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CONTENTS

CONGRATULATIONS TO . . ., 3
RECENT DEATHS;
CORRECTIONS; LEGATO NOTES: 4

LIVE EVENTS
(May 18 to October 24, 2003)

I Hear Museum Art (B.L.C./Greenfest) <> Mad Dreams and Brits (Hickey), 6
The Score's the Thing (David Cleary) <> Recitalists & Rappers (Greenfest), 7
Music for Aldous Huxley (Cleary), 8
In Sarah's Wake (Cleary), 9
Down to the C in Chips (B.L.C.), 10
Exploring the Keys (Cleary), 11
A Rave for "Vera" (Kraft), 12
At the Temple of Drama (B.L.C.), 13
This Macbeth Struts and Frets Not (Kroll), <> A Powerful Woman (Paulk), 14
A Warrior for Us All (Paulk) <> Is There a Dr. T in the House? (McDonagh), 15
Turning the World of Sound Upside-down (Liechty/de Clef Piñeiro), 16
A Classic Ascends (de Clef Piñeiro) <> Broken by Fate (Kroll), 18
An Ancient Instrument, A New Voice (de Clef Piñeiro), 19
Pushing Strings (Kroll) <> Of A Love For Music (Patella), 20
A Night with Wolfe, Ethel and Friends (Hickey) <> Grist for the Opera Mill (Lynn), 21

DOTTED NOTES
from … Kroll, BLC, 22

INTERVIEW
A recent interview by broadcaster Bruce Duffie with Ruth Schonthal

SPEAKING OUT!
"Not Just Another Concert" <>
More on the "Pullet's Surprise," 24
"… a decidedly poor second choice," 25

THE PRINTED WORD
It's Who You Know (Barry Drogin), 25

RECORDINGS

À outrance à la Anderson (de Clef Piñeiro) <>
"Beauty to the Limits" (Galganski) <>
He Never Sat Back (BLC), 27
Gi'me Moe Time (Cleary) <>
Monk's "mercy" (Kaye), 29
Readying the "Unready," (BLC), 30

RECENT RELEASES, 31

THE PUZZLE CORNER:
Another outstanding winner, 32

COMPOSER INDEX, 34

BULLETIN BOARD, 35

WEB SUPPLEMENT

Live Events

Equinox Chamber Players In Concert for Impact
Just In Time: Foreign Influences Brought Home
NEC Percussion Ensemble: Premieres for Percussion
Dinosaur Annex: Metaphysics and Magic
Longitude
IX International Festival for Contemporary Music

CD Reviews

Harrison Birtwistle: Refrains and Choruses
Flute Force: Eyewitness
Exchange Latin America
Outlier-New Music for Music Boxes: John Morton
Works for Flute and Piano of Louis Moyse
New American Piano Music

Obituaries

Arthur Berger (1912-2003)
Harold Schonberg (1915-2003)
Meyer Kupferman (1926-2003)

Review of Concert

NEC Percussion Ensemble: Premieres for Percussion

Sunday, April 13, 2003, 7:30 PM
Jordan Hall, New England Conservatory, Boston, MA

by David Cleary

Of the seven works heard on this "Premieres for Percussion" concert, only two items actually merited the label—and they constituted the best and worst of what was heard.

The musical materials in DNA by Joan Tower are inspired by the dual nature of the double helix; one can in fact best characterize the selection as a sophisticated "game of pairs" involving its five percussionists. It makes inventive and subtle use of spatial writing, is stuffed full with driving energy, and has a good, non-prescriptive feel for form. In a word, wonderful. Stanley Leonard’s Sacred Stones unfortunately is much less successful. Its ritualistic, atmospheric writing comes off as pretentious, and the piece proves structurally scattered and harmonically inconsistent.

There was disparity in listening pleasure to be had with the two marimba quartets encountered as well. Omphalo Centric Lecture by Nigel Westlake is a neo-process delight, perky in mood and mildly jazzy in sound, that nicely clumps its patterned material into convincing larger sections. And it sounds great for its wood-plank foursome. Daniel Levitan’s Marimba Quartet, however, seems a bit stodgy and uninspired in gesture despite a fetching sonic world that’s even more strongly indebted to jazz idioms than the Westlake. Its warm tremolo middle section is its best feature.

The lengthiest opus presented was Michael Colgrass’s Fantasy-Variations. But despite clocking in at nearly 20 minutes, one never thought "enough already!" For roto-tom soloist and six percussionists, the work is loaded with variety of texture and mood. Dramatic and substantial, it proves most effective even though it expresses variations in a stop-and-start manner. Mudra by Bob Becker integrates its featured player more closely with the four battery mates that surround him. It adapts Indian musical techniques to Western ends, essentially deriving its fabric from an initial upward chord progression. It’s nice enough to hear if not all that convincing in unfolding or architecture.

Edgard Varese’s Ionisation is of course the distinguished ancestor of all else heard this evening, and it remains a splendid, riveting listen after all these years. The New England Conservatory Percussion Ensemble, ably led by Frank Epstein, gave it a deliberate presentation that did not skimp on excitement. And they played everything else on the program exceedingly well. Soloists Jeff Means (in the Colgrass) and Matt Grubbs (in the Becker) were charismatic and highly capable.