On the heels of Joan Tower’s 70th birthday concert at Merkin Hall — where Joan presented music written by some of the musicians who’ve played her own work — comes another triumph of participation. On October 2, Bang on a Can’s office staff will offer their own performances, at the Bell House in Brooklyn, NY. They call their music, variously, nouveau-bluegrass, smarty-pants avant;skronk, neo-indie-classicism, baroque noir (I like that one), and boogie-down anachronism-funk, while happily telling us that “such ludicrous descriptive categories are entirely fabricated and arbitrary” (something I wish mainstream classical institutions would admit, when they’re vacantly hyping their music as “magnificent”).
Here’s their press release, as it was e-mailed to me. I might only wish that Bang on a Can itself had produced the event (though, OK, I can see how maybe they can’t take responsibility for music by people who weren’t hired for their music). Or at least they could mention it on their website.
Still — I like this, and I hope the show is good.
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Greg Sandow on The Monday post
And the experimental/modern/avant-garde new music always had more prestige than performances. If you look, for instance, at what US opera...Greg Sandow on The Monday post
The William Weber book I cited takes into account most, if not all, of what you're mentioning. For much of...ariel on The Monday post
Pauls is spot on - but one does find that most people writing on the arts , music...Robert Davidson on The Monday post
I think the idea that "new music" is only experimental, avant-garde or modernist stopped being true about 30 years ago...Scott Harrison on The Monday post
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