PAIRINGS is a four-concert series of contemporary classical music produced by the Tank and curator Adam Mirza taking place each Tuesday night in November. More information about the series is available at www.pairingcomposers.org.
Ekstasis (Being Nothing Becoming)
Adam Mirza
Body-Process : (Ritual) for tenor saxophone [Michael Ibrahim]
LINE NOISE for electric guitar [Adam Mirza]
Impulse to Breathe for accordion [William Schimmel]
Mikrophonie I
for large tam-tam, microphones, filters and controllers.
We are thingNY, a collective of composer-instrumentalists based in New York City. On Saturday, December 19, 2009, we will be presenting a concert called SPAM, based on responses we get to this very email. Congratulations! If you’re reading this email, you’ve been selected to write us some music – even if you’ve never written music before. It could be a few words, a notated score, a set of instructions, a drawing, a video of your dog, your favorite photo of Leonard Nimoy, or anything else you can imagine. It could even be something that takes a second or two to perform.
Please send your new work to thingNY@gmail.com or post on our blog and be sure to include your name and where you’re from. Any reply that we receive by Saturday, November 19th has the potential to be included in whole or in part. You are, of course, welcomed and encouraged to attend the performance, which will be held at the University of the Streets in New York City. Please forward this email to your friends, family, and acquaintances – let’s make this a great show! We look forward to receiving your composition, and we promise we will do our best to satisfy your artistic desires.
Season Opener: Around the World in 24 Hours Festival
New York avant-garders, thingNY take the stage of the LaGuardia Performing Arts Center (along with over a dozen other acts from around the world) as part of a 24-hour marathon of performances curated by The Internationalists. thingNY’s performance will feature painted scores, video projection, sonic theatre, empty bottles, punishments, eskimos, and both newly-penned and gently used works by composers Brad Baumgardner, Hans Buetow, Morton Feldman, Art Jarvinen, David Lang, Luis Menacho and Stephen Rogers.
thingNY goes on around 11pm
(marathon runs from 5pm on Nov. 7 to 5pm on Nov. 8)
LaGuardia Performing Arts Center
31-10 Thompson Ave. Long Island City, Queens, NY
admission: $24 (full festival line-up), $12 (all shows after midnight) www.theinternationalists.org for more info
Alejandro Acierto, clarinet
Gelsey Bell, soprano
Isabel Castellvi, cello
Michael Hanf, percussion
Andrew Livingston, bass Paul Pinto, conductor
Erin Rogers, saxophone
Jeffrey Young, violin
August 3, 2009 – The University of the Streets presents…
The Comformer Perposers Series
a monthly laboratory for experimental and classical composers
Featuring:Andrea Erin Rogers (saxophone), Yoni Niv (electronics), Tom Swafford (Violin)
Once a month, a few composers are invited to showcase a new work (or a few new works) that they are currently developing for their own solo performance. The series focuses on the equal relationship between the composing and performing parts of an individual artist and gives a forum for uninhibited performance of new original compositions. Performances are salon-style, each composer performs their set, after which we casually break for discussion and feedback. We’ll end with an open improv jam led by the participating composers.
Saturday, May 22 @ 8:00
Saint Peter’s Church
346 West 20th Street
Chelsea, Manhattan (between 8th and 9th Avenues)
Tickets $15 advance/$20 door
Click HERE to purchase tickets.
Random Access Music presents a concert of works performed by the Chicago-based Anubis Saxophone Quartet. Works by Random Access Music member-composers Andrew McKenna Lee, David Fetherolf, Jonathan Pieslak, Erin Rogers, and B. Allen Schulz will be presented on the program, along with the winning work of RAM‘s 2010 call for scores Howling at the Wind by Dana Wilson. A reception, with composer and performer question-and-answer period, will follow.
RANDOM ACCESS MUSIC is a consortium of composers who pool their energy and resources to produce concerts of their own music. Founded in 2006, RAM works closely with both emerging and well-established new music ensembles throughout the United States and has presented 12 separate concerts of music by its member-composers. RAM‘s six member-composers have won almost every young composers’ prize in the book and have drawn critical acclaim from coast to coast and internationally, including the following excerpts from periodicals such as the New York Times and Time Out New York: “remarkably inspired,” “diverse and rousing,” “personal, moody and skillfully wrought,” “quirky, sparkling…fresh sounds,” “powerful and intense;” and the music “causes you to prick up your ears.” To learn more about Random Access Music, visit: www.RAM-NYC.org.
Anubis Quartet is a new-generation modular saxophone ensemble committed to the creation, progression, and performance of new music. The four musicians of Anubis Quartet, Ryan Muncy, Allison Balcetis, David Wegehaupt, and Sean Patayanikorn, regularly perform on all members of the saxophone family, resulting in engaging and varied performances that exponentially increase the possibilities of expression through sound.
Formed in 2007, Anubis has quickly gained regard as one of North America’s major contemporary saxophone ensembles, having performed as guests at Bowling Green State University, Chulalongkorn University in Bangkok, Thailand, and at the 2008 North American Saxophone Alliance Biennial conference at the University of South Carolina. In addition to a Chicago debut performance at Nichols Concert Hall of the Music Institute of Chicago, engagements during the previous concert season included the presentation of new works at Mahidol University in Bangkok, Thailand at the 15th World Saxophone Congress, and a performance at the NASA Region IX conference in Edmonton, Alberta. The quartet has commissioned and premiered works by major living composers including Thierry Alla, Philippe Laval, Mikel Kuehn, Claudio Gabriele and Vincent Bouchot. Anubis Quartet includes two Fulbright Scholars, one Fischoff National Chamber Music Competition Gold Medalist, one semi-finalist in the Adolphe Sax International Competition, five diplomas from major French conservatories, one collaborator on a first-round Grammy Award nominated album, and the 4th place winner of the 2008 Jean-Marie Londeix International Saxophone Competition. To learn more about the quartet, visit: www.anubisquartet.com
Hooray! We’re now a Non-Profit!
Come out and Support thingNY
For Our First Fundraiser
Monday, June 22, 2009
5:30 p.m. – 8:30 p.m.
At Vig 27
(In The Back Room)
Located at 119 East 27th Street (between Park and Lex)
Ticket Price Ranges:
$501 – Better than an Opera Star
$201 – $500 – Opera Star
$101 – $200 – Elitist
$51- $100 – Storn Child
$20 – $51 – Groupie
Stop by for a cocktail and some great conversation. There will also be musical performances from the group, special words from a special guest and highlights from our past and upcoming seasons. Please feel free to attend even if you have not already RSVP’d.
The composers of Random Access Music are pleased to welcome Jessica Mathaes <http://www.jessicamathaes.com/>, concert master of the Austin Symphony, for an evening of chamber works for violin and piano at Manhattan’s Tenri Cultural Institute <http://www.tenri.org/>. The concert will feature 6 works from the composers of RAM.
As a miniature prelude to our upcoming opera, thingNY will be performing at the Yippie Museum (Bowery) on May 31st at 7pm. Featuring some of our highlights from the past season, we hope to impress you to the point where you decide it necessary to purchase tickets to our opera, ADDDDDDDDD on June 20th. Do hope you can join us! (tickets $5 at the door)
Saturday June 20, 2009 – 7pm The Tank – 354 W 45th Street
$10 advance/ $15 at the door
A D D D D D D D D D
a 9Ds opera by thingNY
Written and performed by Isabel Castellvi, Andrew Livingston, Paul Pinto, Erin Rogers, Jeffrey Young
Focus. The composers of thingNY will tell you stories, sing you songs, scream in your face, try to sell you stuff and rant recklessly to themselves, filling your ears with the sweet sweet sounds of excess. This new experimental opera by NYC’s freshest avant-garde band highlights the everyday excesses of our lives (workaholism, the thrill of consumption, the joys of gluttony, the elation of libation) and turns them into a suite of attention-deficient songs, monologues and infomercials.
Isabel Castellvi, Andrew Livingston, Paul Pinto, Erin Rogers and Jeffrey Young’s collaboration on this project began a year ago with the specific goal to create (and along the way, define) an opera together. The end result is a stream of poetically verbose scenes and songs (most in English, some in… well, Bizarre-Speak) and a musical score (for various instruments, electronics and toys) that is mentally engaging and heartfelt.