This past Tuesday, Mobtown Modern was allowed to invade the main gallery space at the Contemporary Museum for our Sequenzathon, a marathon performance of 12 of the 14 Sequenzas by the late great Italian composer Luciano Berio. Talking to Erik before the show, I realized that with the exception of seeing Sequenza VIIb for soprano saxophone performed several times, I had never experienced any of these pieces live. So we were fortunate to have an immensely talented roster of soloists willing to tackle some of the most unforgiving solo works in their repertoire, some of which like Sequenza II for harp, Sequenza XI for guitar, and Sequenza XIII for accordion are rarely heard outside the confines of a pair of headphones. We had an amazing crowd who definitely got their money’s worth of Berio for the evening. And the reviews of the show seem to confirm that it was indeed a great night:
- Tim Smith in the Baltimore Sun (including a little extra)
- Charles T. Downey in the Washington Post
Next up for Mobtown Modern on May 6th is our final concert of the season, Out To Lunch. We’ll be back in our usual digs playing music by Edgard Varese, Eric Dolphy, Frank Zappa along with a rare realization of Karlheinz Stockhausen’s Solo and a mind-altering performance by Sam Burt of Alvin Lucier’s Music for Solo Performer.
