Over at NY Times, Anthony Tommasini's taste buds seem to have been tickled by my opera performance at VOX:
The last work showcased was by far the best... The music, rich with imagined folk tunes, undulant accompaniment patterns and vibrant choral writing, is delicate, tartly tonal and lucidly orchestrated. The characters are enchanting, and the vocal writing mostly effective. [The opera is] skillfully written and imaginative...
Extracts from A Bird in Your Ear will performed on WNYC Evening Music (93.9 FM) on Friday May 1st around 7pm, as a preview to the City Opera VOX performance on Saturday evening.
We had the sitzprobe yesterday, after making a last minute dash to the crazy "mind-your-head-on-that-sitar" world of Music Inn on West 4th to secure some additional bird call instruments needed for the closing pages of the piece. After some initial resistance to the idea, members of the orchestra could soon be found in all corners of the rehearsal building diligently practising their bird effects. It was quite a treat.
Bridget Kibbey performs the premiere of Caja de musica tonight at Carnegie's Weill hall. (Tickets)
The City Opera performance of A Bird in Your Ear is on Saturday, the VOX website has sold out, but apparently a good number of the (free) registered tickets don't get taken up, so the organises are telling us that people who turn up on the day should have a good chance of being getting in.
The Groanbox Boys and Metropolis Ensemble conducted by Andrew Cyr play Groanbox Mvt 4: Redhook Revival Rival.
The Carnegie Hall website has released the recording of the world premiere performance of Gumboots by Todd Palmer and the St Lawrence Quartet. I've recently been doing some re-working on the piece, sprucing and tightening it up. I've also uploaded all 4 movements from Groanbox, also from the world premiere, played by the Metropolis Ensemble and the Groanbox Boys at LPR in January. As you can see above, a great video of the complete piece is now also available on my Groanbox page, and video of the Groanbox Boys subsequent set, together with Michael's lagerphone piece Kicking Up Dust can be found on the Metropolis Ensemble's page on vimeo
As a tie-in with the VOX performance of A Bird in Your Ear, students at NYU have been rehearsing extracts from the opera and will be giving a performance of them tomorrow, April 15th, at The Frederick Loewe Theater, 35 West 4th Street, NYC (3:30 - 4:45), together with another of this year's VOX operas, Car Crash Opera by Michaela Eremiasova and Jairo Duarte-Lopez. The students will repeat the performances as a masterclass for NYCO's Maestro Gerald Steichen at New York State Theater building (exact location tbc) on Apr 24th. Anyone interested in attending please contact me.
The site also has a page to tickets for the event here which is free but which sold out last year, so well worth booking in advance if you're thinking of attending.
If mechanical instruments are your thing, you absolutely must visit the St Albans Instrument Museum, which boasts a startling array of musical contraptions, my favourite of which is probably the mechanical violin and piano duet. Check out this youtube clip for a hint of the flavour.
Now read about my piece Caja de musica (which means "music box" in Spanish) which is inspired partly by music boxes and other mechanical instruments.
Introducing Caja de música, my new piece for solo harp, commissioned by the Concert Artists Guild, and written for the unspeakably awesome talents of Bridget Kibbey.
Please everyone come to the premiere at Carneige's Weill Hall, April 28th. Details here
Carnegie Hall has published an interview I did with them shortly before the premiere of Gumboots last October. In it you can hear me talk about my love of world music instruments shops, explain the connection between my temperament and gumboot dancing, and hear excerpts of Piosenki and Gumboots.
Details of New York City Opera's 2009 VOX Festival have been announced. After 10 years of the festival I'm honoured that A Bird in your Ear will mark their 100th festival presentation (my piece will be the final performance of this year's festival, and is scheduled for Saturday May 2nd at 4:50pm). It's especially exciting as, for the first time this year, composers have access to the full NYC Opera Chorus, so we've chosen selections from Bird which feature the chorus prominently. Should be very exciting..
