Center for New Music: October, 2020

The last time I tried to provide a monthly summary for the Center for New Music (C4NM) was for the schedule for this past April. It goes without saying that those events did not prevail over lockdown conditions; and my first encounter with a live-streamed concert did not take place until late in July, when D. Riley Nicholson, C4NM Project Manager, performed his Influences solo piano recital, which was streamed from the C4NM performance area. Since then these events have been relatively spare and have been given one-by-one previews.

I am hoping that this article will mark the return to the previous monthly-summary format. To be fair, as I write this, only two concerts have been scheduled for next month. Nevertheless, that sort of paucity has already shown up in the return of Bleeding Edge articles. That said, here is the list as it now stands with dates and times hyperlinked to their respective event pages on the C4NM Web site:

• Saturday, October 10, 7 p.m.: Cornelius Boots will celebrate the tenth anniversary of the completion and self-publication of a volume filled with solo repertoire selections for one of the world’s rarest and most difficult musical instruments: Taimu shakuhachi. This is the bass variant of the shakuhachi, the vertical bamboo flute with roots (pun intended) in ancient Zen Buddhism. Boots will present a selection of songs drawn from this collection. The performance will be free, and the usual hyperlink for ticket purchase will take the reader directly to the YouTube Web page through which the performance will be live-streamed. Note, however, that the event page includes a DONATE NOW button. The suggested donation is between $20 and $40, and the amount will be divided equally between Boots and C4NM. [updated 10/8, 6 a.m.: The Friction performance has been postponed:
  
• Saturday, October 17, 7:30 p.m.: This will be the second of two concerts that the Friction String Quartet has prepared to showcase new works by Bay Area composers. The program will present the latest efforts of nine of those composers: Mark Alfenito, Allan Crossman, Monica Chew, Jacob E Goodman, Kyle Hovatter, Steve Mobia, Martha Stoddard, Davide Verotta, and Shawne Workman. The event page has not yet been updated with information about live-streaming. Tickets will be sold for $15 for general admission and a $10 rate for C4NM members, students, and seniors; and there is currently a hyperlink for online purchase. Presumably, the event will be live-streamed following the same procedure used for the September 20 concert: All tickets must be purchased prior to 6:45 p.m. on the date of the performance. At 7 p.m. all ticket-holders will receive electronic mail with a link to the YouTube Web page through which the performance will be streamed.] [added 10/8, 8:50 a.m.:
• Sunday, October 25, 4 p.m.: Chris Brown will perform two compositions for piano and interactive software controlled through the Buchla PianoBar keyboard interface. He will begin with the world premiere performance of “Shuffle Bagatelles.” This is a collection of twelve short pieces (the bagatelles), which are played in random order (shuffled). Those performances are sampled and transformed by software analysis using stochastic techniques. There will then be a short intermission during which a video by Johanna Boethig will be screened. The program will then conclude with “Obelisk,” which Brown composed in 2016. The score for this piece allows for improvisations taking place between the pianist and the software.]