(Published by C. Alan Publications)
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CrystalMoonConeMusic
Mas Fuerte – Percussion Sextet
August 23rd, 2011“Tango Symphony premiered by the Detroit Symphony”
April 17th, 2011read on:
BY MARK STRYKER DETROIT FREE PRESS MUSIC CRITIC
It takes tango and performance No. 2 to bring DSO back to form
Detroit Symphony Orchestra
Thursday, Orchestra Hall
Program repeats at 8 p.m. tonight
Max M. Fisher Music Center, 3711 Woodward, Detroit.
313-576-5111. www.dso.org. $20
After the amped-up emotions and media attention surrounding last week’s first post-strike concerts, Thursday’s performance by the Detroit Symphony Orchestra began to feel like a return to normalcy.
The TV crews were gone, though two BBC radio journalists were on hand working on a documentary, and the number of substitutes in the orchestra was down from last week as musicians returned from commitments made before the settlement. The audience numbered about 1,000, a half-full house but a respectable showing given that ticket sales started from scratch five days ago. Still, it was also a sign of how much work needs to be done to rebuild the subscription base.
Most of all, the orchestra, led by music director Leonard Slatkin, sounded more like itself — more relaxed and focused than last week, digging into an eclectic program with contagious passion but also nuanced expression. The first half had a pronounced Latin tinge, with a lively reading of Chabrier’s “Espana” setting the table for the premiere of Stephen Rush’s “Tango Symphony.”
Rush does not have the elevated reputation of his University of Michigan colleagues Michael Daugherty and Bright Sheng, but he is a consistently rewarding composer and the 15-minute “Tango Symphony” offers a charismatic take on the Argentine dance form. This is a night-music score — moody, portentous, stalking, seductive — with the insinuating dotted tango rhythms and repeating bass lines deployed as a ground in the low strings, piano or percussion.
Exquisitely orchestrated, the music creates a humid atmosphere through deft marriages of strings and winds, contrasting registers, call-and-response ideas and quick, rhapsodic flights of solo mallet percussion, violin, cello, etc. Acidic harmonies and stuttering brass add a menacing bite. Slatkin led a dynamic performance and the orchestra played as if enthralled by the piece.
Far Away and Its Okay (We can always Skype)
March 10th, 2011A duet with Jeremy Edwards and Stephen Rush (toys/keyboards) (click the link below)
Short Stacks (sextet #2)
March 7th, 2011Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.
I began “Short Stack” in the Fall of 2008 and finished before Thanksgiving. I felt a bit useless as a composer – “between commissions”, as it were. At various times in my career I’ve felt the urge to write something “just for myself”, and this was one of those times. I had just premiered my fourth opera, and most of my other work for the previous two years was either conceptual in nature (“Taming of the Ox”- an improvisational work for any number of players, responding to watercolors I had painted), electronic (the “Listening Music from the Age of the Crystal Moon Cone” album), or generative/algorithmic (“Gloria in 36 Ways” for choir, any duration, any order). While my work was getting wide recognition with repeat performances and good press in the US and abroad, I felt called to do something more-or-less traditional. As well, when I have written pieces “just for myself” the results have been pretty satisfying professionally (“Tuba Sonata”, “Possession” for orchestra), so I started thinking merely about sounds I liked, and people I was interested in playing those sounds.
Originally conceived as a multi-media installation work, including video and food for the audience with live eaters on stage (I’m dead serious), the work was deliberately scaled down to expose the musical materials for what they are and are not. The musical materials are more filtered than most of my music. There are no obvious attempts at tonal writing and there are no obvious colloquialisms. There is limited reference to so-called “Jazz harmony” or Carnatic (Indian) music; it is one of my most academic, as well as heartfelt, works to date. The piece does again quote the White-Throated Sparrow (heard much in all of my work), my argument for Michigan’s state bird, and the owner of a lovely “pitch-class set” or song.
The only vestige of the original intent of Short Stacks are the titles, which are dedicated based on their breakfast preference – in the order of the performance – to my mother, myself, my wife, and my oldest friend and fishing buddy, Greg (who’s Finnish-ness only partly justifies the cuisine of the last choice). Perhaps an ideal performance of Short Stacks would include live video projections of (the composer) eating, the smell (and sound) of the pancakes, and the music, of course. I hope the audience can accept this non-Gesamtkünstwerk version
of the piece, however.
Discover the Discography:
December 16th, 2010Clarinet Concerto and more here:
December 2nd, 2010Clarinet Concerto – recorded in 2003 by the Warsaw National Symphony, Richard Stolzman soloist
(written with the aid of Brian Eno’s Oblique Strategies Cards)
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¡Stop Blaming Columbus! – a Jazz Opera, performed in 2005, Performance directed, composed, and conducted by Stephen Rush, libretto by Michael Rodemer
A live performance, by Stephen Rush, of the “Hawthorne” movement from Charles Ives Concord Sonata:
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