PSNY Recent Recordings: Part II

by Ted Gordon on May 23, 2018, 2:44 p.m.

We're continuing our celebration of recent recordings by PSNY composers this week, and that celebration begins with a landmark album for Anthony Cheung: Dystemporal, a portrait CD released on Wergo in 2016. Containing six premiere recordings of works Cheung, Dystemporal is performed by the Talea Ensemble, which Cheung co-directs alongside percussionist Alex Lipowski, and Ensemble Intercontemporain. These works represent a formative period in Cheung's career, and this new recording presents a landmark document of his unique compositional voice. They include: SynchroniCities (2012) for 8 musicians with electronics; Windswept Cypresses (2005) for flute, viola, harp, percussion; Running the (Full) Gamut (2008) for piano; Centripedalocity (2008) for 7 musicians; Enjamb, Infuse, Implode (2006) for 6 musicians; and Dystemporal (2012) for 23 musicians.

Another PSNY composer also saw a major portrait CD released in 2016: Lei Liang, whose Luminous, released on New World Records, documents five recent compositions that explore his long-standing research into traditional Asian arts and music, and their incorporation into a contemporary music aesthetic. These works, performed by musicians and ensembles including Steven Schick, Daniel Schlosberg, Aleck Karis, Third Coast Percussion, the Formosa Quartet, and the Palimpsest Ensemble, include: Verge Quartet (2013) for string quartet; Trans (2013) for solo percussion; The moon is following us (2015) for solo piano; Inkscape (2014) for percussion ensemble and piano; and Luminous (2014) contrabass solo and ensemble. Check out a performance of Luminous below.

With the Mivos Quartet, Kate Soper recorded her work 2015 work Nadja, a three-song cycle sets texts by Alfred, Lord Tennyson, Ovid, and André Breton that incorporates the composer's own voice into the quartet. Released on New Focus Recordings, Nadja is accompanied by works by Taylor Brook and Andrew Greenwald to complete Mivos's album, titled The Garden of Diverging Paths. Check out Soper and Mivos performing the work in 2015 below. 

Narrowing from large ensemble pieces to solo works, we're thrilled to feature percussionist Ian David Rosenbaum's solo album, Memory Palace, released on VisionIntoArt Records, the in-house label of Brooklyn venue National Sawdust. Memory Palace contains recordings of the eponymous 2012 work by Christopher Cerrone, as well as Timo Andres'Crashing Through Fences, which Rosenbaum originally commissioned and premiered in 2010. Check out a performance of Memory Palace at EMPAC below: 

New Works from Richard Carrick, Anthony Cheung, and Christopher Cerrone

by Ted Gordon on Oct. 24, 2017, 10:48 a.m.

On October 27th, Richard Carrick will see the world premiere of his new work, sandstone(s), at the Pacific Rim Festival in Santa Cruz, CA. Pairing flute, violin, and cello with traditional Korean instruments, sandstone(s) is inspired by the temporary, unstable structures created by sand, which the composer explored making at Kenya's Diani Beach during his residence in Rwanda in 2016. Sandstone(s), which will be published by PSNY, is inspired by Carrick's involvement with different iterations of traditional Korean pansori, which he has explored in his solo violin work Seongeum, published by PSNY. It will be premiered by the New York New Music Ensemble alongside the Gugak Contemporary Orchestra of Seoul. For a taste of Carrick's relationship with traditional Korean music, check out a recording of Seongeum below.

On November 18th, Anthony Cheung, in collaboration with Wang Lu, will see a new work for solo piano premiered by Joel Fan at the Open Source Music Festival at New York's Abrons Art Center. A few weeks later on November 29, the Longleash piano trio will perform a new version of Cheung's 2006 work, Flyaway Detours, in addition to the US premiere of Ann Cleare's 93 Million Miles Away. To get a sense of Cheung's writing for solo piano, check out his performance of his own work, Running the (full) Gamut), from 2008.

In addition to performances of his work across the country, Christopher Cerrone will see the world premiere of his new string quartet, can't and won't, on December 7th at Walt Disney Concert Hall. Co-Commissioned by the LA Phil and the Calder Quartet, this new work is Cerrone's second string quartet, after 2016's How to Breathe Underwater, which was originally written for male voice, bass clarinet, trumpet, trombone, and electroincs, in 2011.

Anthony Cheung's "The Real Book of Fake Tunes" in Chicago and New York

by Ted Gordon on April 13, 2017, 11:37 a.m.

Players, students, and enthusiasts of jazz will be familiar with the many iterations of the "fake book"—a collection of lead sheets that has seen many versions throughout the 20th century, even an "official" edition as The Real Book in the 1970s. Anthony Cheung, no stranger to the long stylistic and compositional traditions of jazz, takes the "real book" as a starting point for his The Real Book of Fake Tunes, written for fellow Chicagoans Claire Chase and the Spektral Quartet. Cheung takes the architecture of a "Real Book" and designs his own plans for the classical instrumentation of string quartet and flute, recalling the dance or compositional suites of the 18th century while catapulting the listener into the 21st. 

On Thursday, April 13th, Claire Chase and the Spektral Quartet will perform The Real Book of Fake Tunes at Northwestern University, as a part of Chase's "Density" project, alongside a new commission by fellow PSNY compoer Marcos Balter. Later in the month, the ensemble will travel to New York to present The Real Book of Fake Tunes at National Sawdust, in a program that features a new quartet by George Lewis and Katherine Young's arrangement of Arthur Russell's Hiding Your Present From You.