An eighty-four-foot, mixed-media triptych spans a wall at the Museum of Modern Art in New York. With three huge scrolls, each three feet high, arranged on the wall in three rows, it’s an elaborate montage on a stark, white backdrop. Photographs, texts, drawings, and lithographs make up the whole. The piece, (Untitled) 2008–2011 (the mapContinue reading “Zosha Di Castri is looking for action”
Genre Archives
Winter 2012
Derek Charke
Derek Charke is irresistibly attracted to the North. In 2006 he found himself in the Yukon, dogsledding with the Kronos Quartet. For a composer with a love of the Arctic it doesn’t get better, or more surreal, than this. A few days earlier he had been in a Whitehorse hotel room where Kronos was rehearsingContinue reading “Derek Charke”
R. Murray Schafer. My Life on Earth and Elsewhere.
In his latest book, Schafer describes a composition as “a multicultural event in which we laugh at ourselves and each other.” It’s a good description for the memoir itself: its scope is vast, but its tone is irreverent, lighthearted. Schafer does nothing here to dispel his reputation as an enfant terrible. He makes cheeky, bombasticContinue reading “R. Murray Schafer. My Life on Earth and Elsewhere.”
Summer 2012
Internationales Minimal Music Festival, Third Edition. Kassel, Germany. October 6–9, 2011.
Every five years since 1955, the small German city of Kassel hosts documenta, Europe’s preeminent contemporary visual-arts exhibition. documenta attracts over one million curious viewers to Kassel, including world-renowned artists, cultural critics, academics, and international media. The citizens of Kassel are, as a result, one of the most open and culturally sophisticated audiences on theContinue reading “Internationales Minimal Music Festival, Third Edition. Kassel, Germany. October 6–9, 2011.”
CLAEM Festival: un gol de media cancha [a midfield goal]. Buenos Aires, Argentina. June 17–24, 2011.
Edited by Meg Sheppard. One of the best contemporary music festivals I have attended took place in Buenos Aires from June 17–24, with symphonic concerts at the Belgrano Auditorium, and chamber music and electroacoustic music concerts at the Centro Cultural Borges. It was given the full name La Música en el Di Tella—resonancias de laContinue reading “CLAEM Festival: un gol de media cancha [a midfield goal]. Buenos Aires, Argentina. June 17–24, 2011.”
Maki Ishii. Maki Ishii Live.
Distinguished composer, conductor, and curator Maki Ishii (1932–2003) created a body of music inspired by his lineage, heritage, and situation. The poetic sense of movement, gesture, and pace that pervades the three percussion concerti on this disc bespeaks the influence of his father, Ishii Baku (1884–1962)—a pioneer of modern dance in Japan. Also expressed hereContinue reading “Maki Ishii. Maki Ishii Live.”
Montreal New Music International Festival: 5th Edition. Montreal, Canada. February 18–26, 2011.
Being assigned to cover a new music festival such as Montréal/Nouvelles Musiques is somewhat like being thrown into a different space-time (and sound) continuum—one suddenly has the impression that new music is all there is to be heard all over the city, with ensembles, performances, and venues filled with enthusiastic audiences experiencing nothing but newContinue reading “Montreal New Music International Festival: 5th Edition. Montreal, Canada. February 18–26, 2011.”
Nicole Lizée invites us to hear things her way
Nicole Lizée is a huge fan of Alfred Hitchcock, science-fiction films, and Lars von Trier, the maverick Danish director whose Dogme (dogma), about film, inspires her own reflection on how to compose music. She says composers should be just as bold and inventive about creating music as von Trier is about making films. The director,Continue reading “Nicole Lizée invites us to hear things her way”