As mentioned briefly, the Original Cast Recording of Missy Mazzoli's opera, Song from the Uproar: The Lives and Deaths of Isabelle Eberhardt, is out next week on New Amsterdam Records (whose Red Hook offices took a beating last week from Hurricane Sandy). It's based on the life of 20th century Swiss adventurer Isabelle Eberhardt, and can be streamed in full below. Also below is the brand new music video for "You Are the Dust" from the opera

There's a record release show for Song from the Uproar this Sunday (11/11) at Le Poisson Rouge, featuring mezzo-soprano Abigail Fischer, NOW Ensemble, and Aaron RocheTickets are on sale.

Album stream and music video are below.

Continue reading "Missy Mazzoli releasing 'Song from the Uproar' cast recording; record release show this weekend in NYC (stream, video)"

by Andrew Sacher

DOWNLOAD: Roomful of Teeth - "Quizassa" (written by Merrill Garbus) (MP3)

Roomful of Teeth (photo by Nicholas Whitman)
Roomful of Teeth played an Ecstatic Summer show with Merrill Garbus (aka the brains behind tUnE-yArDs) to perform some compositions that Merrill had written for the group along with some tUnE-yArDs songs as well. Some of those compositions will appear on the new self-titled Roomful of Teeth album, which is due out October 30 via New Amsterdam Records. One of those songs, "Quizassa," can be downloaded above, and it's instantly noticeable that Merrill had something to do with it. The album also features songs composed by William Brittelle, Caleb Burnhans, Rinde Eckert, Judd Greenstein, Caroline Shaw, and Sarah Kirkland Snider. The album tracklist and cover art are below.

Roomful of Teeth will also play a free show in NYC on Thursday (10/4) at the David Rubenstein Atrium at Lincoln Center. The show starts at 10:30. They'll be performing material from their album and also the NY premieres of new works by Missy Mazzoli.

Album info is below.

Continue reading "Roomful of Teeth releasing an album (download a track written by Merrill Garbus), playing Lincoln Center"

Skeletons at Crossing Brooklyn Ferry 2012 (more by David Andrako)

Skeletons play the Michael Schimmel Center for the Arts at Pace University tonight (7/11), opening for Missy Mazzoli & Victoire and part of the River to River Festival. The show starts at 7:30 and is free. From a press release about the show:

This musical portrait of "postclassical queen bee," composer Missy Mazzoli, will feature Mazzoli at the keyboard fronting her internationally beloved ensemble Victoire. Performing songs with her own signature "shimmering, surging, post-Minimalist flow" (Time Out New York), she will be joined by Matt Mehlan with his band Skeletons who Pitchfork calls "an outsize global-a-go-go mélange of unceasing polyrhythms, Afrobeat guitars, free jazz, and Timbaland's approach to kitchen-sink percussion." The concert will feature world premieres by Mehlan and Mazzoli.

Victoire will perform beloved favorites from their repertoire along with newly arranged selections from Mazzoli's acclaimed new opera SONG FROM THE UPROAR with special guest mezzo-soprano Abigail Fischer. Skeletons will perform pieces from the upcoming Skeletons Big Band album "The Bus."

Skeletons' new album, The Bus, will be out September 18 on Shinkoyo and was recorded as the Skeleton$ Big Band, which features members of Little Women, Extra Life, PC Worship, Starring, Tune-Yards, NOMO, and others. The album had an interesting birth, as main Skeleton Matt Mehlan explains:

While finishing the mix of the Skeletons' album "MONEY", Jason [Skeletons' longtime guitarist/collaborator] made the joke / non-joke that we should just scrap the entire album, transcribe and orchestrate all the parts we had just recorded, and re-record them with a 20-piece big band, live, in one room. I laughed at the time AND filled with rage. So much energy had been spent on record, the notion of throwing it away made me sick to my stomach.

About a year or so later, we found ourselves in a tiny room trying to track and overdub parts on the songs for "PEOPLE" - when an email came through asking if we might have an idea to do "something special", over the course of a week, with space and time to work through that big idea at the NYC performance space Roulette. Maybe Jason was right?

It was with great relief that we were able to pause for a moment and consider a new set of ideas. We came back to the "big band" - the almost joke, "jazz" reference, high school band, first time you ever realized you could make an instrument scream feeling - let's get those 20 people in a room and make some noise. Skeletons Big Band.

There's more to the story here. You can stream "Pencilneck" from The Bus below. If you pre-order the album you get an immediate download of the whole album.

If you can't make tonight's show, Skeletons will be playing another free outdoor show on August 8 as part of the Summerscreen series in McCarren Park, playing with Knyf Hyts before a screening of Top Gun. No other Skeletons tour dates at the moment, but meanwhile Summesrscreen actually also happens tonight (7/11).

Skeletons song stream and album tracklist is below.

Continue reading "Skeletons releasing 'The Bus' (stream a track), playing two free shows (one with Missy Mazzoli & Victoire tonight)"

Denmark's Efterklang will release their new album Piramida on September 24 via 4AD. Here's a little about it from the band:

Our new album started out in quite unusual fashion. In August 2011 we (Mads, Casper & Rasmus) travelled to Spitsbergen in the arctic. Our destination was the abandoned Russian settlement Piramida. It was left overnight in 1998 and today stands as a ghost town still full of relics from its past including the world northernmost grand piano. We spent 9 days in this ruin just a 1000 km from the North Pole and we collected over a 1000 recordings which we afterwards have used in different ways in the making of our new album

Efterklang made a video of collecting some of those recordings and you can watch it at the bottom of this post. The band performed Piramida at their first-ever Australian show last month at the famed Sydney Opera House with Siouxsie & the Banshees' Budgie on drums, backed by the Sydney Symphony and footage of that is below as well.

With the success of the Sydney show, Efterklang will perform as an augmented six-piece including Budgie. In the UK, orchestra Northern Sinfonia will join the band as well. No tour of North America has been announced yet, but one is promised for 2013. Meanwhile Efterklang will visit NYC to play The Metropolitan Museum of Art on September 22 with the Wordless Music Orchestra and guest conductor Matthew Coorey, with arrangements by Missy Mazzoli (Kronos Quartet, Victoire), Karsten Fundal (Under Byen, Oh Land), and Daníel Bjarnason (Sigur Rós, Múm). Tickets ($25) are on sale now.

Artwork for Piramida is below, along with those videos and a list of all current Efterklang tour dates.

Continue reading "Efterklang releasing 'Piramida', playing the Met with Budgie and Worldless Music Orchestra (and other dates)"

Remember that Dessner brother-curated festival, "Crossing Brooklyn Ferry," which is happening at BAM from May 3-5? And remember how when we posted the National-curated ATP lineup we suggested (for obvious reasons) that it might hint at the BAM lineup? Well, the lineup is out now, and there are definitely some similarities to that, and also not surprisingly, to the ongoing Ecstatic Music Festival which is great at highlighting the growing mix between indie rock and indie classical that the Dessners are huge fans of and participants in.

The three day Brooklyn Academy of Music festival includes The Antlers, My Brightest Diamond (w/ yMusic), Sharon Van Etten, and Buke and Gase who are all playing ATP, in addition to The Walkmen, St. VIncent, Beirut, Atlas Sound, Tyondai Braxton (formerly of Battles), Oneohtrix Point Never, Caveman, Sinkane, Twin Shadow, Jherek Bischoff, Pat Mahoney and Nancy Whang (DFA DJ set), Ava Luna, and others which are all listed below. As mentioned, the fest also includes the Brooklyn Youth Chorus and the NOW Ensemble.

3-Day Festival Passes go on sale Monday (3/5) to friends of BAM and Tuesday (3/6) to the general public. More details and schedule at the Crossing Brooklyn Ferry website.

Full lineup below...

Continue reading "National-curated BAM Festival lineup announced (Walkmen, St. Vincent, Beirut, Sharon, Antlers, Zs & many more)"

As previously announced, the 2011 Ecstatic Music Festival, presented by New York City's Merkin Concert Hall in association with New Amsterdam Records, is a showcase of imaginative collaborations between more than 150 genre-pushing composers, songwriters and performers who represent a new generation of artists combining diverse influences and techniques to explore the intersection of classical and pop music. All concerts will include premieres. The festival opens with a free seven-hour marathon on January 17, 2011, and continues with 13 additional concerts until March 28, 2011. All concerts will take place at Merkin Concert Hall.

The Ecstatic Music Festival 2011 is almost here. Subscriptions and single show tickets are on sale. The full updated schedule (tUnE-yArDs, So Percussion, Dan Deacon, Craig Wedren, ACME, Nadia Sirota, Buke & Gass, Doveman, Owen Pallett, Bang On A Can All-Stars, and more included), and a trailer, below...

Continue reading "Ecstatic Music Festival kicks off on 1/16, runs through 3/28 (updated schedule w/ tUnE-yArDs, Dan Deacon, Owen Pallett)"