Music for Contemplation

Three excerpts from the April 5th perfomance of Antoine Beuger‘s Peckinpah Trios, arranged and realized by Craig Shepard, Dan Joseph and Tyler Wilcox and recorded by Billy Gomberg and edited and mastered by Assaf Gidron are now available on SoundCloud.

Very grateful to the attentive 78 listeners who turned out to experience Andrew Lafkas’ new work last night!

A brief writing on tonight’s concert and the purpose of this series can be found here: http://www.mufoco.net/writing/2014/8/28/andrew-lafkas-creating-a-space

Andrew Lakfas (L) with Barry Weissblatt and Rick Brown (R)

Check out this write up of our last concert by Steve Smith

At the risk of hyperbole, it seemed likely that fewer notes were played during a 110-minute performance of “Peckinpah Trios,” a 2004 piece by the Dutch composer Antoine Beuger, on Saturday night, than might have been contained in a single ringtone on an audience member’s smartphone. No one present could make the comparison the hard way, thanks to the standard cautionary announcement.

The performance, by the trombonist Craig Shepard, the saxophonist Tyler William Wilcoxand the hammered-dulcimer player Dan Joseph, constituted the second event of Music for Contemplation, a new concert series at theChurch of the Annunciation of the Blessed Virgin Mary in Williamsburg, Brooklyn. These musicians and one more, the violinist Erik Carlson, established the series to present music that promotes stillness and permits rumination — most of it contemporary and avant-garde in character.

That’s not to say there were no distractions on Saturday. To facilitate a suitable environment, the series presenters lock the doors before a concert starts. Not quite five minutes into this one, a latecomer’s insistent knocking resounded throughout the ornate Lombard Romanesque chapel.

Viewed from another perspective, though, the knocking was part of the experience. Mr. Beuger, born in 1955, is a founder of the Wandelweisercollective, a loose confederation of disparate, globally dispersed composers bound by the implications of John Cage’s notorious “silent” piece, “4’33”,”as well as other works by Cage and Christian Wolff.

Taken too often as mere provocation, “4’33” ” presents a radical rethinking of the relationships among performer, composer, material, listener and environment. Wandelweiser members have mined that rich lode of intersecting variables in a variety of ways. Accordingly, “Peckinpah Trios” is permeable to interference almost by definition. Each of its 50 pages — some or all of which can be used in any rendition — contains one, two or three sustained notes per player, with attacks and durations determined individually.

“It may last 90 minutes,” Mr. Shepard, a Wandelweiser composer himself, told the small but rapt audience. “It is conceivable that the concert tonight will last five hours,” he added. For nearly two hours, the players whispered notes into the air, alone, in pairs and occasionally all together.

Adjusting to the space and stillness, perception changed slowly but markedly. Were the cars and buses rumbling past the church louder in the second hour than in the first? Were the planes flying lower overhead? Most likely, the answer to those questions was “no.” Yet everything sounded more acute, lively and present — qualities enhanced by the keen listening that the music enabled.

Saturday, March 1st

Eva-­‐Maria Houben: tranquility (premier) Tyler Wilcox (bass clarinet), Christopher Johnson (organ)

Saturday, April 5th

Antoine Beuger: Peckinpah Trios Arranged and realized by: Craig Shepard (trombone), Tyler Wilcox (soprano sax) Dan Joseph (hammer dulcimer)

Saturday, May 3rd

Orlando di Lasso, Sequuntur Cantiones (sine textu) Larry Polansky: Christian Music Anastassis Philippakopoulos: Song 6, Song (for trombone) Jack Callahan: substantia absolute infinita Craig Shepard, Mark Broschinsky (trombones)

Saturday, September 6th

Andrew Lafkas and Ensemble present  a new  work

Saturday, October 4th

Michael Oesterle: l’hiver monastiqie Erik Carlson (violin)

Saturday, November 1st Four for Six

New works by Erik Carlson, Dan Joseph, Craig Shepard, Tyler Wilcox Affinity Brass Sextet

Doors open at 7:30 pm

All concerts begin promptly at 8:05 pm

Most concerts do not allow late admission

$15 each at the door

Church of the Annunciation of the Virgin Mary
259 North 5th St, at Havemeyer and Metropolitan
Brooklyn, NY 11211

In co-operation with the Parish of
Our Lady of Mount Carmel (www.olmcchurchbk.com)

www.mufoco.n

Very excited to hear Tyler and Christopher perform this Saturday.