Famous in China
Last month, Mobtown Modern presented Phil Kline’s Unsilent Night and we were fortunate to have Voice of America China on hand to cover the event. The story they did is below. Our portion starts at 3:28. Hope you know Mardarin!
Sounds Like Now
A blog by saxophonist Brian SacawaArchive for Mobtown Modern
A Home Grown Countdown, So To Speak
Next month, Mobtown Modern will present Home Grown, a retrospective of recent works by super-cool Washington D.C.-based composer Alexandra Gardner. As a way of helping the audience get to know some of the musicians who’ll be performing on that show, Alex has begun posting a series of interviews with them over on her blog. The first one, hot off the presses, is with yours truly. Warning: I admit something quite shameful.
Mobtown Modern receives BCF Grant
The Contemporary Museum‘s Mobtown Modern Music Series was recently awarded a grant from the Baltimore Community Foundation. Mobtown was among fifteen arts organizations recognized by the BCF for making “significant contributions to Baltimore’s vibrant arts and cultural scene in 2009.” Needless to say, we’re humbled and thrilled to have received this recognition.
Unsilent Night Baltimore 2009 Pix
Mobtown Modern played host to Baltimore’s 4th Annual performance of Phil Kline’s ambient Christmas masterpiece last weekend. It was a fun, fun evening as always. And also as always, thanks to Rob McIver for his awesome photos.
Stravinsky for Jazz Ensemble: A Blog
As Mobtown Modern counts down to the first performance of The Rite of Spring for Jazz Ensemble, you can chart the progress and read all about the many, many decisions that have gone into the arrangement process at composer/arranger Darryl Brenzel’s blog Stravinsky for Jazz Ensemble.
Have an Unsilent Night in Baltimore tomorrow
This is the fifth year that I’ve organized a performance of Phil Kline’s ambient Christmas masterpiece Unsilent Night (a.k.a. the boombox Christmas parade). It’s the fourth time I’ve done it in Baltimore and the first time it’s been presented under the auspices of the Contemporary Museum’s Mobtown Modern series.
As always, simply show up with a boombox (or not if you just want to follow along), I’ll provide the tapes and CDs (N.B. eager participants who have audio capabilities can download a sound file of the piece at this website), we’ll press play, and be off to spread some ambient holiday cheer throughout the streets of Baltimore. The route will be the same as previous years, though I think we may take a detour to a stop included on the first year’s route—the curved glass in front of the Meyerhoff lobby.
Tim Smith of the Baltimore Sun wrote a really nice preview yesterday on his blog. Make sure to give him a read.
Update: Anne Midgette of the Washington Post also chimes in with a little pre-Unsilent Night love.
Stravinsky Swings
This May, Mobtown Modern will close out its 2009-2010 season with something that, to my knowledge, has not been done before—an arrangement of Stravinsky’s The Rite of Spring for jazz ensemble. I mention this now because I played a gig with my friend Darryl Brenzel—Darryl is arranging The Rite for our show—this past weekend and he slipped me a CD of the rehearsal recordings. Wow. That’s all I have to say. Below are excerpts from Parts 1, 2, and 4. I’ve heard the entire arrangement and am convinced that May 12, 2010 will be a very special night.
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Live from Mobtown: We Speak Etruscan
Lee Hyla’s We Speak Etruscan for baritone sax and bass clarinet has been on my Gotta Play That Someday list for a long time now. And last month I finally had a chance to check it off that list on Mobtown Modern’s Low Art show. My accomplice was Jennifer Everhart, who sounded (and always sounds) amazing. Here’s the recording:
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All the info:
We Speak Etruscan by Lee Hyla. Yours Truly, baritone saxophone; Jennifer Everhart, bass clarinet. Recorded live at the Metro Gallery on October 7, 2009. Many thanks to Jeff Mewbourn (a.k.a. The Baltimore Taper) for recording the show.
And now a word from our sponsors
It’s been pretty amazing to watch Mobtown Modern grow these past two seasons and continue that trajectory into the third. I’m continually overwhelmed and encouraged by both the size and demographic diversity of the crowds we bring in. Lately, it’s also been extremely gratifying to get some local businesses to sponsor the series, including Metro Gallery (our amazing performance space), Localist (a cool Baltimore-based web-based social life organizer), Joe’s Bike Shop (the best shop in Baltimore), Eye Candy Opticianry (a sweet place for specs on the Avenue in Hampden), Robert McIver Photography (PRO photos), and Quintessential Gentleman (the classiest and friendliest barber shop in town). Thanks, Sarah, Myke, Joe, Cerrill, Rob, and Craig!
It’s never too late to get on board; visit the support page on the Mobtown site for information about sponsorship benefits and how to become a business or individual sponsor of the series.
Meanwhile, down in the town
Preparations for Zodiacrobatic have kicked into high gear recently. Erik and I have been communicating and collaborating via email, text, phone, Twitter, and Dropbox to make sure that we made good progress on the project while I’ve been away on tour. The results have been pretty cool. We’ve got a glut of new posts up on the Zodiacrobatic page chronicling the piece’s development. The goal is to have all of the beat-based tracks roughed out before I get back from tour so we can spend the rest of the time working on the live arrangements and playing with our computers. I’m really excited about this project. Plus, it’s pretty much an instant album and touring show.
