TIGUE killed it at the JACK space where they premiered my new percussion trio An Index of Possibility. Check it out.
|
|
||
L'argent ces casino en ligne jeux de bonus de l'argent sans depot.Of the maximum australian online casinos limit redeeming is.
Very excited to announce that Sleeping Giant will be in residence with the Albany Symphony as part of New Music USA and the League of American Orchestra’s Music Alive Residency program. Over two seasons we will write new works, experiment with programming, and develop outreach ideas. Stay tuned!
I recently got back from Chicago where I collaborated with Ensemble Dal Niente, Quince, and High Concept Laboratories to workshop my opera/oratorio/cantata/whatever in progress, My Heart Iz Open. Working with lighting, projections, and staging on top of all the music stuff was really really fun. It kind of brought me back to my high school theater days and reminded me just how awesome it can be to put together a show. My Heart Iz Open is far from done, but check out the piece page for video and audio from the Chicago performance. A blogger had some nice words to say about the production too. Excited to be a composition fellow at Tanglewood this summer. A bunch of my tunes will be played throughout by other fellows and I’ll get to soak in all the blissful music making they say is in the air. Looking forward to it. Hit me up if you’re in the Berkshires! I’m happy to report my piece Beginnings was the winner of the Lake George Music Festival’s annual composition contest. I’ll be up at the festival for a few days and the piece will be performed on August 20 in Lake George. Check out their website. They’ve got an incredible roster of musicians and guests. Come say hi if you’re in the area! Double Bass Quartet – 8 minutes
There has been so much talk about the internet and social media being both the great connector and the great divider of people. The feeling is that these conduits of information and connectors of people bring with them a kind of odd alienation and disconnect, that we are simultaneous with people and without people. I had been thinking about these things and the image that stuck with me was the physical reality of how we spend so much of our internet time: alone, by ourselves, tucked away in our apartments and homes. My music comes from that place, the quiet times when we commune with our screens and our networks. Full disclosure, the title Alone Together admittedly takes its cue from the Sherry Turkle book of the same name and not the legendary Arthur Schwarz and Howard Dietz song. Alone Together was commissioned by the Heavy Hands Bass Quartet. This recording was made by Lisa Dowling. All tracks and vocals recorded by Lisa. Alone TogetherTo purchase a score and part set please click here premiered 5.10.12 at the Gershwin Hotel by the Heavy Hands Bass Quartet Orchestra (2222.2210.timp.strings) – 20 minutes
Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream has been set to music many times. Composers, including Purcell, Mendelssohn and Britten, have thoroughly explored the rich dramatic and symbolic world of Shakespeare’s play. My interludes make no attempt at retelling the play’s action but instead comment on background elements: thematic ideas that lurk beneath the surface but are not themselves characters in the conventional sense. My choosen subjects – the forest, the night, the moon, and the magic flower – play a silent but crucial role throughout the play: the night and forest providing a time and place for the main action, the moon silently watching over, and the flower acting as the primary agent of change, mischief and transformation. The interludes are specifically meant to accompany Mendelssohn’s incidental music. Inserted into the Mendelssohn, the interludes comment on both Shakespeare’s world and Mendelssohn’s music. Drawing from a broad palette of extended techniques and conventional orchestral writing, my interludes mingle original material with transformed fragments from the Mendelssohn, injecting these disparate shards into evocative textures of unusual sounds and noises. The work has yet to be recorded, but you can listen to demos of each movement. For the first movement, The Forest, I borrowed a small fragment of accompanimental figuration from the Overture. The figure appears throughout The Forest as a kind of distorted echo of the original. Four Midwinter Interludes - The ForestFor the second movement, The Moon, I time stretched the first 12 bars of the Scherzo. The sound file is played back on a portable mp3 player (iphone or ipod, for example) by every member of the orchestra. The effect is a massive surround sound haze of slowly changing harmony, the original scherzo barely recognizable. Four Midwinter Interludes - The MoonAs the demo suggests, The Flower, jump cuts between various movements of the Mendelssohn. I recreated the effect for this demo by using an actual recording of the work. Four Midwinter Interludes - The FlowerThe Night borrows a melancholy flute tune found in one of Mendelssohn’s melodramas, the music that accompanies stage action, and takes it in a different direction. Four Midwinter Interludes - The NightPremiered 2.10.13 at Mount Holyoke College, South Hadley, MA Percussion Trio – Full instrument list below – 25 minutes
An Index of Possibility is about the secret worlds of sound present, but often unheard, in everyday objects. Commissioned by Tigue, Smoke and Mirrors, and Sonore Percussion the work uses simple, easy to acquire instruments. With the exception of a Kick Drum, Toms, Small Gong, Bongos and Log Drum, all instruments are either found objects, homemade constructions, or inexpensive toys. The work is about 25 minutes long in six continuous movements. A complete instrument list includes - Kick Drum, 3 Toms, Bongo, 4 jam blocks, 3 metals, 3 glasses, 3 ceramics, 2 Flower Pots, 2 metal mixing bowls, 2 small bells, Caxixi, Log Drum, a chromatic set of Desk Bells, 3 steel pipes (tuned), 9 copper pipes (tuned), 4 wood planks (tuned), 1 shot glass, and one serving platter attached to a foot pedal. Check out audio from TIGUE’s premiere performance at JACK in Brooklyn, NY. The complete piece: An Index of Possibility 1. Repose And here is a little video snippet of TIGUE killing it at the Brooklyn premiere Piano 4-Hands, String Quartet, Double Bass – 6 minutes
I wrote Beginnings for the final concert of Ensemble ACJW’s 2011-12 season. Endings are often beginnings and this thought immediately made me think of beginnings in my own life. With that in mind I dedicated this piece to my then fiance and now wife, Laura. Beginnings was commissioned by The Academy—a program of Carnegie Hall, The Juilliard School, and the Weill Music Institute in partnership with the New York City Department of Education. The recording is from a studio session featuring Timo Andres and David Kaplan on Piano, Rachel Lee and Tema Watstein on Violin, Edwin Kaplan, Viola, Yves Dharamraj, Cello, and Brian Ellingsen on Bass. BeginningsTo purchase a score and part set please click here premiered 6.10.12 at Le Poisson Rouge by Ensemble ACJW. I’m excited to announce a new commission from the Mount Holyoke Symphony Orchestra. I’ll be writing a set of orchestral pieces to go along with Mendelssohn’s incidental music for A Midsummer Night’s Dream. My pieces will be a contemporary foil to the Mendelssohn, offering a stark contrast to his music and hopefully creating a new context to hear the work. The project is a collaboration with the Dance and Film department as well. The idea is to present the entire incidental music intercut with my music and accompanied by dance and video projections. It’s going to be quite a swirl. The work will be premiered February 10, 2013 in South Hadley, MA at Mount Holyoke College. Stay tuned for more details! |
||
|
Copyright © 2013 Robert Honstein - All Rights Reserved |
||
