Seattle New Music Happy Hour: Monday, March 27 at 5:30pm

Posted on March 27, 2017 by maestrobeats

Same time, new place!

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The next edition of New Music Happy Hour (co-hosted by Second Inversion & Live Music Project) is TONIGHT, Monday, March 27 at 5:30pm at Stoup Brewing!

Join Seattle’s vibrant community of musicians, music-lovers, and open minds for an evening of casual banter and meaningful dialogue about music and art in Seattle and beyond. RSVP and invite your friends.

Please note: Stoup does not a have a kitchen, but offers “a rotation of tasty nibbles in the tap room,” and tonight, 15% off delivery orders from the Ballard Pizza Co! Click here for more info on all of that.

LIVE VIDEO STREAM: “Blackbird, Fly” with Daniel Bernard Roumain and Marc Bamuthi Joseph

Posted on December 6, 2016 by maestrobeats

Join us tonight, Tuesday, December 6 at 7:30pm (PST), for a live video stream from Town Hall Seattle featuring composer and violinist Daniel Bernard Roumain with spoken word artist and arts activist Marc Bamuthi Joseph in “Blackbird, Fly,” a concert for voice, body, and strings. Together these two American sons of Haitian immigrants explore themes of family history, folklore, politics, and race, all of it coursing with the rhythm and energy of hip hop.

If you’re in Seattle, we’d love to see you there! Get your tickets here and be sure to hello at the broadcast table in the lobby.

Program Notes by Aaron Grad c/o Town Hall Seattle

Blackbird, Fly is the co-creation of Daniel Bernard Roumain and Marc Bamuthi Joseph, two powerhouse performers who demolish boundaries in their respective art forms. Roumain, otherwise known as DBR, combines his classical training in violin and composition with the energy of hip hop and pop music, whether he is accompanying Lady Gaga on American Idol or presenting a new orchestral piece at Carnegie Hall. Joseph is best known as a spoken word artist and a National Poetry Slam champion, but his career has spanned from acting on Broadway to arts activism in Oakland.

These two men, both born in the United States to Haitian immigrants, have used their personal histories and artistic talents as springboards to examine larger questions about our society’s past, present and future, especially as it relates to Black life in America. After coming together for a number of projects across the country, from the Atlanta Ballet to San Francisco’s Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, Roumain and Joseph distilled their collaboration into what they describe as “a concert for voice, body and strings,” a label that hardly captures the enormous range and impact of this evening-length duet.

Roumain’s music for Blackbird, Fly is a kaleidoscopic mixture of classical, rock and hip-hop sounds that he creates on several electric violins as well as piano and laptop. When he sends aggressive bow strokes through a heavily saturated distortion pedal, or when he holds the violin across his chest and strums it like a guitar, his sound and technique comes closer to Jimi Hendrix than any concert violinist. Other times he extracts a pure, clean tone from his violin, using subtle sound effects to thicken and amplify his musical gestures into textures that give the impression of an entire string ensemble playing.

Joseph’s words and expressive body movements likewise transcend any one style or narrative thread. Part storytelling, part folklore and part politics, his libretto touches on everything from fatherhood and friendship to mass incarceration and police bias, all infused with the fluid rhythms of hip-hop and spoken word. He introduces an international perspective, with vignettes that recall visits to Haiti, Paris, Tokyo and Senegal. There is also a deep sense of history as he reflects back on figures such as Huey Newton and Martin Luther King, Jr.

Blackbird, Fly is awash in paradox: It is personal but universal; it is high art and pop culture; it is unflinchingly honest and still joyful and optimistic; it is tender and vulnerable and outrageously powerful and virtuosic all at the same time. This is a performance that might generate more questions than answers, but isn’t that exactly what we need today if we hope to understand each other and ourselves?

NEW VIDEO: In/Exchange by Andy Akiho with Friction Quartet

Posted on June 30, 2016 by maestrobeats

String quartet and steel pan? It’s an awesome combination, but we don’t really need to tell you that…

San Francisco-based Friction Quartet was recently in Seattle for a residency at Cornish College of the Arts and their friend, composer and steel pan virtuoso Andy Akiho, joined them at the Chapel Performance Space at the Good Shepherd Center for one of Second Inversion’s video shoots. This piece, In/Exchange, is Andy’s first composition for string quartet and steel pan.

Andy is a virtuoso steel pan player, and just as many composers would write on the piano, thinking about structure and harmony and translating it to other instruments, he relates his music back to the steel pan. This instrument has incredible timbres and melodic possibilities and In/Exchange is a perfect example of relating those possibilities to the string quartet. By doing so, Andy takes both the steel pan and the string quartet to places they have never been before.

In/exchange was commissioned by the Ethel String Quartet and the Jerome foundation, and premiered in Merkin Hall in New York City as part of the Tribeca New Music Festival.

CONCERT PREVIEW: Q&A with Joan Tower

Posted on May 31, 2016 by maestrobeats

by Maggie Molloy

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When you’re a chamber musician, you have to know how to dance.

You have to be able to communicate directly with the other players through music and movement. You have to move together and apart, support each other’s parts, and make each other shine; you have to work together to tell a cohesive story without stepping on each other’s feet.

This notion of musicians as dancers was the inspiration behind Grammy Award-winning composer Joan Tower’s Chamber Dance, a piece which is being performed in Seattle this weekend by the North Corner Chamber Orchestra (NOCCO) in their 2015-2016 season finale.

The piece maximizes the chamber orchestra’s textural and timbral palette by weaving through a rich and colorful tapestry of solos, duets, small ensembles, and full ensemble—each instrument serving as just one small part of the larger dance.

NOCCO will also perform Haydn’s Violin Concerto in C Major, featuring violinist Elisa Barston as the soloist, and the NOCCO Winds will join forces with cellist Eli Weinberger and bassist Ross Gilliland to perform Dvořák’s Serenade for Winds, Cello, and Double Bass in D Minor.

Dance on over to Seattle this weekend to get in on the action! In the meantime, we sat down with the woman of the hour, Joan Tower, to find out more about what we can expect at this concert:

Second Inversion: What was the inspiration behind Chamber Dance?

Joan Tower: Having been a chamber music pianist for a long time with the Da Capo Chamber Players, a group I founded in 1972, I was immediately impressed with how Orpheus (the conductorless group for which I wrote Chamber Dance) was actually a large chamber group that interacted the way a smaller chamber group would: through an elaborate setup of sectional leaders who were responsible for the score. An amazing feat accomplished over years of trials and errors—and an amazing ensemble indeed.

SI: How is this piece similar to and/or different from your other compositions?

JT: It’s similar in structure to many of my chamber pieces, but different in that the solos get surrounded by larger forces within a bigger “palette.”

SI: What composers, artists, or styles of music most influence your work?

JT: Many different styles of music have influenced my work: I grew up in South America surrounded by all the Latin music of that culture; was trained as a pianist in the European Bach, Haydn, Beethoven, Chopin, etc. model; married a jazz pianist who introduced me to all the greats at that time in NYC; and I formed my own group the Da Capo Players who performed the music of many living composers of that time (1972-1987). My biggest influences were Beethoven, Stravinsky, Messiaen, Pärt, Adams, Monk, Evans and lots of popular Latin music.

SI: Three out of the four NOCCO programs this season feature American women composers’ works. Why do you think this is a significant programming decision?

JT: Because it is rarely done, and women make up less than 5 percent of all classical programing—which still is a statistical problem. I am happy to see some visionary conductors find the right music and go for it.

SI: What do you hope audiences will take away from listening to your Chamber Dance?

JT: A memory of some kind, I hope.

Performances are Saturday, June 4 at 2 p.m. at University Unitarian Church in Seattle and Sunday, June 5 at 8 p.m. at the Royal Room in Columbia City. For additional information and tickets, visit NOCCO.org.

New Music Concerts: May 2016 Seattle * Eastside * Tacoma

Posted on May 3, 2016 by maestrobeats

Second 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!

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 drop us a line at least 6 weeks prior to the event.

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

1
Noise Yoga with John Teske
Noise Yoga is a series of yoga classes that combine the meditative intentionality of yoga with the sonic depth of live performance by local musicians
Sun, 5/1, 11:30am, Frye Art Museum | $10

5
Josh Archibald-Seiffer + Ania Stachurska
UW composers Josh Archibald-Seiffer & Ania Stachurska present works with themes spanning political civil war, children’s lit, language, & the uncanny.
Thurs, 5/5, 8pm, Good Shepherd Chapel | $5-$15

6
Seattle Composers’ Salon
Composers, performers, & audience gather in a casual setting that allows for experimentation & discussion of finished works & works in progress.
Fri, 5/6, 8pm, Good Shepherd Chapel | $5-$15

6-8
The Esoterics: Milton Babbitt
A celebration of Babbitt’s centenary featuring his entire catalog of a cappella choruses, several of which have never been performed in live concert.
Fri, 5/6, 8pm, St. Stephen’s Episcopal Church, Seattle | $15-$20
Sat, 5/7, 8pm, Holy Rosary Church, West Seattle | $15-$20
Sun, 5/8, 7pm, Christ Episcopal Church, Tacoma | $15-$20

7
Seattle Wind Symphony: American Places
Donald K. Miller leads the SWS in a program of Donald Grantham, William Schuman, Eric Whitacre, Ron Nelson, and more.
Sat, 5/7, 7:30pm, Shorewood Performing Arts Center | $5-$20

7/8
Seattle Rock Orchestra performs Neil Diamond
SRO celebrates the man, the myth, the legend: Neil Diamond. SRO will explore his entire catalogue, performing hidden gems and revered hits alike.
Sat, 5/7, 8pm, The Moore Theatre | $20-$37.50 (+ fees)
Sun, 5/8, 2pm, The Moore Theatre | $20-$37.50 (+ fees)

10
Inverted Space: Long Piece Fest
A double-header concert featuring two commissions from Seattle composers Kevin Baldwin and Takemitsu prize-winner Yigit Kolat.
Tues, 5/10, 7:30pm, Good Shepherd Chapel | $5-$15

13
Seattle Symphony: Sonic Evolution: This is Indie!
This concert features Michael Gordon, William Brittle, Tomoko Mukaiyama, Fly Moon Royalty & Filmmaker Bill Morrison. Co-Presented With SIFF.
Fri, 5/13, 8pm, Benaroya Hall | $25-$52

20/21
Universal Language Project: The Elements
An interactive event featuring visual artist Scott Kolbo and iconoclast band TORCH.
Fri, 5/20, 8pm, Resonance at SOMA Towers, Bellevue | $10-$25
Sat, 5/21, 8pm, Velocity Dance Center | $15-$25

21
Kirkland Choral Society: Luminous
KCS premieres a commission from Ola Gjeilo plus many Gjeilo favorites from previous concerts and will be joined by the Skyros Quartet.
Sat, 5/21, 7:30pm, Bastyr University Chapel | $15-$20

21
SMCO Season Finale: Mozart, Carter, Ligeti, and Haydn
Seattle Met. Chamber Orchestra welcomes Cristina Valdes, Matthew Kocmieroski & Maria Mannisto – 3 soloists in high demand for contemporary music!
Sat, 5/21, 8pm, First Free Methodist Church | $15-$20

22
Music of Remembrance: Jake Heggie’s Out of Darkness
This two-act opera and portrait of survival conveys the vastness of the Holocaust’s scope through emotionally rich depictions of those caught in its grasp.
Sun, 5/22, 4pm, Benaroya Hall | $30-$45 ($5 TeenTix)

24
Town Music at Town Hall: Season Finale
Joshua Roman, Arnaud Sussman, Karen Gomyo, & Kyle Armbrust will perform Britten’s String Quartet No. 2 and a commissioned piece by Andrius Zlabys.
Tues, 5/24, 7:30pm, Town Hall | $5-$25

27
Second Inversion Showcase at Folklife
Join us for Second Inversion’s 2nd annual showcase at Northwest Folklife! We’ll feature bi-coastal musicians and local favorites alike.
Fri, 5/27, 8pm, Center House Stage | FREE