In Tuesday’s (1/12) Wall Street Journal, Allan Kozinn writes that New Music Gathering 2016, held in Baltimore from January 7 to 9, began “with an extended and peculiarly transfixing whisper. Members of Chamber Cartel, an Atlanta group, gave an uninterrupted five-hour reading of ‘For Philip Guston,’ one of Morton Feldman’s characteristically slow-moving, soft-hued, pianissimo meditations, this one for flute, piano and pitched percussion…. Like the first New Music Gathering, in San Francisco last January, this … installment at the Peabody Institute of the Johns Hopkins University drew composers, performers and new-music fans from around the country for a rich menu of panels and concerts, and—not least—networking. Its organizers—the composers Lainie Fefferman, Daniel Felsenfeld, Mary Kouyoumdjian, Matt Marks and Jascha Narveson—think of the Gathering mainly as a place for musicians to meet, exchange ideas and hatch new projects, and its most popular session, both years, was New Music Speed Dating, at which composers and performers … have a few minutes to make their cases.” Concerts featured music by a broad variety of 20th-century and contemporary composers; performers included Ensemble 50, Nouveau Classical Project, and Sō Percussion.
Posted January 15, 2016
