Coming up soon!

Ten days until our CD release concert! Looking forward to rehearse this weekend and get back to Kyle Bartlett's squawks and quirky rhythmic figures (and to put the instrumental parts together with her own theatrical vocalizations) and to Douglas Boyce's groovy take on big-band swing, combined with his idiosyncratic experiments with "open pulse" and aleatoric writing.

I think it's great that we are presenting these two world premieres by Kyle and Doug and a premiere by Erich Stem at the April 29 concert, while the CD itself offers previous works by these three composers. Cool to highlight the ongoingness of c)i creativity. Our composer-member Ryan Streber's Partita for cello is featured on both the CD and the release concert, at which we will also give live and lively renditions of "Dead Cat Bounce", written expressly for c)i by Eric Moe, and "Ciao Manhattan", by Lee Hyla, who has had a close association with c)i for some years. Sciarrino's "Centauro Marino" - the only work by a non-American on the CD - represents just the sort of breathtakingly vivid conjuring of a soundworld that c)i is crazy about.

Come and join us to celebrate and have a great time on the 29th!

On Tuesday the c)i players had the first rehearsal for our April 29 CD release show, which features a new piece for piano quartet and narrator by Kyle Bartlett, as well as a new arrangement of a big band piece by Douglas Boyce. It was a thrill to rehearse these two works with the ink still drying on the page, so to speak (we received the scores days before the rehearsal).
Kyle's piece will be our second with narrator in as many months; the text, written I believe by the composer, is most striking! Serial killers, obscenity! Thrilling; I can't wait to see this come together. And Doug has given us the chance to test our jazz abilities by taking solos, comping and so on. This program is all American, but with such excellent variety. I look forward to it.
Steve

adventures in marketing

So, last week I reached the double bar line on my latest piece for the band. It's called MOTHERS and it's about Grendel's mother and an Italian female serial killer. The idea came to me last November in a hotel in New York. I was in the city for a conference on new opera, and I was thinking a lot about the way composers talk about their work to others.

Fast-forward to 12:30 am. One thing I love to do when I'm staying in a hotel is watch the gristly, spooky true-crime shows on late at night. I don't watch TV much as a rule, and the coincidence of being able to stay up late and watch whatever I want on tv feels like a luxury.

Perhaps I was subconsciously on the market for an easy-to-explain subject for a dramatic work. Once it came to me, it seemed obvious - female killers! I had been wanting to do something with the character of Grendel's mother for some time. When I read about Leonarda Cianciulli, the "Soap-Maker of Correggio" who killed three women in a deluded plan to protect her son on the battlefield in WWII, I realized that both of these women killed on behalf of their beloved sons - Grendel's mother in retribution for Grendel's death, and Cianciulli as a protective sacrifice for her son's safety. (also to make what she called some "acceptable creamy soap.") Mother-love gone very, very wrong.

I hope you will come hear MOTHERS at our next concert - 4/29, Tenri Cultural Institute. I'll be doing the sprechstimme role. It's a big party for our CD release, so you'll hear some choice cuts from that as well as this world premiere and Douglas Boyce's A BRIEF HISTORY OF ACCELERATION in a brand new arrangement. Hot.

Coming together

Every musician has at the back of his or her mind the musical equivalent of the "bucket list" (I detest that term)-- pieces one would love to perform or to compose, but hasn't yet found the right collaborators, or venue, or concert for them. I prefer the more attractive term "desiderata." With the extraordinary program this evening we are all checking multiple works off our lists of desiderata. I feel so fortunate that the program, the venue, and the collaborators have come together to perform these monumental works. And while we'll draw big, beautiful, bold checks next to three items on out list, working with Paula and Yuki and being buoyed up by the passion of their music making has only inspired us to add more items to our desiderata. I look forward to making more and more check marks with them.

A Preview in Pictures...

It is so amazing to see what this group has become since we first started in the late 90's.

I love that my son Ethan can have a conversation with Steve during a car ride while looking at Nono's score.

I love that we get a chance to collaborate with great musicians like Paula Robison and Yuki Numata.

Ben loves that he can practice the Lachenmann at "full-volume" in the kitchen without waking up Ethan.

Hope to see you Sunday at 6pm!

Paula Robison says the devil made her do it.

Cool thing: tracing Schoenberg's musical references to Lucifer, "Miscalled the Morning Star" through the whole work...sometimes only as a scattering of descending pizzicati....almost as a reminderto the fallen or falling Napoleon...., sometimes the scattering and then the ponticello grindingof death, also tossed off as a dark reminder at selected moments....what a genius!

Paula Robison on "Ode to Napoleon Buonaparte"

Lord Byron was a powerful swimmer. Whenever the whirlings of his eventful and tumultuous life got a bit too much for him he would dive into the nearest body of water and swim, sometimes for many miles, sometimes through the canals of Venice, often far out to sea. As I've prepared Schoenberg;s "Ode to Napoleon Buonaparte," wondering how in Heaven's name I, a woman, can declaim Byron's words, I have heard first the voice of Schoenberg snarling at me, insisting that it was written for a man's voice and should be done only with a male reciter...and then suddenly the voice of Lord Byron: laughing, shrugging his beautiful shoulders, and saying "Swim, woman, swim! Jump in and swim!" What could I do? I jumped in, and I'm swimming for my life, and I feel like George Gordon, Lord Byron is right there next to me. I hope that the spirit of Schoenberg will relent a bit and say that this was a good thing! Many a woman lost a son or brother to Napoleon; many a woman her husband, or lover, or both. Every day in our war-infested, tyrant-molested world a woman loses a loved one or is lost, herself, in battle. So Byron's powerful words speak very much from our women's hearts and minds, too.I look forward with all my heart and mind to this, my first "Ode to Napoleon", with the amazing players of counter)induction.

We will perform "Ode to Napoleon Buonaparte" this coming Sunday. More info here.