Chamber Music America Conference - continued

sorry for the delay! Things have been busy in Loopland. Below is a follow up to the Chamber Music America conference 2010 chronicles.

CMA Ensemble Showcases

This part of the conference provides an opportunity for groups, all CMA members, to showcase their talents and hopefully win over concert presenters and management types who are attending the conference. We were only able to attend about a third of the performances as many were happening at the same time. We prioritized attending some of the jazz and contemporary music showcases. The performances we saw included duoJalal, Weiss-Kaplan-Newman Trio, Madera Vox, Fireworks Ensemble, Ted Kooshian’s Standard Orbit Quartet, and Jeff Newell’s New-Trad Octet.

We can’t take the space here to review or comment on all of the performances, but wanted to give you the synopsis of what we saw, as it seems to be an important event for the industry. The W-K-N Trio gave an impassioned performance of works by Brahms, Smetena, and Sheng. They handled the Romantic to Contemporary works confidently. This wasn’t the most cohesive performance, you got the impression that this collaboration was not their main project, but they were all wonderful musicians and gave a convincing performance.

Madera Vox and Fireworks Ensemble were back to back on Saturday and represented the “contemporary” (quotes explained below) category of ensembles. This combined hour of showcasing was the most confusing and disappointing part of the entire conference. One might expect the contemporary ensembles to be edgy, take risks, and above all to perform works by living composers…not so. The overall esthethic of both of these ensembles seemed to gravitate toward cabaret more that anything else. It appeared to be geared toward entertainment value, which is possibly the marketing angle they felt necessary to find work in today’s economy.

The Fireworks Ensemble delivered a very tight ensemble performance, with much of the music performed from memory, but in the context of this situation, the most striking thing about it was that THEY PLAYED ABSOLUTELY NO MUSIC BY LIVING COMPOSERS!! Um…whom are we fooling here? This is one of the groups selected as a “contemporary ensemble.” Worse yet is that the ensemble members didn’t seem to know that the composers were dead! Bassist and bandleader Brian Coughlin even gave an elaborate introduction about the group’s dedication to contemporary music as a lead-in to the group’s arrangement of G-Spot Tornado by Frank Zappa. Now, we love our Zappa, but we also know this piece was released on “Jazz From Hell” in 1986, over 20 years ago (and that Zappa died, God bless his soul, over 16 years ago). That makes it a 20th century work, modern for sure, a classic in rock/pop terms, but certainly not contemporary. All of this might have been forgiven and forgotten if a really rousing performance followed this nonsense, but it all felt tepid, as if Broadway session musicians had been hired to read some cool charts. The group was tight and well rehearsed, but inventive, passionate or convincing, not to mention contemporary(!), it was not. This reached the point of offensiveness, because either Mr. Coughlin considered the audience to be ignorant, or was himself, and either way there was no integrity in the presentation as regards CMA.

The best thing to say about Madera Vox was that they were honest and knowledgeable about what they were doing. The ensemble playing was less refined than Fireworks'– they played Children’s Song No.6 by Chick Corea and seemed to be fishing for whether or not to play a latin or swing groove, but there was some inventiveness to their arrangements and presentation. Again, instead of giving gutsy performances, they gravitated toward this cabaret esthetic, which seemed out of place at such a conference. These combined sessions left us wondering if CMA stood for Cabaret Mentality Amusement… more to come!

-J.M.

The session with Chick Corea was tremendously insightful as he, Fred Sherry, Ida Kavafian, Billy Childs, and Phillip Ying reminisced about past collaborations. This was heavily focused on Corea's album, Leprechaun, on which he first wrote for strings. The cross-pollination of jazz and classical music/performance was a big part of the discussion. This was meant as a 'moderated discussion', in that there was someone there to ask questions and direct the conversation. It somehow seemed more natural though, and more interesting, to let the musicians wax nostalgic on their prolific careers. Chick even talked about playing with Miles and Miles' approach to dealing with his collaborators' input. It seems that in performance Miles always let his players do their thing, even when he didn't like what they were doing. He let people find themselves and define themselves - he was responsible for himself and led by demonstration...I would imagine that you didn't get called for the next tour though if you weren't smokin'!

Chamber Music America’s (CMA) annual conference was last weekend at the Westin Hotel in NYC. This is the first time we have attended the full conference (though we have participated in APAP and other conferences), and overall found it to be very worthwhile. There were some stimulating talks with guest speakers, including Steve Reich, Leon Botstein, and Chick Corea. The weekend also included showcase performances from member ensembles. We got to see a wide variety of these performances, some of which were exciting, some disappointing, and some simply confusing as to their relevance at such an event. There were also sessions on fund-raising and other organization-building topics.

Steve Reich talked about being an inventor – something we all need to do as makers of art music in order to have any hope of survival! He basically related the idea of chamber musicians being entrepreneurs, except that most of us are not going into this so that we can drive a Porsche and have 3 houses. Reich also discussed the genesis of his phasing works and his approach to writing for new ensembles/instruments as his palette expanded over the years from all like-instruments to more diverse ensembles.

Leon Botstein was the ‘shake-up’ factor of the conference. Mr. Botstein was likable just as much for his broad perspective on music history, as for his sense of humor, and fearlessness. He declared, “The age of recording is dead.” He was also very clear that he did not aim this comment at electronic music, but that he specifically meant the recording of “standard repertoire,” and the idea that there can be a “definitive recording” of any piece of music. He was essentially advocating the unique experience of a live performance. He also addressed this issue of “standard repertoire,” posing the question: why are we still performing the same 10 pieces by the same 5 composers when there is so much good music to be heard? Now step back a second here…he is saying this to a room full of classical musicians, and concert presenters, the latter of whom are mostly rooted in the idea that Schumann, Beethoven, and Brahms is all the public wants to, or should be allowed to hear, or that they will dare to take a chance on presenting. One needs only to view the programming of an American Symphony Orchestra concert to see how Mr. Botstein approaches this problem. His question is a relevant one and one that contemporary composers struggle with constantly. This problem is the exact reason why a young Frank Zappa turned to rock and roll instead of chamber and orchestral music. This goes deeper as CMA itself seems unable to even grasp the definition of contemporary music (more on this in the next installment).

Welcome to 2010

Reflecting on musical happenings in 2009, there were some great moments that we hope to share more info and footage on as tapes are collected, images are digitized and so on. Highlights included the production and release of Loop 2.4.3's 2nd album, Zodiac Dust, a residency at Alma College in MI with David Zerbe's fabulous percussion program, tours through the northeast and midwest, returning to SOUNDunderGROUND in New Haven, surfing in Maine with David Y. (that's me above trying on the full-body wet-suit) and a final blowout concert in November at the Tank in NYC with Tom Burnett, Steve Gilewski, Teresa Smith, and the enhanced visual atmosphere provided by luckydave. We do have some video footage of that event which will be showing up soon on youtube.

Frank Jiminez took his own video of the event and has made one post on his dataimagen site of our work-in-progress, As a Child. You can view that video HERE.

More to come....Happy New Year from Loop 2.4.3

- t.k.

Autumn Action

It has been a busy fall in loopland – we apologize for the lack of blog time. We’ve been posting some mobile updates on the Twitter page; you can link to that through our homepage at www.loop243.com. We of course reserve the more juicy, detailed scoop for this blog.

We traveled up to Ithaca, NY early this fall for a concert at Ithaca College, where we were hosted by the one-and-only Gordon Stout. Gordon is a legendary marimbist and a wonderful and generous human being. We stayed at his home, surrounded by trees, fields, crickets and stars and were inspired by nature. One can start to feel a bit removed in the concrete jungle.

We had a fabulous concert in Ithaca’s massive orchestra hall. The audience was mostly Ithaca students and we invited people up on stage afterwards. The downside of the trip is that the Loop-wagon was pulled over and we were issued a speeding ticket on the way to the show. I am still dealing with that beauracratic mess! I really don’t think we were traveling 81 in a 55….

We made friends in Albany the next day at our show at Emack and Bolio’s and then headed back into the city.

We were soon off to Pittsburgh and Garfield Artworks, a grungy gallery near downtown. Pittsburg seems like a tough town for music..maybe we need to dedicate something to the Steelers...props to Mannie for all his support!

From Pittsburgh we hit the PSALM Salon in Phillie. This was a really nice set-up. A stage built into a fabulous old house, great audio gear, etc., and a very warm crowd.

We were back in Brooklyn for a couple of weeks and did a pair of shows near Park Slope before heading to New England – more on that to come!

Good Stuff - Make Music New York

Loop 2.4.3 was recently featured as part of the Make Music New York festival. Pictured above is Lorne playing a Waterphone in Straus Park on the Upper West side of Manhattan. Special thanks to our friend Doug Corella (the Verve Pipe) who was in town from Chicago, and his friend James who helped us pack up when the rain came!
Below are some links to coverage of the event:

Alex Ross' Blog

The New Yorker

The New York Times

Daily News

Hog Farm Bootleg

We had a fantastic time in Maine back in June.  We played at the interim location of Hog Farm, a Maine gem run by Gil and Coco Corral. The 'interim location' turned out to be their art/design/clothing boutique which made for an extraordinarily intimate event.  There is a lot of cool stuff at this place to check out - very original work, so if you are traveling through Maine you should stop in.  We had no idea someone was operating a flip cam and recording the show, otherwise we would not have gabbed so much in between pieces!  Anyway the audience was great, the hosts were magnificent and you can check out some bootleg footage HERE.