Center for New Music: April, 2019

The odds are fairly good that, by this time of the month, no further March events will be added to the Calendar Web page on the Web site for the Center for New Music (C4NM). Indeed, we have not yet reached the halfway mark of this month and there are already a generous number of events scheduled for April. That means that this is as good a time as any to initiate a report on those performances scheduled for next month. Since updating this Web page is easy, I shall, as usual, use my Facebook shadow site (which seems to be functioning normally again) to put out the word whenever this page is updated to account for additions and/or changes to the schedule.

C4NM is located at 55 Taylor Street, half a block north of the Golden Gate Theater, which is where Golden Gate Avenue meets Market Street. All tickets may be purchased in advance through a Vendini event page. Hyperlinks to the appropriate Web pages will be attached to each of the dates in the following summary:

Thursday, April 4, 7:30 p.m.: Nicolee Kuester on horn and Eric Moore on cello will present a duo recital. They will present premiere performances of two compositions they commissioned for their unconventional approach to instrumentation. The commissioned composers are Dongryul Lee (“Szygy”) and Sergio Cote (“Paar”). They will also play “Two Instruments,” composed by Morton Feldman in 1958 and scored for cello and horn. Pianist Jenny Hunt will join them for the final work on the program, Alvin Lucier’s “August Moon” trio, composed in 2015. Admission will be $15 for general admission and $10 for C4NM members and students.

Monday, April 8, 7:30 p.m.: Based in Falcon Heights, Minnesota, 113 was founded as a collection of composers and performers of new music that curates concerts, seminars, and master classes throughout the Twin Cities area. They now have a touring schedule that is taking their efforts both to Europe and throughout the United States. Their tour of California will bring them to C4NM, where they will present West Coast premieres of works by five of the composers in the collective, Joey Crane, Sam Krahn, Joshua Musikantow, Tiffany Skidmore, and Jeremy Wagner. The program will also included works by Georges Aperghis, Chaya Czernowin, and James Dillon. The performers that will visit C4NM will be Duo Gelland (violins), Nina Dante (soprano), Maria Ritzenthaler (viola), and the Hutchins/Qiang Duo (Jeffery Kyle Hutchins- saxophone and Neil Nanyi Qiang- piano). Admission will be $15 for general admission, $10 for C4NM members, $5 for students and seniors, and no charge for those under the age of eighteen.

[updated 3/31, 11:35 a.m.:

Wednesday, April 10, 8 p.m.: Matthias McIntire will host performances of some of his recent compositions. He will present the American premiere of his “Cathedral Grove (and the Gray Jay),” score for solo violin and live electronics. He will play the violin part. In addition the OFSQ woodwind quintet will premiere his “Little Worlds.” Admission will be $15 for general admission and $10 for C4NM members, students, seniors, and art workers.]

Thursday, April 11, 6:30 p.m.: Glenda Bates will curate a lecture-recital entitled Vocalizing the Horn. The title of the program is also the title of a book of études for French horn by Amr Selim, who will be both the lecturer and the recitalist. The recital portion will present original and arranged Arabic tunes for the horn. In the lecture portion Selim will share some historical and theoretical background on Arabic music and will discuss the performance practice of such music on the horn. He will use his own études to demonstration his approaches to performance. Admission will be $15 for general admission and $10 for C4NM members and students.

Friday, April 12, 7:30 p.m.: Composer Patricia Wallinga will host a free salon-style concert of her own art song and chamber music entitled An Evening at Patricia’s: The Music of Patricia Wallinga.

Saturday, April 13, 7:30 p.m.: Kurt Rohde will curate a program entitled Summits. That is also the title of a song cycle composed for voice, string quartet, guitar, and accordion by Daniel Corral. The words for all of the songs are drawn from texts extracted from summit registers, notebooks that can be found at the tops of many mountain trails. Jazz vocalist Joanna Wallfisch will be accompanied by the Koan Quartet. Corral will provide the “continuo,” playing both guitar and accordion. Admission will be $15 for general admission and $10 for C4NM members.

Sunday, April 14, 2 p.m.: The Amaranth Quartet will present a program entitled Bend, Bent, Break. “Break” is the title of D. Riley Nicholson’s most recent composition, which will be given its premiere performance alongside a new quartet version of his earlier piece “Bend.” Bent is the name of a 1997 film for which Philip Glass composed the score, and Amaranth will perform selections from that score. The program will also include music by the winner of Amaranth's young composer's initiative, Alyssa Weinberg, Ryan Brown, and Sahba Aminikia. Admission will be $20 for general admission and $10 for C4NM members.

Thursday, April 18, 7:30 p.m.: Gregg Belisle-Chi is a guitarist and composer currently based in Brooklyn (New York). He is currently on a tour in support of the record release of his latest effort, “Book of Hours.” This is a 50-minute through-composed piece with elements of improvisation. The work was inspired by the history and texts of the Mass ordinary; and it was scored for a quartet of guitar, bass, keyboards, and drums. The performance of “Book of Hours” will be preceded by a set taken by the Grex duo of Karl Evangelista and Rei Scampavia. They will convene a “special expanded configuration;” but instrumentation and instrumentalists have not yet been specified. Admission will be $10 for general admission and $7 for C4NM members.

Friday, April 19, 7:30 p.m.: This will be another two-set evening, presenting freewheeling and imaginative Bay Area jazz by two ensembles, both led by women. Erika Oba plays both piano and flute and leads a trio called the Ends Meat’ Catastrophe Jazz Ensemble. The other members of the trio are Eli Maliwan on tenor saxophone and Chris Bastian on bass. The second set will be taken by the Lisa Mezzacappa Six, led by Mezzacappa on bass. The group will perform the suite that Mezzacappa composed based on the Cosmicomics stories by Italo Calvino. Admission will be $15 for general admission and $10 for C4NM members.

Saturday, April 20, 7:30 p.m.: Kurt Rohde will curate a solo piano recital by Sakurako Kanemitsu. Her program will span a wide range of compositions from the current and last centuries. She has created a “frame” for the evening that will begin with “Für Alina” by Arvo Pärt and conclude with “Für Arvo” by Ryan Suleiman. In between she will play two of Philip Glass’ études (the thirteenth and fourteenth), “Au gré des Ondes” by Henri Dutilleux, Suleiman’s “The Floating Island II,” and works by Dai Fujikura (“Frozen Heat”) and Lei Liang (“My Windows”). Admission will be $10 for general admission and $7 for C4NM members.

Sunday, April 21, 6 p.m.: Slow & Steady Records will present a showcase of their artists. These will include trombonist Naomi Moon Siegel, pianist Richard Sears, saxophonist Steven Lugerner leading his SLUGish Ensemble, and the BASTET trio of Justin Rock (guitar), Giulio Xavier (bass), and Mike Quigg (drums). Admission will be $15 for general admission and $10 for C4NM members.

[updated 3/31, 11:40 a.m.:

Tuesday, April 23, 7 p.m.: Arab.AMP will present a solo evening of work by pianist, Meredith Maloney. Arab.AMP serves as a platform for the work of Arab Experimentalists. Maloney explores textural, linear sound collage, and has developed a set of techniques that draw on the history of prepared and inside piano vocabulary, but are highly individualized and expand the language for internal piano music making. Admission will be $15 for general admission and $10 for C4NM members and students.]

Wednesday, April 24, 7:30 p.m.: Curator Blaine Todd will present the next installment in the Other Minds Latitudes series. This will be a two-set evening of unorthodox approaches to plucking strings. Paul Metzger plays a modified 23-string banjo and calls his works “hymnprovisations.” He will be followed by John Saint Pelvyn, whose electric guitar is enhanced by an abundance of sound-processing technology. Admission will be $15 for general admission and $10 for C4NM members.

Friday, April 26, 7:30 p.m.: Dan Becker will curate a recital by the Galax Quartet entitled Music from 1607 to 2007. This is not the usual string quartet, since the two violins and cello are joined by a gamba. They will play selections from Johann Sebastian Bach’s BWV 1080, The Art of Fugue. The program will also include early music by Samuel Scheidt and much more recent music by Belinda Reynolds. Admission will be $15 for general admission and $10 for C4NM members and students.

Sunday, April 28, 7 p.m.: Kurt Rohde will curate a program entitled Guided By Voices, which is also the name of a commissioning project by Elinor Frey, who plays two variations on the modern cello, the Baroque cello and the five-string instrument for which Bach composed the last of his six solo cello suites (BWV 1012 in D major). Frey will play solo compositions by the Japanese-American composer Ken Ueno (“Chimera”) and Swedish-German composer Lisa Streich (“Minerva”) and Canadians Scott Edward Godin (“Guided By Voices”), Linda Catlin Smith (“Ricercar”), Isaiah Ceccarelli (“With concord of sweet sounds”). Admission will be $15 for general admission and $10 for C4NM members.