On Thursday 18 April, the Voices of Ascension under the direction of Dennis Keene will be premiering a new commission for chorus and organ called Building the Bird Mound. Click the photo for tickets and more information: Building the Bird Mound was inspired by a visit I made to Poverty Point, a pre-historic mound complex [...]
I’ll be performing some RiverProject music including It Happens Like This and I am really a simple person with wonderful Mark Stewart and the excellent Dither folks on 4 March at this very cool place. It’s a benefit for Dither, and it’s gonna be awesome. Guitar aficionados will especially enjoy it: check it out! [...]
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 [...]
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 [...]
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 [...]
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. Order Online Now 01. I am really a very simple person 02. I’m worried now, but I won’t be [...]
This one is really thoughtful, thanks so much, Brett!
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?!?!
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 [...]
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 [...]
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. [...]
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!
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 [...]
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!
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.
Here‘s a happy-making preview of the two pieces I’ve written for the Sarasota Orchestra players as part of the Greenfield Prize.
I’ve been away for a while being sick with what felt like an endless case of bronchitis, and I am better now, for which I am totally totally grateful, but the good part is I pretty much stayed home and played around in music-land the whole month of January, which was a very fun thing [...]
I’ve posted another River Project piece, this time on YouTube. It’s call In and Out of the Game, and it was inspired by my meeting with Paul in Cape Girardeau, which you can read about here.
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Posted 14 December 2010
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Tagged: music
We’re doing a first public showing of some of the River Project music at Roulette on 19 October 2010, joined by guest pianist Lara Downes and the fabulous trombone quartet, Guidonian Hand. Should be a festive event!
I found this poem by Zachary Schomburg in my inbox today, and fell in love. I’m going to perform it in some version at the BRIM debut show on 19 October at Roulette.
One of the greatest blessings that the United States could receive in the near future would be to have her industries halted, her business discontinued, her people speechless, a great pause in her world of affairs created…. We should be hushed and silent, and we should have the opportunity to learn what other people think. [...]
here are a collection of quotations from The Soul of the Indian, by Charles Alexander Eastman (Ohiyesa) [Dakota Sioux], published 1911. Charles Alexander Eastman was the grandson of Seth Eastman, the painter who worked with Schoolcraft. He graduated from Dartmouth, worked as a physician, and was a founder of the Boy Scouts and Campfire Girls. [...]
(my notes on Where The Two Roads Meet, by Christopher Vecsey) The demise of Indians as obstacles to American expansion made them objects of commiseration to romantics and other sympathizers. (p. 96) *** [The current term for the Catholic Church's attempts to missionize is inculturation, the idea being inculturation good, syncretism bad...] “If inculturation is [...]
(my notes on Native and Christian: Indigenous Voices on Religious Identity in the United States and Canada, a collection of essays edited by James Treat) **** The Christian church is made up of creatures on a planet that revolves around a small sun, in a small galaxy that is only a small part of the [...]
