Curran, Elwood, Murray

Led by Stephen Drury of the NEC faculty, the Callithumpian Consort is a loose aggregation of NEC students, alumni, and new music enthusiasts that performs locally, on the East Coast, and in Europe. Throughout the year, the group visits NEC with performances of contemporary avant-garde music.

On tonight's concert, the Consort reprise a work by Paul Elwood from their existing concert repertoire, Stanley Kubrick's Mountain Home, and give the first performance of Elwood's Under the Table. From the Callithumpian Consort blog:

Under the Table is based on rhythms and cadences of auctioneers. Our own Callithumpian cellist, Ben Schwartz, had sent Paul some recordings he had made of rural Pennsylvania auctioneers, and in addition, Paul had interviewed an auctioneer from Colorado while writing this new work. Also, a treat: Paul himself will perform his new piece with us (Ben tells me he’s a beast on banjo).

Performers on Stanley Kubrick's Mountain Home: Ilana Davidson, soprano; Hayes Griffin, banjo; Matt Combs, fiddle; David Goodchild, bass; Jessi Rosinski, flute; Rane Moore, clarinet; Gabriela Diaz, violin; Benjamin Schwartz, cello; Stephen Drury, piano

Performers on Under the Table: Jennifer Ashe, soprano; Paul Elwood, banjo; Jessi Rosinski, flute; Benjamin Schwartz, cello

Alvin Curran describes his trio Schtyx as "charts, bones, professions, shades, numbers, glues, hypes, acts, devils, organgrindings, wood implements, jugglers, chance operations, performance art, the Yiddish underground." The concert opens with a prelude performed by Curran and Margie Apfelbaum on shofar, the biblical horn (שופר, usually made of a ram's horn) that is still sounded in Jewish worship services.

Performers on Schtyx: Diamanda Dramm, violin; Yukiko Takagi, piano; Nick Tolle, percussion

Alvin Curran is also in town to deliver the Louis C. Elson Lecture at Harvard University on February 28. His topic is "The New Common Practice, or, A Life in Unpopular Music." More on this. Curran returns to NEC on March 2 as a guest of NEC's Piano Seminar.

Deployment, a new work by Brendan Murray will also have its premiere tonight. The Callithumpian Consort blog notes that:

Brendan Murray has a particular bent with drones and repetition, being interested in recording and processing instruments and tapes “until all traces of instrumentality are blurred, leaving only large blocks of pure sound”. His new work, Deployment, scored for 7 instrumentalists, computer, microphones, and loudspeakers, plays on the concept of a live, self-looping instrumental cluster which is then sampled and diffused in digital variations, interacting with the original acoustic source as well as with the physical space.

Performers on Deployment: Jessi Rosinski, flute; Rane Moore, clarinet; Joseph Walsh, trombone; Gabriela Diaz, violin; Benjamin Schwartz, cello; Yukiko Takagi, piano; Nick Tolle, percussion