Allow me to take a moment to drag you away from the Olympic dressage and water polo that you must be watching (have you ever checked out water polo? that sport looks HARD) to tell you a little bit about what I’ve been up to this summer, and what’s coming up in the fall!
First of all, I’m so excited to announce the official launch of my website - iandavidrosenbaum.com! It’s been in the works for a while, and I’ve only had the time in the last few weeks to put the finishing touches on. A big thank you goes out to my brother for the design and Matt Fried for the photos. Please look around and let me know what you think! My whole calendar is up here, along with videos, audio clips and some more pictures. It’s still evolving, so please check back often.
This summer, I’ve been very fortunate to make music with a lot of really great people. At the end of June, I joined six incredible percussionists, six fantastic young composers, the world-famous Amadinda Percussion Group, composer extraordinaire James Wood, and my good friends Martin Bresnick and Bob van Sice up at the Norfolk Chamber Music Festival for their New Music Workshop. Over the course of about 10 days, we learned, rehearsed and performed something like 25 pieces, including a brand new James Wood sextet, classics by Steve Reich and Béla Bartók and 12 world premieres! It was some of the most intense work I’ve ever done, and while I’m not really in a hurry to do it again anytime soon, it was really an incredible experience. Norfolk is also beyond beautiful…..so that didn’t hurt.
After that, I flew down to Pittsburgh to join the Pittsburgh New Music Ensemble for two weeks of their season. Even if you don’t live in the Pittsburgh area, you need to check these guys out. Each of their concerts combines theatricality with music in a way that is extremely engaging and fun to watch. Along with the stellar musicians and artistic director, they have a wonderful full-time lighting designer who transforms each show into a visual experience as well as an aural one and a superb sound designer who makes the black box theatre that we played in sound like Carnegie Hall. We played some incredible music (including a wonderful work by my friend Amy Beth Kirsten with soprano Lindsay Kesselmen - another wonderful musician you should check out) and I had a terrific time down there.
The day after I flew home from Pittsburgh, I drove upstate to the New York State Music Festival to give a clinic to the percussion students and to play a recital. Now, back in 2005, just when I was graduating high school, I was a counselor at this festival, except that it was located at a different school down the street and had a slightly different name. It was fantastic to see so many familiar faces, and I really loved working with the students there. The concert was a lot of fun and you can check out some photos from the event here (scroll down a little bit). As I normally do, I played a bunch of pieces by Andy Akiho, and they brought down the house (as they normally do). I don’t even know why that surprises me anymore.
Speaking of Andy, our group Foundry is playing a show at the Noguchi Museum in Queens this Sunday at 3pm! Your ticket is free with the museum admission, so what better way to check out the exhibits and then hear some great music? Our old friend Domenic Salerni is coming up to join us on violin, so you don’t want to miss this. More information here.
After that, I go up to New Haven to record A Message from the Emperor, a duo for marimba, vibraphone and spoken Kafka text by Martin Bresnick that I helped commission while I was still in school with longtime collaborator Mike Compitello. This recording will go on Martin’s upcoming disc – I’ll let you know when I know something about its release!
As we roll into September, NOVUS NY (the contemporary ensemble at Trinity Wall Street) presents a very cool series of concerts – the Twelve in 12 festival. Basically, we are playing a piece by each of the twelve most recent winners of the Pulitzer Prize in music. There’s some pretty fancy names on that list – Steve Reich, David Lang, Kevin Puts, Jennifer Higdon and John Adams, just to name a few. These pieces are spread out over four concerts, all on Thursdays at 1pm – September 6, 13, 20 and 27. You can see the full schedule here, and I will play in the shows on the 13th, 20th and 27th. These concerts are all FREE but tend to fill up, so get there early. There’s information on location and such here.
I’m not sure if I mentioned this in an earlier email, but in the Spring of 2011 I auditioned for and was accepted to the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center’s Young Artist program - CMS Two. My residency starts this fall and kicks off on October 18th with a performance of George Aperghis’ piano/marimba duet Quatre pièces fébriles with the wonderful Gilles Vonsattel. This show is in the Kaplan Penthouse in the Rose Building, and you can get more information on location and tickets here. This concert will be streamed live, so those of you who can’t get to NYC, check out that link! I can’t tell you how excited I am to start this program, and I’d love to see some of you there.
That’ll do it for now. Check out that fancy little sidebar to the right for a concise listing of my upcoming events, sign up for my mailing list if you haven’t already and please check back often for updates!