Press
"The STRAD Selection" - Strad Magazine, 09/30 2008"I have very much enjoyed getting to know the Calder Quartet, which since the 2007-8 season has been in residence at the Colburn School of music in Los Angeles...Their Ravel, which begins this introductory disc, is ravishingly played..."
"In downtown L.A., a fresh mix of new music sounds, via San Diego" - LA Times, 09/22 2008The Carlsbad Music Festival previewed five new events at Zipper Hall, and at REDCAT, CalArts began its Creative Music Festival featuring UC San Diego's Anthony Davis and his group Episteme.
By Mark Swed
Times Music Critic
September 22, 2008
That downtown Los Angeles has become new music central is one thing, but that downtown's new music scene could be so taken over by San Diego-area beach towns, as happened Friday night, really is something that would have been unimaginable a few years ago.
In the Colburn School's Zipper Hall, the Carlsbad Music Festival held a marathon concert to preview the five new music events that this week will fill the city just north of San Diego. At the same time, across the street at REDCAT, CalArts began its Creative Music Festival with a marathon that featured the UC San Diego composer and pianist Anthony Davis and his adventuresome group Episteme.
I checked out the new kids on the Carlsbad block. Founded four years ago by Matt McBane, a young composer and violinist from Carlsbad who studied at USC, the festival became a showcase for a new generation of composers, many under 30.
McBane, now approaching 30, and his festival have prospered. He's relocated to Brooklyn, where he has formed a new music indie band, Build, to play his malleable music, which doesn't distinguish between classical and rock.
Build's catchy first CD, recently released, has caught on with tastemakers at NPR and Amoeba Music and boasts a slate of warm reviews. The Zipper program began with a Build set that closely resembled the CD.
McBane's music has sweet, simple melodies that flow over an ingratiating beat. I look forward to a time when McBane adds more meat to his music, but he is a natural composer, a fresh voice and, from the evidence of his festival, a first-rate organizer with a broad range of musical interests.
Next came an appearance by Red Fish Blue Fish, a percussion ensemble at UC San Diego. The program closed with the Calder Quartet, which has been associated with the festival from the beginning and in an astonishingly short time has become the American string quartet to watch.
And it offered maybe the newest of the evening's works -- a short piece, "Interface," by Tristan Perich, who will be one of the composers featured in Carlsbad.
I first encountered Perich, who specializes in primitive electronics, at a new music festival in Massachusetts two years ago where he couldn't be missed because he walked around with a big, white 1970s push-button telephone that he had converted into the world's coolest mobile phone.
Using elegant if basic electronics, Perich hooked up each of the Calder's instruments to a dinky speaker. One of the hallmarks of the Calder is the wonderful richness of its sound, here turned into beeps. But they were voluptuous beeps full of texture.
As with most young composers these days, Perich's style is hard to pinpoint. He demonstrates an accomplished sense of counterpoint, and "Interface" has a harmonic identity all its own. From one angle, this sounded like old music; from another, it felt utterly new, and the angles kept changing.
There was much else of interest on the program. The Calder played a movement by Anton Batagov, a Russian, Tchaikovsky Competition-winning pianist with a flair for Bach, Philip Glass, John Cage and rock, who gave up performing to put all that in his own mystically tinged music.
The movement was a warm, rocking, off-center lullaby from Batagov's new "Quartet.ru" with the character of a Russian Terry Riley.
Other recent music included a pleasingly post-minimalist movement from Christine Southworth's "Honey Flyers," which the Calder premiered at last year's festival.
In between modern percussion classics by Steve Reich and Cage, Red Fish Blue Fish offered an experimental piece by a collective, Synchronism Project, and another by Marianthi Papalexandri-Alexandri; neither work was self-explanatory.
The percussion standout was David Lang's "Unchained Melody," a bopping single line played by Steven Schlick on the glockenspiel, each note doubled by an electronically operated mallet hitting a noise-maker.
This was made possible by Williem Brent, who goes by the title of robot designer. Operated by a laptop, the robot crew proved a flawless ensemble.
By Mark Swed
Times Music Critic
September 22, 2008
That downtown Los Angeles has become new music central is one thing, but that downtown's new music scene could be so taken over by San Diego-area beach towns, as happened Friday night, really is something that would have been unimaginable a few years ago.
In the Colburn School's Zipper Hall, the Carlsbad Music Festival held a marathon concert to preview the five new music events that this week will fill the city just north of San Diego. At the same time, across the street at REDCAT, CalArts began its Creative Music Festival with a marathon that featured the UC San Diego composer and pianist Anthony Davis and his adventuresome group Episteme.
I checked out the new kids on the Carlsbad block. Founded four years ago by Matt McBane, a young composer and violinist from Carlsbad who studied at USC, the festival became a showcase for a new generation of composers, many under 30.
McBane, now approaching 30, and his festival have prospered. He's relocated to Brooklyn, where he has formed a new music indie band, Build, to play his malleable music, which doesn't distinguish between classical and rock.
Build's catchy first CD, recently released, has caught on with tastemakers at NPR and Amoeba Music and boasts a slate of warm reviews. The Zipper program began with a Build set that closely resembled the CD.
McBane's music has sweet, simple melodies that flow over an ingratiating beat. I look forward to a time when McBane adds more meat to his music, but he is a natural composer, a fresh voice and, from the evidence of his festival, a first-rate organizer with a broad range of musical interests.
Next came an appearance by Red Fish Blue Fish, a percussion ensemble at UC San Diego. The program closed with the Calder Quartet, which has been associated with the festival from the beginning and in an astonishingly short time has become the American string quartet to watch.
And it offered maybe the newest of the evening's works -- a short piece, "Interface," by Tristan Perich, who will be one of the composers featured in Carlsbad.
I first encountered Perich, who specializes in primitive electronics, at a new music festival in Massachusetts two years ago where he couldn't be missed because he walked around with a big, white 1970s push-button telephone that he had converted into the world's coolest mobile phone.
Using elegant if basic electronics, Perich hooked up each of the Calder's instruments to a dinky speaker. One of the hallmarks of the Calder is the wonderful richness of its sound, here turned into beeps. But they were voluptuous beeps full of texture.
As with most young composers these days, Perich's style is hard to pinpoint. He demonstrates an accomplished sense of counterpoint, and "Interface" has a harmonic identity all its own. From one angle, this sounded like old music; from another, it felt utterly new, and the angles kept changing.
There was much else of interest on the program. The Calder played a movement by Anton Batagov, a Russian, Tchaikovsky Competition-winning pianist with a flair for Bach, Philip Glass, John Cage and rock, who gave up performing to put all that in his own mystically tinged music.
The movement was a warm, rocking, off-center lullaby from Batagov's new "Quartet.ru" with the character of a Russian Terry Riley.
Other recent music included a pleasingly post-minimalist movement from Christine Southworth's "Honey Flyers," which the Calder premiered at last year's festival.
In between modern percussion classics by Steve Reich and Cage, Red Fish Blue Fish offered an experimental piece by a collective, Synchronism Project, and another by Marianthi Papalexandri-Alexandri; neither work was self-explanatory.
The percussion standout was David Lang's "Unchained Melody," a bopping single line played by Steven Schlick on the glockenspiel, each note doubled by an electronically operated mallet hitting a noise-maker.
This was made possible by Williem Brent, who goes by the title of robot designer. Operated by a laptop, the robot crew proved a flawless ensemble.
"Carlsbad Music Festival offers a taste of the eclectic" - Press Enterprise, 09/19 2008By MARK BENOIT
The Press-Enterprise
A concert today at the Zipper Hall in Los Angeles will provide an introduction to the eclectic offerings of the 5-year-old Carlsbad Music Festival.
"This year we actually have four groups that are performing in the festival in general. At that concert we have three of the groups performing. ... And it's like a longer concert, like a 2 ½ -hour concert with those three groups playing," said Matt McBane, the festival's founder and director.
"It's kind of like a showcase of what we're doing down in Carlsbad. In Carlsbad we have five concerts. So it's kind of condensing all of those five concerts into one," he said in a telephone interview.
The festival consists mainly of classical chamber music.
"There have been some pieces with video that are like multimedia media kind of pieces that we've done in the past and we're doing one this year as well. But the format that it's presented in is a chamber-music format, but it's all adventurous chamber music," McBane said.
McBane, a violinist and composer, is also the leader of the Brooklyn-based band Build, which will be performing at the festival for the first time this year, including the Los Angeles concert.
He described Build, which recently released a self-titled album, as an indie-classical band. He said it is a mix of a lot of things, mainly chamber music and art rock. As examples of art rock, he cited the British band Radiohead, the Icelandic band Sigurros and the American singer/songwriter Beck.
The other performers featured in the festival are the Calder Quartet, which has been the festival's ensemble in residence since its inception; Red Fish Blue Fish, the resident percussion ensemble of UC San Diego; and Partch, which specializes in the music of Harry Partch, a 20th-century American composer.
The Calder Quartet is rooted in the classics such as Beethoven and Bartok, McBane said. "But then they also have an adventurous side to their programming. Their usual programs will be a juxtaposition of modern works with the classics of the string-quartet repertoire."
Diversity is the audience's main feature, he said.
"The audience that we get is all ages. And there are some people that are real aficionados and there are some people that are just along for the ride and checking out something different."
McBane, who lives in New York, grew up in Carlsbad and his parents still live there.
This is the second year the festival has started in Los Angeles. Last year, several of the people who went to the Los Angeles concert went to Carlsbad for all the concerts, McBane said.
"That's not a bad way to spend a weekend down here in Carlsbad by the beach," he said. "It's a nice time of year for that, and then going to a whole bunch of concerts in a weekend."
The Press-Enterprise
A concert today at the Zipper Hall in Los Angeles will provide an introduction to the eclectic offerings of the 5-year-old Carlsbad Music Festival.
"This year we actually have four groups that are performing in the festival in general. At that concert we have three of the groups performing. ... And it's like a longer concert, like a 2 ½ -hour concert with those three groups playing," said Matt McBane, the festival's founder and director.
"It's kind of like a showcase of what we're doing down in Carlsbad. In Carlsbad we have five concerts. So it's kind of condensing all of those five concerts into one," he said in a telephone interview.
The festival consists mainly of classical chamber music.
"There have been some pieces with video that are like multimedia media kind of pieces that we've done in the past and we're doing one this year as well. But the format that it's presented in is a chamber-music format, but it's all adventurous chamber music," McBane said.
McBane, a violinist and composer, is also the leader of the Brooklyn-based band Build, which will be performing at the festival for the first time this year, including the Los Angeles concert.
He described Build, which recently released a self-titled album, as an indie-classical band. He said it is a mix of a lot of things, mainly chamber music and art rock. As examples of art rock, he cited the British band Radiohead, the Icelandic band Sigurros and the American singer/songwriter Beck.
The other performers featured in the festival are the Calder Quartet, which has been the festival's ensemble in residence since its inception; Red Fish Blue Fish, the resident percussion ensemble of UC San Diego; and Partch, which specializes in the music of Harry Partch, a 20th-century American composer.
The Calder Quartet is rooted in the classics such as Beethoven and Bartok, McBane said. "But then they also have an adventurous side to their programming. Their usual programs will be a juxtaposition of modern works with the classics of the string-quartet repertoire."
Diversity is the audience's main feature, he said.
"The audience that we get is all ages. And there are some people that are real aficionados and there are some people that are just along for the ride and checking out something different."
McBane, who lives in New York, grew up in Carlsbad and his parents still live there.
This is the second year the festival has started in Los Angeles. Last year, several of the people who went to the Los Angeles concert went to Carlsbad for all the concerts, McBane said.
"That's not a bad way to spend a weekend down here in Carlsbad by the beach," he said. "It's a nice time of year for that, and then going to a whole bunch of concerts in a weekend."
"Old, New California in Tune at Carlsbad" - Voice of San Diego, 09/18 2008By Cathy Robbins
Thursday, Sept. 18, 2008 | Matt McBane doesn’t look like he’s celebrating an important milestone. At the Coffee Cup in La Jolla recently, he limited himself to some green tea and talked about the fifth anniversary of the Carlsbad Music Festival. This year the festival he founded and now directs kicks off in Los Angeles on Sept. 19 and moves to Carlsbad and San Diego for performances from Sept. 25 through 28.
McBane is an unassuming, almost retiring young musician, even though he’s presenting cutting edge music from a gaggle of genres from electronic to punk. The composer and violinist grew up in Carlsbad, and after school at USC and eight years in Los Angeles, he now lives in Brooklyn, the base for his band Build.
The Carlsbad festival has always featured young composers and ensembles.
"They’re underrepresented in California in contemporary music. Few venues present things in a high-profile way," McBane said.
Joining the festival this year are 26-year-old Tristan Perich, an artist-composer-geek-NYU graduate student, and Sweden’s 28-year-old Fabian Svensson. McBane, members of Build, and the Calder Quartet are in their late 20s. Many combine conservatory training and jazz and pop sensibilities.
With national and even international creds, the festival’s ensembles are youthful and originated or are based in southern California. The Calder has developed a world-wide reputation with performances of both traditional and cutting edge new music and helped establish the festival; its violinist, Ben Jacobson is one of McBane’s life-long friends from Carlsbad. red fish blue fish of UCSD brought down the house during August’s SummerFest, and Los Angeles’ Partch has assumed a unique mission.
This year’s festival, however, also introduces some historic energy with attention to California’s post-World War II experimental tradition. John Adams, one of the best known of the Californians, described in a New Yorker article last month how he experienced that tradition. Rooted in New England, he headed west in 1974, when young composers were going to Paris and Vienna. Among other day jobs, he unloaded ship containers and taught at the fledgling San Francisco Conservatory. At night, he and other Bay Area composers experimented with new and explosive forms like electronic, minimalism, and making music out of audio junk. Today, Adams is an "establishment" but idiosyncratic composer, known for operas like "Nixon in China."
For listeners in any genre -- fine art, punk, indie rock, jazz, etc. -- the festival is rich with works from California experimenters, who provide liberating inspiration for today’s composers: Terry Riley (Colfax) and Fred Firth (a Brit who teaches at Mills College); and the late Lou Harrison (San Francisco), Angeleno John Cage, Harry Partch, who lived in Leucadia, taught at SDSU and died in San Diego, and James Tenney, who performed with Partch and Cage and taught at Cal Arts and U.C. Santa Cruz.
Paralleling the California experiments were those in New York, specifically among the "downtown" group that differentiated itself from the "uptown" composers associated with Juilliard, Lincoln Center and Columbia University.
McBane said that the differences between the two coasts were real. Composers from the west tended to take their cue from nature, with open music in which changes occur gradually and lines of sound are longer. In contrast, New Yorker Elliot Carter writes works that are meticulous in detail. "It’s music written by someone living in a small space," he said.
The Californians also heard much music from the Pacific Rim, and they borrowed Asia’s musical structures and instruments. Harrison and Cage were among the first to incorporate Asian influences.
While San Francisco and UCSD were important centers, modernists Henry Cowell and Arnold Schoenberg taught Harrison and Cage in Los Angeles. "European modernists moved to Los Angeles, so Americans had a relationship to modernism, the intellectual rigor of modernism, even though they eventually rebelled against it," McBane said.
Harrison, whose later music seems a return to romanticism, was an innovator and experimenter to the core, and the festival will perform one of his last pieces, "Nekchad." Harrison wrote it for a resonator guitar and rearranged the frets for microtonal tuning.
One of the more intriguing appearances will be Partch, named for Harry Partch, who invented his own instruments, such as a diamond shaped marimba tuned to his own 44-note scale and another fashioned with containers from particle accelerators. The composer’s original instruments were in storage at SDSU, until the collection moved to Montclair State University in New Jersey, where it is housed in the Harry Partch Instrumentarium.
Partch’s leader John Schneider has been building replicas and is working toward a complete set. The group will give a free performance and demonstration at the Museum of Making Music and a full concert on Schulman Auditorium. The performances are a rare treat; even McBane has never heard Partch’s music live.
Today’s young composers stand on the shoulders of the past, even as they draw heavily on pop influences and new technologies. On his blog Perich describes his works as simple forms where randomness, order and composition intersect. He isn’t content to make music and art; he invents "instruments" that are in a straight line from Harry Partch’s, although they are creations of the digital age.
In his One-Bit Music project, Perich turns jewel cases into personal lo-fi devices. The listener plugs into a head phone jack on the side of a jewel case that contains an electronic circuit and hears 40 minutes of 1-bit electronic music, the lowest possible digital representation of audio. "Interface" is a full-throated work for string quartet and 4-channel 1-bit electronics. Perich, who can switch from Bjork-like compositions to punk, has been recognized by no less than New York’s Whitney Museum, which in February, showcased him in its Whitney Live series of cutting edge performers.
Sevensson is Perich’s polar opposite. Loaded with Scandinavian bite and humor, his works use unusual instrument combinations and sometimes large ensembles. In his hour-long work "Tillvaratagna effekter," he reinvents the violin concerto, scoring it for a violin soloist, two sopranino recorders, two melodicas, six electric guitars, two bass guitars and timpani.
Svensson’s "Singing and Dancing" won the festival’s international competition which drew 100 entries. The Calder Quartet will perform Svensson’s piece, which was co-commissioned by ArtPower! at UCSD, and Perich’s "Interface."
Build, which performs in clubs and lofts in New York, will make its California debut at the festival with McBane’s compositions. The band’s musical identity sings from the cover of its recently-released premiere CD, "build." A hulking, rusting piece of construction equipment is parked on a beach washed by a gentle surf. McBane wrote the music, took the photo and produced the disc for New Amsterdam Records. The band -- violin, cello, piano, bass and drums -- is clearly in control of music that is alternately swaying and gentle ("in the backyard") and rough and driving ("magnet"). The final track ("driving") clocks in at nearly 14 minutes and progresses in a steady and energetic minimalist intensity. The recording has already picked up good reviews.
Today, new music is a free trade zone, and differences between the coasts are not as stark as they were in the middle of the twentieth century. Bi-coastal energies rule. In 2005, the San Francisco opera premiered John Adams’ "Doctor Atomic," about Robert Oppenheimer, the developer of the A-bomb. This season, after productions in the Netherlands and Chicago, it’s on the Metropolitan Opera’s schedule.
Terry Riley’s work will reach across the continent too. In November, Bang On a Can All-Stars of New York will premiere Terry Riley’s "Autodreamographical Tales" at Le Poisson Rouge in Greenwich Village. And then in the spring, Carnegie Hall will host a California modernist masterpiece. The Kronos Quartet, which is based in San Francisco, will supervise a star-filled 45th anniversary performance of Riley’s movable musical feast "In C." (SoundOn, the Athenaeum’s new music festival, has presented it twice in the past two years.)
Rooted in California, McBane also operates in the active New York music world that he described: "Composers in their 30s and early 20s are fusing genres, including indie rock. They’ve gone to conservatories and they’re musicians from different groups. It’s an indie classical scene."
For complete festival information go to www.carlsbadmusicfestival.org.
Thursday, Sept. 18, 2008 | Matt McBane doesn’t look like he’s celebrating an important milestone. At the Coffee Cup in La Jolla recently, he limited himself to some green tea and talked about the fifth anniversary of the Carlsbad Music Festival. This year the festival he founded and now directs kicks off in Los Angeles on Sept. 19 and moves to Carlsbad and San Diego for performances from Sept. 25 through 28.
McBane is an unassuming, almost retiring young musician, even though he’s presenting cutting edge music from a gaggle of genres from electronic to punk. The composer and violinist grew up in Carlsbad, and after school at USC and eight years in Los Angeles, he now lives in Brooklyn, the base for his band Build.
The Carlsbad festival has always featured young composers and ensembles.
"They’re underrepresented in California in contemporary music. Few venues present things in a high-profile way," McBane said.
Joining the festival this year are 26-year-old Tristan Perich, an artist-composer-geek-NYU graduate student, and Sweden’s 28-year-old Fabian Svensson. McBane, members of Build, and the Calder Quartet are in their late 20s. Many combine conservatory training and jazz and pop sensibilities.
With national and even international creds, the festival’s ensembles are youthful and originated or are based in southern California. The Calder has developed a world-wide reputation with performances of both traditional and cutting edge new music and helped establish the festival; its violinist, Ben Jacobson is one of McBane’s life-long friends from Carlsbad. red fish blue fish of UCSD brought down the house during August’s SummerFest, and Los Angeles’ Partch has assumed a unique mission.
This year’s festival, however, also introduces some historic energy with attention to California’s post-World War II experimental tradition. John Adams, one of the best known of the Californians, described in a New Yorker article last month how he experienced that tradition. Rooted in New England, he headed west in 1974, when young composers were going to Paris and Vienna. Among other day jobs, he unloaded ship containers and taught at the fledgling San Francisco Conservatory. At night, he and other Bay Area composers experimented with new and explosive forms like electronic, minimalism, and making music out of audio junk. Today, Adams is an "establishment" but idiosyncratic composer, known for operas like "Nixon in China."
For listeners in any genre -- fine art, punk, indie rock, jazz, etc. -- the festival is rich with works from California experimenters, who provide liberating inspiration for today’s composers: Terry Riley (Colfax) and Fred Firth (a Brit who teaches at Mills College); and the late Lou Harrison (San Francisco), Angeleno John Cage, Harry Partch, who lived in Leucadia, taught at SDSU and died in San Diego, and James Tenney, who performed with Partch and Cage and taught at Cal Arts and U.C. Santa Cruz.
Paralleling the California experiments were those in New York, specifically among the "downtown" group that differentiated itself from the "uptown" composers associated with Juilliard, Lincoln Center and Columbia University.
McBane said that the differences between the two coasts were real. Composers from the west tended to take their cue from nature, with open music in which changes occur gradually and lines of sound are longer. In contrast, New Yorker Elliot Carter writes works that are meticulous in detail. "It’s music written by someone living in a small space," he said.
The Californians also heard much music from the Pacific Rim, and they borrowed Asia’s musical structures and instruments. Harrison and Cage were among the first to incorporate Asian influences.
While San Francisco and UCSD were important centers, modernists Henry Cowell and Arnold Schoenberg taught Harrison and Cage in Los Angeles. "European modernists moved to Los Angeles, so Americans had a relationship to modernism, the intellectual rigor of modernism, even though they eventually rebelled against it," McBane said.
Harrison, whose later music seems a return to romanticism, was an innovator and experimenter to the core, and the festival will perform one of his last pieces, "Nekchad." Harrison wrote it for a resonator guitar and rearranged the frets for microtonal tuning.
One of the more intriguing appearances will be Partch, named for Harry Partch, who invented his own instruments, such as a diamond shaped marimba tuned to his own 44-note scale and another fashioned with containers from particle accelerators. The composer’s original instruments were in storage at SDSU, until the collection moved to Montclair State University in New Jersey, where it is housed in the Harry Partch Instrumentarium.
Partch’s leader John Schneider has been building replicas and is working toward a complete set. The group will give a free performance and demonstration at the Museum of Making Music and a full concert on Schulman Auditorium. The performances are a rare treat; even McBane has never heard Partch’s music live.
Today’s young composers stand on the shoulders of the past, even as they draw heavily on pop influences and new technologies. On his blog Perich describes his works as simple forms where randomness, order and composition intersect. He isn’t content to make music and art; he invents "instruments" that are in a straight line from Harry Partch’s, although they are creations of the digital age.
In his One-Bit Music project, Perich turns jewel cases into personal lo-fi devices. The listener plugs into a head phone jack on the side of a jewel case that contains an electronic circuit and hears 40 minutes of 1-bit electronic music, the lowest possible digital representation of audio. "Interface" is a full-throated work for string quartet and 4-channel 1-bit electronics. Perich, who can switch from Bjork-like compositions to punk, has been recognized by no less than New York’s Whitney Museum, which in February, showcased him in its Whitney Live series of cutting edge performers.
Sevensson is Perich’s polar opposite. Loaded with Scandinavian bite and humor, his works use unusual instrument combinations and sometimes large ensembles. In his hour-long work "Tillvaratagna effekter," he reinvents the violin concerto, scoring it for a violin soloist, two sopranino recorders, two melodicas, six electric guitars, two bass guitars and timpani.
Svensson’s "Singing and Dancing" won the festival’s international competition which drew 100 entries. The Calder Quartet will perform Svensson’s piece, which was co-commissioned by ArtPower! at UCSD, and Perich’s "Interface."
Build, which performs in clubs and lofts in New York, will make its California debut at the festival with McBane’s compositions. The band’s musical identity sings from the cover of its recently-released premiere CD, "build." A hulking, rusting piece of construction equipment is parked on a beach washed by a gentle surf. McBane wrote the music, took the photo and produced the disc for New Amsterdam Records. The band -- violin, cello, piano, bass and drums -- is clearly in control of music that is alternately swaying and gentle ("in the backyard") and rough and driving ("magnet"). The final track ("driving") clocks in at nearly 14 minutes and progresses in a steady and energetic minimalist intensity. The recording has already picked up good reviews.
Today, new music is a free trade zone, and differences between the coasts are not as stark as they were in the middle of the twentieth century. Bi-coastal energies rule. In 2005, the San Francisco opera premiered John Adams’ "Doctor Atomic," about Robert Oppenheimer, the developer of the A-bomb. This season, after productions in the Netherlands and Chicago, it’s on the Metropolitan Opera’s schedule.
Terry Riley’s work will reach across the continent too. In November, Bang On a Can All-Stars of New York will premiere Terry Riley’s "Autodreamographical Tales" at Le Poisson Rouge in Greenwich Village. And then in the spring, Carnegie Hall will host a California modernist masterpiece. The Kronos Quartet, which is based in San Francisco, will supervise a star-filled 45th anniversary performance of Riley’s movable musical feast "In C." (SoundOn, the Athenaeum’s new music festival, has presented it twice in the past two years.)
Rooted in California, McBane also operates in the active New York music world that he described: "Composers in their 30s and early 20s are fusing genres, including indie rock. They’ve gone to conservatories and they’re musicians from different groups. It’s an indie classical scene."
For complete festival information go to www.carlsbadmusicfestival.org.
"Audiophile Audition Gives Album a Positive Review" - Audiophile Audition, 07/09 2008The Calder Quartet is an ensemble in residence at The Colburn School, and they made these recordings at Zipper Hall there in June 2007. This disc itself looks like vanity-press production, with neither timings nor a record “label” as such. While the names of the Calder Quartet are listed, there are no biographies provided.
I must say I find the Ravel Quartet a compelling realization, expansive, lingering over hazy harmonies and the interior colorations that make the piece unique. The group articulates Ravel’s curious demands--like sur tanto, from the bridge--with care, molding the melodies that recur throughout the composition with a delicacy likely borrowed from Debussy’s Prelude to the Afternoon of a Faun.
The curio is the 1994 Arcadiana of Thomas Ades, a seven-movement set of miniatures, in what some would politely call an “eclectic” style. Behind the ethos of the work are musical allusions from Mozart’s The Magic Flute and Watteau’s The Embarkation from the Island of Cythera, or what Debussy called The Isle of Joy. The odd-numbered sections are intended as watercolors, the third titled after Schubert’s song about singing waters. Whether the various pluckings, cluckings, whizzings, and bangings at certain moments makes for aquatic listening is up to you.
Mozart’s last quartet, his K. 590, dedicated to the King of Prussia, basks in its cello part, presumably written to accommodate the King’s own talents. The cello leads immediately in the first movement, a real choice exercise for Eric Byers, cello. The operatic, expressive writing finds good balances in the Calder distribution of voice parts. Engineer Matt Snyder focuses on those audacious bass harmonies that make the late Mozart style a world unto itself. Violin Benjamin Jacobson relishes his concertante part, and the second movement vibrates with bucolic energy. One can only speculate what a violin concerto from this period of Mozart’s development might have been. The Menuet, one of the more Haydnesque moments in Mozart, quite jars us with passing dissonances and urgent sforzati. Nice viola work from Jonathan Moerschel in the last movement, a sarcastic rondo with virtuosic writing in each part, as each “soloist” competes for the principal leading voice.
I must say I find the Ravel Quartet a compelling realization, expansive, lingering over hazy harmonies and the interior colorations that make the piece unique. The group articulates Ravel’s curious demands--like sur tanto, from the bridge--with care, molding the melodies that recur throughout the composition with a delicacy likely borrowed from Debussy’s Prelude to the Afternoon of a Faun.
The curio is the 1994 Arcadiana of Thomas Ades, a seven-movement set of miniatures, in what some would politely call an “eclectic” style. Behind the ethos of the work are musical allusions from Mozart’s The Magic Flute and Watteau’s The Embarkation from the Island of Cythera, or what Debussy called The Isle of Joy. The odd-numbered sections are intended as watercolors, the third titled after Schubert’s song about singing waters. Whether the various pluckings, cluckings, whizzings, and bangings at certain moments makes for aquatic listening is up to you.
Mozart’s last quartet, his K. 590, dedicated to the King of Prussia, basks in its cello part, presumably written to accommodate the King’s own talents. The cello leads immediately in the first movement, a real choice exercise for Eric Byers, cello. The operatic, expressive writing finds good balances in the Calder distribution of voice parts. Engineer Matt Snyder focuses on those audacious bass harmonies that make the late Mozart style a world unto itself. Violin Benjamin Jacobson relishes his concertante part, and the second movement vibrates with bucolic energy. One can only speculate what a violin concerto from this period of Mozart’s development might have been. The Menuet, one of the more Haydnesque moments in Mozart, quite jars us with passing dissonances and urgent sforzati. Nice viola work from Jonathan Moerschel in the last movement, a sarcastic rondo with virtuosic writing in each part, as each “soloist” competes for the principal leading voice.
"The Art of Brilliant Chamber Music" - Star Telegram, 06/26 2008There’s nothing dissonant about Mozart’s quartet except a short, brooding introduction. After that, it’s sunny and vivacious. The quartet — Andrew Bulbrook and Benjamin Jacobson, violins; Jonathan Moerschel, viola; and Eric Byers, cello — captured the frivolity often conjured by Mozart’s music. Melodies were tossed back and forth between players in the elegant give and take so crucial to good chamber music. The quartet played with a broad, dark tone. Phrases were weighted with color, tapering from one instrument to another.
"String Quartets by Ravel, Ades and Mozart" - Cleveland Plain Dealer, 06/26 2008The Calder Quartet will appear in the Cleveland Museum of Art's Viva! & Gala Around Town series Wednesday, Nov. 19, at Plymouth Church of Shaker Heights. But why wait to hear this galvanic ensemble, which is in residence at the Colburn School in Los Angeles? Ravel's String Quartet is a burst of seductive and ravishing ideas in their hands, and they treat the seven movements of Thomas Ades' enchanting "Arcadiana" with utmost clarity, color and cohesion. In Mozart's Quartet in F major, K. 590, the Calder catapult the score's invigorating material as vividly as they probe its dramatic corners. Grade: A
"Spin of the Week" - Strings Magazine, 06/19 2008Greg Cahill says, "There is an almost delirious display of rich coloration and complex textures that unify these three works, spanning 220 years of string literature. Yet the Calder Quartet—Benjamin Jacobson and Andrew Bulbrook, violins; Jonathan Moerschel, viola; and Eric Byers, cello—bring a sense of purpose to this adventurous program that underscores the group's stature as quartet-in-residence at the Colburn School in Los Angeles...."
Click below to read the entire article!
Click below to read the entire article!
"The Calder Quartet excelled in its challenging, esoteric repertoire at the Barns at Wolf Trap on Friday night." - Washington Post, 04/14 2008There's little that's typical in a typical performance by the Calder Quartet. This ensemble pushes the audience's boundaries, and sometimes its buttons. Friday night at the Barns at Wolf Trap, the players -- violinists Benjamin Jacobson and Andrew Bulbrook, violist Jonathan Moerschel and cellist Eric Byers -- probably included Mendelssohn's Capriccio, Op. 81, No. 3, just to show they could handle standard repertoire. Although the piece is actually a bit unusual -- featuring a fugue, that most uncapricious of forms -- the quartet gave it a straightforward, rather dry interpretation.
"Calder Quartet Shows Strength for Artist Series" - Tallahassee Democrat, 01/21 2008The Calders (Benjamin Jacobson and Andrew Bulbrook, violin, Jonathan Moerschel, viola, and Eric Byers, cello) opened their program with Felix Mendolssohn's "Capriccio," Op. 81, No. 3. This short work neatly showed where the quartet's strengths lie. They lyrical introduction showed their warm, cohesive sound, while the fast fugal section revealed their balanced approach to ensemble playing.
"Calder Crosses the Ages with Ease" - LA Times, 12/20 2007The Calder Quartet-- suave in appearance and elegantly unified in its playing-- is the model of the sleek young string quartet. The ensemble's technical accomplishment is very high. The four men dress alike: fitted suits, black shirts, skinny striped ties. They have a reverence for the formal Classical style and for formal Modernism as well.
"A Taste of the Carlsbad Music Festival-- in forward and reverse" - LA Times, 09/26 2007The Calders-- now an even more self-confident, powerhouse of a group than ever-- produced a warm, beautiful amplified string tone in the second movement of festival founder-director Matt McBane's "Ghost in the Machine" that the composer manipulated electronically with delicacy and restraint. The foursome then found considerable subtly shaded expressive depth in Philip Glass' "Company"...
News 
Check out the recent press for the Carlsbad Music Festival
Mark Swed from the LA Times said about our performance this past Friday night at Zipper Hall:
"The program closed with the Calder Quartet, which has been associated with the festival from the beginning and in an astonishingly short time has become the American string quartet to watch...Using elegant if basic electronics, Perich hooked up each of the Calder's instruments to a dinky speaker. One of the hallmarks of the Calder is the wonderful richness of its sound, here turned into beeps. But they were voluptuous beeps full of texture."
The full articles are available in our Press Section!
Carlsbad Music Festival Starts on September 19!
We're excited to announce this year's Carlsbad Music Festival, beginning September 19 and going through September 28. This year will include performances by Founding Ensemble-in-Residence of the Carlsbad Music Festival, the Calder Quartet, along with Red Fish Blue Fish, Partch, and Build. Additionally, the Festival will host composers-in-residence: Fabian Svensson (winner of this year’s Composers Competition), Tristan Perich, and Festival Founder and Director, Matt McBane.
There are 7 concerts in all in LA, San Diego, and Carlsbad.
Come check it out! www.carlsbadmusicfestival.org
