-
-
Recent Comments
- admin on BRIM: the RiverProject Band
hi clark, thanks so much for your comment, sounds like we're defi …
- Clark Suprynowicz on BRIM: the RiverProject Band
I just saw your interview on New Music Box (NewMusicUSA being the …
- Kristin Norderval on BRIM: the RiverProject Band
HI Eve! Thanks for sharing your music on Tuesday. I'm sorry …
- Richard Gettelfinger on Music – The Composer Eve Beglarian Looks at the Mississippi and Sees a Muse – NYTimes.com
Well, Eve is now getting a look at the Mississippi from the windo …
- admin on BRIM: the RiverProject Band
floating through february
Even though we just finished up one series of concerts, there are more upcoming projects here in New York that continue the flow…
On 17 February, the Ekmeles Vocal Ensemble with Vicky Chow on piano and Ana Milosavljevic on violin will be performing a show we’re calling Songs from the River and Elsewhere on the Avant Music Festival, which is going to be a wonderful series of concerts, highly recommended.
We’ve already begun rehearsing the repertoire for the 17 February concert, and it’s really fascinating to be embedding RiverProject songs in and among songs from A Book of Days. While the journey down the river definitely changed me and my work, there are some themes that thread their way through all the pieces, and hearing them performed by these excellent musicians is really great.
Also upcoming (on 2 March) is a performance of The Sirens, or Pleasure, my Cagean (Cageish?) collaboration with Yvan Greenberg, by the duo Two Sides Sounding. come check out the bicycle roulette wheel doing its thing, you never know which crackerjack prizes it’ll choose!
Along with these performances, I’m starting work on Pump Music, a big new piece for violin, trombone quartet, and location recordings of hand pumps found in campsites along the Mississippi River, a Meet the Composer commission that will premiere later in the spring on the Tribeca New Music Festival. Stay tuned for news about date and venue, which should be firmed up very soon!
rivers on the lower east side
What a fun way to start the year! a series of RiverProject concerts at Abrons Arts Center, each one so different from the next, with an array of wonderful musicians, from Loadbang and the Guidonian Hand the first night, to Newspeak and Will Lang the next, and then the last night with Taylor Levine, Malcolm J. Merriweather, and special guest Ron Blessinger, who paddled all the way from Portland, OR to get here… and of course Mary Rowell with me every night, that’s a central part of the whole experience! I feel so lucky to work with all these wonderful musicians, who also happen to be excellent humans, which really makes it great!
Here are a few links to interviews and press about the festival; over the next few days and weeks we’ll be posting some live recordings and more fun stuff.
Amanda McBlane’s interview in Time Out
Olivia Giovetti’s RiverProject radio show on Q2
Kurt Gottschalk’s radio show/interview on WFMU
Stacey Anderson’s NYTimes pop/rock listing
Steve Smith’s NYTimes classical listing
Dither’s movie of The Garden of Cyrus
Stephen Taylor has made a very cool movie of Dither playing The Garden of Cyrus. That piece is so dear to my heart that it’s got my birthday slot in A Book of Days.
it’s all about the river
We’re hard at work getting ready for three concerts of River Project music at Abrons Arts Center in late January: wrangling rehearsal schedules for more than 25 people, making special arrangements and generating parts for River Project music for three different rosters of players, organizing tech riders, instrument movers, press releases, all that endless stuff that goes into doing shows, even before a single sound gets made. In a way I feel very far away from the river, and from the urges and pleasures that got me out there two years ago. but then I realize it’s all about the river, and the anxiety recedes and I can just keep paddling.
brim ep 1 out now
BRIM has released the first of what will be a series of recordings of River Project music, a limited edition of 250 signed CDs. It’s a four-song EP which you can get only while supplies last.
01. I am really a very simple person
02. I’m worried now, but I won’t be worried long
03. Wayfaring Stranger (live recording)
04. The Flood
Album Credits:
Eve Beglarian vocals, electronics, electric guitar, bass
Mary Rowell violin, electric violin, acoustic guitar
another portland review
This one is really thoughtful, thanks so much, Brett!
portland press
The Oregonian did both a preview article and a review for my RiverProject show with Third Angle, called One Mississippi. it was a totally wonderful experience to work with Ron Blessinger and the band, and I’m seriously considering a Columbia River project now. Why not?!?!
blue grass
Monday morning, we left Pittsburgh early in order to get to Hyden, Kentucky, where Mary had set up a school presentation for BRIM at the Kentucky School of Bluegrass and Traditional Music. Mary had been there with ETHEL before, and has worked with Dean Osborne, who’s the director of this very cool school nestled in a hollow in the Appalachians.
I was fascinated to learn that there’s a rigidity and extreme traditionalism in the bluegrass world that rivals the classical music world. Doing anything different from the established norms is frowned upon, and yet all the greats of bluegrass were of course tremendous innovators who broke all the rules, from Bill Monroe to the Osborne Brothers themselves. So the school is devoted to finding that line of respect and devotion to the excellence of the tradition, while at the same time opening up to new ideas and approaches that will keep the art form alive.
It was a really meaningful experience to perform my music for these fellow travelers, I felt like we arrived from different places to a shared path, and I’m honored to have their company. They had lots of questions about how I put my music together technically, which was a bit of a surprise to me. When I do these kinds of presentations at conservatories, I don’t generally get asked detailed compositional questions. I found the whole experience refreshing and fascinating. I think there may be something really interesting to explore at the nexus of traditional bluegrass and new music…. Hmmmm….
Dean Osborne generously arranged to put us up at Mary Breckinridge’s house, Wendover, which was the site of the Frontier Nursing Service she founded in the late 20s, and which is still operating today. (I had only learned about this program a few weeks earlier, when I met Mary’s cousin Kristin, a cheese-maker, at the Craftsbury Farmer’s Market up in Vermont, who had participated in the program in the late 80s.) Mary Breckinridge was this amazing person. A privileged woman, she lost both her own children at an early age, so she decided to come to deeply impoverished Leslie County and start a nursing service for mothers and children. In the years that she ran this service, both maternal and infant health improved from perhaps the worst in the nation to better than the country as a whole, and all this work was done by a combination of professional nurses on horseback traveling up and around the hollows, and by young women volunteers, who came out to join the adventure. It’s a case of those much-maligned “ladies bountiful” doing something really meaningful and transformative with their time and talent and energy. Dean estimates that something like a hundred thousand people today owe their existence to Mary Breckinridge and the Frontier Nursing Service.
a day to Pittsburgh
Saturday, we headed out in the rain and cold towards Pittsburgh, stopping at Shanksville at the newly unveiled Flight 93 memorial, which is quite well-done: tasteful and thoughtful in that National Park-ish way. It might be strange to say this, but I found the absence of any information or images of the four hijackers to be a lost opportunity, somehow. I guess I really believe that seeing the bad guys, engaging with their craziness, is a way to guard against craziness in oneself or one’s culture. I mean, isn’t that at least part of why we read and watch movies about Hitler or mass murderers or whatever? I’m not sure how that could or should be done at this memorial, but in my opinion, erasing them completely from the picture is a sanitizing that minimizes the actual authentic heroism of the forty folks who brought down the plane in this lonely field.
We arrived at my friends’ Rick and Kate’s place in time for dinner, and I could help marveling at how different our pace was from that 20 to 40 miles per day I did going down the Mississippi in 2009. No wonder I got so interested in 19th century (and earlier) history, I was traveling at a pre-20th century pace! That’s super-obvious the moment I think of it, but I only realized it fully doing that quick drive on Saturday: nothing to it to drive from New York City to Pittsburgh, it’s only a few hundred miles!
It was great to catch up with Rick and Kate. Rick is a wonderful poet, you can check out his work here and here
New Music Box profile
Frank Oteri and Molly Sheridan and I had a fun conversation together; you can watch and read it here.
hudson paddle
The night before heading out on our little mini-tour back to the Mississippi, I took Mary out for a sunset paddle on the Hudson River. I figured since we won’t be kayaking or biking on tour, we could at least start out with a paddle just to get off on the right foot or something.
Here are a few pictures from the paddle, which was just great. If you’re in NYC and are into paddling at all, this is an excellent little excursion, highly recommended!
on the road again
Mary Rowell and I as BRIM are doing a show at Millsaps College in Jackson, MS on 11 October as part of a little mini-tour we’ve set up. More info here. We’ll be traveling along the Ohio River to join the Mississippi, really looking forward to getting out on the road again!
Locrians play River Music
Here’s what Allan Kozinn of the New York Times had to say about Night Psalm and I’m Worried Now, but I Won’t Be Worried Long:
Mr. Faiman also gave a lovely account of Eve Beglarian’s “Night Psalm” (2009), an appealing meditation in which velvety descending arpeggios morph into a quietly rumbling harmonic haze. Ms. Beglarian’s “I’m Worried Now, but I Won’t Be Worried Long” (2010), though composed only a year after “Night Psalm,” inhabits a different universe: electronic sound, a droning cello line and tactile, rhythmically solid harp writing form the backdrop for a soulful, almost folk-song-like soliloquy for the violin, played here with a rich, deep sonority by Miranda Cuckson.
Robin Redbreast at Tanglewood
Here’s what Allan Kozinn of the New York Times had to say about the Tanglewood performance of Robin Redbreast:
Eve Beglarian uses more tactile, inventively morphing sounds in “Robin Redbreast” (2003), an odd but evocative setting of a Stanley Kunitz poem for tenor (Martin Bakari) and piccolo (Henrik Heide).
[News] Bangle and Tangle
| hi my friends,I'm delighted that Robin Redbreast, my setting of Stanley Kunitz's wonderful poem, will be performed this summer at both Banglewood AND Tanglewood. How sweet is that?! But if you're not the type for woodsy climes in the summer, you can catch performances of Night Psalm and I'm Worried Now right here in NYC (at Riverside Church on 25 August.) And coming right up, my friend Despina Sarafeidou is doing a free showcase performance of her Kassandra at KGB Bar on 27 July at 7 pm. (No music by me, but definitely worth checking out!) I'll be heading back to the Mississippi River in September-October with the excellent Mary Rowell. We'll be performing my rivertrip-inspired music as BRIM. More about that very soon, I promise. Stay cool and beautiful! xoxox evb |
Archives of Exile
If you happen to be in Yorkshire in July, definitely check this out, should be very fun!
Village Voice talks of Book of Days
from The Village Voice, 1 June 2011
Wednesday, June 1 (tonight!); 8 p.m.
Eve Beglarian: Songs from A Book of DaysFor over a decade, Beglarian has been working on this song cycle, which she describes “‘mulling over’ pieces, made in the spirit of commonplace books, collections of found thought that please me, and of medieval books of days.”
Whether she’s pivoting off Plato to create some early electro-percussive damage (circa 1985) that could’ve schooled Reznor, or turning Whitman’s “We Two” into a lovely duo for herself and Corey Dargel, she’s as intellectually erudite as she is deeply intuitive.
(Where else to hear Beglarian: On the New World-issued Tell the Birds CD, as well as the compilation Lesbian American Composers.)
remembering Spencer Beglarian
a slideshow made by Robert Kazlauskas and Michael Mullen
eve at the stone 6/1
then, next Wednesday 1 June, again at the Stone, I myself will be performing with fabulous guests Lydia Van Dreel, Mary Rowell, and Megan Schubert. works include the first performance of EinHorn for horn and electronics, and lots of other good stuff. Hope to see you there!
ana at the stone 5/25
this coming Wednesday, 25 May, Ana Milosavljevic is doing a show at the Stone which will include a couple of pieces from me, including I’m worried now, but I won’t be worried long. Go here for more details.
the kaftan era
For the last couple of weeks, I have taken to starting my day by choosing and scanning around forty photographs from the nine cubic feet of totally disorganized photo boxes here in Spencer’s LA house.
Today’s selection included a few polaroids that I took with this very cool white plastic camera I got for maybe my tenth birthday (that would be 1968.) [okay, I just checked: it was a polaroid swinger, and here’s an advertisement for one. too cool!]
Here are my parents opening gifts at the breakfast table. I can’t remember what the occasion would have been: Grant and Joyce’s birthdays were at the opposite ends of December, and I don’t remember ever opening Xmas gifts at the breakfast table. Could it have been their wedding anniversary? Not impossible, as my friend Dembski would say.
That’s Spencer looking on at Joycie’s gift, of course.
Next, we have a picture of Stefan Bauer-Mengelberg with my father, on a deck in Amagansett, where Stefan had a place. He was an amazing person, a true polymath: mathematician, conductor, attorney, et al. You can read more about him here. I remember a really fun evening at Gene’s Restaurant on 11th Street with him and my father just before Stefan died in the mid-90s.
Check Grant’s kaftan poncho thing along with the excellent white socks.
Here’s an extra shot in honor of Bill Morrison:
And finally, here are two portraits of my parents in full late-60s regalia, kaftan and nehru jacket, with my father sporting this fabulous little short-lived goatee:
There’s an enlargement of a color photograph taken the same night. It hung along the staircase for forty years: first in the Los Angeles house and then in Scarborough. I think the big version, strangely washed out in color, is still around somewhere, and I’m sure I’ll also come across the original photograph eventually. I’ll post it when I do.
But in the meantime, I opened Spencer’s hall closet the other day and came upon this:
Yup, the nehru jacket my father was wearing in those portraits, which was moved from Glen Rock, NJ to Los Angeles to Scarborough, NY, to Broome Street, Manhattan, and back to Los Angeles, CA.
It needs a new home now. If any among you develops a burning desire for a 43-year-old green and yellow and beige paisley nehru jacket that fits a person the size of my father or brother, you know who to ask!
first portrait
I’m going through stuff here in Spencer’s house in LA.
physically, I mean — but of course in every way.
there are thousands of books, not really exaggerating — only half the books from our parents’ house, but still, way too many books. I’m not capable of just dealing with them wholesale: I go through each one, deciding which to keep, which to sell on Amazon, which to donate. I enjoy the process, really: finding Joyce’s annotations in Virginia Woolf, a copy of an obscure anarchist novel next to pretentious right-wing Russell Kirk (my parents’ politics are inscrutable), it’s all cool.
so here’s what I came upon in a copy of Jim (not yet James) Beard’s Casserole Cookbook of 1955:
Here’s what I can tell you about this piece of paper. The writing is my father’s, from the summer of 1958, and it’s a slightly mysterious set of accounts of income he expects for August of 1958. I can figure out Interlochen (where he taught that summer), and various music publishers: Holt, E B [Marks], Peters, for whom he did music copying work. Here’s a close up view of the accounts:
The reverse side is a blank form (mimeographed I think), for the service music choices at the First Methodist Church in Plymouth, MI, where my mother was the organist. (I was baptized there in October of 1958.)
So of course, the line drawing below can be none other than a pre-natal portrait of me by my father. I was born 22 July 1958, and my guess is that he was working out the numbers to be sure he could pay the hospital bill for my birth.
I love this portrait of a fetus reading. love it completely. and it makes me patient with this whole process of sorting through books. but I guess I was set up to be bookish from the start, no?!
Two Nights on the River
Here‘s a happy-making preview of the two pieces I’ve written for the Sarasota Orchestra players as part of the Greenfield Prize.
archives of images
I'm reading a really fascinating book called "The Art of Memory" by Frances Yates, which traces ancient Greek techniques of "artificial memory" through European history. In the medieval chapter, there's talk of a 14th century English friar by the name of Robert Holcot:
Something about pagan doodles on the pages of Hosea seems connected to our project in some odd way I haven't yet thought through, but I thought I'd post it here.
Holcot's Moralitates are a collection of material for the use of preachers in which the 'picture' [memory] technique is lavishly used....He places such images, in imagination, on the pages of a Scriptural text, to remind him of how he will comment on the text. On a page of the prophet Hosea he imagines the figure of Idolatry to remind him of how he will expand Hosea's mention of that sin. He even places on the text of the prophet an image of Cupid, complete with bow and arrows! The god of love and his attributes are, of course, moralised by the friar, and the 'moving' pagan image is used as a memory image for his moralising expansion of the text.
The preference of these English friars for the fables of the poets as memory images, as allowed by Albertus Magnus, suggests that the artificial memory may be a hitherto unsuspected medium through which pagan imagery survived in the Middle Ages. (pp. 98-99)
