sound expanse

Apologies for my long absence. I had very little time over the past few months. Excuses are boring. But tomorrow morning I'm on my way back across the Atlantic for an exciting concert series, Music We'd Like to Hear, concisely described as "three concerts on three wednesdays curated by three composers," who are Markus Trunk, Tim Parkinson, and John Lely. If you're anywhere nearby you should plan on coming.

There also will be a 5-6 hour performance of Cornelius Cardew's graphic score, Treatise, on July 11th, performed by Angharad Davies, Rhodri Davies, John Lely, Lee Patterson, Tim Parkinson and James Saunders. It's part of a series of events centered on Cardew's legacy at The Drawing Room called From Scratch. It hasn't happened yet, and I'm already finding it unforgettable.

More soon...

The Wittener Tage für neue Kammermusik start tomorrow, and two of the concerts will be broadcast live on at 20:00 and 22:00 German time. There is some difference between the program order listed on the festival site and on the WDR 3 site, but in any case the lineup looks very promising. The other concerts will be broadcast during the month of May.

Then on April 28th, ELISION will perform works by Aaron Cassidy, James Dillon, and Roger Redgate on a program called fracture/fissure at King's Place in London. It promises to be a first-rate concert, and I so wish I could be there.

I'm just waking up to the possibilities of scheduling live streams to record on my home computer. I've found a good application, Wiretap, that I am testing out on my mac to make sure it serves my purposes. So far it's been great.* It allows me to schedule the recording of any live streaming web radio, whether it is a single event or a weekly show. Now that I know that I don't have to be planted at my computer for a particular span of time to hear these broadcasts, I want to know what the most promising shows are. Here is my (very partial) list so far.

Of course there are always streams. My favorite that I know of so far is wandelweiser web radio. You can check out what is playing at any time in their status window.

Let me know, please, of any other shows or streams I should know about. This is only a beginning. I'll update or fix my little table, and make a permanent spot for it on the links page once I have filled it out more.

*Update: Wiretap is working very well for me, and has been recording all of my scheduled shows reliably. It's normally $69, but is available through Monday (April 6th) as part of a great package of software through MacHeist that is a total of $39. If you're a Mac user, it's well worth taking a look. The savings on Wiretap alone are substantial, not to mention all the other offerings.

Tomorrow (Sunday) at 8:03 Berlin time, there will be a second radio broadcast of music from this year's MaerzMusik festival. The broadcast will open with Berio's SOLO for trombone and orchestra. I am most interested to hear the world premiere of Mark Andre's complete orchestral cycle, "... auf ... " I-III. I heard "... auf ... " III at the 2007 Donaueschinger Musiktage, and bought the recording of it when I was back there the following year. I latch onto different aspects of the piece each time I hear it, and it never fails to fascinate me. You can get some taste of it through this video clip, whether or not you understand German.

Mark Andre - "...auf..." III from Felix 1982 on Vimeo.

The other composer on tomorrow's broadcast whose work I want to know better is Petros Ovsepyan. His use of silence, as well as aspects of sound production that are usually ignored, is quite committed and compelling. You can get a good sense of his approach in the intro page video and further content of his website.

Though many of the programs on Deutschlandradio Kultur are available on-demand, the MaerzMusik broadcast from Tuesday was only available through a live stream. It looks like that will also be the case with Sunday's broadcast. I'm going to hook up my best headphones--this music will benefit from that kind of close listening.

There are two chances to hear what's going on at MaerzMusik this year without being in Berlin. The first is today, from 8:03-10:30pm Berlin time. The second broadcast will be on Sunday. (More on that later.) I'm going to listen to the live stream from work today at 3:03 my time (in Boston) and hope the phone doesn't ring very often. It looks like it will be available on demand after that as well.

This year's festival is titled:

REDUCTION · STRUCTURE · DECONSTRUCTION

YOUNG RUSSIA MEETS THE AMERICAN AVANT-GARDE
MUSIC FROM ARMENIA AND CENTRAL ASIA

There is an excellent description (and English translation) of this year's programming by artistic director Matthias Osterwald.

The closing piece on the broadcast will be Ben Johnston's fifth string quartet, played by the Kairos Quartett. Dmitri Kourliandski's music will be featured, along with other composers involved in the Structural Resistance group. As I'm taking a look through Kourliandski's conent-rich site, I'm becoming more interested in his work. There will be plenty to hear today, but here is a 58-second piece (with animation) that he wrote for Guy Livingston's One Minute More DVD.