mostly Mozart Festival, playing Beethoven's 3rd concerto with Osmo Vanska - one of her biggest champions - as well as a late night recital of Chopin and Ginastera. Tickets on sale June 11 at the box office.

Basement Tunes

Nice, low-key evening at Union Hall last night, just the right tonic after a tough week at work. Dave Godowsky played clever songs on acoustic guitar while Takka Takka went indie pop, filled with organ and Gabe Levine's quavering vocals. Toronto's Ohbijou closed out the night with a quiet set of guitars and strings that sounded like something you'd hear in a snowbound cabin. Mmmm, pass the Yukon Jack.

Dave Godowsky
Takka Takka


Ohbijou

Water Music

For over 30 years, Olga Bloom's Bargemusic concerts have been a New York institution, albeit a peculiar one. As the name indicates, the concerts take place on a 100-foot floating barge in Brooklyn Heights just south of the Brooklyn Bridge, commanding postcard views of downtown Manhattan.

On her website, Olga - who turns 89 this year - relates the tale of how Bargemusic came to be:

"In Averne, a borderline community between Nassau County and Queens, a hospitable boatyard provided us with space and helpful tutelage by experienced waterfront dwellers. We solved the problem of achieving good acoustics in the practical advice that we visit a maritime scrap yard on Staten Island. The proprietor there, Mr. John Witte, offered a huge supply of paneling, mahogany stripping, and cherry wood benches retired from duty on the original Staten Island ferry The American Legion. For a year and a half I made weekly trips from the scrap yard with materials weighing down my VW Beetle until it almost scraped the ground. En route, truck drivers shouted to me, ‘Yo! Mama.’

The interior, which remains unaltered, has a quirky, patchwork quality. On one side of the barge is a brick fireplace, on which a ceramic vase precariously sits. Outside the north windows, tourists compete for space with wedding parties, scrambling for the perfect photo opp. Behind the stage, floor-to-ceiling windows are filled with Wall Street skyscrapers and passing boats, whose wake causes the barge to shift violently from side-to-side and up-and-down. It is not for the faint of heart (or stomach).

It must also test the concentration of even the most seasoned musicians, most of whom are not used to having the floor moving underneath them while playing. Fortunately, it didn't seem to faze the young pianist Victoria Schwartzman, who performed this afternoon in Bargemusic's monthly free recital. Schwartzman, a Russian expat, played a powerhouse performance of Schumann's Symphonic Études from memory. (She also played Prokofiev's 10 Pieces from Romeo and Juliet prior to my late arrival.) The crowd of fifty-or-so - equal parts young and old - gave her a warm, well-deserved ovation.

Bargemusic's performance calendar continues throughout the summer with concerts every Thursday-Sunday, in addition to the free monthly recitals. Go, and say Hi to Olga while you still have the chance. And, tell her thanks. (More pics after the jump.)

(Seated: Bargemusic director Mark Peskanov with Olga Bloom)

More French Music

With all the fuss this year about Olivier Messiaen's centennial, it's easy to forget that Messiaen was the scion of a great tradition, rooted in the liturgical music of Paris. These composers were primarily known as organists, responsible for providing weekly music on Sundays.

On Thursday, St. Patrick's Cathedral presented a concert of music for organ and choir by three of the greatest French organist-composers from nthe 20th Century.  Louis Vierne (1870-1937) was the organist at Notre Dame Cathedral for 37 years, literally keeling over at the console during a recital. Charles-Marie Widor (1844-1937) was organist at St. Sulpice - home of what is widely regarded as the greatest organ in the world - for 64 years. Widor was succeeded by Marcel Dupré (1885-1971), who remained at St. Sulpice for a mere 37 years.

The French-Gothic interior of St. Patrick's provided an ideal setting for this music. The Cathedral Choir, a mix of amateur and professional singers, was led by St. Patrick's director of music, Jennifer Pascual. Principal Organist Donald Dumler played the gallery organ; he was joined by John Miller at the chancel organ on works by Vierne and Widor.

Unfortunately, the performance fell far short of the lofty standard set by the city's Episcopal institutions, whether at St. Thomas up the block or the Trinity Choir downtown. Which goes to show that the Catholic church - at least in this country - is still reeling from the musical reforms of Vatican II, reforms the current Pope has publicly lamented.

Messiaen, who was the organist at La Trinité for 61 years, will get his due at New York's Catholic catherdral on May 29, when Gail Archer concludes her cycle of his major organ works with Livre du Saint Sacrament. Unfortunately, I won't be there, but only because I'll be hearing the very same work performed at La Trinité. I know, poor moi. (More pics after the jump.)   

Reunion

I only ended up making it to one of the two concerts I intended to this past Sunday - and was late at that - but it was clearly the one not to miss. Tashi, a quartet that first played together over thirty-five years ago, consists of the world's leading clarinetist (Richard Stoltzman), one of the world's leading pianists (Peter Serkin), the world's foremost contemporary music cellist (Fred Sherry) and the former violinist of the Beaux Arts Trio (Ida Kavafian). They broke the mold in more ways than one: they performed in casual clothes, wore long hair, and were the first classical group to appear at a New York nightclub,  playing the now-defunct Bottom Line.

These four formidable musicians joined forces with one particular piece of music in mind: Olivier Messiaen's Quartet for the End of Time. They studied the piece directly with Messiaen, and would end up performing it over 200 times during the five years of their existence, producing a best-selling recording that is still considered the gold standard. (Alex Ross considers it one of the top ten classical recordings ever made.) They decided to reunite for the centennial of Messiaen's birth, choosing the Free For All at Town Hall series to make their first New York appearance in over thirty years.

The quartet, split into eight sections and nearly an hour in length, was written by Messiaen in a WWII prisoner camp, scored for the musicians he had at his disposal. (Messiaen himself played piano.) It lives in a mysterious, otherworldly soundscape, alternately soothing and terrifying, astringent and tonal. Serkin - a master of Messiaen's notoriously difficult piano music - exploded onto the keyboard, lurching across his bench in fits of energy. Stoltzman played the long solo of the 3rd section with astonishing authority and grace. The fifth section had Sherry playing sad and tender, full of quavering notes that mirrored the cold, harsh conditions of the camp. In between, there were dissonant blasts and brute fortissimos that sent meeker patrons fleeing for the exits.

The final section is an intimate, achingly beautiful passage for violin and piano. Soft and gentle, it rises slowly towards its spiritual conclusion: here, finally, Messiaen leads us to refuge. Kavafian and Serkin created some real magic, leaving the audience of over a thousand in stunned silence for a full minute after the final notes wafted into the balcony. It was a moment those of us present will not soon forget.

If you missed them, the closest place you'll be able to catch Tashi over the next few months is at Tanglewood, where they'll be playing on August 7. I've actually got a ticket to that one, which I bought before the Town Hall show was announced - feel free to contact me if you're interested.

Paul and Philip

An insightful, casual conversation tonight between Philip Glass and Paul Simon at BAM's Harvey Theater, where the two composers shared thoughts for 90 minutes, mostly about music. Simon started things off with a bang.

PS: "Who, in your mind, were the greatest composers of the 20th Century?"

PG: (after much hesitation) "Charles Ives, because of how he was able to marry innovation to lyricism. I've always had a thing for composers who didn't teach, who were mavericks: Nancarrow, Partch...In the end, the only music that matters is the music that we love, the music that we want to hear."

PS: "If you can get people to listen, they're at a level of heightened awareness."

PG: "I see songwriting as a very refined art, one that I myself have been unable to master. I find it incredible that you wrote the music before you wrote the words (for Graceland)."

PS: "How do sounds become language?"

PG: "It's about the rhythm of words matching they rhythm of the music."

PS: "And what do you think about that?"

PG: "I think it's a very good idea."

PS: "What compelled you to write an opera in Sanskrit?"

PG: "Because it's consonants followed by vowels. English is not a good language for opera. English cuts off their words with hard consonants. It takes a lot of time and energy to teach singers how to sing in English. It's a distraction from the music."

PS: "It always happens: I'm on tour, playing my 30th show, and then all of a sudden - usually in the middle of "You Can Call Me Al" - I go: "What am I doing? I'm imitating myself!"

PG: "I made a conscious choice to perform my own music. It's given me a deeper appreciation for what interpreters do: they - not the writers - are the ones who create the music. They realize the music. That's an important word: they make it real. In a sense, I've become an interpreter of my own music."

PS: "I have absolutely no connection to the person that wrote The Caveman. I don't even remember writing those songs. But, I remember feeling that it suceeded at what it was trying to do."

PG: "Young composers worry about when they're going to find they're voice. But that's not the problem. The problem is: how do you get rid of it?"

PS: "There's no plan. I just follow what I like."

Stochastic Finale

For all of you who might be listening to the Stochastic Hit Parade on WFMU right now, here's hoping you made it out to Barbes this past Wednesday to see our girl Bethany in action. For those who didn't, you missed her mixing up some field recordings and hauling out her horn, which she used to flay both the Elliott Carter Wind Quintet (1948) and a Gounod "Mélodie" (joined by pianist David Moore.) Give the girl some props: not only did she go out in front of a full house and play live, she did so with the goddamned hardest instrument in the house. And, she friggin' nailed it.

She finished the night at the podium, leading a series of "Post Participles": improvisations for ensemble inspired by blurbs from the new music mag Wire. It was all near-noise madness, the kind we've grown to know and love these many Sunday nights. Well done, girl.

Ok, back to your radios.

Daily Double

I don't know if I can pull it off, but there are two free Messiaen concerts happening today, both at 5pm: "L'Ascension" on the organ at St. Thomas, and the "Quartet for the End of Time" at Town Hall. The latter is being played by TASHI (Peter Serkin, Richard Stoltzman, Fred Sherry, and Ida Kavafian) who are making their first New York appearance in over 30 years. Game plan: hit St. Thomas first, then hop the V to Town Hall, where the Messiaen is on the second half of the bill. My Metrocard's about to get a workout.

Stop. Look. Listen.

I spent both Thursday and Saturday nights at the 7th annual Look & Listen Festival, which puts new music concerts in art galleries in Chelsea and Soho. This sort of thing is nothing new - Steve Reich and Philip Glass used to play almost exclusively in Soho lofts and galleries - but it's an idea that makes sense, giving the listener something to look at other than the musicians, who are focusing on - duh - the music.

Both evenings featured a mix of acoustic and electric instruments, with WNYC's John Schaefer and New Music Box's Molly Sheridan filling in the set changes with composer interviews. Personal highlights: So Percussion, 2 Foot Yard (with Carla Kihlstedt singing and playing violin), and Mark Stewart's homemade instrumentarium, assisted by members of the Ethel, Daedalus and Electric Kompany quartets.

The real fun was, though, was afterwards at the Broome Street Bar, where most of the composers and musicians turned up. More on that later. 

Thursday May 1, Robert Miller Gallery, Chelsea

So Percussion

Biava String Quartet

Odd Appetite (Ha-Yang Kim and Nathan Davis)

2 Foot Yard (Marika Hughes, Carla Kihlstedt, Shahzad Ismaily)

John Schaefer with Ha-Yang Kim

Saturday, May 3, OK Harris Gallery, Soho

Mark Stewart

Molly Sheridan

Daedalus String Quartet

Ethel and Electric Kompany with composer Nick Didkovsky

Parting

Last night's Wordless Music show had the bittersweet taste of a farewell. Ronen told the sold-out crowd that this would probably be the last concert held at the Good Shepherd-Faith Church, where Wordless started in 2006 and has experienced some of its most astonishing moments (such as Sigur Ros' surprise acoustic set last season.) But, all good things come to an end, and with the series' meteoric growth over the past year, it's time to find more room for the flocks of indie and new music kids who want to hear come their favorites, and maybe pick up something new along the way.

Violinist Caleb Burhans and guitarist Grey McMurray make up the ambient duo itsnotyouitsme, who say they, "hope to make you cry, in a good way." Caleb, who readers will know from previous posts, played electric but kept it soft, blending with Grey's effects-driven guitar to create a sound that filled the church like the organ you might hear during meditations any given Sunday.

They ended their set with the astonishing, "we are malleable, even though they seem to own us," off their debut album walled gardens. Grey laid down a trance beat that would have fit on any dancefloor while Caleb punctured it with sharp, high attacks. It wasn't loud or fast, but I could feel my heart racing to the steadily building pulse. I was hard in its grip, and it would not let me go. Strong stuff. 

Most classical kids have to endure a hard-fought rebellion against their parents and teachers before abandoning a career in the concert hall for the scary underground of new music. But, Face the Music, a group of pre-teens from the Kaufman Center's Special Music School, exclusively performs new music, implicitly teaching these kids that it's OK to be different. Necessary, even.

There's nothing that can quite prepare you for the sight of a pair of 10 year old pianists playing John Adams' Hallelujah Junction, or a mini-orchestra performing Michael Gordon's Yo Shakespeare, doing both more than justice. (They also performed Ira Mowitz’s Kol Aharon for solo violin, digital soundtrack, and ensemble, in a new version written for them.) The only appropriate reaction was to stand and cheer - which we all did, sullen hipsters included.

The night ended with Stars of the Lid, founded in Austin in 1993 by Adam Wiltzie and Brian McBride, making their first New York appearance since 2000. They played slow, soft drones on their guitars, accompanied by string players and abstract projections filling the sanctuary.

As I sat there, listening to pieces such as "Ballad of Distances" and "Requiem for Dying Mothers," I felt like there was a cinderblock sitting on my chest. This is music of irrepressible sadness, of deep and abiding loss. It's the soundtrack to a broken heart.

Their last number, "December Hunting for Vegetarian Fuckface," evoked awe and wonder, filling the space with majestic chords like those at the end of a Messiaen organ cycle, held to the brink of unbearableness. I couldn't tell how they were getting all those sounds out with only five instruments, but whatever it is, these guys have figured something out.

This may have been the last show at Good Shepherd, but Wordless has a busy summer ahead of it, with four Friday night shows at the Whitney in June, plus outdoor concerts at Celebrate Brooklyn and Lincoln Center's Damrosch Park, all free. I'll see you there.

(Photos 2-5 by Christopher Owyoung; more by your's truly after the jump.)