Performances

Full concert programs will be available as they are confirmed with the artists.

Mikel Rouse – www.mikelrouse.com
Wednesday, Sep 2, 7:00 p.m.
Kansas City Public Library, Plaza Branch

Program:
Rouse’s film “Funding”

Mikel Rouse is a New York-based composer, director, performer and recording artist hailed as “a composer many believe to be the best of his generation.” (NY Times 2002) His works include 25 records, 7 films (including Funding and Music For Minorities), and a trilogy of media operas: Failing Kansas, Dennis Cleveland and The End Of Cinematics. His work has frequently appeared on Top Ten lists around the country. He has received commissions from the Brooklyn Academy of Music, the Mary Flagler Cary Charitable Trust and the Meet the Composer/Reader’s Digest Commissioning Program. Rouse’s compositions have been performed at Lincoln Center, the New York State Theater, and Alice Tully Hall, and throughout the United States and Europe.

newEar Concert – www.newear.org
Thursday, Sep 3, 8:00 p.m.
White Hall, UMKC

Program:
Tom Johnson – Twelve for solo piano
Terry Riley – Autumn Leaves flute, violin, alto sax, bass clarinet, cello, piano, percussion
Phill Niblock – Tow by Tom for fixed media
Vladimir Tosic – Arios for cello and piano
Barbara Benary – Sun On Snow for soprano and mixed ensemble
Jakob ter Veldhuis – The Body of Your Dreams for piano and boombox
Tom Johnson – Narayana’s Cows flute, violin, alto sax, bass clarinet, cello, piano, percussion (Tom Johnson, narrator)

newEar, now in its 17th Season, is a professional music ensemble based in Kansas City featuring the music of today’s composers. newEar’s music can be difficult to classify because composers write in ALL styles — from a traditional piano trio to a work for solo instrument and electronics. newEar concerts often feature a visual or cross-cultural element that blurs the boundaries of classical, rock, jazz, world music and the avant-garde. Other artistic disciplines are often part of newEar performances — including dance, visual arts or theatre. newEar’s concerts may be challenging to categorize: they are truly on the eclectic and cutting-edge creative trends of the 21st century.

Sarah Cahill – www.sarahcahill.com
Friday, Sep 4, 8:00 p.m.
All Souls Unitarian Universalist Church

Program (order to be determined):
Hans Otte- Das Buch der Klange (excerpt)
Harold Budd- Children on the Hill
Mamoru Fujieda- Patterns of Plants (selections)
Bunita Marcus- Julia
Meredith Monk- St. Petersburg Waltz, or Steppe Music (excerpt)
Elodie Lauten- Adamantine Sonata
Eve Beglarian- Night Psalm (premiere)
John Adams- China Gates
Harold Budd- Children on the Hill
Terry Riley- Be Kind to One Another

Sarah Cahill, recently called “as tenacious and committed an advocate as any composer could dream of” by Joshua Kosman of the San Francisco Chronicle, has commissioned, premiered, and recorded numerous compositions for solo piano. Composers who have dedicated music to her include John Adams, Terry Riley, Frederic Rzewski, Pauline Oliveros, Kyle Gann, and Evan Ziporyn. Most of Sarah’s albums are on the New Albion label. She has also recorded for the Tzadik, CRI, New World, Albany, Cold Blue, and Artifact labels. Her newest recordings feature little-known works by Leo Ornstein and by Marc Blitzstein. Her radio show, Then & Now, can be heard every Sunday evening from 8 to 10 pm on KALW, 91.7 FM (kalw.org).

Charlemagne Palestine – www.charlemagnepalestine.org
Saturday, Sep 5, 8:00 p.m.
Grace & Holy Trinity Cathedral

Program:
Schlingen-Blängen for Organ

Charlemagne Palestine (born Charles Martin or Chaim Moshe Tzadik Palestine August 15, 1945, or 1947, in Brooklyn, New York) is an American minimalist composer, performer, and visual artist. A contemporary of Philip Glass, Terry Riley, Phill Niblock, and Steve Reich, Palestine wrote intense, ritualistic music in the 1970s, intended by the composer to rub against Western audiences’ expectations of what is beautiful and meaningful in music. A composer-performer originally trained to be a cantor, he always performed his own works as soloist. His earliest works were compositions for carillon and electronic drones, and he is perhaps best known for his intensely performed piano works. He also performs as a vocalist: in Karenina he sings in the countertenor register and in other works he sings long tones with gradually shifting vowels and overtones while moving through the performance space or performing repeated actions such as throwing himself onto his hands. Palestine’s performance style is ritualistic: he generally surrounds himself (and his piano) with stuffed animals, smokes large numbers of kretek (Indonesian clove cigarettes), and drinks cognac.

Dennis Johnson’s November
Performed by Sarah Cahill and Kyle Gann
Sunday, Sep 6, 1:00 p.m.
All Souls Unitarian Universalist Church

November was written in 1959, and is the piece that La Monte Young credits as having inspired The Well-Tuned Piano. Johnson was one of a trio of students at UCLA in the late 1950s who were exploring La Monte’s idea of slow, static music, along with La Monte himself and Terry Jennings. Johnson figures heavily in La Monte’s semi-famous “Lecture 1960,” and is also credited with a work titled The Second Machine that uses only four pitches drawn from La Monte’s Trio for Strings. Soon afterward, however, Johnson abandoned music and went into computer science. November seems to have been the magnum opus of a heavily abbreviated career.

La Monte Young mentions that November was “theoretically” six hours long, though the hiss-filled, barely audible surviving recording, cuts off abruptly after 100 minutes. For this conference, Kyle Gann has worked to reconstruct the score based on this recording and further information he received from Dennis Johnson. This performance, then, will mark the first time this landmark piece has been heard since the early 1960’s.