Sunday, March 28, 2010

Coming Up: Fun Stuff

So I managed to miss both the Sanford Dole Ensemble's program of recent settings of "Seven Last Words," and the Switchboard Music Festival this weekend. There's plenty of good stuff coming up, and Patrick lays some of it out for you. (He and I were not, by the way, in NYC at the same time, but we independently photographed a number of the same things, hence the photographic commentary on each other's blog postings.)

Here are a couple of additions.


Alex Ross, blogger, New Yorker notational music critic, and prize-winning author, comes to Herbst on a tour with pianist Ethan Iverson of The Bad Plus. Together, they'll perform The Rest is Noise. This I have to see! 10 a.m., Saturday, April 24. $36 and $24.


This month, LA Opera presents Goetterdaemmerung and Franz Schreker's Die Gezeichneten. Click the link above for dates, times, and prices for both. Hint: the weekend of April 23 to 25, you can see the Schreker Saturday night and the Wagner Sunday afternoon. I may be off to the airport immediately following Alex's event.



7 comments:

Anonymous said...

"After each selection, Iverson performs a piano interlude related to the reading, presenting a dynamic cultural and musical tour."

What, I wonder, does that mean? Will Iverson be performing selections by the composers Ross is reading about, or giving his own musical impressions of the descriptions?

Lisa Hirsch said...

I'll ask and report back.

Lisa Hirsch said...

I don't need to ask. The press release has the story:

Asked to describe “The Rest is Noise: In Performance,” Ross says: “You’ll hear classics of early modern music: Schoenberg, Stravinsky, Bartók, Ives, Webern. You’ll also hear snippets of jazz and pop—Gershwin, Jelly Roll, Charlie Parker. You’ll hear deeply grim tonal music by Shostakovich and antic 12-tone music by Milton Babbitt. Between the selections, I’ll read passages from the book, giving a bit of background and a bit of atmosphere. … In a short span of time, you’ll get a sense of the dazzling richness of 20th-century composition.”

Anonymous said...

Cool. Thanks.

Henry Holland said...

Damn, when he was here doing the TRIN tour, it was without piano. Pretty much the first selection of music was the opening of Schoenberg's wonderful Five Orchestral Pieces, it was great to hear what a powerful punch that music has in a large auditorium with a great sound system.

You have to come down for the Die Gezeichneten, you just have to. :-) I again wonder at who the genius that did the scheduling for LAO is though. Like last season, nothing for months, then a Recovered Voices opera alternates with a Ring opera. They have to accommodate the RV opera production to the Ring stage and then this year, you have a long opera by Schreker (2:45 if done complete like I think Mr. Conlon will) alternating the day before/after with the 4:30 of Wagner. Crazy.

Lisa Hirsch said...

4:30? That's without intermissions, I presume. :)

I kinda feel for Conlon, and also for my butt. That's a LOT of conducting for one weekend.

Henry Holland said...

4:30? That's without intermissions, I presume. :)

Well, for me, Gotterdammerung feels like it lasts 430 hours. By the 2 millionth time* somebody tells us of how Siegfried slew the dragon and won Brunnhilde, I'm ready to scream. I actually cheer when Hagen stabs him because Siegfried is starting in on *another* damn time of Siegfried Storytelling Time.

* possible exaggeration