Until our series begins on August 30th at the Amador Club, join us for a sneak peak of the program each week.
Caleb Burhans ⎹ Escape New York
Our last piece that we will give you a sneak peak of is the most contemporary of the program. Its' composer, Caleb Burhans was born in 1980 and currently resides in New York named as "New York’s mohawked Mozart” by Time Out New York.
Burhan has worked extensively with the JACK quartet and has had his works performed by Roomful of Teeth, eighth blackbird, the Alabama Symphony Orchestra, and the Choir of Trinity Wall Street and as worked on late night shows like SNL, Colbert, and Letterman.
You will notice his music has a more minimalist sound than the previous week's composers-- meaning that his use of ornamentation and rich chords are more sparsely placed (if at all). Rather than focusing on one or two melodies with another instrument playing the harmony/accompaniment, it finds itself focused on rhythmic patterns and clusters to become an embodiment the phrase, "the whole is greater than the sum of its parts".
A note on listening to new music (new to you or new to the world): In my listening, I enjoy allowing the different moods and phases to "wash" over me. This is an essential key to the first listening to any piece in my opinion-- don't try too hard to pick and choose, to find patterns or meanings. Instead, imagine you are walking through a garden and allow yourself to notice things you like (or don't like!). Give yourself the space to find out if the music resonates with you and why!
Without further ado, here is the sister piece to the piece will be performing this Friday.
As mentioned above, Burhan's music has many features akin to the minimalist subgenre in that it it doesn't concern itself with romantic gestures or sweeps. You'll notice that each instrument and each section of instruments follows a specific repeating pattern, similar to music by Steve Reich and John Adams. Yet, the term minimalist doesn't exclude a piece from becoming loud or energetic as you will hear in the recording above. In fact, the entrances of each instrument are bursting with energy and by the end of the piece we are caught up in the middle of all of the instruments sounding off at once (the image of a snowstorm perhaps??)-- their energy compounding with each repetition and new musical event.
This Friday (and throughout the Atlas Cycle), we will perform Escape New York, the sister piece to Escape Wisconsin. Escape New York has a paired down instrumentation of just two violins, but extracts the image of a busy, bustling city.
Thank you so much for following along with these teasers the last few weeks! I had lots of fun putting them together and I hope they help you enjoy the upcoming shows even more!!
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