Evolution Contemporary Music Series

Baltimore’s new-music concert series Mobtown Modern and Evolution return

The upstart New York-based JACK Quartet has won an ardent following among fans of contemporary music, not least because of its acclaimed 2009 recording of the complete quartets of Romania-born avant-garde eminence Iannis Xenakis. And as part of its fall schedule—which includes stops in the Czech Republic, New York, Northern California, and Vancouver—JACK is stopping at the 2640 Space in Baltimore on Sept. 14 to play the complete Xenakis quartets, a thorough accounting of his bracing rewrite/rewire of the basic possibilities of violins, viola, and cello, as part of the Mobtown Modern series.

“You’re not going to hear that this year in Philadelphia, you’re not going to hear that in Washington,” Mobtown Modern curator Brian Sacawa says. “You’re only going to hear that in Baltimore.”

As the mainstream classical-music world winds down the summer festivals and pops programs and turns toward rehearsals for season-opening concerts, Baltimore’s foremost new-music concert series are prepping for their 2011-2012 seasons. Mobtown Modern enters its fifth season with an impressive lineup and a lot to prove. The Evolution Contemporary Music Series, curated by local composer Judah Adashi, enters its seventh season with a theme explicitly linking contemporary music with the other arts. Both series hope to build on what they set out to do from the start: provide more programming for contemporary composition in Baltimore while growing the audience for late 20th-/early 21st-century music.

Adashi, who teaches at the Peabody Institute, says that he began planning the forthcoming season of Evolution as he always does. “Things always start with the composers I want to represent and the repertoire I want to represent, and then I try to figure out some kind of overarching concept that can hold all that together,” he says by phone from the Providence, R.I., airport. “And this season what came together was looking at music through the lens of other artistic disciplines and history, politics, things like that.”

The stated theme for the new Evolution season, which begins with a reception and preview concert at series home base An die Musik on Sept. 20, is Beyond Music. The music of Peabody faculty member Michael Hersch will be the focus of a Nov. 1 concert; Evolution will present performances of Hersch’s the wreckage of flowers, based on the work of Polish writer Czeslaw Milosz, and Fourteen Pieces, based on the work of writer Primo Levi. An die Musik will also display drawings by local artist Nicholas Cairns inspired by Hersch’s pieces, which in turn, Adashi says, involve the composer’s response to the Sept. 11 attacks a decade ago.

“[T]he music always has to stand on its own, and that goes without saying,” Adashi says. But by delving into the inspirations for new music, especially the nonmusical sort, “you get a glimpse of the springboard for the composer, and it gives the audience a different sort of point of entry. . . . Offering context, offering some sort of touchstone for the listener is a good thing.”

The Evolution series continues with a program titled Liederabend 2.0 on Dec. 6, featuring vocal music based on texts from the likes of Pablo Neruda (composed by Peter Lieberson) and Louise Glück (composed by Adashi). A Feb. 7, 2012 concert also has a literary bent, showcasing two compositions inspired by Shakespeare’s The Tempest: Paul Moravec’s Tempest Fantasy and Kaija Saariaho’s Tempest Songbook. Painter Francisco Goya and writer Franz Kafka were overt influences on the music of composer Martin Bresnick, who will attend an Evolution program of his work on March 6, 2012.

The multidisciplinary emphasis provides a handy organizing theme, and also dovetails with one of Evolution’s main goals: expanding the contemporary-music audience in Baltimore. “You don’t want to just draw in people who are interested in new music,” Adashi says. “You want to draw in people who are interested in new theater and in new art and in new anything really.”

The Evolution season closes on April 3, 2012, with a return engagement from French new-music titan International Contemporary Ensemble. The upcoming Mobtown Modern series also features big new-music names. After the JACK Quartet opens the season, the series follows up on Nov. 9 with the Grand Valley State University New Music Ensemble, a Michigan-based ensemble that has won raves and wide renown (in new-music terms, anyway) for its performances and recordings of such new-music cornerstones as Steve Reich’s Music for 18 Musicians and Terry Riley’s In C. MM’s annual holiday season performance of Phil Kline’s Unsilent Night, a composition for massed boomboxes whose performance has become a Baltimore tradition, takes place Dec. 3. A concert featuring Philip Glass’ Music With Changing Parts takes place Jan. 26, 2012, followed by pianist/new-music champion Adam Tendler’s performance of John Cage’s epochal prepared piano work Sonatas and Interludes on Feb. 15, 2012. Composer and bass clarinetist Michael Lowenstern comes to Baltimore April 12, 2012, for an MM concert of his music.

This Mobtown Modern season is a bit different than those past. For one, it offers fewer concerts (six; there were 10 during the 2010-2011 season). For another, it’s the first season MM is presenting as a stand-alone entity, not as a program under the auspices of the Contemporary Museum.

Sacawa says MM is doing fewer concerts for a reason. “I stretched a little thin [last year] in terms of having a sizable audience at each show with the number of shows we did,” he says. “So this year I wanted to focus on getting some superior artists and really cool music, kind of concentrating down what I did last year into a more potent form.”

The break with the Contemporary, on the other hand, took place after former Contemporary Executive Director Irene Hofman left the museum in fall 2010. “There was a really good synergy and energy with [her],” Sacawa says. “With the change in leadership, the chemistry just wasn’t there anymore.” While he takes pains to express his gratitude for the Contemporary’s support for the series, he adds that “there are a lot of positives in that Mobtown Modern is going to be its own entity now.” Sacawa has his work cut out for him, however, especially considering his demanding schedule as a saxophonist for the ever-touring U.S. Army Field Band and as a new-music performer himself.

Sacawa hopes Mobtown Modern can continue to build on its success to date. To that end, he has launched a Kickstarter online fundraising campaign to raise $5,000 for the season. Bringing in an internationally renowned group such as the JACK Quartet isn’t cheap; the deadline for the Kickstarter campaign falls on Sept. 15, the day after the Xenakis performance.

“We have a fairly large following and a lot of people coming to shows and who ‘like’ this or that online or whatever,” Sacawa says, “but unfortunately a lot of people who are into this kind of music don’t have a lot to put behind it. It’s really imperative that some funds get raised . . . to continue at the level we’ve set for ourselves the last four years.”

Back to Top

Evolution Contemporary Music Series announces 2011-12 season

As I've mentioned before, Baltimore has become quite a nice little hotbed for contemporary music. It's not just cool that we have Mobtown Modern and the Evolution Contemporary Music Series, but that each one has its own identity, with remarkably little overlap of repertoire.

Mobtown's 2011-2012 season was announced last week. Now comes word of Evolution's, which will again be held at An die Musik, where a season preview concert and fundraiser will be held Sept. 20.

Composer Judah Adashi, founding director of the series, devised a theme for the new season that reflects remarks made by conductor/pianist Daniel Barenboim: "You can only live in music … if you see the parallels with literature, if you see the parallels with painting, if you see the parallel with the development of political processes."

An element of that theme will be particularly evident on Nov. 1, when violinist Miranda Cuckson and pianist Blair McMillen perform music by the challenging composer Michael Hersch, who is on the Peabody faculty.

The program includes two works written in response to 9/11: "The wreckage of flowers: 21 pieces after poetry and prose of Czeslaw Milosz" and "Fourteen Pieces, after texts by Primo Levi."

Drawings by Nicholas Cairns will be displayed during this concert, providing a visual intersection with the music.

On Dec. 6, there will be ...

a "Liederabend" (a term you'd never see on a Mobtown Modern schedule) devoted to works by Oliver Knussen, Peter Lieberson and Arvo Pärt that incorporate texts by Pablo Neruda and Rainer Maria Rilke -- the parallel with literature Barenboim mentioned.

Shakespeare's "The Tempest" provides the focus for a concert Feb. 7, when Kaija Saariaho’s "Tempest Songbook" and Paul Moravec's Pulitzer Prize-winning "Tempest Fantasy" will be performed.

A program on March 6 will offer works by Martin Bresnick, director of the composition program at Yale University, who drew inspiration from Franz Kafka and Francisco Goya.

The series will close with a concert by the International Contemporary Ensemble April 3. Members of that ensemble will also spend time mentoring Baltimore School for the Arts students, who will also perform at the concert.

Back to Top

My Top 10 classical music events of 2010 in Baltimore and Washington

Dec. 6: The Evolution Contemporary Music Series at An die Musik. Judah Adashi led a finely responsive vocal quartet in a mesmerizing account of David Lang's "The Little Match Girl Passion," winner of the 2008 Pulitzer Prize for music. Lang added many layers to a Hans Christian Anderson tale of a poor girl left to die in the cold; both the words and the music touch a nerve. The performers brought out that subtle emotional power with remarkable skill. A most rewarding experience. Click here to read the full article »

Back to Top

Pulitzer-winning work by David Lang superbly presented by Evolution Contemporary Music Series

Every now and then, you get lucky enough to be blown away by hearing a piece of music for the first time. I had that experience Monday night at An die Musik, where the Evolution Contemporary Music Series presented a performance of David Lang's "The Little Match Girl Passion," a work inspired by a sobering Hans Christian Anderson story.

Winner of the 2008 Pulitzer Prize for music, this score does what great works of art always do -- it takes you outside of yourself into another place and brings you back to yourself, changed in some way.

The only disappointment, given the roughly 40-minute duration of the composition, was that it didn't get performed twice. I'm sure the sold-out crowd would have gladly stayed for a complete encore.

Chalk the event up as a major achievement of the Evolution enterprise, founded and directed by Judah Adashi. Along with Mobtown Modern, the wide-ranging series has elevated and enriched Baltimore's new music scene enormously, and this particular presentation strikes me as an extraordinarily substantive contribution.

"The Little Match Girl Passion" provides a contemporary take on the centuries-old form of the Passion, the retelling of Christ's final days. Bach's profound efforts in this field are, of course, the best known. Lang found much to consider in Anderson's story about the poor girl who is beaten by her father, tries to earn money selling matches on the street, and freezes to death. Imagery in this dark tale recalls the life and death of Christ, but Lang did not set out to do a religious work (as the composer says in his program note, "There is no Bach in my piece and there is no Jesus").

This is a work about purity, poverty and suffering -- and, at least as I see it, a work about the

tragedy of an uncaring world, a place where too many people choose not to see the pain around them so they can concentrate on fattening themselves (and, these days, avoiding any extra taxes).

However you read the libretto -- Lang wrote his own, based on Anderson's story and also the writings of H. P. Paulli, Picander (librettist for Bach's St. Matthew Passion) and the gospel of Matthew -- it's a powerful statement.

Lang scored the work for four singers (the standard SABT); the performers also are called upon to play percussion instruments that add subtle dots of color to the soundscape. Much happens in 15 short movements. 

The musical style is spare, but lyrical, often resonant of chant. During the descriptive movements about the girl's plight -- roaming the street in bare feet, the visions she has when she strikes matches in hopes of some warmth -- the singers' lines often overlap, creating subtly shifting harmonies. A colorful, recurring device involves the repetition of syllables on the same note (I was reminded of Monteverdi).

The reflective passages, which play a role akin to that of the chorales in Bach's Passions, achieve remarkably poetic effects, nowhere more movingly than in the 13th movement: "When it is time for me to go, don't go from me; when it is time for me to leave, don't leave me; when it is time for me to die, stay with me; when I am most scared, stay with me."

The performance, effectively conducted by Adashi, featured soprano Elizabeth Hungerford, also Kristen Dubenion-Smith, tenor Lee Mills and bass Michael Droettboom. These were not typical classical-sounding singers; they had a wonderfully natural sound and style, which enabled them to communicate the texts all the more compellingly.

No wonder the concert room was so still and quiet throughout the performance (save for the inevitable cell phone). "The Little Match Girl Passion" proved to be quite the spell-binder. It's still haunting me the morning after.

Back to Top

What I like most about the An die Musik performance space in Baltimore is the low stage, which to me represents the basic spirit of the place. It’s no more than two feet high, and it extends wall-to-wall across the full forty-or-so foot width of the yellow room. There’s no curtain, for this stage is neither display-case nor pedestal. When I go to symphony halls or other elegant classical music spaces, I sometimes feel like an intruder in the courts of the the cultured. An die Musik is different: you don’t have to be high-class; you just have to like music.

Last night I went there to see a performance of David Lang’s Little Match Girl Passion, which was being performed as part of Judah Adashi’s thus-far excellent Evolution Music Series. It’s a choral work that on a first listen sounds to an untutored ear like something Arvo Pärt might have written. The piece is a retelling of Hans Christian Andersen’s short story in recitatives, interspersed with choruses inspired by Bach’s St. Matthew’s Passion. On the Carnegie Hall website (where, incidentally, you can stream a good recording of the piece), Lang describes why he chose the story of the match girl:

“What drew me to The Little Match Girl is that the strength of the story lies not in its plot but in the fact that all its parts—the horror and the beauty—are constantly suffused with their opposites. The girl’s bitter present is locked together with the sweetness of her past memories; her poverty is always suffused with her hopefulness. There is a kind of naive equilibrium between suffering and hope.”

I have a feeling that, had Lang not been so careful to maintain this equilibrium, this piece would have struck me as incredibly mawkish, as the story alone does. Yet the meditative interludes, especially “Have Mercy, My God” and “When it is Time for Me to Go,” gives the listener a relationship to the music than the reader couldn’t have with the text.

As for the performance, I thought all the singers were wonderful, but then again I haven’t spent much time listening to vocal performances. The mezzo-soprano gracefully handled the phrasing in the recitatives as the other musicians , and I noticed the tenor had an exquisite high range. Beyond that, I can’t judge. There was a deceptive simplicity to the staging. The musicians didn’t come to the stage as a group; they just kind of ambled up there in ones and twos, sat around for a minute or two, then stood up and started. They also played some sparse supplemental percussion. I’ve already described the effect An die Musik’s stage setup has on me; this sort of performance in this sort of space makes me feel like I’m watching highly skilled DIY indie musicians rather than Professional Classical Vocalists. (But of course these singers are in reality highly trained.)

The one sour thought I had during the oratorio had nothing to do with the music itself. In Baltimore, we’ve just settled into winter temperatures in the last week or so. Here I was, in a warm room full of music appreciators, listening to an artful evocation of a poor person suffering in the cold. Surely there is something wrong with this scene, and though I will try to ease my conscience by donating to a charitable organization this week, my conscience isn’t really the issue here.

Back to Top

The brainchild of composer and Peabody Professor Judah Adashi, the Evolution Series celebrates music by living composers with concerts performed at Mt. Vernon’s plush An Die Musik, a jazz CD store with an intimate music venue upstairs. Its sixth season “Listen to This” includes a Nov. 2 discussion and book signing with The New Yorker music critic Alex Ross and, on Dec. 6, The Little Match Girl Passion – composer David Lang’s Pulitzer Prize-winning, Bach-inspired interpretation of the haunting Hans Christian Andersen parable. Events $15, 8pm, concert followed by wine reception, 409 N. Charles Street, www.evolutionseries.org.

Back to Top

The Focus is on the Music: A Conversation with Henry Wong of An die Musik in Baltimore

Q. This will be the sixth season of the Evolution Contemporary Music Series, founded by [Peabody] faculty member Judah Adashi, at An die Musik. How do you view the expansion of the contemporary music scene in Baltimore and An die Musik's place in it?

A. The Evolution Contemporary Music Series is a true gem in Baltimore for promoting new music. Judah creates each concert to have a unique focus, such as works by one composer, like the late Nicholas Maw or Christopher Theofanidis, or a discussion with Alex Ross. An die Musik Live! offers an intimate environment to allow our audiences to focus on the music. Other arts organizations offering contemporary music take a more casual approach..which I find to be more focused on socializing than on the artists...we feel strongly that continuing to present contemporary music is just as important as offering baroque and traditional classical music.

Back to Top

When I first moved to Chicago in 1996, it was considered a bit of a new music backwater. The local universities each ran their own concert series, the CUBE Ensemble was up and running strong, and the Lyric Opera would present the occasional production by Berio or Ran while the Chicago Symphony programmed a new piece or two each season. But in general the experimental music scene lagged behind cities like Boston, Minneapolis, and Los Angeles.

By the dawn of the new millennium, all that was changing. The Chicago Symphony began MusicNow, its own new music series, originally curated by Augusta Read Thomas with the amazing Cliff Colnot as its main conductor. Then eighth blackbird moved into town, followed by ICE. Remarkably, Patricia Morehead and Janice Misurell-Mitchell—the founders of CUBE—welcomed these late-arriving players and helped them get started. As each of these ensembles found their sea legs, they focused on aiding others. The generous nature of these pioneers led to a warm community that nurtured its new members. Groups like Dal Niente, Accessible Contemporary Music, Fifth House, Fulcrum Point, Third Coast Percussion, and Anaphora (among others!) also began presenting concerts. As more ensembles entered the fray, the audience for each concert grew. The energy from each performance transferred onto the next until eventually Chicago found its new identity as a place (according to TimeOut Chicago) "to hear some of the most white-knuckled, desolately beautiful or head-bouncingly groove-savvy music ever unleashed under the classical heading."

I believe that Baltimore is ready for a similar new music naissance.

Baltimore is fortuitously located along the Northeast corridor, a stone's throw from Washington and Philadelphia. And Baltimore is unique among the I-95/Amtrack cities in that it combines a long-standing tradition of community support for the arts with reasonable property values. In addition, Baltimoreans welcome outsiders into this community with an openness that led to its most common nickname: Charm City.* The city teems with wonderful warehouses that have been converted into performance spaces that are easily accessible by public transit or car.

Baltimore already has a thriving community for experimental music improvisation. Later this month, the High Zero Festival will celebrate its 12th anniversary as one of the leading festivals for improvisation, welcoming artists from three continents. Every week Out of Your Head brings people together to play free experimental concerts. The Red Room, the Windup Space, and the 2640 Space (among other local venues) continuously present exciting concerts of the most cutting-edge experimental sound artists.

The more traditional new music scene is showing signs of rising to match its improvisatory brethren. Within the last few weeks, our two pioneering new music series made their 2010–11 season announcements, and both appear poised to raise Baltimore's profile.

The Contemporary Museum's Mobtown Modern opens their season tonight with an all-Ligeti concert featuring Peabody alumna Jenny Lin as a special guest. Each concert of their current season will focus on a specific composer, including a presentation of Oscar Bettison's masterpiece O Death, and an all-Ken Ueno concert. They are bringing some amazing composer/performers into town, including Corey Dargel, Todd Reynolds (in a much-demanded return engagement), and Victoire. Additionally, this season the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra is partnering with Mobtown Modern, a collaboration that bears watching.

About a mile south, Judah Adashi's Evolution Contemporary Music Series will present David Lang's Pulitzer-Prize winning The Little Match Girl Passion, and will bring ICE and Derek Bermel into town to play concerts and Alex Ross to talk about his new book. Locals are extraordinarily lucky to be able to hear these people in the intimate upstairs space at An Die Musik.

So I find myself amazed at all that's happening in this relatively small city, and I wonder what's next. Now that these organizations have taken root, can we take the next step? Can we build a reputation as a center for new music? Can we draw people to our city in order hear concerts? To present concerts? Can we convince people to stay? What can we do to build on the achievements of these pioneers?

And I would ask non-Baltimorean readers to come into town to sample some of these concerts. If you'd like, I can recommend some nice restaurants, as well. After all, it's Charm City.

***

* The story of Baltimore's nicknames is a long and interesting one. Every few years, civic leaders run out a new contender that locals mercilessly mock until it is replaced by something equally ridiculous. In my years here, the city has adorned bus stops with continuously changing slogans, including "The City That Reads," "The Greatest City in America," "Believe," and currently "Find Your Happy Place."

Back to Top

I am not only thrilled about the new season of classical and contemporary music in Baltimore… I am drooling over it. Unladylike to be sure....To whet your appetite, I bring you the Season 6 announcement for the Evolution Contemporary Music Series. Judah Adashi, founder/director, certainly brings his “A” game to programming each season.

Back to Top

The New Now

WIND THROUGH the warren of gates, passages, buildings, and hallways that make up the city-block-sized Peabody Institute and you eventually find yourself in an office whose sparse decoration consists mostly of a set of fliers for the Evolution Contemporary Music series. It looks like a space barely used, perhaps because its occupant, Judah Adashi, is busy teaching composition and music theory at the conservatory, working on his Ph.D., curating and running the Evolution concerts, and working on his own compositions as well.
A compact, composed Baltimore native, the 34-year-old Adashi first dispels the notion that new music is somehow new to town. David Zinman's stint as the BSO's music director from 1985-'98 was marked by a dedication to presenting American composers and new commissions before packed houses at the Meyerhoff, Adashi reminds. Zinman's successor, Yuri Temirkanov, focused on opulent versions of time-honored European classics, but current BSO Music Director Marin Alsop "is picking up where [Zinman] left off," Adashi says.

For many years, however, if new music was performed in Baltimore, it was mostly performed at Peabody, by student ensembles or visiting musicians. It was still relatively rare. As Adashi says, for some students Peabody remains "a trade school, an apprenticeship." They come to polish and refine traditional musical skills they've honed for years in hopes of making a career out of playing Sibelius or Chopin like generations before them.

Adashi attended Peabody Prep before going to Yale for his bachelor's degree. After college he returned to Baltimore, and, eventually, to Peabody, beginning a master's program in composition under the late Nicholas Maw in 1999. He acknowledges that the conservatory was still "pretty quiet" on the contemporary-music front when he first came back, but its conservatism had started to loosen thanks to Maw and a wave of other faculty members with an active interest in contemporary composition. It helped that the battles fought throughout most of the 20th century between the defenders of the traditional classical canon and the proponents of the mid-century musical avant-garde were finally winding down and, indeed, becoming irrelevant.

"Baby-boomer composers come through [Peabody] all the time talking about, 'When I was in college, I had to write like Schoenberg or Stravinsky and that was it,'" Adashi says. "At this moment, there's no dogma. You don't have to be writing tonal music or atonal music. It's OK if you invoke rock, it's OK if you use electronic means. You can do what you want."

By the mid-'00s, the music of the 1950s, '60s, and '70s was finally getting more attention at Peabody. "You started to see more and more concerts of Berio, Ligeti, Davidovsky, Stockhausen, and I think that's fantastic," Adashi says. "But I thought, You know what's not happening? People don't know that contemporary music is also the last 20 years, the last 10 years, right now."
Adashi had made attempts to add to contemporary music performance to the conservatory, but an option farther off Mount Vernon Square made sense. "Part of [the reason for starting the series] was practical," he says. "Peabody is getting bigger and bigger with more and more students, and hall space was getting scarce."

Having worked at An die Musik when it was a CD store, he knew proprietor Henry Wong, who had expanded the business and its purview by opening an on-site concert venue booking classical and jazz performances and the occasional new-music-friendly bill. Evolution came to life in November 2005 with a chamber performance of works by Robert Beaser, Joan Tower, and Adashi himself. Each season has brought a slow growth in the number and breadth of events, from themed concerts (the Obama-inspired "Music for Change," presented in October 2008, presented a program of hopeful works by contemporary-music marquee names Arvo PA¤rt and John Adams, but also Baltimorean Will Redman) to informal encounters with the likes of the BSO's Marin Alsop and New Yorker music critic Alex Ross. The recently concluded 2009-'10 season was organized under the banner "A Sense of Place" and presented concerts of contemporary music from countries such as Finland and England, including an Oscar Bettison world premiere.
The plush appointments of An die Musik are a far cry from the somewhat grungier Metro Gallery, and Evolution's marketing remains more traditional than Mobtown's. (The promotional art for "Low Art," Mobtown's October 2009 program of music for lower-pitched instruments, featured a neon-red low-rider street rod.) But both put a premium on contemporary-music advocacy.

"There's sort of a do-it-yourself energy that composers and musicians in the classical world [now], and we're starting to do what bands have been doing since time immemorial--find any old place and set up and play," Adashi says, though he adds, "that's not a new model in classical music--Steve Reich and Philip Glass were doing that, and people before them as well."

One thing that minimalist godfathers such as Reich and Glass didn't have going for them was the internet. The rise of the web has not only allowed for better networking, it has allowed composers the opportunity to connect directly with listeners and for listeners to seek out information about more obscure sounds, as well as the sounds themselves. In years past, a curious music fan might have had to go to the trouble of special-ordering a costly CD from a European label to sample new work by Kaija Saariaho or Harrison Birtwistle. Now, a relatively inexpensive download is just a few clicks away.

"The fact that music is so easily shared on the internet, and people becoming aware of lots of different types of music, everything is happening so much faster," Bettison says. "I had a piece [played] in New York recently, and there was a review up before I'd even got back home from New York. Everything's being disseminated in a much more rapid fashion."

There's enough contemporary music--and enough growing interest--that having two new-music series in Baltimore doesn't lead to competition. The two series even compare dates so they don't book opposite each other.

And unlike traditional independent music, there seems to be little compartmentalization between one school of contemporary music and another. "I write fairly tonal music, and I write fairly lyrical music," Adashi says. "But I don't feel any need to justify that and to stake a claim for it as the one true path. I could easily put together a concert of young composers in their 30s with one of them writing serial music, one of them writing electronic music, one of them working with beats. It's all going on now, and each one of those or all of them together can [bring] people into something that beforehand they might have considered foreign or forbidding."

Neither Sacawa or Adashi is interested in promoting new-music as superior to older composed music or even whatever's playing the other nights of the month at An die Musik or the Metro Gallery. "I don't think it's about converting people to Team Contemporary Music," Adashi says. "It's about opening doors."

www.citypaper.com

Back to Top

Every year, the American Academy in Rome selects a handful of American composers to come study in the Eternal City for a year. The Rome Prize is a big deal in the galaxy of competitions, fellowships, and prizes that help make up the classical-music universe (Samuel Barber won twice), and tonight, the Evolution concert series presents contemporary chamber works by recent winners Lisa Bielawa, Sebastian Currier, and Pierre Jalbert, as performed by pianist Insun Kim, violinist Courtney Orlando, and the Vinca Quartet (pictured).

www.citypaper.com

Back to Top

Composer and Evolution Series founder and director Judah Adashi was featured on WYPR's "Maryland Morning," discussing his own music and, in the second half of the interview, the Evolution Series.

mdmorn.wordpress.com

Back to Top

A glance at the music calendar in Baltimore reveals enticing chamber-size programs performed by excellent ensembles this week, especially over the next couple of days.

On Tuesday evening at An die Musik, the Evolution Contemporary Music Series goes where few local organizations have dared go before -- contemporary Finland. Works by two very big names on the composer front, Kaija Saariaho and Magnus Lindberg, will be performed, along with music by Esa-Pekka Salonen, better known as a conductor, but a very persuasive composer as well. Among the performers: pianists Lura Johnson and Kenneth Osowski, percussionists Kelsey Tamayo, soprano Andrea Edith Moore, clarinetist Elisabeth Stimpert, and harpist Jacqueline Pollauf. (I wouldn't miss this one if I didn't have a good excuse -- I'll be participating on a panel discussion at the Loyola/Notre Dame Library about what the arts in Baltimore might look like in 2020. After that, I may have to check myself into a depression clinic.)

Back to Top

Perhaps no composer is as closely identified with his or her native country as Jean Sibelius is with Finland. He not only defines Finnish culture for many throughout the world, he literally helped define it with a host of renowned pieces based on his country's landscape and myths. But in recent years, a handful of younger composers have emerged from Sibelius' shadow and are redefining Finnish music--and modern composition--anew. Tonight, the Evolution Contemporary Music Series presents chamber settings of pieces by Esa-Pekka Salonen, Kaija Saariaho, and Magnus Lindberg. Don't miss.

www.citypaper.com

Back to Top

One week ago, the Evolution Contemporary Music Series presented a program titled Across the Pond, featuring works by Knussen, Harvey, Birtwistle, Adès, and a world premiere by Peabody professor Oscar Bettison. The Evolution Series uses the intimate space of Baltimore’s An Die Musik LIVE!, where instead of cramped seating, rows of pink overstuffed chairs help create the intimate atmosphere of a salon. Evolution Series director Judah Adashi mentioned that English contemporary music, as with its predecessors, characteristically calls for a high degree of quiet introspection, making this venue particularly well suited for this program. To set the mood, Vaughan Williams’s instrospective Fantasia on a Theme by Tallis was quietly piped through onstage speakers prior to the performance.

The program began austerely with Tarik O’Regan’s Darkness Visible (2008) for countertenor, tenor, and harp, which features repeated harp motifs, played by Jacqueline Pollauf, along with carefully framed dissonances from the singers, Curtis Adamson and Deven Mercer. Pianist Timothy Hoft’s objective approach to performing new music was especially successful: by treating Oliver Knussen’s Variations, op. 24 (1989), as uncomplicated, Hoft allowed the work to be perceived as equally rhythmic, harmonic, and (importantly) pianistic. Though intriguing on many levels by the set of variations, most of the audience – including your reviewer – likely missed its actual theme. The first half of the program concluded with a stage occupied solely by speakers projecting Jonathan Harvey's Mortuos Plango, Vivos Voco (1980), an eerily playful composition with spontaneous dynamic shifts able to lull the listener into a calm trance with tones at times resembling church bells and boy choristers, then turning to expectedly shake one into rapt attention.

Hoft opened the second half of the program with Harrison Birtwistle’s first movement of Harrison’s Clocks (1998). Again, Hoft’s precise control of dynamics and quiet approach to the keyboard with a perfect technique led to a beautiful automatic sense of music making in a work that used the highest note on the piano and resembled something like a mix of the Prokofiev Toccata and a microprocessor. The world premiere of Oscar Bettison's (b. 1975) experimental Neolithic Airs (2008) for solo violin (Courtney Orlando) with each string tuned to ‘D’ drew much excitement from the audience, primarily made up of Peabody students enthusiastic for their faculty member's piece. Due to the different tensions on each string tuned to the same pitch, each contained a unique timbre, which Bettison exploited by having the violinist repeat the same note on different strings that created an effect of multiple instruments. Some sounds were nearly painful to hear, grating, and yet absolutely purposeful, particularly Orlando’s experimental technique of descending clusters of non-vibrating harmonic bow circles in “Otherworldly,” the work’s last movement.

The program concluded with Thomas Adès' Darknesse Visible (1992) for piano (Stefan Petrov) -- Baltimore readers may recall the Baltimore Symphony’s presentation of Adès works a few years back. Adès created a vast 3-D sonic scape by having the pianist, with pedal down, play repeated notes high and low that later became clusters. He additionally teases the listener with hints at formal harmony while carefully controlling the decay of the layers of sound created.

The compelling Evolution Contemporary Music Series will present two more programs this season.

ionarts.blogspot.com

Back to Top

Concert halls rarely go more than a week or two without multiple pieces of music from German, Austrian, French, or Russian composers on the bill. Pieces by English composers are fewer and farther between, however, and pieces by English composers more contemporary than early 20th-century eminences like Britten and Vaughan Williams scarcer still. Tonight, the invaluable Evolution Contemporary Music Series presents a concert of new-jack Union Jack chamber music, featuring compositions by Thomas Adés, Anna Clyne, Jonathan Harvey, Oliver Knussen, and Tarik O'Regan, plus the world premiere of English composer/new Peabody Institute faculty member Oscar Bettison's Neolithic Airs. A discussion precedes the music; wine follows.

www.citypaper.com

Back to Top

Judah Adashi was thinking about music—not unusual, since he teaches at the Peabody Institute. He had noticed a lack of concert series and ensembles devoted to the music of living composers. “People are doing everything under the sun,” he says, “but if you go to a symphony concert probably one of the latest pieces you’ll hear is Stravinsky’s The Rite of Spring”—which premiered in 1913.

So in 2005, Adashi, a composer himself, founded a concert series focusing exclusively on living composers. The resulting Evolution Contemporary Music Series has featured an eclectic mix of up-and-coming and established composers, including those championed by Baltimore Symphony Orchestra music director Marin Alsop, whom Adashi praises for venturing into new repertoire.

Each concert this season explores whether a composer’s national or cultural heritage leaves a discernable mark on his or her music. The series’ December offering, Across the Pond, features five composers from the United Kingdom, including Thomas Adès (whose compositions were dubbed “viscerally appealing and intellectually stimulating” by a New York Times critic) and Peabody faculty member Oscar Bettison, whose “Neolithic Airs” (a ten-minute piece for detuned violin) will receive its world premiere. “Does it matter that these are all British composers?” Adashi asks. “Is there something about the music that has an ‘Englishness’ to it?”

Across the Pond will be followed by Finlandia in January and When in Rome in March. Last October’s concert, New Amsterdam, featured composers and performers based in New York City. “Their music has more pop in it,” Adashi says. “It’s a little more influenced by minimalism, the pulsing energy. Even if it’s not fast, there’s a beat.”

Adashi’s main goal is to introduce composers and performers to audiences who may not be aware of the tremendous diversity of styles in contemporary music. “Definitely there’s some music that is atonal and complex, some that is conceptual and abstract, but there is lots of tonal music that is very melodic,” he says. “‘Crossover’ is a loaded word, with connotations of Pavarotti singing pop songs, but there is a lot of interesting stuff that happens between genres.”

urbanitebaltimore.com

Back to Top

Has Baltimore become a haven for new music? It sure looks that way.

"I've always been optimistic about new music here," says Baltimore-born, Peabody-trained composer Judah Adashi, founder of the Evolution Contemporary Music Series.

"I'd definitely say that, with our series, Mobtown Modern, what Marin [Alsop] is doing at the BSO, and the High Zero Festival, we have a vibrant scene going. You might find something like this on every street corner in New York, but given the relative size of our town, there are really dynamic things on almost any given night," Adashi says.

Tuesday marks the fifth anniversary of the Evolution series, based at An die Musik. Adashi's wide-ranging tastes have resulted in consistently interesting programs. This one will feature the NOW Ensemble, co-founded by composer Judd Greenstein, who helped launch the cutting-edge New Amsterdam Records. The group will perform works by Greenstein, Missy Mazzoli, Timothy Andres and others, at 8 p.m. Tuesday (a pre-concert chat with Greenstein and Adashi will be at 7 p.m.) at An die Musik, 409 N. Charles St. Call 410-385-2638 or go to andiemusiklive.com.

Works by several major contemporary composers, from Thomas Ades and Oliver Knussen to Magnus Lindberg and Kaija Saariaho, will be heard at subsequent Evolution concerts this season. For more info, go to evolutionseries.org.

Back to Top

In the space of 24 hours, two organizations offered Baltimore a hearty jolt of contemporary music, putting the spotlight on the late Luciano Berio and the very-much-with-us Christopher Theofanidis, two composers whose work has not enjoyed nearly enough attention in this city...

Last night, the Evolution Contemporary Music Series, founded and directed with great commitment by Judah Adashi and based at An die Musik, saluted Theofanidis, who recently left the Peabody faculty for Yale's. The program provided a fascinating sample of the composer's solo and small ensemble pieces, all of them reflecting the Theofanidis trademarks of refined craftsmanship, structural clarity and neo-tonal, unapologetic accessibility.

Pianist Kenneth Osowski gave a taut, vivid performance of All Dreams Begin with the Horizon from 2006; the strikingly lyrical third movement was played with particular sensitivity. The tightly woven Kaoru for two flutes, a 1994 work, found Rachel Choe and Kristin Bacchiocchi Stewart articulating the most angular and propulsive of lines in deftly synchronized fashion.

The unaccompanied violin work Flow, My Tears, written in 1997 as an elegy for Jacob Druckman (one of Theofanidis' teachers), is quite striking. The darkly romantic style is certainly resonant of the past, but the has its own clear, telling voice. The poetic mileage the composer gets out of a deceptively straightforward descending scale speaks volumes for his originality and communicative power. Violaine Melancon played the score with evident affection, vibrant tone and often exquisite phrasing.

In the second movement of Visions and Miracles, a 1997 piece for strings, Theofanidis does some lovely things with an ascending scale. I found that gently pulsating movement the most interesting of the three, but the whole work is easily engaging (in remarks to last night's audience, the composer said that writing a work with "three happy movements" was "almost embarrassing"). The Brunell String Quartet, featuring Peabody grad students, gave a spirited, if sometimes rough-edged, performance.

Back to Top

In the space of about two hours last night, pianist Amy Briggs dove into the daunting field of modern American music -- at one point, nose-first (literally) -- and demonstrated the diverse richness of that repertoire in brilliant fashion.

Her concert, a presentation of the Evolution Contemporary Music Series at An die Musik, included a couple of premieres. Traces, by Augusta Read Thomas, is a series of stylistic fusions, suggesting what would happen if you crossed Scarlatti with Art Tatum, or Bach with BeBop. Briggs made a strong cases for these imaginative, often thorny keyboard etudes, especially the austere beauty of Reverie (a supposed mesh of Schumann and George Crumb) and the intense, vibrant complexity of Impromptu (Stravinksy and Chopin meet Thelonius Monk). This was the first public performance anywhere of the complete Traces, composed in 2006.

Like the Thomas work, David Rakowski's Piano Etudes pose any number of technical challenges, while attempting to provide a certain entertainment quotient. Briggs chose seven of the composer's nearly 90, sometimes cheekily-named Etudes, a sampling from the years 1997-2005. Absofunkinlutely conjures up boogie-woogie on acid; Palm de Terre (receiving its official U.S. premiere -- an "informal performance" is on YouTube) surrounds a gentle melody with misty harmonic clusters; Cell Division derives its glittery sonic coloring from the generic sound of a mobile phone being turned on; Chord Shark (an official world premiere, with an informal YouTube version) is like a thunderously dissonant variation on Chopin's C minor Prelude. Briggs delivered these and the remainder with abundant bravura, but her most distinctive feat came in a piece with a silly name, Schnozzage, that doesn't apparently aim for silliness. It calls on the pianist to articulate the melodic line with her nose, while her hands fill in subtle textures at either end of the keyboard. (Until last night, I was under the illusion that Peter Schickele had composed the only nasal keyboard piece -- and that one is intended for a laugh.) Rakowski was on hand to enjoy the dynamic performances of his music.

David Smooke's Requests was also performed in the presence of the composer. This work from 2003, written for Briggs, exploits her technical elan and gets additional color from having her tap on the instrument. A lot of kinetic action is packed into this short and sweet score. Other highlights of hefty program included two more 2003 items: Nico Muhly's Quiet Music, with its tapestry of thick, yet ever-lyrical, chords; and Bruce Stark's elegant, shimmering Waltz. I also admired Briggs' straightforward way with Philip Glass's Modern Love Waltz, but the Waltz No. 1 by the late rocker Elliott Smith, in Christopher O'Riley's lush arrangement, needed more tonal warmth to unleash the bittersweetness of the haunting tune.

This turns out to be quite the week for contemporary sounds. Tomorrow night at the Contemporary Museum, the provocative Mobtown Modern group presents a program of vocal works by Jacob ter Veldhuis, Ken Ueno, Missy Mazzoli and others who "have taken the vocal cords to their outer reaches and beyond." Should be fun.

Back to Top

Baltimore Symphony Orchestra music director Marin Alsop was hailed -- and hailed and hailed -- last night as a champion of living composers during a nearly three-hour event presented by the Evolution Contemporary Music Series that drew a standing-room-only crowd to An die Musik. Two of those composers, Christopher Rouse and Kevin Puts (who has studied with Rouse), were on hand to join in the praise during a pre-concert discussion with her and, later, in remarks to the audience before their works were performed…the remarkable concert balanced works by Rouse and Puts with those by two other composers whose music Alsop has long advocated, John Corigliano and John Adams.

The sensational violinist Tim Fain, who gave a memorable performance with Alsop and the BSO in December, played the heck out of Arches, a 2000 score by Puts. Extraordinarily kinetic and virtuosic, the unaccompanied piece also has a strong emotional core, suggesting something Bach might have written were he to pop back up today (subtle references to Bach flash by in the first movement). Fain is quite the fiddler, as effortless in taming technical challenges as he is compelling in the way he shapes phrases organically and creates an extensive range of tone colors as he goes. Mesmerizing.

Rouse's Compline, a 1996 work inspired by time spent in Italy, progresses in mood from "giddy tourist" stage (his description) to something spiritual. Scored for flute, clarinet, harp and string quartet, the music creates an inventive, involving sound world. Along the way, reiterative motor rhythms are deftly employed, but not for typical, minimalist purposes. There is drama, as well as energy, in that propulsion, leading at the end to a chant-like section that creates a clam, if not entirely settling, effect. An ensemble of musicians drawn from Baltimore and beyond performed the piece effectively.

The first half of the program opened with Corigliano's Etude Fantasy of 1976, a brilliantly organized exercise for solo piano that combines harsh dissonance, haunting melodic ideas, thunderous outbursts and hushed reflection. Michael Sheppard had the daunting music well in hand and tapped deeply into its expressive undercurrents. Adams, most familiar in his orchestral or operatic guises, was represented by one of his chamber works, Road Movies, a sporty vehicle from 1995 that puts violin and piano through intricately timed paces. The infectious minimalist motion of the score came through neatly in the performance by violinist Courtney Orlando and pianist Ken Osowski. The well-chosen repertoire reaffirmed the reasons why Corigliano, Adams and Rouse became such established composers, and why Puts is well on his way to joining them.

Back to Top

Nothing much to report, sorry to say, about Benjamin Kim's recital Thursday at An die Musik. This recent winner of a big international competition in Munich, Germany, played like, well, a competition winner -- technically polished (minus a memory slip), interpretively underpowered. Perhaps it was just a case of a talented pianist having an off night.

It was a different story the next night, when An die Musik's intimate concert room was turned over to the Evolution Contemporary Music Series and a program called "A New Songbook" that delivered a stimulating sample of vocal works from the past 27 years. (Full disclosure: I participated, however unmemorably, in a pre-concert panel discussion.)

Founded and directed by An die Musik's composer-in-residence, Judah Adashi, the Evolution project has added a welcome dose of newness to the local concert scene. This particular venture was rich in unusual experiences.

Eminent soprano Phyllis Bryn-Julson came out of retirement -- vocal artistry of her magnitude shouldn't be allowed to retire, anyway -- to deliver a riveting account of Gyorgy Kurtag's complex, unaccompanied Attila Jozsef Fragments. Another unaccompanied piece, Bernard Rands' Memo 7, turns art song into performance art, and soprano Bonnie Lander took full advantage of the theatrical possibilities in this brilliant atomization of an Emily Dickinson poem. Lander also took a wry romp through Life Story, a delicious Tennessee Williams text set to edgy music by Thomas Ades. Andrea Moore's lovely soprano uncovered the interior beauty of scores by Joseph Schwantner and, especially, Osvaldo Golijov.

The dark lyricism in John Harbison's Simple Daylight emerged tellingly in soprano Leah Inger's performance. Ryan Scott Ebright brought a thin baritone but abundant expressive understanding to David Del Tredici's retro-romantic Matthew Shepard.

The program's keyboard-accompanied works, all presenting their own considerable challenges, were divided up by five excellent pianists: Adashi, R. Timothy McReynolds, Patricia Puckett, Daniel Schlosberg and David Witmer.

Back to Top

Baltimore doesn't have a thriving new music scene, but it got a welcome boost with the arrival last year of the Evolution Contemporary Music Series at An die Musik, run by composer Judah Adashi. For its season-opening concert Friday night, the series offered a heady and hefty sampling of American piano music from the past 25 years. I caught the first half of the program, which included two particularly impressive achievements.

It was rewarding to hear the specially constructed, 30-minute suite from Michael Hersch's two-hour work completed last year, The Vanishing Pavilions, inspired by poetry of Christopher Middleton. But the complete score, premiered last month in Philadelphia, deserves a local airing -- and soon.

Hersch played the suite, which gripped the ear right from the opening movement, its downward slicing motive reflecting the lines, "So the flashing knife will split memory down the middle." With the occasional insertion of familiar harmony amid the thick, forbidding dissonance, Hersch's writing is fresh and astonishingly powerful -- like his playing.

Another fascinating discovery was the Sonata Andina from 2000 by Gabriela Lena Frank. Its inventive use of Latin American folk elements produces many a vivid effect, particularly when the pianist is called upon to do rhythmic clapping and tongue-clucking. Lura Johnson-Lee's performance had exceptional vitality, color and impact.

Back to Top

Like prophets, some composers don't get heard often enough.

British-born Nicholas Maw, a longtime Washington resident and faculty member at the Peabody Conservatory, should be a household name here. This composer of uncompromising seriousness, extraordinary imagination and uncommon expressive weight is hardly ever acknowledged locally.

That may be changing. Next season, Washington National Opera will present his compelling Sophie's Choice, conducted by Baltimore Symphony Orchestra music director-to-be, Marin Alsop. Meanwhile, An die Musik made a welcome acknowledgment of the composer with a 70th birthday celebration Tuesday night. (His actual birthday was Nov. 5.)

The Piano Trio from 1991 grows from a sinewy melody into a maze of complex harmonic ideas, strikingly diverse colors and deep emotions, finishing up in a defiant, affirmative burst of tonality. A minor rough patch aside, the Monument Piano Trio performed it with polish and depth.

The Old King's Lament (1981), delivered superbly by Fred Dole, is a tour de force for double bass, full of vivid imagery, ending with a pitiful wisp of sound, like a stifled cry in some endless night. Maw's Sonatina for Flute and Piano from 1957 is a compact yet eventful score in a confident, distinctive voice. Adriana Potoczniak and Li-Tan Hsu played it elegantly.

Roman Canticle (1989), for baritone, flute, viola and harp, achieves a Mahler-like lyricism. Ryan Scott Ebright's slender voice left some of the music unfulfilled, but he phrased sensitively, while the fine instrumentalists captured the many subtleties of Maw's inviting sound-world.

Back to Top