http://blog.corneliusdufallo.com/ Urban Modes: Music and Life in New York en-us Nucleus CMS v3.64 © Weblog http://backend.userland.com/rss http://blog.corneliusdufallo.com//nucleus/nucleus2.gif http://blog.corneliusdufallo.com/ http://blog.corneliusdufallo.com/index.php?itemid=230 20120117-20091211-huang_ruo_in_conducting_3.jpg

On January 10 I had the pleasure of attending a performance of Huang Ruo's music at (le) poisson rouge. I've been a fan of Huang Ruo since 2007, and I was particularly interested in hearing his most recent string quartet, having missed the Chiara Quartet's premiere last season. This performance was given by the excellent Momenta Quartet (Emilie-Anne Gendron and Alex Fortes, violins; Stephanie Griffin, viola; Michael Hass, cello).

The quartet's title, Calligraffiti (a fusion of the words "calligraphy" and "graffiti") is meant to reflect the composition's autobiographical nature: Huang Ruo grew up in China and moved to New York City as a young adult, so Chinese calligraphy and urban graffiti are among the visual images that have influences his aesthetic sense.

In order to describe his compositional approach, Huang Ruo has coined the term "dimensionalism," which he describes as an organic integration of Chinese folk, Western avant-garde, rock, and jazz. Despite his own description, none of these styles is immediately recognizable in his music. This is good, because Huang Ruo's unique musical voice is far more interesting than any obvious allusion to the above mentioned genres. Whichever styles he draws upon is really his own concern; what is compelling about his music is its vitality, inventiveness, and extreme emotional expression.

The quartet's three movements run without pause. The first two movements lead the listener on a journey through rugged musical terrain: expressionistic glissandi, tones clusters, and driving rhythms. Huang Ruo builds an almost uncomfortable level of emotional tension by means of long sustained drones with microtonal fluctuations alongside periodic outbursts of dissonance. The drones eventually transform into high pitched screams in the violins as the lower instruments come together in a powerful, seemingly unstoppable rhythmic motive. In the third movement the listener's perceverance is rewarded with the emergence of a sublime melody (built mostly of fourths and fifiths) that is gently passed from player to player until it dissolves into a single high harmonic at the end.

The Momenta Quartet, an ensemble that seems unusually well suited to Huang Ruo's music, performed with fire, fantasy, and absolute musical commitment.

Also on the program were Book of the Forgotten, a playful and virtuosic work for clarinet and viola (performed by clarinetist Vasko Dukovski and violist Stephanie Griffin) and excerpts from Huang Ruo's recently composer opera, Dr. Sun Yat-Sen (performed by soprano Fang Tao Jiang, tenor Laurence Broderick, Ensemble FIRE, and the Momenta Quartet).]]> General http://blog.corneliusdufallo.com/index.php?itemid=230 Tue, 17 Jan 2012 13:29:21 -0500 http://blog.corneliusdufallo.com/index.php?itemid=229 Ayelet Rose Gottlieb
Photo by Angela Bartolo

ETHEL will soon be reunited with our dear friend and collaborator Ayelet Rose Gottlieb at the 2012 Winter Jazz Fest (January 7th/Zinc Bar). Ayelet has composed a beautiful and deeply heartlfelt piece for ETHEL and percussionist Satoshi Takeishi entitled Shiv'a. We've been developing Shiv'a together for over a year now, and recently recorded it. This January's concert marks the beginning of a series of live performances of the piece.

Ayelet's style combines tuneful folk influences with moments of abstract improvisation. Her tone color choices are unusual and interesting. In this interview she discusses her music, her projects, and the fascinating relationship between her music and her dreams.


Dufallo: Can you discuss Shiv'a - your inspiration for the piece, and how it came together?

Rose Gottlieb: Shiv’a is a meditation on the process of mourning. It references Jewish and Buddhist mourning rituals. I composed it following several deaths, including that of my good friend, drummer and percussionist Take Toriyama. It took a while to piece together the seven movements of Shiv’a, and to find the right “language” for it (the movements vary from graphic scores to traditional scores, with improvisation sections). It’s a very special piece for me, as it’s my first long instrumental composition.

Being a vocalist, I’m used to working with text, and in this case the composition process was very different from anything I had done before. Since there were no words, the way in for me was visual. Each movement in the piece is like a sketch that draws an image with sounds and textures. The titles of the seven movements reflect on a quote from the book of Kings:

There was a great and mighty wind, splitting mountains and shattering rocks […] but The Great Spirit was not in the wind. After the wind - an earthquake. But The Great Spirit was not in the earthquake. After the earthquake – fire. But The Great Spirit was not in the fire. And after the fire- a voice of thin silence.

The movement titles also reflect the four elements of nature, being slightly jolted and out of place – Geshem (rain), Ra’ash (earthquake), and Esh (fire). Air is referenced through the use of a unique instrument that was made specially for Shiv’a by instalation artist Michelle Jaffe – the "Blanket with 49 Bells." My dream life is at least as “real” to me as my waking reality... When I started composing Shiv’a, I had an incredible, powerful dream of a blanket with bells on it, that was moved by the wind. Michelle took on the task of bringing this sound-sculpture into physical reality, and the BW49B is now an integral part of Shiv’a. The bells signify a soul that keeps ringing in the world after the body has passed...


Dufallo: Can you tell a little bit about your musical history?

Rose Gottlieb: From childhood through the end of high school I studied to be a classical flautist. When I was about 14 I started “flirting” with improvisation -- first as a flautist, then as a vocalist. Saxophonist Arnie Lawrence moved to Israel in the 90s, and performing with him solidified my direction into the realm of vocal jazz and improvised music... About a year before I started singing, I started having a reoccurring dream of swirling colors -- a large, intricate orchestral piece would be playing, causing the colors to move. Every time I awoke from that dream I experienced a great frustration about not having the skill to “transcribe” this sub-conscious composition... I decided to start writing music, in order to be able one day to write that piece that was asking to be born... Of course, once I started composing, the dream stopped. I’m still hopeful this piece will come to visit me again some day...


Dufallo: What are some exciting upcoming projects?

Rose Gottlieb: With Shiv’a –- I’m very much hoping it will now have life as a performed piece. I feel that the combination of ETHEL, Satoshi Takeishi, and Michelle’s gorgeous BW49B will be a real treat to see on stage. We’re starting this journey on the night between the 7th & 8th of January at Winter Jazz Fest (Zinc Bar, 12:15am). The album is in the mixing stages, and will be released towards the end of 2012/early 2013.

Aside from Shiv’a, I have a few exciting projects in the works... On March 28th, my composition for trombone and piano, Carry On-Check In, will be premiered at Carnegie Hall by pianist Vered Reznik and trombonist Haim Avitzur.

In Israel, I recently recorded Betzidei Drachim / On The Roadside -- a project that features my settings of Israeli and Palestinian poetry. The music is a cross-over of jazz, prog-rock and middle-eastern music... This project features my long standing collaborator, pianist Anat Fort, as well as Ihab Nimer on Oud and Violin, and several other leading Israeli musicians.

With Mycale – John Zorn’s acapella vocal quartet –- we’re touring the US and Europe, and working on new materials... We’re also gearing up to an exciting 2013 – Zorn’s 60th birthday year!

Outside of my musical life –- I recently shifted my base to London, where my husband works as an animator. I am grateful every day for the fact that music is my life and I have incredible people to share it with...


Ayelet, ETHEL, and Satoshi Takeishi rehearsing Shiv'a
Ayelet, ETHEL, and Satoshi Takeishi rehearsing Shiv'a

]]> General http://blog.corneliusdufallo.com/index.php?itemid=229 Thu, 22 Dec 2011 17:55:49 -0500 http://blog.corneliusdufallo.com/index.php?itemid=228 Missy Mazzoli
Missy Mazzoli

Life in ETHEL is frantic these days. In the midst of meetings, emails, conference calls, and intense rehearsals, I sometimes (sadly) lose touch with the sense of wonder that originally drew me to a life in contemporary music. Missy Mazzoli is one composer whose music always brings me back to a fundamental excitement about what I do. I have been working with Missy on her solo violin piece, Dissolve, O my Heart, which I will be performing at Bargemusic on October 5th (8PM) as part of my ongoing Journaling series.

Originally written for Jennifer Koh, the piece is essentially Missy's emotional reaction to J. S. Bach's D minor Chaconne (one of the great masterworks of the solo violin literature). She starts the piece with the same iconic d minor triad, in which the listener immediately "acknowledges the inevitable failure of the assignment." Missy seems to refer to the impossibility of approaching the structural perfection of that piece, and how, from her perspective, the only way to create her own piece was to embrace it as a "failed Chaconne." It's a gorgeous failure, if you ask me. The version that I will be performing in October includes live electronics (three different kinds of digital delay), which Missy and I have been developing together.

One of Missy's massive new projects is to create three operas, each one about "a fascinating female character from the 20th or 21st century." Part one of this trilogy, Song From The Uproar: The Lives and Deaths of Isabelle Eberhardt, is sure to be spellbinding. The libretto, co-written by Royce Vavrek and Missy, is based on the journals of Isabelle Eberhardt, and depicts more than a dozen scenes from Eberhardt's life. The opera begins at the moment of Eberhardt's death, and continues as a series of flashbacks. Eberhardt, who was a Swiss

Abigail Fischer
Abigail Fischer in "Songs from the Uproar: The Lives and Deaths of Isabelle Eberhardt" (photo by Lindsay Beyerstein)

writer and explorer of the early 20th century, has been alternately idolized and shunned as a symbol of female liberation. Missy points to Eberhardt's relentless search for personal freedom and independence, her complicated love life, and her gender ambiguity (as a cross-dressing female artist) as themes that continue to be relevant to women today. Another interesting through-line of the opera is how Eberhardt navigates the conflict between Eastern and Western cultures. Eberhardt moved to North Africa and converted to Islam when she was a young woman. "She fought in street battles in Algiers against the French," Missy explains, "but she was also working for the French as a journalist, so she was caught between these two worlds."

The opera, directed by Gia Forakis, has already been workshopped at Galapagos in Brooklyn, New York City Opera's VOX, and Bard College, and will be premiered at The Kitchen on February 24, 25, and March 1-3. Performers include singer Abigail Fischer and NOW ensemble; with films by Stephen Taylor.

Missy has some other exciting projects coming up, including two new pieces - one for the Albany Symphony, and one for cellist Maya Beiser. Her all-star band Victoire (Olivia De Prato, violin; Eileen Mack, clarinet; Lorna Krier, keayboards; Elenore Oppenheim, bass; and Missy on keyboards), whose CD Cathedral City was one of NPR's top ten classical albums of 2010, will be performing at the Bell House in Gowanus on October 17. Not to be missed!]]> General http://blog.corneliusdufallo.com/index.php?itemid=228 Tue, 27 Sep 2011 23:34:52 -0400 http://blog.corneliusdufallo.com/index.php?itemid=227
Hafez Modirzadeh

ETHEL performs music of Hafez Modirzadeh
By Cornelius Dufallo

Hafez Modirzadeh, a visionary saxophonist, theorist and composer, has been developing his own style of inter-cultural improvisation for three decades. His mentors and collaborators have included Ornette Coleman, some of the founding members of the Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians, and the great Iranian violinist, Mahmoud Zoufonoun. ETHEL first encountered Modirzadeh in 2007, and the two parties felt an immediate artistic sympathy.

Since that time, Modirzadeh has created a body of work for saxophone, flutes, karna, string quartet, trumpet, santur, tombak, daf, and voice. On July 23, 2011 nine musicians came together to perform this music at the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts in San Francisco, CA. The lineup included ETHEL, Mili Bermejo (Mexican Argentinian jazz vocalist), Amir ElSaffar (Iraqi – American trumpeter), Faraz Minooei (Iranian santur player), Amir Abbas Etemadzadeh (Iranian percussionist), and the composer himself on saxophone and Karna. The unforgettable event, which Modirzadeh entitled In Convergence Liberation, was met with enthusiasm from a large audience, and all nine artists spent the following two days together at Open Path Studios in San Jose, recording the music for a forthcoming CD.

Matching-spirit
Dufallo, Modirzadeh, and ElSaffar practice "matching-spirit"

Modirzadeh’s work combines fascinating musical and philosophical concepts. “Composting” (a specific type of improvisational dialogue based on pre-existing written material), “matching–spirit” (a process of group improvisation using shared interval structures), “intoning” (a technique of improvising within a unison, playing with the higher partials of the overtone series), “tetramodes” (a carefully calibrated microtonal system based on a synthesis of ancient and modern approaches to intervallic relationships), and “Makam X” (an overarching and inter-cultural musical system of various partials of the harmonic series) were some of the techniques that the nine musicians shared and practiced together. Rhythmic meters of 17/4 (5+5+7) --inspired by Persian poetry -- were the foundation for improvisations that defied cultural boundaries. Persian modal systems, Iraqi maqam, Andalusian musical traditions, aspects of Indonesian gamelan, and references to western classical composers from the past three centuries were all called upon in this collaboration.

Tetramode
Tetramode Unfolding

In 2009 Modirzadeh described his musical aesthetic this way: “It begins with a few ideas sounded together, each one in an incomplete fashion, as if light were peering through traditions’ tattered curtains.” More recently he has started to speak of a “Convergence Liberation Principle,” which is directly inspired by the gathering at Tahrir Square, which he considers “the most concrete and brilliant example” of Convergence Liberation. Musically speaking, the concept is connected to a dual approach of honing individual style, while also transcending all cultural distinctions. The strategies that we used to translate these concepts into sound were mostly intuitive. We each drew from our own years of discipline in our respective traditions, but we also abandoned that discipline to make ourselves totally vulnerable. The process was mysterious, but we could all clearly feel a deep connection to our nature as social animals. For a few days we rejected the concepts of right and wrong; instead, we created a group dynamic based entirely on trust.

Convergence Liberation
Members of the Convergence Liberation Band
(From left: Cornelius Dufallo, Amir Abbas Etemadzadeh, Mary Rowell, Dorothy Lawson, Ralph Farris, Amir ElSaffar, Hafez Modirzadeh)



]]> General http://blog.corneliusdufallo.com/index.php?itemid=227 Mon, 1 Aug 2011 23:42:53 -0400 http://blog.corneliusdufallo.com/index.php?itemid=226 Judd Greenstein
Photo: Steve Taylor

Also published on ETHEL's Blog

On May 23 ETHEL will be premiering quartets by this year's HomeBaked composers (Anna Clyne, Matt Marks, Andy Akiho, and Judd Greenstein). Merkin Hall, 8PM as part of the 2011 Tribeca New Music Festival.

HomeBaked is a new project for ETHEL, in which we support the work of innovative, emerging composers who are based in our hometown of New York City. ETHEL’s HomeBaked commissions are funded in part by the Jerome and Greenwall Foundations. Click here to read a recent interview with Matt Marks.

Also on the program will be works by Corey Dargel, Randal Woolf, and Rick Baitz.

Judd Greenstein was kind enough to answer a few questions last week:


Dufallo: What are some of your influences (musical or non-musical)?

Greenstein: I really believe that artists need to be open to the possibility of everything they've ever encountered making its way into their work. So I don't claim to know what all my influences are, even if I can name the composers and musicians and other artists to whom I return most frequently. My "big three" in the classical world are Johann Sebastian Bach, Frederic Chopin, and Maurice Ravel; their approaches to voice-leading and harmonic motion serve as models for my own. Other musicians who are hugely influential are Philip Glass, Nina Simone, The Beatles, John Coltrane, Neil Young, DJ Premier, and Fela Kuti, as well as many of my friends and colleagues in our present time. Terrence Malick and David Lynch are are the two non-musical artists whose work has certainly influenced my music. But I'm less interested in the artists who I find personally important than in the many fragments of sound that have worked their way into my compositions. There are string quartets and pop songs that I've hated but which have had one moment that, knowingly or unknowingly, got past the defenses and wind up recontextualizing that work as an "influence"!


Dufallo: This question may seem overly simplistic, but why do you compose?

Greenstein: Music has always been a necessary part of my life, for as long as I remember, and at some point, I became addicted to my own music — to the works that I made that satisfied my own needs as a listener, and which weren't being addressed by existing work. That sounds onanistic, and it is, but fortunately, it seems like there are other people who have an emotional use for what I create, as well. So that takes it out of the realm of pure onanism and into the broader realm of contributing something useful to society. There's no objective measure of when or how that happens; being an artist is, in part, about finding the confidence to take the leap of faith that your work does have that relevance. I could have done a lot of things in the world that are objectively useful, but I came to the conclusion that the most powerful thing I could contribute in the world is to make great art. There's no way of knowing whether that's the correct decision; I'll never know. But I wouldn't have known the other way, either.


Dufallo: ETHEL is thrilled to be premiering your piece, Octet 1979. Can you describe the piece and your inspiration for composing it?

Greenstein: I've been collecting synthesizers from the 1970s and 1980s for the past few years. One of my interests is to bring these great instruments into conversation with other kinds of instruments, and this commission offered an opportunity to pair four of these synthesizers with four strings — thus, an "Octet". This is not an exploration of the sounds that these synthesizers can make, though I have created many new sounds for this piece. Rather, it's about "the notes" as well as the ways in which these two quartets speak to each other. ETHEL is the perfect group for this project, as it asks the string quartet to be a part of a broader conversation with what are conventionally "pop" sounds, while being incredibly virtuosic, technically proficient, and highly musical interpreters of a complex notated score. When ETHEL asked me for a quartet, it seemed obvious to bring them into the weird world of my "1979" series, and here we are.


Dufallo: What are some exciting upcoming projects?

Greenstein: My next project is a 30-minute orchestral work for the Minnesota Orchestra, which is premiering in March, 2012. I'm also finishing my evening-length work about King Solomon, "Sh'lomo", for my new synthesizer/guitar/bass/voices/percussion ensemble, The Yehudim.


Dufallo: Do you have any advice for composers who are just starting out?

Greenstein: Don't close yourself off to any of your influences. Study scores and refine your technique — strong commands of counterpoint, voice-leading, form, and harmony are the bedrock of all good composition. Put yourself in a position to work closely with excellent performers who respect and understand your voice and your music. Start your own ensemble.

]]> General http://blog.corneliusdufallo.com/index.php?itemid=226 Wed, 18 May 2011 19:08:51 -0400 http://blog.corneliusdufallo.com/index.php?itemid=225 Okkyung Lee
Photo by Eckhart Derschmidt

Issue Project Room's current Artist-In-Residence, Okkyung Lee, is a fascinating and original cellist, improvisor, and composer. She has an awesome new CD, noisy love songs, that is now available for purchase at amazon and also at cduniverse.

Okkyung generously answered a few questions via email:


Dufallo: Okkyung - you have an interesting musical history - can you describe it?

Lee: well, i began like many other kids in korea by starting piano when i was 4... then when i began going to a catholic elementary school where all the kids had to play an instrument, my mom chose cello for me... then i studied classical cello for next 12 years... however i never liked playing the cello mostly because i had a horrible teacher whose idea of good student was someone who can copy exactly the way he played... meanwhile i got into listening to non-classical music ranging from korean pop songs, american main stream pop music then smooth jazz without knowing what it really was... then finally i was able to "stop" playing classical music when i decided to go to berklee college of music to learn something different after not getting into this university in korea... i went there without knowing a thing about jazz but was ready to learn... i even tried to play jazz on cello but never really got into it... then i decided to study film scoring since i love watching movies... then later i started improvising again without knowing anything about it... i was lucky enough to get in at new england conservatory of music to do master's in contemporary improvisation... however the real turning point was after moving to new york out of boredom... i finally was able to say playing cello is something i would do until the day i die... i still feel like i don't know so much about music except that's what i do...

Dufallo: What was the major inspiration for your CD, noisy love songs?

Lee: usually i never know what my inspiration is until i finish writing the music... usually i just respond to what i'm hearing in my brain and follow it carefully or sometimes without questioning it too much... although i have this general "pool" of emotions that i'm personally aware of while writing but cannot really describe it in words... then i think something clicked while i was staring at this portrait of george dyer by francis bacon at tate modern last spring... it felt like my entire body and nerves were responding to all these raw emotions brought out within the painting... couldn't stop staring it at for more than 15 minutes... i really felt all those emotions i couldn't describe in words through this portrait... also the fact all that vivid and powerful emotions were displayed out in the open in a crowed gallery with hundreds of people walking by yet most of people wouldn't look at it for more than 5 seconds made me quiver...

Dufallo: What are some exciting upcoming projects?

Lee: i'm doing a few things this year that i'm very excited about... i'm an artist in residence at issue project room this year and doing 3 new projects... first i'm doing a concert with guitarist liberty ellman, bassist skuli sverrisson and drummer tom rainey at the end of april... the music i'm writing for is more structured and even elements of rock... then thinking about doing a project with a dancer and a string quartet... also eventually want to do a string ensemble, percussion with a singer before the end of this year... we shall see...

Dufallo: Do you have any advice for musicians who are just starting out on their professional career?

Lee: it really makes the whole thing easier if you get into it because you are passionate about it... otherwise you won't have any fun...!
]]> General http://blog.corneliusdufallo.com/index.php?itemid=225 Sat, 30 Apr 2011 19:31:36 -0400 http://blog.corneliusdufallo.com/index.php?itemid=224 Armando Bayolo

I had the pleasure of meeting Armando Bayolo last season at SUNY Fredonia, while we were both on a panel discussion that Rob Deemer had organized for his students. I was struck by his music, in particular a string octet that he wrote entitled Ludi.

In addition to teaching at Peabody Conservatory and running the Great Noise Ensemble, Armando is a prolific and imaginative composer. I am very pleased to be premiering Tusch, a piece for violin and digital effects/loops, on March 27, 3PM, at the Flea Theater. The concert will be part of Kathy Supove's Music With A View series.

Dufallo: Can you discuss some of your musical influences?

Bayolo: My musical influences are very varied. My first love was Beethoven, with whom I've had a love-hate relationship over the years, but his music really opened my ears up to "classical" music. When I seriously started working towards being a composer, though, I gravitated towards a lot of post-modern composers and, eventually, minimalist and post-minimalists. The biggest single influence is probably Louis Andriessen, though, whose music was a revelation to me as a graduate student. Then there are composers like John Adams and Morton Feldman and Olivier Messiaen and Igor Stravinsky, all of whom have exherted a strong influence on my music over the years. I also have to admit that there is a great deal of Romantic and Neo-Romantic influence in me (Christopher Rouse was an early and very formative teacher of mine, and his music has meant a lot to me as well, so he's in there somewhere), although I tend to fight it quite a bit.

Dufallo: Please tell us a bit about your piece for violin and electronics.

Bayolo: The piece is called Tusch, which is the old German word for "toccata." The inspiration, frankly, came from hearing you play last year when we were both guests of the composition department at SUNY Fredonia. I thought the things you were able to do with violin and live electronics were unbelievable and I really wanted to try something out for you and your gear. The thing is, I hadn't worked with electronics since the late 1990s and had really no gear of my own to work with, so the piece was largely written conceptually on Finale. I was thinking of pieces like Reich's Violin Phase and what that looks like in notation as a way to work out what I wanted from the loopers and the delay. Of course, it helped to be able to just email you pdf files of the pages as they were written and getting a sense of what is and isn't possible in my conception (I'm sure that new issues will come up at the performance on the 27th and that I'll have to return to Tusch before too long).

The inspiration for the piece itself was actually one of Bach's toccatas for organ (BWV 540), which I discovered while reading through Richard Taruskin's massive Oxford History of Western Music, which I've been reading over the last year. The opening of that toccata has a running stream of sixteenth notes over a pedal point that lasts about three minutes and is the most incredible sonority I've encountered in a while. So I thought about replicating something similar for violin and electronics, where the violinist sets up a series of moto perpetuo runs that become a contrapuntal accompaniment to his live playing, which, in turn, changes in mood and, thus, the nature of the piece as it goes along.

Dufallo: How and why did you start Great Noise Ensemble?

Bayolo: Great Noise Ensemble came about in 2005 after I placed an ad on Craig's List. I had always wanted to start a new music ensemble, not only to perform my own music but also to help bring to life music by friends and fellow composers whose music might otherwise not be heard and to be an advocate for new music "classics" that I loved and were formative to me. I had tried this out at the University of Michigan as a student and had expected to do this whenever I landed at a university through their department. As the years went by and the tenure track job failed to become a reality, however, I decided to put my money where my mouth is, as it were, and create my own opportunity. At first, my wife and I, with a friend of hers who had experience in arts administration, tried to start a chamber orchestra, but we went around it all wrong, I thought, trying to set up the business side of things first before a note was sounded. Besides, the D.C. area has a lot of little orchestras around and I wanted our group to stand out somehow. So after that effort failed, I decided to see what would happen if I wrote an ad on Craig's List. Maybe I'd meet some other enthusiastic people and we'd give a couple of concerts. I ended up meeting a number of incredible professional musicians who were either just starting out gigging in the area or were finishing degrees at the University of Maryland and other area schools and have become a very important ensemble in the region. The idea was (and, to an extent, still is) to do this as a garage band. We would get together and rehearse then find some gigs, which we were lucky enough to get right away and put together a little season in early 2006. From then on, we've just gotten to play some amazing performances and work with some amazing people, and it looks like next year will bring some more amazing opportunities for the group.

Dufallo: What are some exciting upcoming projects?

Bayolo: Well, on the Great Noise side of things, we'll be coming to New York for the first time next season when we play at the Cutting Edge Festival in Symphony Space next spring. We'll also be returning to the Mansion at Strathmore this fall to present a program of music by young American composers representing the major trends around the last 15 years or so. We're also moving along on a CD project, which has been a laborious process, but one that will be incredible when we complete it later this year (and folks can help by contributing to our Kickstarter campaign), and there are a number of other projects on the horizon that I'm not quite ready to announce yet, but which promise to be really exciting.

On the compositional side, I've had a number of really great performances this year. Next year is going to slow down a little bit, but that's okay as I have a number of really big pieces to write in the next few months. I just finished a set of songs for clarinet, baritone and piano for clarinetist Marguerite Levin which will be premiered in Baltimore in September, and I'll be starting a big symphony for wind ensemble for the University of Oregon Wind Ensemble and a number of other groups in the coming weeks. After that I will be writing an orchestra piece for the Puerto Rico Symphony Orchestra and the Pablo Casals Festival which will be premiered in February followed by pieces for solo electric guitar for D.J. Sparr and for solo organ for David Troiano.

Dufallo: Do you have any advice for young composers?

Bayolo: Be strong, don't give up and if you don't find opportunities, MAKE THEM.
]]> General http://blog.corneliusdufallo.com/index.php?itemid=224 Fri, 18 Mar 2011 20:43:58 -0400 http://blog.corneliusdufallo.com/index.php?itemid=223 Matt Marks
Photo by Timothy Sekk

This season ETHEL is thrilled to be launching a new and ongoing project called HomeBaked in which we support the work of innovative, emerging composers who are based in our hometown of New York City. In 2011 we'll be commissioning and premiering four new works by Matt Marks, Judd Greenstein, Andy Akiho, and Anna Clyne as part of this initiative. The premieres will take place on May 23, 2011, during the Tribeca New Music Festival at Merkin Concert Hall. ETHEL’s HomeBaked commissions are funded in part by the Jerome and Greenwall Foundations.

In this interview HomeBaker Matt Marks discusses his approach to music and his new ETHEL piece:

Dufallo: Can you describe some of your musical influences?

Marks: I suppose there are two types of musical influences on the music I write. The first would be the various kinds of music which I've consciously learned to emulate and the techniques of which I directly employ in my pieces, such as hip hop, drum 'n' bass, and 70s power ballads. The first music I ever created was noisy hip hop on my sampler and the music I write for humans has gradually grown from that origin.

The other type consists of the unconscious influences, which I try and encourage indirectly. For about a decade I was obsessed with finding and listening to as many types of music as possible. At first I consciously attempted to write music in these various specific styles - everything ranging from house music to Nepalese folk song - but I would always fail. Eventually I learned to let these influences creep into my music, almost without my knowledge, with absolutely no claim to authenticity.

Dufallo: Your work has been described as "brilliantly simultaneously creepy and funny." Can you tell us a little about your distinct approach to humor in music?

Marks: I'm fascinated with the subversion of irony. Coming from the world of hip hop and genre electronica, one of the main devices used is the remix, which often places a well-known extended sample in a completely different context. Quite often this displacement is done humorously or ironically, such as remixing the Tetris theme to a hard house beat, but sometimes the recontextualization makes for conflicting moods and emotions that can be unsettling, frightening, or unexpectedly beautiful. If you're lucky it can be all of these things. In my more theatrical works, I often pair-up (or mash-up) seemingly conflicting genres such as horror and romance, or sex and christian pop. Audiences tend to expect basic irony when faced with these juxtapositions, but I like to use this expectation against them.

Dufallo: Please tell us a little about the piece you are writing for ETHEL.

Marks: My, as yet unnamed, piece for ETHEL is an extension of a series of solo pieces I've been writing for a few years. I've been creating solo works for specific instrumentalists based on music they are ashamed or embarrassed to admit they love. These "Shame Remixes" have been based on the music of Madonna, Sade, Taylor Swift, and various Disney songs. For ETHEL, I thought I'd continue this project, but on a larger scale. I contacted everyone from ETHEL and asked them about their own shameful choices and they gave me a treasure trove to work from. I'm creating a large piece for string quartet and electronic track that involves all four of these choices. I'm tempted to give away what the choices are, but I'll hold off until the piece is performed.

Dufallo: Any other exciting projects that you'd like to mention?

Marks: As I mentioned above, I've been writing a lot of theatrical works recently, mainly with vocals. My post-Christian nihilist pop-opera, The Little Death: Vol. 1, was released on New Amsterdam Records in the last year and had a successful run in NYC this summer. I am also completing a song cycle for baritone and chamber ensemble called The Adventures of Albert Fish, which is a sort of pop song cycle about the notorious serial killer from the 1920s. I'm also in the planning stage of a new theatrical work for Alarm Will Sound.

Dufallo: Do you have any advice for composers who are just starting out?

Marks: I have two main points of advice for young composers:

1. If you can't find people to play your stuff, play it yourself.

2. Don't define your music by what it isn't.
]]> General http://blog.corneliusdufallo.com/index.php?itemid=223 Wed, 2 Feb 2011 15:41:38 -0500 http://blog.corneliusdufallo.com/index.php?itemid=221 ETHEL's Blog

A few pics from ETHEL's performance at Gild Hall in Arden, DE (1/1511).

Arden dinner

Dinner before the show.

Windex Cello

Yes, it's true: Dorothy uses Windex to clean her instrument.

Arden Live

This picture was taken by Joe del Tufo. Many thanks to the Arden Concert Gild - we had a blast! Arden is a beautiful community.]]> General http://blog.corneliusdufallo.com/index.php?itemid=221 Sun, 16 Jan 2011 11:27:57 -0500 http://blog.corneliusdufallo.com/index.php?itemid=220
January 15 - Arden, DE

January 17 - New York, NY Ne(x)tworks @ Ecstatic Music Festival

January 21 - Albany, NY Music from Dream Streets performed live with Ellen Sinopoli Dance Company

January 27 - Hazard, KY ETHEL

January 29 - Hillsdale, MI ETHEL

February 3 - Denver, CO ETHEL

February 4 - Loveland, CO ETHEL

Please take a moment to check out my new mobile website, courtesy of When I'm Mobile! If you have a QR scanning app on your smartphone (if you do not, I recommend i-nigma 4) you can just scan my QR code (below) and you will be taken directly to my mobile site, where you can then have my music delivered directly to your phone.

QR code
]]> General http://blog.corneliusdufallo.com/index.php?itemid=220 Wed, 12 Jan 2011 11:11:33 -0500