I know it’s Easter, but this Sunday night my good friend Andy Akiho & I are returning to the Kennedy Center for an incredible program. With the help of the Mivos Quartet, we’ll present Andy’s works for marimba/steel pan and string quartet – including, of course, one of my favorite pieces in the whole world: LIgNEouS 1. Wooden mallets, rubber bands stretched across marimba bars, what more could you want?
The latest…
Tomorrow night, I have the pleasure of joining the Carnegie Hall Academy, Robert Spano and my CMS colleague Juho Pohjonen in a rare performance of Messiaen’s Des canyons aux étoiles. This piece, commissioned by the one and only Alice Tully, was written to celebrate the bicentennial of the American Declaration of Independence. It was inspired by Messiaen’s time at Bryce Canyon in Utah and depicts, among other things, the incredible vastness of the sky, the many colors of the canyons and in true Messiaen fashion, the bird songs he heard.
The citizens of Utah were so overjoyed with the composition that they christened Mt. Messiaen on August 5th, 1978 – also known as Messiaen and the Beauty of Southern Utah Day!
Messiaen is one of the most spectacular composers of the 20th century. He sounds completely unique, and there is so much raw emotion and power in his music. This is one of my favorites, and the group sounds incredible. Please come join us tomorrow night at 6pm! Tickets and more information here.
Last weekend, I did a family concert with the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center. On the program was a 30-minute instrumental suite composed and narrated by Bruce Adolphe. Bruce is an extremely gifted speaker and performer – he’s hilarious, and for this show he dressed up and acted out semi-improvised interludes to our performance.
Anyhow, before the concert, we had what they called an ‘Instrument Petting Zoo’ – or about 45 minutes of controlled chaos + musical instruments. Basically, they set each of the performers up in roped-off pens with our instruments and then they let the kids in. Hundreds of them.
Happy new year!
Our Kickstarter campaign to commission Andy Akiho to write his first percussion quartet is in its final week! If you haven’t yet, please check out our campaign!
Lots of new things have been added to the campaign web site since the last time I posted here:
- Video of Andy’s incredible piece for 11 steel drummers, 1 metal drumset and a whole bunch of junk metal played with kick drum pedals (“pedalmetal”), Alloy, is up on YouTube. We recorded this piece a spur-of-the-moment recording session at a warehouse in LA last May. Check it out!
- New rewards: for percussionists and percussion quartets we added a $240 reward. You’ll get the parts and score for the new piece six months before it’s published along with exclusive performing rights during those six months. Also, for any Japanese backers, we added a $120 reward that includes a lesson with Ayano Kataoka in Japan along with some other goodies.
- You backed – we delivered! In an update a week or so ago, we promised to post a brand new performance video for each $2000 that we raised. We hit $2000 a few days ago, so I posted a video that Andy and I made a few weeks ago. This was another impromptu session – we set up a few iPhones in the lobby of a building at Princeton University and let them roll for a few hours. Read more about and check out our video of Andy’s Karakurenai here.
- Finally, my friend Chris McGovern over at the arts blog The Glass wrote a nice piece about the campaign. Check that out here.
5 days left – please help us make this important contribution to the percussion quartet literature!
Hello!
Last Spring, I got together with three really good friends (who also happen to be 3 of the most brilliant musicians I know) to record Paul Lansky’s beautiful percussion quartet Threads for Bridge Records - expect that record in the near future! We had a ton of fun with the project, and decided to keep playing together. The group is called Time Travelers and it consists of Gwen Burgett, Ayano Kataoka, Svet Stoyanov and myself.
We spent a while discussing what our next project would be and we decided that we wanted to commission a piece. Not just any piece – we wanted to commission a piece that would be a significant addition to the percussion quartet repertoire and would see a long life of performances beyond the premiere. We decided to commission my good friend and frequent collaborator Andy Akiho.
Now, if you’re a contemporary-music lover you may have heard Andy’s name by now. He’s a steel drum virtuoso who has made a huge splash on the composition scene with works for new music powerhouses like eighth blackbird, ETHEL and the Calder Quartet. Most recently, he was commissioned by the New York Philharmonic! If you’re in the NY area, you can check that premiere out on December 21st and 22nd.
Andy’s music is a ton of fun to play….we play in a group called Foundry together and I play his piece for marimba and string quartet all the time. This will actually be Andy’s first percussion quartet, and I can’t wait to see what he’s going to come up with!
We decided to fund this commission with Kickstarter, which, if you haven’t heard of it yet, is one of the more popular crowdfunding platforms. Basically, it allows anyone to back a project and help make it a reality. You can donate any amount that you want, and you’ll get a bunch of rewards for your support. In our campaign, we’re offering all kinds of stuff: lots of recordings (including previously unreleased ones), music lessons, drafts from Andy’s score and even a private concert for you and your friends! We liked the idea of it because we wanted to make this project about you, the people who will be listening to and maybe even playing this piece in the future. Anyone should be able to be a part of creating a new work of art, and with this project, you can be!
Please take a minute and watch our video and check out the campaign. I know that this is going to be an amazing piece and I can’t wait to share it with all of you!
Thank you so much, and happy holidays.