New Composed Music: February 2017 Seattle * Eastside * Tacoma

SI_button2Second Inversion and the Live Music Project create a monthly calendar featuring contemporary classical, cross-genre, and experimental performances in Seattle, the Eastside, Tacoma, and places in between! 

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Keep an eye out for our this flyer in concert programs and coffee shops around town. Feel free to download, print, and distribute it yourself! If you’d like to be included on this list, submit your event to the Live Music Project at least 6 weeks prior to the event and be sure to tag it with “new music.”


 

Racer Sessions
A weekly showcase of original music with a jam session based on the concepts in the opening presentation.
Every Sunday, 8-10pm, Cafe Racer | FREE

Wayward Music Series
Concerts of contemporary composition, free improvisation, electronic/electroacoustic music, & more.
Various days, 7:30/8pm, Good Shepherd Chapel | $5-$15
waywardmusic.org (check website for complete listings)

4
Ancora presents Wild! With Skyros Quartet
Aimee Mell leads a program of works by Randall Thompson, Ola Gjeilo, Sarah Quartel, Joan Szymko, Dan Forrest, and Jackson Berkey.
Sat, 2/4, 7:30pm, Trinity Lutheran Church | $11-$16

4
Seattle Music Exchange
Pianist Angelo Rondello will perform works by Seattle composers Samuel Jones, Peter V. Stevens, Angelique Poteat, Adam Haws, & Benjamin Salman.
Sat, 2/4, 8pm, Nordstrom Recital Hall | $20-$42

4
Seattle Rock Orchestra performs The Police
SRO shakes out hits like ‘Roxanne,’ ‘Message In A Bottle,’ ‘Don’t Stand So Close To Me,’ and ‘Every Breath You Take.’
Sat, 2/4, 8pm, Kirkland Performance Center | $40

10
Solaris Vocal Ensemble with Seattle Modern Orchestra
SMO collaborates with UW’s Solaris Vocal Ensemble in a unique performance of Julia Wolfe’s Thirst and works by Dempster and Erickson.
Fri, 2/10, 7:30pm, Meany Studio Theater | $10-$20

12
Andrew Joslyn & the Passenger String Quartet
Violinist, composer, and arranger Andrew Joslyn presents an afternoon of music with The Passenger String Quartet.
Sun, 2/12, 4pm, Bainbridge Waterfront Community Center | $5-$20

12
Adagio: The Music of Arvo Pärt
An evening of music from Estonian composer Arvo Pärt where the spirit of early music meets ultra-spare modern minimalism in a meditative, intimate setting.
Sun, 2/12, 7pm, On the Boards | $20

17
Cornish Presents: Jesse Myers
Pianist Jesse Myers brings John Cage’s prepared piano music to the stage on which the instrument was born.
Fri, 2/17, 8pm, PONCHO Concert Hall | $10-$20

17
Inverted Space: Composers Concert
Inverted Space presents a concert of new works featuring the music of Adrian Swan, Charles Corey, Anna Stachurska, & Jacob Sundstrom.
Fri, 2/17, 8pm, Good Shepherd Chapel | $5-$15

18
Lake Union Civic Orchestra: Temptation
Baritone Charles Robert Stephens performs music by Seattle composer and pianist Jeffrey Moidel. Works by Milhaud and Shostakovich round out the program.
Sat, 2/18, 7:30pm, Center for Spiritual Living | $15-$20

18
Wayward Music Series: Melanie Voytovich
Percussionist Melanie Voytovich and friends bring you a night of new work featuring Storm Benjamin, Scott Langdon, Maggie Brown, Brad Hawkins, and Ella Maher (dance).
Sat, 2/18, 7:30pm, Good Shepherd Chapel | $5-$15

18-19
NOCCO: Resonance: Celebrating Black American Composers
Hear a newly commissioned work by Hanna Benn & performance artist Davida Ingram and works by Scott Joplin & George Walker.
Sat, 2/18, 2pm, New Holly Gathering Hall | $15-$30 (under 18 FREE)
Sun, 2/19, 7:30pm, Langston Hughes Performing Arts Institute | $15-$30 (under 18 FREE)

24
Melia Watras: 26 Album Release
UW faculty violist Melia Watras performs selections from 26, her newly released CD on Sono Luminus, with a video presentation and commentary.
Fri, 2/24, 7:30pm, Brechemin Auditorium | FREE

25-26
Seattle Pro Musica: Chichester Psalms
Bernstein’s Chichester Psalms is paired with James MacMillan’s Cantos sagrados, both exploring the desire of humankind to seek social justice and peace.
Sat, 2/25, 8pm, St. James Cathedral | $12-$38

ALBUM REVIEW: ORBIT: Music for Solo Cello (1945-2014)

by Maggie Molloy

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What do Jimi Hendrix guitar solos, György Ligeti sonatas, Shakespeare sonnets, and Spanish sarabandes all have in common? Each of them appears in one form or another on cellist Matt Haimovitz’s latest release, “Orbit: Music for Solo Cello (1945-2014).”

Sprawling in scope, “Orbit” is a three-disc compilation of music for solo cello featuring works by over 20 contemporary composers, 15 of whom are still living. The ambitious solo album is also one of the first releases on the new Pentatone Oxingale Series. This innovative new project is a collaboration between the Dutch classical music label PENTATONE and Haimovitz’s own  trailblazing artists’ label Oxingale Records, which he created in 2000 with his partner in life and music, composer Luna Pearl Woolf.

Clocking in at a hefty 3 hours and 45 minutes, the album features solo works that Haimovitz initially released on Oxingale as five thematic albums: “Anthem” (2003), “Goulash!” (2005), “After Reading Shakespeare” (2007), “Figment” (2009), and “Matteo” (2011). The album also includes two newly-recorded works: Philip Glass’s “Orbit” and a new arrangement by Woolf of the Beatles’ “Helter Skelter.”

Over the course of three discs, Haimovitz takes the listener on a musical odyssey through time and space, from minimalism to maximalism, tonal to atonal, folk to avant-garde, abstract to narrative, and everything in between.

The album begins with the title track, Philip Glass’s “Orbit.” Warm and achingly tender melodies evolve softly over the course of this seven-minute solo work, and Haimovitz crafts each note gorgeously.

He tackles a very different style of contemporary classical in his performance of Luciano Berio’s “Sequenza XIV,” a virtuosic piece with mesmerizing rhythms inspired by Sri Lankan drumming. Haimovitz bows, plucks, taps, twangs, slides, scrapes, and soars through a number of extended techniques before settling into silence.

Another memorable moment on the album is György Ligeti’s Sonata for Violoncello Solo, a piece Haimovitz worked directly with Ligeti himself to learn. The piece’s modal melodies and Hungarian profile make clear the influence of Bartók and Kodály, and Haimovitz brings out the complex polyphonic counterpoint beautifully. It is followed by a performance of Du Yun’s “San,” a piece which weaves musical fragments of Eastern mysticism and meditation into a mesmerizing yet haunting sound world.

Haimovitz also takes a crack at some contemporary popular music: the album includes his own cello arrangement of Jimi Hendrix’s famous “Star-Spangled Banner” performance at Woodstock. He snarls, growls, and wails through the Hendrix classic so convincingly that you’d almost expect him to have a whammy bar hidden somewhere on his cello. Haimovitz also takes on the Beatles’ loud, wild, and raunchy proto-metal anthem, “Helter Skelter.”

Over the course of disc two Haimovitz glides through the dramatic and dense melodies of Elliott Carter’s “Figment” (Nos. 1 and 2), the ethereal whispers of Salvatore Sciarrino’s “Ai Limiti Della Notte,” and the gorgeous cantabile lyricism of Luigi Dallapiccola’s “Ciaccona, Intermezzo e Adagio.”

But the most sentimental piece on the album is Woolf’s “Sarabande.” Derived from the Baroque Spanish dance form, the piece is also named after Haimovitz and Woolf’s child, who was lost mid-term in utero. The poignant and pensive work is both delicate and passionate, and Haimovitz brings it to life with remarkable timbral detail.

The third disc features three suites inspired by literature. The first is Ned Rorem’s “After Reading Shakespeare,” a suite in which each movement is based on a quotation from a Shakespearean play or sonnet—and the nine movements explores the romance, beauty, and balance of Shakespeare’s poetry without using a single word.

Inspired by Rorem’s work, Haimovitz commissioned two new suites based in literature by Pulitzer Prize-winning composers Paul Moravec and Lewis Spratlan. Moravec’s “Mark Twain Sez” takes the witty words of Mark Twain as the basis for an eight-movement exploration into the human condition, exploring themes of dreams, love, humor, insanity, mystery, and more.

The album comes to a close with Spratlan’s four-movement “Shadow,” a surreal musical reflection which takes the symbolist poetry of Rimbaud to a whole new world.

Because in the end, the musical possibilities for solo cello are about as numerous as the stars in the sky—and Haimovitz puts them all into “Orbit.”

Matt Haimovitz and Christopher O’Riley, from our field trip to the Tractor Tavern in Seattle on February 2, 2015