Callithumpian Consort + [nec]shivaree: Shaw, Czernowin
NEC faculty Stephen Drury created the Callithumpian Consort and [nec]shivaree in the belief that new music should be an exciting adventure shared by performers and listeners alike, and that the brand new masterpieces of our day are beautiful, sensuous, challenging, delightful, provocative, and a unique joy.
Callithumpian’s repertoire is the new and unusual, encompassing a huge stylistic spectrum from the classics of the last 100 years to works of the avant-garde and experimental jazz and rock. It is grounded in the musical discoveries of John Cage, Karlheinz Stockhausen, John Zorn, Giacinto Scelsi, Morton Feldman, and Iannis Xenakis. [nec]shivaree is the attack wing of NEC's new music program, performing the modern, the new, and the avant-garde.
This program is supported in part by a grant from the Boston Cultural Council and administered by the Mayor’s Office of Arts and Culture. It is a continuation of Callithumpian Consort's Summer institute for Contemporary Performance Practice and recevies friendly support of the Ernst von Siemen's Music Foundation.
View the concert program here.
This is an in-person event with a private stream available to the NEC community here: https://necmusic.edu/live.
Caroline Shaw | Gustave Le Gray (2012)
Program note
Chopin’s opus 17 A minor Mazurka is exquisite. The opening alone contains a potent poetic balance between the viscosity and density of the descending harmonic progression and the floating onion skin of the loose, chromatic melody above. Or, in fewer words – it’s very prosciutto and mint. When someone asks me, “So what is your music like?” – I’ll sometimes answer (depending on who’s asking), “Kind of like sashimi?” That is, it’s often made of chords and sequences presented in their raw, naked, preciously unadorned state – vividly fresh and new, yet utterly familiar. Chopin is a different type of chef. He covers much more harmonic real estate than I do, and his sequences are more varied and inventive. He weaves a textured narrative through his harmony that takes you through different characters and landscapes, whereas I’d sometimes be happy listening to a single well-framed, perfectly voiced triad. But the frame is the hard part – designing the perfectly attuned and legible internal system of logic and memory that is strong but subtle enough to support an authentic emotional experience of return. (Not to get all Proustian or anything.) In some way that I can’t really understand or articulate yet, photographs can do this with a remarkable economy of means. Translating that elusive syntax into music is an interesting challenge. Then again, sometimes music is just music. Gustave Le Gray is a multi-layered portrait of Op. 17 #4 using some of Chopin’s ingredients overlaid and hinged together with my own. It was written expressly for pianist Amy Yang, who is one of the truest artists I’ve ever met.
– Caroline ShawArtists- Pauline Pu, piano
Chaya Czernowin | Seed I (2008) from Anea Crystal
Program note
Anea is an invented name for a music-crystal modelled on an ionic crystal. It is a piece written in three independent and individual movements which can be played separately or together. Seed I and Seed II are for string quartet and Anea is for string octet, being built of both Seeds together played simultaneously with some changes. The pieces belong to the series Shifting Gravity together with the pieces Sheva (Seven) and Sahaf (Drift).The five pieces on this series are each a concise and concentrated focus on a singular physical gesture. Close examination of the gesture reveals the strange physical laws of the world in which the gesture exists, and the body performing it. One could conceive of Anea Crystal as an ionic crystal of gestures. Anea Crystal is dedicated to Johannes Kalitzke.
– Chaya CzernowinArtists- Lilit Hartunian and Emma Carleton, violin
- Julian Sneige-Seney, viola
- Stephen Marotto, cello
Chaya Czernowin | The Hour Glass Bleeds Still (1992)
Program note
The Hebrew title of this piece, Dam Sheon Hachol, carries two meanings: both the flowing of the sand in the hourglass and the hourglass sand lying still. In this string quartet, time slows down until it has almost stopped, whilst at the same time trajectories are intensified. The slow flow of time makes it possible to discern the smallest details of a texture or a sound.
– Chaya CzernowinArtists- Grant Houston and Caroline Jesalva, violin
- Julian Sneige-Seney and Asher Boorstin, viola
- Jeffrey Ho, cello
- Edward Kass, double bass