More Modern press
Today, the day of Mobtown Modern’s maiden voyage, State of the Union makes headlines in the Sun with a nice preview article by Tim Smith.
Sounds Like Now
A blog by saxophonist Brian SacawaArchive for Reviews
Gramophone review
Well, 2008 is off to a grand start as The Album continues to garner some good press. Though my appeal for a recount is still being processed by the Academy, the CD review in the December issue of Gramophone Magazine, which occupies the better part of an entire page, more than makes up for the Academy’s oversight.
Unsilent feedback
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Unsilent Nighters may have noticed a mysterious man giving a play-by-play of the evening’s activities into a small handheld recording device. It turns out that our interloper was none other than Ed Schrader, whose Feedback article appears in this week’s CityPaper.
All Music review
American Voices continues to garner some good press. Here’s the latest review courtesy of All Music. And a nice little excerpt:
Brian Sacawa’s American Voices makes an excellent case for Sacawa’s skill as a player, but it also provides insight to the wide variety of options that composers are making available to artists of his caliber and specially developed talents. Rest assured, with players like Brian Sacawa on the scene, guys like John Harle should be running scared.
AV review from S21
The first review of American Voices has appeared on the august website Sequenza21. Here’s a sample: “American Voices is, without doubt, a CD you need. The performances by Mr. Sacawa are amazing and the music selected is equally so. This is music that every sax player you know needs to perform and that every music listener you know needs to hear.” Stop, stop! I’m blushing. Okay, go on!
MATA notes
The 2007 MATA Festival has come and gone and SLN has been delinquent in posting about the event. I performed Alexandra Gardner’s Tourmaline on the Tuesday night’s “Solitary Confinement V” concert at the Brooklyn Lyceum, which featured works for solo performers w/ or w/o electronics. I had quite a journey that day, flying in from Dallas extremely early that morning, heading straight to the venue, sound checking, and then playing the show. Rather than making me tired, the day’s journey had more of a romanticizing effect and the performance went wonderfully. A comment was made to me to the effect of, “It’s been a while since I’ve been to a new music concert where all the pieces were great.” Indeed. It was a splendidly enchanting evening, made a just little sweeter by the review in the Times.
RSO review
Seth Williamson of The Roanoke Times had some nice things to say in his review of Monday’s concert with the Roanoke Symphony Orchestra.
In praise of silence
The Red Room played host to two of Boston’s finest last Friday as Tim Feeney and Vic Rawlings schooled the faithful on the sound of silence. Although Tim confessed that Friday’s set was one of their louder efforts, both musicians operated in a dynamic space that ranged from niente to about mezzo piano. Yet within those seemingly narrow confines there is much that transpires and holds your interest. Both musicians play with such poise and conviction that they compel you to engage, drawing you into a world of sonic subtlety. Texture appeared to be the overarching theme to their set, which oscillated between the white-noisey and moments of pure beguiling consonance, with both textural flavors being equally elaborate and complex. Perhaps the most refreshing and virtuosic aspect of Tim and Vic’s set was the patience and restraint they displayed. Less levelheaded musicians might get bored or anxious working in the confines that they choose to. So it says something about their musical maturity that they are able to not only maintain their self-control but also that they can expand that space into a universe of infinite possibilties.
SPARK review
Justin Schell has a review of last month’s SPARK Festival over at NewMusicBox. My recap is on the way . . . I promise.
Memory slip
I’m going to stay out of the scuffle on the main page at Sequenza21. However, there’s one issue from Anthony De Mare’s concert that both Anthony Tommasini and Frank Oteri bring up in their review and rebuttal, respectively–playing from memory.
One fact from Mr. De Mare’s concert that they both mention, was that Mr. De Mare needed to go off stage to retrieve the score for Mr. Rzewski’s work after failing to be able to perform it from memory. That took a lot of guts. And I’m glad that neither Mr. Tommasini or Mr. Oteri castigated Mr. De Mare for doing so. Rather, both give him credit for a wonderful reading of the work with the score.
So this makes me wonder, who cares if you play with music in front of you? Does it matter that much? A great performance of a work will transcend the score. When I play a concert, I’ve internalized the score to a point where I don’t really need it–in a way I’m playing from memory. But it’s nice to have it there as a reference, especially if the music is extremely difficult and complex. (I do play Stockhausen’s In Freudschaft from memory, but that’s because he specifies that it needs to be played from memory in the score. There is so much choreography that reading a score during performance would be impossible anyway. I’m also scared of the consequences if Stockhausen were to find out that I was playing his piece with the score.) It’s pretty easy to tell if a performer “owns” the piece or is using the music as a crutch.
As a new music performer, I have to tip my hat to Mr. De Mare for taking on the formidable task of presenting six new works from memory. Is it necessary though? Somewhere along the line, playing from memory became the norm in piano performance. Yet I’ve seen some great performances where the pianist played with the score–Marilyn Nonken’s recital of the complete Boulez piano sonatas stands out. Not all instruments have this tradition. But in the piano’s case, does it really matter if you play from memory? I don’t think it’s that important.
