Neighborhood Concerts

On Sunday I saw a great violin and piano recital at the Brooklyn Library presented as a part of Carnegie Hall's "Neighborhood Concerts" series. Jennifer Kho and Reiko Uchida played a program of American composers, all but one of them still living. It was my first encounter with Jennifer Higdon's music, they opened with her piece "String Poetic". It was very exciting rhythmically, and there was a passage where the pianist mutes the strings with her hand while the violin plays pizzicato (plucked strings), making a surprisingly similar timbre.
The non-living composer in question was Lou Harrison. I love a lot of Harrison's work (see this post on performing his "Varied Trio"), but I admit that I only liked parts of this piece, called "Grand Duo". One of the highlights was the pianist's use of an "octave bar" used to play smashing clusters of all the notes within an octave simultaneously. This was used to great effect in the "Polka" movement that concluded the piece. There was a very ominous atonal slow movement , which is a side of Harrison's music I haven't heard much of, but he did study with Schoenberg.
There's a few more of these concerts left, go see them!

Lou Harrison's "Varied Trio" at Midwood House Concert Series

Several years ago I made a pilgrimage to Bard college to hear Morton Feldman's "Rothko Chapel", a piece that I was really into at the time and was excited to hear live, as it is rarely performed. The concert was part of a festival of music by composers associated with the New Albion record label, which features "New Music from the 14th Century to the End Of Time."
A lot of the music on their catalog is devoted to contemporary music, much of it very meditative and beautiful. They champion a lot of west coast composers like Ingram Marshall, John Luther Adams, and Lou Harrison. It was on this program at Bard that I first heard Harrison's "Varied Trio", a short piece in 5 movements for Piano, Percussion and violin. I was really taken by the music, and when I heard the piece again in New York a few months later I resolved to get the score.
I was lucky enough to have two great musician friends who were up for working on the piece with me. Martin Urbach and Erika Kapin. After rehearsing on and off for many months we performed the piece in the intimate setting of a house concert series hosted by Mariel Berger and Dustin Carlson.
Here's the first movement of the piece, "Gending".



Mariel played later that evening in a trio with Dustin Carlson and Shannon Barnett. I think this is a song by Brad Shepik.

The Two of Anything Band at Barbes

At the end of March I played a set of new music at one of my favorite Brooklyn music haunts, Barbes in Park Slope. The show was part of the Palimpsestic Music series curated by saxophonist Oscar Noriega. I played with a new quartet called The Two of Anything Band with Jeremy Viner on saxophone and clarinet, Eivind Opsvik on bass and Flin Van Hemmen on drums.
I started writing music for the show when I got back from Bolivia in the beginning of March. The material came from recording myself improvising on wurlitzer electric piano and synthesizer, and transcribing parts that I liked. As I was listening back, I found myself more aware than usual of the connections to my various musical influences coming through the music. I decided to embrace this, and as I was developing the material into compositions, I gave each piece two dedications.

Here are a few tunes recorded live at Barbes:

"Research and Development" is dedicated to composer Lou Harrison and my teacher Paul Caputo. There's a part in the piece (not included in the recording) where I play a long line on both keyboards and it has a strange resonance that reminds me of Lou Harrison's gamelan-influenced music, and his keyboard music with different tunings. I developed the lines into a 3-part counterpoint section at the end, and I always think about my lessons with Paul when writing contrapuntal music.





Research and Development by JPSchlegelmilch


"Plant" is dedicated to Jim Black and Werner Herzog.


Plant by JPSchlegelmilch



"Slow Century" is dedicated to Phil Elverum from the bands The Microphones and Mount Eerie, and also to composer Carla Bley.


Slow Century by JPSchlegelmilch