CD Release Heads-Up: TIME PIECES

One of my earliest pieces, American Standard for clarinet and piano, is included on an upcoming CD of American works for clarinet and piano on the British label Clarinet Classics.

Performing on the recording are clarinettist Peter Furniss and pianist David Leiher Jones, both good friends since our Budapest Liszt Academy days a really long time ago. (They taught me all about Marmite and how to curse properly in English.) American Standard was originally written for Peter, who’s performed it numerous times around the world.

The disc also includes a magnificent performance of the Bernstein Sonata as well as works by Victor Babin, James Cohn, Robert Muczynski and Richard Dudas, another Budapest cohort.

The release is scheduled for June, and I will, no doubt, crow about it again here at that time.

Lysistrata at City Opera

Here’s an early review of Mark Adamo’s Lysistrata which has just opened at New York City Opera.

This is from Steve Smith of Time Out New York:

It was hard to come away from tonight’s premiere without a sense of renewed faith in the possibility that contemporary opera can deal with both the baggage of genre history and the demands of a contemporary audience. Adamo, in only his second big-stage piece, neatly proves that it can be done — and with a show that’s genuinely entertaining, to boot.

Read the rest…

Mark Adamo on NewMusicBox

I say “hooray!” to Alex Ross for recognizing Mark Adamo as one of “the best opera composers of the moment”. (I disagree about Adams, but that’s a whole other thing. Adés I don’t know from Adam’s off ox.)

Mark is a brilliant guy. If you have the slightest interest in opera or any music for the stage, please read this interview with Mark on NewMusicBox. You’ll see that, not only is he popular and successful, but he actually knows what he’s talking about.

The Grackle and other Poems

My friend Tom Laughlin (now “Will” for some reason) wrote this incredibly funny poem years ago. It’s a send-up of Edgar Allen Poe’s The Raven, full of dizzying Sondheim-like internal rhymes. (Sibyl/Shibboleth, anyone?) I’d post the whole poem here, but my content column is too narrow to do it properly. So, take a look at the version on Tom’s web site, (which is primarily dedicated to his obsession with bad horror movies).

While you’re there, take a look at his Rhymes and Dances, a series of very short, very funny poems. (Follow the “Things That Rhyme” link on the home page). About 15 years ago, I did a choral setting of one of them, Ducks in the Garden.

By the way, for all these years, I thought that a grackle was something Tom made up. Turns out it’s an actual, real type of bird. Eh, what do you want from a city kid.

The manDrum

My old friend Chris Mandra appeared out of nowhere this weekend, announcing that he was in San Francisco and on the way to Burning Man. When I say “old”… he was among my first friends when I arrived at the University of the Arts as a freshman, so we’re talking exactly twenty years now. Holy moly.

So, Chris is an interesting guy. He has gone from affable, endearingly pretentious, bearded composition student to shaved-headed Executive Producer of NPR Online to red-streaked, wild-haired electro-acoustic performance, uh, wizardy guy. (OK, not quite sure what’s up with my obsession with Chris’ hairstyle.)

Chris now goes by the name of “kataStatik” (and I relentlessly taunted him by calling him “katatastic”), and he performs on an instrument he invented called the “manDrum”. If I understand correctly, the manDrum consists of sensors he wears under his clothing that interact with software he wrote to control a synthesizer when struck. (Sorry, I’m not hip to all the real terminology.) So, basically, he beats himself silly, and music comes out.

There’s more to it than that. More details and video of the manDrum in action can be found on Chris’ web site. This is all quite removed from the musical world I live in, but it sure is interesting. Plus, I have to say: “manDrum” is a great name.