by Daniel Hathaway
Having birthed such first-rate new music ensembles as eighth blackbird and ICE (International Contemporary Ensemble), the Oberlin Contemporary Music Ensemble has been long overdue for it own regular presence in Cleveland. [Read more…]
by Daniel Hathaway
Two sound extravaganzas by environmental composer and Pulitzer prizewinner John Luther Adams will launch the 2014-2015 Performing Arts Series of the Cleveland Museum of Art — though not at the museum.
Veils and Vesper, a cycle of electronic works composed in 2005, will begin a two-month run on Saturday, September 20 at the newly restored Historic St. John’s Episcopal Church in Ohio City. A slow-moving, “immersive sound installation,” Veils and Vesper lasts six hours and allows the listener to “create her own mix by moving through the space”. Visiting hours through December 1 are Wednesdays through Saturdays from Noon to 5:00 pm and Thursdays from Noon to 8:00 pm. Admission is free
Adam’s second contribution to the series is Inuksuit, a 2009 daylong site-specific work devised for nine to 99 percussionists to be dispersed over a wide outdoor area, in this case Lakeview Cemetery, and inspired by “the Stonehenge-like markers used by the Inuit and other native peoples to orient themselves in Arctic spaces.” The free performance begins at 2:00 pm on Sunday, September 21. [Read more…]
by Mike Telin
Founded at Oberlin, the contemporary music sextet eighth blackbird had a triumphant homecoming on Friday, October 4 in Warner Concert Hall, when the three-time Grammy-winning ensemble joined with the Oberlin Conservatory’s Contemporary Music Ensemble (CME) in a brilliant concert for a large and enthusiastic crowd. Throughout the evening, eighth blackbird confirmed its reputation as one of the world’s preeminent chamber music ensembles. And from all appearances, the future of new music is in good hands with the members of CME.
Premieres by Oberlin faculty members Tom Lopez and Peter Swendsen bookended the concert. Each work is scored for two identical groups of instruments — flute, clarinet, violin, cello, piano and percussion plus electronics. Both were given inspired performances by eighth blackbird and CME.
Lopez’s Skipping Stones (2013) is an evocative work reminiscent of tossing rocks into the water while floating down a placid river — an effect achieved through the tossing of musical motives from one group of six to the other. [Read more…]
by Mike Telin
Deemed by the New York Times as “a hotbed of contemporary-classical players” and a “rural experimental haven,” the Oberlin Conservatory of Music has a history of cultivating innovation and entrepreneurship in its students. “Oberlin gives students the opportunity to experiment,” says Tim Weiss, director of Oberlin’s Contemporary Music Ensemble. “Undergraduates don’t really think about the limited number of ways one has to enter the music industry, they are only thinking about music as an art form. It’s very pure and they have no fears about entering the industry so I think that students are better equipped to be entrepreneurs because of their involvement in experimentation.”
On Friday, October 4 at 8:00 pm in Warner Concert Hall, Tim Weiss will lead the Contemporary Music Ensemble (CME) in a concert featuring guest artists and three-time Grammy-winning eighth blackbird, a group originally formed at Oberlin. The program includes music by composer-in-residence Benjamin Broening, Kaija Saariaho, Lisa Kaplan, Derek Bermel, and David Lang. The concert also features the premieres of pieces by Oberlin Technology in Music and Related Arts (T.I.M.A.R.A.) professors Tom Lopez and Peter Swendsen
Weiss, who reluctantly takes credit for forming eighth blackbird, says that he first put them together as a chamber group. [Read more…]
by Mike Telin
The Italian experimentalist
Luciano Berio is arguably one of the most influential composers of the mid- to late twentieth and twenty-first centuries. His group of Sequenzes is a series of thirteen compositions for unaccompanied instruments, including voice, each of which explore and expand on each instruments technical possibilities. On occasion the composer expanded some of the Sequenzes through the addition of instrumental layers. Berio’s Corale (su “Sequenza VIII”) featuring the outstanding violinist and Oberlin faculty member, David Bowlin, served as the centerpiece for the Oberlin Contemporary Music Ensemble concert on Friday, December 7 in Warner Concert Hall.
Although Berio never composed a violin concerto, Corale (1981), is a more than suitable contribution to the canon by the composer. Scored for string orchestra and horns, Berio leaves his haunting Sequenza VIII intact and creates dialogues from within the orchestra that inventively support the solo line melodically, harmonically and rhythmically. Throughout the performance it was clear that David Bowlin has lived with this work for some time. Performing from memory, he made the many complicated technical passages, numerous double stops, and extended soft staccato lines sound effortless. [Read more…]