Spring Swing 2009 at Dudley House

The Spring Swing is a great dance night. It is happening this Saturday, April 4th, in Dudley House, Harvard University's Graduate Students' House!

Come at 8:30 for the dance class, and from 9:30 on, you will dance to the sound of the Dudley House Big Band and its singers.

This year, our program will look like that:

• All Of Me
• And The Angels Sing
• Basie Straight Ahead
• Concerto For Cootie
• Cute
• I'm Just A Lucky So And So
• I Will Survive
• In The Mood
• Jumpin' At The Woodside
• Knock On Wood
• Launching Pad
• Mack The Knife
• Main Stem
• Pennsylvania 6-500
• Sweet Home Chicago
• They Can't Take That Away From Me
• Tickletoe
• When I Fall In Love

I really enjoy this event. It's a lot of fun to play, and the dancers have a great time. But most importantly, I love to take part to such a dance party featuring live musicians!

A Third Stream dinner

Gunther Schuller, Theodore Antoniou, and Alan Lenarcic after the première of Viola palustris.

On Monday, March 23rd, Alea III performed my most recent composition, Viola palustris, in its "Composers' Workshop" concert (see announcement). After the concert, the conductor Theodore Antoniou invited all the composers to dinner. That was great to spend some time with this authentic music lover.

Gunther Schuller was excited about the piece and about the soloist Alan Lenarcic's playing. The first thing he told me was: "C'est une vraie composition du Troisième Courant!" ("It's a true Third Stream composition!") Then, he talked a lot with Alan about improvisation and saxophone players. Notably, he defended Charlie Parker's album Charlie Parker with Strings (result: I just ordered the CD).

Thank you Alan Lenarcic, Gunther Schuller, and Theodore Antoniou, for your enthusiasm for music!

Viola palustris - Premiere with Alea III

I'm happy to invite you to the premiere of Viola palustris, my most recent composition. It is a concerto for an improviser and 14 instruments. Alan Lenarcic is playing the solo part with the ensemble Alea III.

Monday, March 23, 8 p.m.
Tsai Performance Center - 685 Commonwealth Avenue
Boston
Free admission

The concert features new works for large ensemble by talented young composers from around the world: Brian Buch (USA), Jean-Francois Charles (France), Phivos-Angelos Kollias (Greece), Mary Montgomery Koppel (USA), Michael Maganuco (USA), John Muniz (USA), Ilias Nikolaidis (Greece), Tolga Tüzün (Turkey).
The conductor is Theodore Antoniou.

Program notes

I finished writing the program notes last week. Here they are:

Viola palustris was inspired by the Alpine Marsh Violet, a perennial forb of the genus Viola. This flower inhabits moist meadows and marshes. It is the feast of the Fritillary butterfly.
Viola palustris is a concerto for an improviser with a 14-instrument ensemble. Tonight's performance features Alan Lenarcic on tenor saxophone. I have played with Alan for several projects, including a live performance of a 70-minute score to the movie "The Man with the Movie Camera". I am thrilled to work again with him on this creation.
Viola palustris is dedicated to Gunther Schuller.

First page of the score

Open Rehearsals

Come to hear and see how this new music is prepared for performance:

• Friday 3/20, 9:30 am - 2:30 pm (Viola palustris at some point between 11:30 and 1:30)
  Room 171, 855 Commonwealth Avenue
• Saturday 3/21, 3:00 – 8:00 pm
  Room 167, 855 Commonwealth Avenue

Hyper-systemic Music - Jacopo Baboni Schilingi at Ircam

Jacopo Baboni Schilingi is a composer, the founder of the Prisma group, and currently holds the position of composition professor at Montbéliard Conservatory. You are invited to the presentation of his book La musique hyper-systémique : Une réponse possible (link to amazon France):

Saturday, March 14th, 11am
Ircam - 4 place Igor Stravinski
75004 - Paris

François Nicolas will be moderating the discussion. Guests include Gian Franco Vinay, Jean-Baptiste Barrière, Ernesto Napolitano, and Jean-Marc Chouvel, who will discuss with the author the propositions exposed in his work published by éditions MIX.

Music is a judgement

In the third chapter of the book, Jacopo introduces the 323 theoretical foundations of hyper-systemic music. Here are a few of them:

• 01 Music is a judgement.
• 05 A sound is a phenomena.
• 84 Memory and judgement are inseparable.
• 305 Art is free expression.

From Jacopo's 2007 project Crossborder (picture from Jacopo's web site)

Jacopo gave the book to all the members of the Prisma group. I got mine during our July 2008 Prisma meeting. Thank you Jacopo!

Fulbright Afternoon of Music 2009

Yesterday afternoon, the Fulbright Association Massachusetts Chapter organized its annual Afternoon of Music. This relaxed event took place in Harvard Eliot House Library.

Amateur and professional musicians performed a colorful program including pop music, traditional music, classical music, contemporary classical music, and jazz. I brought a basic setup to perform a pedagogical and musical presentation with clarinet and live electronics.

Program

• Maximo Gurméndez, piano, guitar, voice, sang in English and Uruguayan: Don't let the sun go down on me (Elton John) and Al otro lado del rio (Jorge Drexler)
• June Park, piano, violin, performed a Haydn piano sonata, a new composition of hers "Nighttime Wanderer part 2", and a Korean song
• I performed semi-improvised music with clarinet and live electronics (Max/MSP/Jitter on my laptop, an amp, here you go)
• Cédric Hanriot, piano, invited Ben Powell, violin, to perform a Bill Evans standard and a Waltz of his own.
• Carlos O. Mendivil-Anaya, piano, performed Astor Piazzola piano pieces and Milonga in D with Leslie Levi
• For a spiritual ending, Leslie Levi, violin, performed Massenet's Méditation de Thaïs, accompanied by June Park

I was happy to put together the program and coordinate the artists. But most importantly, I was lucky to meet such great persons! Thanks to all of them.

Souvenirs, souvenirs

Here are two pictures of the 2007 Fulbright Afternoon of Music (I believe the pictures were taken by Agnes Erenyi). We were performing my composition Nigritella nigra for clarinet and string quartet, with Ariadna Rodriguez and Peter Deckers, violins, Sidney Solow, viola, and Blaise Dejardin, violoncello.

Composers' Un-Music Roundtable

You are invited to the Harvard Graduate Music Forum's Sixth Interdisciplinary Graduate Student Music Conference! This Saturday morning, March 6th, I am moderating a roundtable discussion entitled "Un-Music". Guest composers are:

• Lou Bunk, Brandeis University
• Maxwell Dulaney, Brandeis University
• Davide Ianni, Boston University
• Adam Roberts, Harvard University

I'm looking forward to knowing which work in the repertoire represents best Un-Music for them.
What is your idea of the most "Un-Music" composition?

Pianist Seda Roeder plays Stockhausen & Lachenmann

Seda Roeder is a young pianist whose repertoire extends "from Couperin to Stockhausen and music by selected living composers". She is currently a Teaching Assistant at Harvard Music Department, and a piano instructor at MIT.

Helmut Lachenmann and Seda Röder.
Picture from Seda Roeder's web site. Make sure you visit!

A couple of days ago, she made available live recordings of a performance at the Goethe Institut in Boston on December 5th, 2008. The archive includes Henze's La mano sinistra, Lachenmann's Ein Kinderspiel, and Stockhausen's Klavierstück IX. I just dropped her an e-mail to get the download password. To get the files, rendez-vous on Seda's Download page.

Seda Roeder plays Tolga Yayalar

Seda premieres In The Temporal Gardens by composer Tolga Yayalar on Saturday April 25th, 8pm, in Paine Hall, Harvard Music Department. Maybe I'll see you there!

By the way, Seda recently released a Mozart, Brahms & Berg CD. Listen to her, and support a young artist!