Press Release: Wordless Music

The Wordless Music Series has announced preliminary details of its 2007-08 season, which will include the much-anticipated U.S. premiere of Radiohead guitarist Jonny Greenwood's Popcorn Superhet Receiver for string orchestra. The series, which brings together classical and contemporary rock and electronic artists in nontraditional chamber-music spaces, will feature performances in the fall of its second season from Do Make Say Think, Beirut, Múm, Colleen, Nico Muhly, Valgeir Sigurdsson, Sandro Perri, Bing and Ruth, Hauschka, Torngat, and Electric Kompany. Also appearing will be classical soloists and ensembles performing the music of Bach, Bartók, Chopin, Scriabin, and György Ligeti, as well as contemporary composers Arvo Pärt, John Adams, Gavin Bryars, Osvaldo Golijov, Jacob TV, Nick Didkovsky, and Marc Mellits.

The 2007-08 season of Wordless Music will open with a concert by Toronto big band Do Make Say Think and New York new-music quartet the Electric Kompany on Friday, September 14, at the New York Society for Ethical Culture on Central Park West and 64th Street. Continuing in the Wordless Music tradition of offering concerts in alternative and unconventional spaces, shows will also take place at Good-Shepherd Faith Church and The Church of St. Paul the Apostle in Manhattan, as well as the Brooklyn Masonic Temple in Fort Greene. Beginning with the 2007-08 season, in a special new partnership, Wordless Music concerts will take place for the first time at venues outside New York City, at the Southern Theater in Minneapolis.

The 2007-08 season will also include an extremely rare full-orchestra program on January 16-17, 2008, with music exploring the subjects of religion, technology, and modernity by contemporary composers John Adams (Christian Zeal and Activity), Gavin Bryars (The Sinking of the Titanic), and Jonny Greenwood (Popcorn Superhet Receiver). Commissioned by the BBC in 2005, when Greenwood was named the BBC's Composer-in-Residence, and premiered in November 2006 at Queen Elizabeth Hall in London by the BBC Concert Orchestra, Popcorn Superhet Receiver is a 20-minute work inspired by the phenomenon of white noise and the music of Krzysztof Penderecki, György Ligeti, and Olivier Messiaen. For its U.S. premiere, the work has been revised by the composer and will be performed by a string orchestra comprising 18 violins, 6 violas, 6 cellos, and 4 double basses. The Wordless Music Orchestra will be led by conductor Brad Lubman, known for his work conducting the Steve Reich Ensemble, and will feature a one-time gathering of 50 instrumentalists, who represent many of the brightest talents in New York's classical and new-music community. They come from a diverse group of bands and ensembles who have drawn inspiration from the music of Jonny Greenwood and Radiohead throughout the group's 15-year history, including members of Alarm Will Sound and So Percussion.

Tickets for all 2007-08 Wordless Music shows will be on sale beginning at noon on Friday, August 9. Planning for Wordless Music concerts in the winter and spring is in progress and will be announced soon. Full schedule details and ticket sale info are available at wordlessmusic.org.


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Wordless Music
2007-08 Season


Friday, September 14 (at the New York Society for Ethical Culture) will be headlined by the Toronto big band Do Make Say Think, with support from the amplified new-music ensemble the Electric Kompany, who will perform music for rock quartet by the composers Jacob TV, Nick Didkovsky, and Marc Mellits.


Thursday, September 20 (at the Brooklyn Masonic Temple) will be headlined by Beirut with support from Fifth Veil, a clarinet-and-string-quartet ensemble from the Bard Conservatory of Music that will perform composer Osvaldo Golijov's The Dreams and Prayers of Issac the Blind (1994), which combines Klezmer clarinet playing with classical string quartet writing.


Monday, September 24 (also at SEC) will also be headlined by Beirut with support from the French cellist/electronic artist Colleen, as well as the pianist Katya Mihailova playing solo pieces by Chopin and Scriabin, followed by duos for piano and violin (with violinist Colin Jacobsen) by Arvo Pärt and Bela Bartók.


Saturday, September 29 (at the Southern Theater in Minneapolis) will mark the first Wordless Music concert to take place outside New York City, and will feature a large ensemble led by composer Nico Muhly and producer/electronic artist Valgeir Sigurdsson.


Friday, October 5 (at Good Shepherd Church) will be a showcase devoted in part to the Bedroom Community label in Iceland, with a large ensemble led by composer Nico Muhly and producer/electronic artist Valgeir Sigurdsson, best known to date for his work producing records by Bjork, Múm, and Bonnie "Prince" Billy. The show will open with music from Toronto musician Sandro Perri.


Friday, November 9 (at St. Paul the Apostle) will be headlined by Múm with support from Torngat, a horn/percussion/keyboard trio from Montreal with Pietro Amato from Bell Orchestre/Arcade Fire, along with the cellist Jihyun Kim performing one of Bach's solo cello suites and György Ligeti's sonata for solo cello.


Saturday, November 10 (at SEC) will again be headlined by Múm, with support from Hauschka, a German pianist and composer on the Fat Cat label, as well as Bing and Ruth, a rotating "ambient orchestra" of ten or more instrumentalists and vocalists, mainly living in Brooklyn. Bing and Ruth's set will open with a brief solo piano program by bandleader, composer, and pianist David Moore, who will perform a selection of Bach's Goldberg Variations.


Wednesday & Thursday, January 16 & 17 (at St. Paul the Apostle) will feature a full Wordless Music Orchestra led by conductor Brad Lubman, performing a program of works exploring the subjects of religion, technology, and modernity, including the U.S. premiere of Jonny Greenwood's Popcorn Superhet Receiver for string orchestra, as well as music by John Adams (Christian Zeal & Activity) and Gavin Bryars (The Sinking of the Titanic).

Tickets for all 2007-08 Wordless Music concerts go on sale at noon this Friday, August 10, via wordlessmusic.org.

Taking time off

I will be taking the next week or two off from blogging, as I have a few things on my plate:
1) finish my tenure file(s)
2) finish my article on cognition of musical articulation
3) compute final grades for my IU class
4) prepare my six(!) classes for DePauw
5) get my kids ready for school
6) go to the state fair
7) give a presentation on library use to new faculty
8) hire a part-time instructor in musicianship
9) torment the cats
10) there is no number 10.

In the meantime, there is a recent article in Memory Cognition (2007, 35(2):242-253) about how to learn song lyrics: "Learning lyrics: to sing or not to sing?" by Racette and Peretz.

According to common practice and oral tradition, learning verbal materials through song should facilitate word recall. In the present study, we provide evidence against this belief. In Experiment 1, 36 university students, half of them musicians, learned an unfamiliar song in three conditions. In the sung-sung condition, the song to be learned was sung, and the response was sung too. In the sung-spoken condition, the response was spoken. In the divided-spoken condition, the presented lyrics (accompanied by music) and the response were both spoken. Superior word recall in the sung-sung condition was predicted. However, fewer words were recalled when singing than when speaking. Furthermore, the mode of presentation, whether sung or spoken, had no influence on lyric recall, in either short- or long-term recall. In Experiment 2, singing was assessed with and without words. Altogether, the results indicate that the text and the melody of a song have separate representations in memory, making singing a dual task to perform, at least in the first steps of learning. Interestingly, musical training had little impact on performance, suggesting that vocal learning is a basic and widespread skill.

And you can go visit James Cook's post explaining why I'm wrong about Chopin. Related to that subject, see Scott Strader's analysis of Chopin's A minor prelude. Scott also just wrote a good post on Krenek and Sorabji.

Can I play?

Alex has come up with a new game, which has been played by Matthew, Rex, Lisa, Robert, Charles, and John (Alex has all of them, except Lisa's The Schenker Youth). Alex declares the Robert Ludlum Compendium closed, but this is too good a meme to let die. I have:

The Saariaho Reflection
The Pärt Contemplation
The Tavener Orthodoxy
The Gorecki Epitaph
The Stockhausen Aberration

Faster than a speeding tuba

This morning I ran in the Circle the City 5k race, supporting the Indianapolis Symphony Orchestra. A brass quartet was set up on the Memorial steps to entertain us before and after the run*, with a string quartet playing at the first mile marker and a pianist at the second (I couldn't tell you what was played at either marker, I was too busy keeping my feet moving). I imagine there were more along the 10K route. I did okay, finishing 49th out of 262, and 4th out of 13 in my age group, with a time of 24'34". I had hoped to make it in 24 minutes, but this is still one minute faster than my previous 5k. It was also nice to chat with colleague Jim Beckel who played in the quartet, and with a student who is interning with the symphony this summer.

* When the CEO of the symphony finished his race, the quartet played "Hail to the Chief."

FriPod: Alone and Separate

I've got my reasons.

1. "I Don't Want To Be Alone" by Billy Joel on Glass Houses.
2. "Creatures of Pan appear and frighten the pirates, who flee in terror, leaving Chloé alone with a shining crown" from Daphnis et Chloé by Maurice Ravel, performed by Charles Munch, Conductor / Boston Symphony Orchestra / Robert Shaw, Director / New England Conservatory Chorus And Alumni Chorus.
3. "Alone Together" by Dietz and Schwartz, performed by Dinah Washington on Dinah Jams!
4. "Alone" from The Mission soundtrack by Ennio Morricone.
5. "Eating Alone" from the Shrek soundtrack by Harry Gregson-Williams & John Powell.
6. "Far from home / E.T. alone" from the E.T. The Extra-Terrestrial - Remastered & Expanded soundtrack by John Williams.
7. "Separate Lives" by Stephen Bishop, performed by Phil Collins on Serious Hits...Live!

Listening to Maps

I just received an unexpected press release: NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC LAUNCHES NEW MUSIC AND RADIO DIVISION: GREAT MUSIC FROM AROUND WORLD, CULTURAL UNDERSTANDING, PLANET-FRIENDLY LIVING

Part of this new venture makes sense, as National Geographic produces many films and TV shows, thus it needs to have music supervision of all these projects. But they will also be launching syndicated radio shows, promoting live events, selling MP3s (many from their own record label), and a publishing house that will manage "the music publishing assets of the Society, representing over 12,000 copyrights." I had no idea National Geographic owned the rights to printed music.

New music blogs

Recently I've been made aware of several music blogs new to me.

Mathemusicality is a new blog by James Cook, exploring advanced theoretic views of music.
Classical Convert describes Ben's new discovery of classical music, having only started listening when he was 23. He also maintains a larger website with advice for newcomers to the classical world.
the search for artistry is Phil Giampietro's blog on (duh!) the search for artistry in music. He's also a euphonium player.
The Sibelian Conspiracy is a group blog by composers to promote their music. There is some discrepancy in the mission, since the subtitle of the blog is "about music, art, and literature."