NYT Review of Gloria Cheng and Calder Quartet at LPR

At home in Los Angeles the pianist Gloria Cheng is a celebrity: an invaluable new-music advocate and a preferred collaborator of composers like Pierre Boulez and Esa-Pekka Salonen. A review of a recital Ms. Cheng presented at the Colburn School of Performing Arts in September breathlessly conjured a heady, star-studded scene. But Ms. Cheng’s copious gifts are scarcely a mystery here, a point proved by the sizable, luminary-filled throng that assembled for one of her too infrequent New York appearances, at Le Poisson Rouge on Wednesday night.

Read the full review by Steve Smith here.

MATA Festival at LPR

Brooklny Vegan did an extensive post on the MATA Festival, which is going on this week at LPR. Check out the below interview with one of this year's composers, Julian Day.



MATA is a non-profit organization that has, for the past thirteen years, been dedicated to commissioning and showcasing works by young composers. The festival kicked off last night in The Galley with Matthew Wright's audio/video installation Totem for Gobi-New York, and will run through Thursday with several shows including tonight's performance by the Calder String Quartet. Tickets are still available for tonight's show, and you can head over here for more information on the rest of the performances.

Listen: Missy Mazzoli and Victoire on WNYC

WNYC is currently streaming an in-studio performance with Missy Mazzoli and Victoire, who recently performed at LPR.

Missy Mazzoli, the composer, keyboardist, bandleader and curator from Brooklyn, N.Y., is at the center of a group of emergent musicians who are classically trained, but who've also had experience working in rock bands. Mazzoli plays keyboards (note that I didn't say "piano" -- her keyboards tend to be electronic) and leads an all-female quintet called Victoire. Violin, clarinet, bass and two electronic keyboards add up to a sound that exists somewhere between chamber music and the vaguely defined, mostly instrumental "post-rock" scene. Some of her works include taped sounds of voices, machinery and the like, and her approach to tonality is refreshingly strange.

Head over here to listen to their performance and read the rest.

Missy Mazzoli is also the director of the MATA Festival, which begins tonight with a free event, MATA Sound Works with Matthew Wright, in The Gallery at LPR. We've seen them setting up all day, and it looks awesome. You should come by and check it out.

The MATA Festival runs through Thursday and will feature performances by Calder String Quartet, Lisa Moore, Ensemble Pamplemousse, Argento Chamber Ensemble, and L'Arsenale. Head over here to see details on all of the events and purchase tickets!

Just Announced: Calder Quartet and Iva Bittová w/ music of Janáček and Fred Frith

ON SALE NOW

Calder Quartet
Caldera Quartet an LA based string quartet specializing in classical and contemporary repertoire as well as discovering young, emerging composers and pursuing unique collaborations. We perform different eras and genres of music side by side so that both types of music are seen in a new light. A lot of the music we play is sometimes hard to get at first listen but it’s the kind that deepens the more you listen to it. Your 10th listen is more intense than the 1st and that’s how you get hooked.


Iva Bittová
Iva Bittová was born in 1958 in Bruntal in northern Moravia in what was then Czechoslovakia – and nowadays the Czech Republic. Both of her parents were musicians. Her mother Ludmila was a pre-school teacher who spent most of her life with her family; her father Koloman Bitto – Bittová is the surname’s female form – was a musician strongly influenced by the land of his birth – southern Slovakia. His main instruments were string bass, cimbalom, guitar, and trumpet. This exceptional ability to play almost any instrument he laid his hands on, whether performing in classical or folk music styles, proved a major influence on his three daughters as they grew up. Both of Iva’s sisters – her older sister Ida and her younger sister Regina – are professional drama and music performers.

MORE INFORMATION HERE.