Carnegie Hall presents At a Glance

Carnegie Hall presents At a Glance - Mar 6-Mar 19, 2007

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A VERY GOOD EAR

John Adams

March 6, 2007

“The vast, polymorphous diversity of the new American music scene.” That, says composer John Adams, is at the heart of In Your Ear Redux, the series of concerts that he is curating in Zankel Hall from March 16 to 18. In his four years as holder of the Richard and Barbara Debs Composer’s Chair at Carnegie Hall, Adams has celebrated the vast diversity of the contemporary musical landscape with his In Your Ear weekend mini-festivals: everything from a digitally plugged-in gamelan to an oud-playing trio of brothers from the West Bank. This year, Redux celebrates young composer-performers. Adams says, “It’s significant that all of these composers are also performers. Their art seems to convey a fresh energy, a spontaneity that could never come from merely sitting at a table with a pen and sheet of manuscript paper.”

Kicking off the weekend is what John Adams calls the “refreshingly impossible to pigeon-hole” music of 25-year-old composer-keyboardist Nico Muhly. “I’m at a loss for words to try to describe his music, because the range is so wide,” Adams says. “I think he’s someone we’re going to hear from a lot in the future.”

It may seem surprising, then, that 21st-century composer Muhly has designed a concert program that intersperses his pieces (including three world premieres) with centuries-old works by John Taverner, Thomas Weelkes, and William Byrd. But for Muhly, it makes perfect sense: “To say that that music is an influence is an understatement,” he offers in the latest Sound Insights podcast from Carnegie Hall.

Nico Muhly

“It’s deeper than an influence. It’s a grounding for me. Whenever I’m thinking about primary, root-level music, it’s always Byrd.” Performing pieces by Byrd and other English Renaissance composers are the Vox Vocal Ensemble led by the group’s founder, George Steel. Says Muhly: “I thought it would be great to present my music alongside the stuff that is so important to me and that’s not very well known outside of its own little world.”

To perform his own works, Muhly has tapped a group of top-notch musicians with whom he has collaborated before. Establishing such relationships between the composer and performers is, for him, a key to creative success: “I’m interested in having relationships with the performers, having people be excited to get music from me, and having me be excited to hear them play it.”

Chris Thile also knows a thing or two about building off the music he loves through collaborative efforts.

Chris Thile

He has grown from a mandolin prodigy—he made his first record at the age of 12—into a versatile musician who has recorded arrangements of Charlie Parker and J. S. Bach; infused new life into bluegrass music with the Grammy Award–winning trio Nickel Creek; and has now composed a 40-minute suite in four movements for voice, mandolin, violin, banjo, guitar, and bass called The Blind Leaving the Blind, which will receive its world premiere during In Your Ear Redux. Both the coming-of-age story that the piece tells and the hybrid musical style in which it is told (combining structural elements of pop songs and large-scale classical pieces) evolved from experiences in Thile’s own life: overtones of his recent divorce and its aftermath can be found in the story; and the music, he acknowledges, owes something to the multi-talented members of his new band, The Tensions Mountain Boys.

Closing the festival with a marathon concert event is the innovative young ensemble Alarm Will Sound,

Alarm Will Sound

for whom the idea of composer-performers is nothing new. In fact, it was one of the group’s founding principles. “We think of ourselves more as a band than as an orchestra,” explains Alan Pierson, Alarm Will Sound’s Artistic Director, “which means we can’t be reduced to just the instruments we play. It very much matters who is playing those instruments.” All but one of the pieces on the group’s March 18 program—which includes improvisation based on jazz, Indian classical music, hip-hop, and electronica—were either written or arranged by band members. The one that was not: Scratchband by John Adams.

Learn More

Hear Nico Muhly discuss composing and his 16th-century inspirations on Sound Insights, Carnegie Hall’s Podcast.

In Your Ear Redux

FRI, MAR 16, 2007
Nico Muhly
Vox Vocal Ensemble
Zankel 7:30 PM

SAT, MAR 17, 2007
The Tensions
Mountain Boys
Zankel 8:30 PM

SUN, MAR 18, 2007
Alarm Will Sound:
Out of Our Heads
Zankel 8:30 PM

More Music of John Adams

SAT, MAR 31, 2007
Saint Louis Symphony Orchestra
Stern / Perelman 8 PM

featuring John Adams’ Harmonielehre

FRI, APR 27, 2007
American Composers Orchestra
An Adams Apple
(John Adams at Sixty)
Stern / Perelman 8 PM