Balourdet Quartet performs Strange Machines in Summer Season
- On June 28, 2023
- By alzand@rice.edu
- In EVENTS, News, Reviews/Press
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The Balourdet Quartet will include Strange Machines in their summer season with performances at festivals including:
Taos School of Music Chamber Music Festival
Rockport Chamber Music Festival
Green Lake Festival of Music
Honest Brook Music Festival
Music Mountain Summer Festival
Green Mountain Chamber Music Festival
Nantucket Musical Arts Society
Portsmouth Athenaeum Chamber Music Series.
The Boston Musical Intelligencer reviewed their recent performance at Rockport.
Merz Trio premieres Lines in Motion at Chamber Music Columbus
- On May 08, 2023
- By alzand@rice.edu
- In EVENTS, News
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May 6th saw the Merz Trio premiere Lines in Motion at the concluding concert of Chamber Music Columbus‘ 75th anniversary season. Works by seven composers were commissioned by CMC over the course of their 2022-2023 season. (Lines in Motion was co-commissioned by Chamber Music Houston, where the work was played on January 17th.) The program, presented at the beautiful historic Southern Theatre, included works by Rachmaninov, Shostakovich and Schumann, and opened with a celebratory fanfare by Ching-chu Hu and poetry by poet laureate Jennifer Hambrick.
Strange Machines premiered in the UK and US
- On April 06, 2023
- By alzand@rice.edu
- In News
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Strange Machines (String Quartet No. 4) was premiered by the Balourdet Quartet in their UK tour this February. The work was given its US premiere at Merkin Hall, New York City on April 4th. Above, a film from the UK premiere: Wigmore Hall, February 7, 2023.
The Leader CD reviewed in Opera News
- On March 28, 2023
- By alzand@rice.edu
- In News, Reviews/Press
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The recent CD release The Leader and other works (Navona Records NV6469) was reviewed by Joshua Rosenblum in the February 2023 issue of Opera News.
Canadian-American composer Karim Al-Zand demonstrates how relevant a one-act French political satire from 1953 can be. His short chamber opera The Leader is based on Eugène Ionesco’s Maître, in which, according to the notes, “The characters worship a buffoonish ‘great man.’” The play, we’re also told, is a “trenchant commentary on the casual rise of tyranny.” Ionesco’s pointed absurdities are surprisingly pertinent but also not nearly caustic enough to parody today’s America. But it’s clear why Al-Zand felt inspired to musicalize it.
Not much happens in the ten scenes of this thirty-five-minute work, which is partly the point. Most of the satire comes from the mindless repetition of certain phrases. “There he is! There he is! There he is! At the end of the street! There’s the Leader! He’s coming nearer, nearer, nearer,” sings the Announcer (Mark Diamond) at the beginning of the first track, “It’s Better If He Doesn’t See Us,” and then, at the end, “Hooray! The leader! Long live the leader! Too bad! He’s going away.” He’s joined in his sycophantic commentary by two Admirers amid a cheerfully pulsing musical texture, featuring a swirling figure for the solo woodwinds and a pungent, Poulenc-like harmonic language that proves a good match for Ionesco’s mocking aesthetic. Diamond is artfully unctuous in his grand, vacuous pronouncements; Megan Berti and Aidan Smerud echo him with pleasant (and alarming) brainlessness, particularly in the fourth track, in which their rapid-fire parroting of the Announcer’s phrases turns briefly into a laughing song.
Ionesco also provides a love story, in his characteristic absurdist fashion: the couple falls instantly in love after affirming that they don’t know each other and therefore have something in common. Al-Zand captures the deadpan drollery and gives it life with a fresh, piquant musical language and earnest, melismatic, self-mocking declamations. The short scene soars briefly into a lyrical love duet, allowing soprano Lindsay Russell Bowden and tenor Zach Averyt to flex their operatic chops while highlighting the silliness of love at first sight.
In later scenes, mini episodes are given over to the ridiculous: “They’ve given the leader’s trousers back! He puts them on!” and “The leader’s sucking his thumb!” This kind of thing could wear thin in less skilled hands, but Al-Zand provides continuous musical invention, including a fast, off-kilter jig in seven (2+2+3), breakneck orchestral skittering, a chorale with crunchy harmonies and a militaristic march that implies incipient creeping Fascism. The Leader had a full staging in February 2020, but it’s easy to imagine successful concert performances as well. The eleven-piece ensemble, led with precision by Eiki Isomura, gives a crackerjack rendering of the virtuoso score.
Also included here is Songs From the Post TruthEra,a setting of three poems combined into a single continuous piece,which promises more skewering of ripe targets, though it doesn’t draw quite as much blood as one might hope. The first poem, Charles Lamb’s “Incorrect Speaking” (1809), is an admonition to a young girl and contains lines such as “Study well the sense of each / Sentence, lest in any manner / It misrepresent the truth.” The second two poems are mashups of words and phrases from Lamb, a technique Al-Zand calls “vocabularyclept.” These fractured texts (intentionally) make less and less sense as they proceed, and Al-Zand accordingly puts soprano Alexandra Smither through vocal calisthenics of ever-increasing difficulty—all of which she aces—amid her character’s mounting hysteria. Bassoonist Ben Roidl-Ward, the sole accompanist in this unusually scored piece, is an equal partner and matches Smither’s remarkable expressive prowess.
Three instrumental sets round out this impressive collection from a composer who deserves wider recognition—Six Bagatelles for piano trio, with color-oriented titles such as “Mezzotint in Indigo” and “Gauloises Bleues”; two of Al-Zand’s Capriccios for solo violin; and Stomping Grounds, a four-movement work for clarinet, violin and piano, whose jazzy and harmonically original last movement sounds like ragtime put through a blender. The two solo capriccios are challenging but idiomatic showpieces, with blistering performances by violinists Sonja Harasim and Matthew J. Detrick respectively, both delivered with considerable expertise and outstanding intonation. —Joshua Rosenblum
Parizade and the Singing Tree performed for Family Concert
- On February 20, 2023
- By alzand@rice.edu
- In EVENTS, News
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Rice University’s annual “Family Concert” will present Parizade and the Singing Tree for narrator and ensemble. This tale from the 1001 Nights (or, so called “Arabian Nights”) will be narrated by singer and educator Rachel Buchman, and conducted by Michael Webster. Take your family on a thrilling adventure as a musical story unfolds before your ears! A brave and determined Parizade is on a quest to find a magical singing tree but encounters challenges (like a mysterious old dervish) along the way. Will she prevail in her journey?
Saturday, Jan. 28 | Stude Concert Hall at Rice University; Shepherd School Chamber Orchestra | Rachel Buchman, narrator| Michael Webster, conductor
• 10:30 a.m. — Meet the musicians and their instruments before the concert.
• 11 a.m. — Enjoy a family-friendly, 55-minute concert, featuring a living composer!
Best for ages 6 and up. Registration is recommended but not required. Park in West Lot 2 for $5.
RESERVE YOUR FREE TICKETS TODAY! MUSIC.RICE.EDU/FAMILY
Music for these Distracted Times
- On February 20, 2023
- By alzand@rice.edu
- In EVENTS, News
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Music for these Distracted Times was a January 23rd concert featuring recent works connected by their shared commentary on recent times. From the program notes: “At this point, it’s difficult to describe the last few years in anything but glib catchphrases: “unprecedented events,” “the new normal,” “shocking but not surprising,” and so on… It has felt maddeningly absurd, impossible to escape, never-ending: health crises, political deceit, violent extremism, racial animus. Typically, the music I write isn’t reactive. But like many composers, my recent work has been inspired (if that’s the word) by the upheaval around us. Tonight’s program contains compositions written mostly over the last few years, a product of these distracted times. The pieces have a variety of moods and characters, but they share a kind of tattered anxiety—a sentiment that has perhaps become the temperament of our time.”
The concert featured guest appearances by Matthew Roitstein, Natalie Lin Douglas, Ally Smither, Ben Roidl-Ward, Mei Rui, Jon Kimura Parker, Brian Connelly, and students of the Shepherd School of Music. The program included Songs from the Post Truth Era (written in 2018 for the Pushback Collective, who reprised the work), Pattern Preludes, Book 4, Ignoble Dances (written in 2020 for Mathew Roitstein, but here receiving its LIVE premiere), Loop Studies (the premiere of this work for violin and looper pedal, written in 2021 for Natalie Lin Douglas) and Lamentation on The Disasters of War (a string sextet from 2006).
Balourdet Quartet plays Strange Machines in UK Tour
- On February 20, 2023
- By alzand@rice.edu
- In EVENTS, News
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In February the Balourdet Quartet embarked on their first UK tour, including a debut performance at Wigmore Hall. Their programs feature Strange Machines, a new work written for them, and commissioned with the assistance of Chamber Music America. The tour included an appearance on BBC 3 Radio 3’s In Tune, where they played the second movement of the work, “Goldberg Machine.” Listen to the performance here (starts at 1:36:32). The Balourdet will perform the piece in the US in upcoming concerts beginning with the New York City premiere on April 4 at the Kaufman Music Center’s Merkin Hall.
The Cleveland Orchestra plays Lamentation on The Disasters of War
- On October 18, 2022
- By alzand@rice.edu
- In EVENTS, News, Reviews/Press
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The Cleveland Orchestra performed Lamentation on The Disasters of War as part of their 2022–2023 season, under conductor Nikolaj Szeps-Znaider on October 13-16 in Severance Hall. The program featured Beethoven’s Symphony No. 3 Eroica and Bloch’s Schelomo: Rhapsodie Hébraïque for Violoncello and Orchestra. The theme of the concert, as expressed by David Patrick Stearns in his notes for the concert:
“Music created in times of war so often comes down to the question “Why?” On one level, we question the politics of war, an often confusing and complex web of governmental policies and prejudices. On another is the heartbreaking bloodshed and loss of soldiers and civilians. Why do we so often turn to music and art during these troubled times? Why can a tone poem, symphony, or concerto more clearly express what can be communicated in words, or, more to the point, beyond words.
The three composers on this program each confront — and transform — the question of “why” through pre-established musical forms. Karim Al-Zand’s Lamentation on The Disasters of War (2006) finds renewed resonance in Francisco de Goya’s tortured 19th-century etchings of Napoleon’s invasion of Spain; Ernest Bloch’s World War I–era Schelomo, Hebraic Rhapsody for Cello and Orchestra (1916), invokes the Old Testament wisdom of King Solomon; and Beethoven’s Symphony No. 3 (1803–04) finds inspiration — and later criticism — in the conquests of Napoleon. In contemplating war, they illuminate dual sides of humanity: not only to endure through unimaginable hardship, but to find meaning, purpose, and eventually beauty in it.”
The program was also featured by Szeps-Znaider in his role as director of the Orchestre National de Lyon. [reviews: Cleveland Plain Dealer; Seen and Heard International]
NEW ALBUM AVAILABLE from NAVONA RECORDS
- On September 05, 2022
- By alzand@rice.edu
- In EVENTS, News
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Announcing a new recording from NAVONA records released on 9/9/2022, The Leader and other works. The album features the titular chamber opera (with a libretto by Eugène Ionesco), paired with several new instrumental works
The Leader | Six Bagatelles | Songs from the Post Truth Era | Capriccios Nos. 5 & 6
Personnel
Mark Diamond baritone | Aidan Smerud baritone | Megan Berti mezzo-soprano | Zach Averyt tenor | Lindsay Russsel Bowden soprano | Eiki Isomura conductor
Omri Barak cornet | Michael Clark piano | Matthew J. Detrick violin | Wesley Ducote piano | Thomas Frey clarinet | Alex Garde percussion | Max Geissler cello | Sonja Harasim violin | Mary-Grace Johnson violin |Julia Kirk viola | Andrew Laven cello | Natalie; Lin Douglas violin | John Mietus double bass | Sam Park violin | Ben Roidl-Ward bassoon | Jihong Son trombone | Alexandra Smither soprano | Chapman Welch mandolin | Willie Yeh flute/piccolo
NV6469 NAVONA RECORDS
Available on all major streaming services, or from NAVONA.
New Solo Organ Work: Let Down the Scale of Music from the Sky
- On September 05, 2022
- By alzand@rice.edu
- In EVENTS, News
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Let Down the Scale of Music from the Sky is a major new work for solo organ commissioned by the American Guild of Organists for the 2023 Ronald G. Pogorzelski and Lester D. Yankee Annual Competition, written to be premiered on the Pogorzelski/Yankee organ at Indiana University Pennsylvania.
The Heav’ly Choir, who heard his Notes from high,
Let down the Scale of Music from the Sky.
Strange Machines premiere
- On September 05, 2022
- By alzand@rice.edu
- In EVENTS, News
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Strange Machines, a new work for the Balourdet Quartet, will be premiered in the group’s 2022–2023 season, including a performance at Wigmore Hall. The work is commissioned with support from a Chamber Music America Commissioning Grant
Strange Machines imagines three quirky musical automata. In Alberti Machine we encounter a steam-punk music box, its buttons, levers and dials adjusting a familiar accompanimental pattern until the machine breaks. Bach meets Rube in Goldberg Machine, a contraption that careens between variations in a musical chain reaction. Mannheim Machine is a cliché-bot, an unhinged device that furiously spits out distorted musical tropes from the dawn of the symphony.
Loop Studies premiere
- On September 05, 2022
- By alzand@rice.edu
- In EVENTS, News
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Loop Studies was written during the covid-19 pandemic for violinist Natalie Lin Douglas. Chamber music performances during the pandemic have often relied on asynchronous multi-tracking as a necessity. Loop Studies is a duet, but is playable in real-time by a single musician with the aid of a loop pedal.
Each of its four studies uses an idiosyncratic musical fragment that is played, recorded and repeated. The first study, Berceuse, is a lullaby based on a gentle, rocking, cross-string figure. Lines is a short set of variations on a fragment by Luigi Dallapiccola, an improvisatory fantasy over a chromatic accompaniment drawn from the composer’s Quaderna Musicali. Straw Man Parade has the violinist using in turn various coloristic effects: pizzicato, harmonics, bowing near the bridge of the instrument—all heard over a bouncing figure performed with the wood of the bow. Tone Up/Tone Down features a syncopated, irregular groove underlying a vigorous and “athletic” foreground part. Natalie Lin Douglas will premiere Loop Studies in the 2022–2023 season in Boston and Houston.
Merz Trio to premiere new work for Columbus Chamber Music and Chamber Music Houston
- On June 07, 2022
- By alzand@rice.edu
- In EVENTS, News
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A new piano trio, Lines in Motion, will be premiered in the 2022-2023 season by the acclaimed Merz Trio. The work is commissioned by Columbus Chamber Music (as part of their 75th Anniversary season) and by Chamber Music Houston.
Merz Trio is a dynamic young ensemble “praised for their “fresh and surprising interpretations,” … their passionate playing and uniquely artistic programming style, interspersing classic trio works with interdisciplinary elements and their own arrangements. The Trio have made a sweep of recent US chamber awards, taking top prizes at the 2021 Naumburg, 2019 Concert Artists Guild, 2019 Fischoff, and 2018 Chesapeake Competitions. Upcoming debut appearances include performances at NYC’s Merkin Hall, Boston’s Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, and the Concertgebouw in Amsterdam.”
Lines in Motion for violin, cello and piano, explores the relationship between music art, and is inspired by three striking line-drawings from the early 20th century: On the Open Sea [En pleine mer], a 1921 woodcut by French artist René Quillivic, Amerika [America], a 1922 line drawing by Flemish artist Frans Masereel, and Rhythms, a 1922 woodcut by American artist Wharton Esherick. The distinct technique used for each black and white illustration creates form and shape through linear motion: sweeping curled lines, dramatic vertical lines, and the sinewy lines of the human body. The three movement of Lines in Motion aim to project a similar effect in their musical character and atmosphere.
City Scenes broadcast on BBC Radio 3
- On February 23, 2022
- By alzand@rice.edu
- In EVENTS, News
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The January 3, 2022 concert of the National Youth Orchestra of Great Britain, featuring City Scenes, will be broadcast on BBC Radio 3 on February 22, and available for online listening afterwards.
Sian Edwards conducts a programme that ends with Rachmaninov’s Symphonic Dances. Before it come two much newer pieces, Dani Howard’s Coalescence – which explores how the human race has attempted to ‘outsmart’ nature over the centuries, and Karim Al-Zand’s City Scenes, which captures the beauty and chaos of life in a city.
Dog Days Dirge
- On January 15, 2022
- By alzand@rice.edu
- In News
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A short impromptu film from a December recording session for Stomping Grounds. Michael Clark (piano), Sam Park (violin) and Thomas Frey (clarinet) are featured here in Dog Days Dirge, the second movement. A recording is set to be released in 2022.
Recording The Leader
- On January 15, 2022
- By alzand@rice.edu
- In News
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December featured a series of recording sessions for an upcoming CD release, including one devoted to The Leader, a chamber opera based on a short one-act play by Eugène Ionesco. The recording featured much of the original cast from the Opera in the Heights premiere in February 2020 (immediately before the pandemic closed all performances!). Conducted by Eiki Isomura and starring Mark Diamond (baritone) as the Announcer, Megan Berti (mezzo-soprano) as the Female Admirer and Aidan Smerud (bass-baritone) at the Male Admirer.
National Youth Orchestra of Great Britain plays City Scenes
- On December 26, 2021
- By alzand@rice.edu
- In News
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The National Youth Orchestra of Great Britain will present City Scenes in a concert at the Barbican on Monday, January 3rd, 2022, under the direction of Lee Reynolds. The concert will be broadcast on BBC Radio 3 on Tuesday 22 February on Radio 3 in Concert at 7.30pm and will be available for 30 days on BBC Sounds.
It’s time to get connected!
Join us in this boundary-breaking performance as the National Youth Orchestra of Great Britain open up the music they love to audiences across the UK, packed with pulsing dance rhythms and a feeling of freedom and release.
Expect a burst of youthful energy and an inclusive, inspiring concert experience as we kick off 2022 with a bang.
PROGRAM
Ravel La Valse
Dani Howard Coalescence
Karim Al-Zand City Scenes
Conducted by NYO’s Associate Conductor,
Lee Reynolds
Rachmaninoff Symphonic Dances
National Youth Orchestra of Great Britain
Sian Edwards conductor
Saint Louis Symphony plays Luctus Profugis
- On November 01, 2021
- By alzand@rice.edu
- In News, Reviews/Press
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The Saint Louis Symphony performed Luctus Profugis on a recent program of music on the theme of “homeland.” The concert was also radio broadcast and streamed on St. Louis Public Radio’s Classic 107.3 FM. The program, conducted by Nikolaj Szeps-Znaider, featured Smetana’s Má vlast and Robert Schumann’s Piano Concerto with soloist Ingrid Fliter. Written in 2015, Luctus Profugis reflects on the European migrant and refugee crisis during that period. The work is scored for string orchestra and vibraphone.
Capriccio FILM
- On July 13, 2021
- By alzand@rice.edu
- In Musiqa, News, Reviews/Press
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Musiqa presents a newly commissioned work by filmmaker Traci Lavois Thiebaud entitled Capriccio. Commissioned by Musiqa, Capriccio celebrates the diversity and resilience of Houston’s arts community, and features musicians, dancers, poets, painters, actors, art cars and more, all packed into a free-flowing visual collage conceived and created by Houston artist Traci Lavois Thiebaud. The filmmaker describes it as a “love letter to Houston’s artists.” The film is scored to Capriccios Nos. 1 & 6, as performed by Natalie Lin Douglas (director of Kinetic Ensemble) and Matthew Detrick (from Apollo Chamber Players). Contributors include Contemporary Arts Museum Houston, Houston Masterworks Chorus, WindSync, Apollo Chamber Players, Houston Symphony, Houston Ballet, Mildred’s Umbrella Theater Company, DiverseWorks, The Catastrophic Theatre, Ars Lyrica Houston, Stages, Loop38, Orange Show Center for Visionary Art, NobleMotion Dance, Transitory Sound and Movement Collective, Kinetic Ensemble, Dre Forgotten, Brittani Alexandra Broussard, Anastasia F. Kirages, Sara Royer, Bryan Kaplun, Casey Waldner, Erin Rodgers, Alli Partin Villines, Natalie Lin Douglas, JooYoung Choi, Charlie Scott, David A Brown, Christa Forster, Rebecca Lowe, Miranda Ramírez, Kacee Dugas, Joe Folladori, Candice D’Meza, Matt Detrick, Loren Holmes, BooTown, AFA, Muhammad Fachrul Yunus, James Templeton, James Medford, National Pleasure, Joseph Weiss, Bonnie Blue, Ken Hoge, Felizabeth Smiley, Swimwear Department, and many more….
CAPRICCIO
/kəˈprēCHēˌō/
1. A lively piece of music, typically short and free in form.
2. A style of painting introduced in the Renaissance that combines real architectural elements and figures in fictional and fantastical combinations.
3. A series of six works for solo violin by Houston composer and Musiqa Artist Board member Karim Al-Zand.
4. The film inspired by Al-Zand’s Capriccios, created by Houston filmmaker Traci Lavois Thiebaud, and involving arts organizations and artists from across the city. “Capriccio” was commissioned by Musiqa, and includes ballet dancers, actors, writers, visual artists, poets, musicians of all sorts and (of course) art cars in a celebration of Houston’s artistic diversity. A modern cinematic riff on a 17th century painting style, Musiqa’s “Capriccio” is coming this summer, for free, to your electronic device.
Rice Stadium Concert
- On July 10, 2021
- By alzand@rice.edu
- In News, Uncategorized
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On March 17th, 2021, in the midst of the COVID pandemic, Shepherd School of Music composition students participated in a unique concert of new music at Rice University’s 50,000 seat football stadium. Five new, site-specific works were composed by graduate students Nicky Sohn, Jake Sandridge, Grace Ann Lee and Daniel Leibovic, and by undergraduate Alex Moreno—works especially designed to be performed within the “extreme distanced” environment of the stadium. The collaborative project involved the school’s brass and percussion students, who rehearsed and performed the works over the course of several weeks, assisted by staff conductor (and light saber brandisher) Jerry Hou. The result was a memorable and unique concert on a massive spatial scale, occasioned by performance restrictions in the era of COVID. Full footage of the concert can be found below.