Department of Music Blog

Department of Music Ensemble in Residence IonSound Project will make its New York debut on Friday as  part of the Phoenix Concerts. The group will perform a program of works by Michael Torke, Libby Larsen, Jed Distler, Orianna Webb, and Eric Satie. The concert takes place on October 2 at 8 p.m. at the Church of Saint Matthew and Saint Timothy, so if you’re in the New York area, come hear IonSound on Friday night.

Chatham University will celebrate the Global Focus Year of West Africa at the Sounds of Africa Music Festival, Friday, October 2 and Saturday, October 3. Pauline Rovkah, professor of music and the festival director, has assembled Pittsburgh’s finest music scholars and musicians for an incredible weekend of free events in the James Laughlin Music Hall. For more information contact Pauline Rovkah at 412-365-1676 or rovkah@chatham.edu. The festival will include discussions and performances by Pitt Department of Music faculty including Akin Euba, Eric Moe, and Roger Zahab, alumni Anicet Mundundu and members of Alia Musica Pittsburgh, and current graduate students Oyebade Dosunmu, Charles Lwanga, and Ayo Oluranti. The complete schedule and list of participants is after the jump. (more…)

Composer Philip Thompson (PhD, 2002) created the score and produced the music for Will Zavala’s short documentary Virgil Cantini: The Artist in Public. The film is one of four documentaries commissioned by the Pittsburgh Center for the Arts and funded by the Heinz Endowments. Each brief documentary celebrates a past PCA Artist of the Year and will be shown continuously in the Center’s video room during their opening to introduce current Artist of the Year, Tim Kaulen. The opening takes place at Pittsburgh Center for the Arts on Friday, September 25 from 5:30-8 p.m. There’s a suggested donation of $5 and PCA members get in free.

Will Zavala is a freelance media producer and an Assistant professor at Pittsburgh Filmmakers. He specializes in documentaries and has credits on productions for ITVS, PBS, MTV, and HBO. His films and videos have screened in festivals internationally and on public television.

Virgil Cantini founded Pitt’s Department of Studio Arts and created many pieces of public art including the sculptures on Pitt’s Graduate School of Public Health (Man), in front of Pitt’s School of Law (Ode to Space), in Penn Circle behind East Liberty Presbyterian (Joy of Life), and many more. Cantini passed away in May of 2009.

132 Music Building, free

Pittsburgh Symphony Composer of the Year Richard Danielpour will speak about his recent works.

(Correction: Mathew Rosenblum’s The Big Rip was premiered in Hameln and will be performed again in Leipzig on October 25.)

Mathew Rosenblum’s new work, The Big Rip (A Science Fiction Cantata), will be premiered by the Calmus Vocal Ensemble of Leipzig and the Rascher Saxophone Quartet on September 10 at The Niedersächsische Musiktage (Lower Saxony Music Festival) in Hameln Germany. The piece will also be performed at the Gewandhaus in Leipzig on October 25 as part of the Calmus Ensembles’ 10th Anniversary concert. The Calmus Ensemble is the recent recipient of the 2009 ECHO KLASSIK Award, the German Grammy.

According to Rosenblum,

“The Big Rip uses the basic theme of “Night,” the theme of the 2009 Niedersächsische Musiktage, as its core idea. Instead of night as we experience it at the end of each day, I decided to use the concept of “Dark Energy,” the theory of the expansion of the universe that will ultimately rip our galaxy completely apart, the “ultimate night,” as the metaphorical starting point. Texts are excerpted from Paul Celan’s poem “Engführung,” a science book called The Runaway Universe by Don Goldsmith, a science fiction short story entitled “Last Contact” by Stephen Baxter, Isaiah chapter 51 verse 6, and an internet chat room conversation about the 2009 global economic situation.”

Mathew Rosenblum and the Rascher Saxophone Quartet have enjoyed a fruitful artistic collaboration going back to the Rascher’s 2000 commission of Möbius Loop for saxophone quartet and orchestra. The Rascher later commissioned Rosenblum to create a quartet-only version of Möbius Loop which they have performed frequently since, and which will receive another hearing in Pittsburgh when the Mana Saxophone Quartet performs it October as part of Music on the Edge.

Bellefield Hall Auditorium, free

Roger Zahab’s vioentelechron for violin and orchestra,
Brahms’s Piano Concerto no. 1
Roger Zahab, violin and conductor, with Walter Morales, piano and conductor

Bellefield Hall Auditorium

Tickets in advance though ProArts: general admission $8.50, students and seniors $5. Visit www.proartickets.org or call 412-394-3353. At the door: general admission $15, students and seniors $10. Pitt Students: free with ID.

This year the bulk of the upcoming Music on the Edge Season will take place in 2010 and feature well-established new music groups like the International Contemporary Ensemble, Relâche, and Newband. But MOTE co-directors Eric Moe and Mathew Rosenblum will also showcase one of the most promising young ensembles in the world of contemporary chamber music. On October 13, the up-and-coming Mana Saxophone Quartet will give a concert billed as Music on the Edge: Emerging Artists. Fresh off winning the Grand Prize at the 2009 Coleman Chamber Ensemble Competition (the first and only saxophone quartet ever to do so) the Mana Quartet has received acclaim for their sensitive and skillful presentation of chamber music. (more…)

 
Heinz Chapel

Ayo Oluranti, organ with music by G.F. Handel and Ayo Oluranti,
Schubert’s Unfinished Symphony
Call 412-624-4157 for ticket information

Bellefield Hall Auditorium

Tickets in advance though ProArts: general admission $8.50, students and seniors $5. Visit www.proartstickets.org or call 412-394-3353. At the door: general admission $15, students and seniors $10

Heading into the second year of its residency with the University of Pittsburgh, IonSound Project will kick off the season at Bellefield Auditorium on Sunday, November 1st, 2009 at 7 pm with Reduce, a program featuring an original work by Pittsburgh film director and video artist Chris Ivey.  The program celebrates musical reductions of larger works including Maurice Ravel’s Mother Goose Suite, Pittsburgh composer Philip Thompson’s Percussion Concerto, and Gustav Mahler’s Kindertotenlieder.  For this concert IonSound is thrilled to welcome back Daphne Alderson, whose rich contralto voice shines in this moving work by Mahler.

Update: IonSound pianist Rob Frankenberry hass posted “Reduce: a program essay for IonSound” at Pittsburgh New Music Net in anticipation of Sunday’s concert.

 
Location TBA
Featuring music by Kevin Puts and Michael Torke