Four years ago today, Tilted Axes: Music for Mobile Electric Guitars made its debut at Make Music New York‘s 1st annual Make Music Winter on Wednesday, December 21st, 2011 in New York City. Now, 1,461 days past, the project has been produced in a number of cities on three continents. More to come in the New Year. Thank you to all the musicians, presenters, and sponsors who have make everything possible. Guitarists, bassists, and percussionists – you are the most awesome. Here’s to the future tilts that await! ~ http://www.tiltedaxes.net/ ~ https://www.facebook.com/tiltedaxes/
TILTED AXES: SÃO PAULO – Now it’s official and can be announced:The 3rd Música Estranha – International Exploratory Music Festival, to be held in São Paulo, Brazil, from 25th to 29th of November 2015, has invited Tilted Axes to create a series of events for their city. Exactly how it will manifest itself is still in development (there’s much work to do) but, it’s very exciting to think of how things will sound with Brazilian musicians added to the post-progressive mix. Very.
Tilted Axes: Music for Mobile Electric Guitars’
TILT CORE ~ THE SOUND OF BURNING CHAIRS
A Preview Performance of New Material
Wednesday, December 17th at 10:00 PM
Carta Azul Taqueria & Ceviche Bar
103 W 14th Street, New York City
Free Admission
Performers: Patrick Grant, Dan Cooper, Matt Grossman, John Halo, Randolph Hudson III, Jeremy Nesse, Cesare Papetti, Reinaldo Perez, & Daniel Reyes-Llinas
Tilted Axes: Music for Mobile Electric Guitars was created in 2011 by composer/performer Patrick Grant for Make Music New York’s inaugural Make Music Winter solstice event. Since then, Tilted Axes has evolved as a project with multiple incarnations in New York, Detroit, and Düsseldorf, Germany. In 2015 the project will manifest itself in performances created in the USA, Europe, and South America.
After performing three years in a row for the December 21st Make Music Winter events, a conscious decision was made to sit this one out in order to prepare for the work ahead in 2015. We will be back!
TILT CORE, in its original intention, is an ensemble drawn from the larger group of performers as a means to explore and experiment with new material without the constraint of an immediate public performance. Its roster can, and should, change seasonally. Tilt Core’s smaller size comes from the concept of “the magic number seven plus or minus two” a.k.a. Miller’s Law, the number of objects an average human can hold in working memory. This smaller size, 5-9 members, enhances Tilt Core’s musical and practical possibilities. Outside of the larger Tilted Axes projects, Tilt Core will be a more agile and easily presentable ensemble.
Why this performance then, if performing was never an intention? It is a preview through which all of the standard criteria of an official performance will apply. In whatever city Tilted Axes performs, we discover a local establishment where we can eat, drink, and hold our post-rehearsal discussions. “Where Tilted Axes Relaxes” is how it’s come to be known. In the case of Tilt Core, it’s been Carta Azul Taqueria & Ceviche Bar, directly across the street from the Alchemical Theater Laboratory where Tilt Core rehearses. The owners of Carta Azul, having gotten to know us well over the past couple of months, generously offered us their place to have an informal performance. In other words: it came to us. This performance will bring to completion this phase of Tilt Core 1.0. The project’s 2.0 incarnation will begin early next year.
So here we are, ready to rise to this performance challenge. If you are free, please join us and get a taste of everything Tilted that’s in store for the New Year.
A highly subjective musical take on what it means not only to write an opera, but to encompass and even embody one in the modern age of internet witnessed its world premiere launching on April 5th at Dixon Place, New York City’s “Laboratory for Performance.” Written, composed and performed by ASCAP member Joseph Keckler, this conceptual tour-de-force also provided a vehicle for fellow ASCAP member Patrick Grant, collaborating as music producer, with violin arrangements added to the artistic mix by Dan Bartfield. Directed by Uwe Mengel, this highly operatic exposure of Keckler’s inner subconscious, transparent at its most ridiculous and sublime, is propelled through a multi-media series of phantasmagoric tableaux with many an unexpected turn. “I Am an Opera” steadily escalates with its unspoken pronouncement that life, especially at its most primal and personal, is supreme artistic game. Performances will take place on Friday and Saturday evenings throughout the month of April.
With a 28-year history of leading-edge concert production in NYC, Composers Concordance presents The Composers Concordance Festival 2012. This will be a whirlwind of five innovative contemporary music concerts in ten days, including over 40 of NYC’s most distinctive and accomplished composers. This festival spotlights the composer in different contexts, engaging the audience and performer in the creative process, and contending with the dizzying multiplicity of styles within today’s music scene. All the while, Composers Concordance puts a premium on distinguishability, that factor by which we remember and denote individual identity – and it’s that aspect, the distinction and breadth of the composer’s message, on which we’ll chiefly focus.
The first concert, ‘Songs‘, shows the various vocal styles the composer writes songs for. From the traditional western classical soprano and baritone, to the modern pop/r&b diva, to voices of other world cultures that stretch the boundaries of notation and pitch.
‘The Composers Play Composers Marathon‘ shows the composer as a performer of his or her own music. A common practice in baroque, classical and romantic periods but rarer in the mid 20th century. Toward the end of the century and into the new 21st century, the art of the composer-as-performer is re-emerging, and on this marathon we hear no fewer than 27 composers interpreting their own works.
‘New Blues‘ asks the composer to show his or her compositional skill and voice in this very particular genre that influenced so much of the music in the 20th century. With the 100-year anniversary of the first publication of a blues piece by W.C. Handy, we look at how the 21st century composer is influenced by this style.
The development of technology was quick in the 20th century, and it inspired composers to create brand new timbres and sonorities with the possibilities electronic manipulation of sound provided. We see what the 21st century composer has to offer to progress further the art of computers, amplifiers, and circuits in the ‘Electronics‘ concert of the festival.
With the final concert: ‘Ensemble‘, we witness the composer in an ensemble setting, performing each others’ music. The ensemble in question is the Composers Concordance Ensemble (which is the ensemble-in-residence at William Paterson University), made up of the directors of comp cord as well as regular performers and composers associated with the group.
NOTE: There will be a press conference before the first performance on January 27th, at 5:30pm at The Turtle Bay Music School. Members of the press are invited to attend and learn more about the festival. RSVP: composersconcordancerecords@gmail.com
Festival Schedule:
I. SONGS
Composers Celebrate the Diversity of Song Part of the Turtle Bay Visiting Artist Series
January 27th at 6:30pm
Turtle Bay Music School
Em Lee Concert Hall
244 East 52nd St, NYC
(212) 753-8811 http://www.tbms.org/ Admission: Free
Composers: Cody Brown, Dan Cooper, Charles Coleman, Luis Cobo, Duke Ellington/Pritsker, Milica Paranosic, Gene Pritsker, and Bob Rodriguez
Performers: Bobby Avey, Gernot Bernroider, Cody Brown, John Clark, Charles Coleman, Dan Cooper, Mat Fieldes, Laura Kay, Taka Kigawa, Milica Paranosic, Edmundo Ramirez, Chanda Rule, Sean Satin, and Keve Wilson
II. MARATHON The 3rd Annual Composers Play Composers Marathon
Composers Performing Their Own Music January 29th at 7pm
Composer/Performers: Cristian Amigo, Loop B, Dan Barrett, Eve Beglarian, Svjetlana Bukvich-Nichols, Peter Breiner, David Chesky, Luis Cobo, Valerie Coleman, Dan Cooper, Jed Distler, Patrick Grant, Franz Hackl, Sara Holtzschue, Peter Jarvis, Andrew M. Lee, Peri Mauer, Daniel Palkowski, Milica Paranosic, Gene Pritsker, David Saperstein, Larry Simon, David Soldier, Rubens Salles, Eleonor Sandresky, Ezequiel Viñao, and Michael Wolff
III. NEW BLUES Marking 100 Years of the Blues
Composers Bring the Genre into the 21st Century
Performed by The International Street Cannibals Ensemble January 31st at 9pm
Composers: Dan Barrett, John Clark, Dan Cooper, Glenn Cornett, Patrick Grant, Robert Johnson, Earl Maneein, Milica Paranosic, Gene Pritsker, and Joseph Pehrson
Performers: Dan Barrett, Lynn Bechtold, John Clark, Dan Cooper, Glenn Cornett, Glenn Cornett, Jennifer DeVore, Patrick Grant, Earl Maneein, Cesare Papetti, Milica Paranosic, Gene Pritsker, and Malik Work
IV. ELECTRONICS
Music for Electronics and Electro-Acoustic Ensemble
Composers Working with New Media February 3rd at 8pm
Gallery MC
549 West 52nd Street, 8th Floor
(bet. 10th & 11th Ave), NYC
(212) 581-1966 http://www.gallerymc.org/h/ Admission: $10
Composers: Loop B, Lynn Bechtold, Glenn Cornett, Dan Cooper, Dinu Ghezzo, Patrick Grant, Lainie Fefferman, Franz Hackl, Mari Kimura, Daniel Palkowski, Milica Paranosic/Joel Chadabe, Gene Pritsker, and Eric Somers
Performers: Loop B, Glenn Cornett, Lynn Bechtold, Gene Pritsker, Daniel Palkowski, Lainie Fefferman, Peter Christian Hall, Mari Kimura, Milica Paranosic, and Franz Hackl
Visual projections: Carmen Kordas
V. ENSEMBLE Composers Performing within an Ensemble
The Composers Concordance Ensemble at William Paterson University February 6th at 7pm
William Paterson University
300 Pompton Road Wayne, NJ
(973) 720-2315 http://www.wpunj.edu/ Admission: $5
Composers: John Cage, Dan Cooper, Robert Dick, Patrick Hardish, Peter Jarvis, Otto Luening, Milica Paranosic, Joseph Pehrson, and Gene Pritsker
Performers: Dan Barrett, Lynn Bechtold, Robert Dick, Peter Jarvis, Milica Paranosic, Gene Pritsker, and Michiyo Suzuki
BIG BANG Composed & directed by Patrick Grant
Text by Patrick Grant and Charles Liu with Brian Schwartz
Performed by Patrick Grant Group: Patrick Grant, Kathleen Supove, Marija Ilic, & John Ferrari
Charles Liu, narrator
Technical assistance: Erick Gonzales & Jocelyn Gonzales
Performed May 21, 2006 on the One-Two-Three-GO! New Music Concert Series, NYC
Video editing and post-production 2010
BIG BANG was commissioned by the CUNY Graduate Center Science & the Arts performance series in NYC, an initiative of the Science Outreach Series, presenting programs in theatre, art, music, and dance that bridge the worlds of art and science. Supported in part by the National Science Foundation and the Lounsbery Foundation. For further information on Science & the Arts at: http://web.gc.cuny.edu/sciart/
The MMiXdown 