Results tagged “newmusic”

Bang on A Can has always been about innovation, exploration, and breaking boundaries. Formed in 1987 by composers Michael Gordon, David Lang and Julia Wolfe, the New York based collective acts as an incubator for new and contemporary music. The organization is a place where adventurous composers and performers strive to add a fresh voice to the musical landscape.

While there are some great shows coming up in January, this week is still subject to holiday doldrums. Here are a few shows to check out.

Word of mouth is considered an important marketing tool these days; call it what you will, but it's still a great way to hear about new music, movies, TV, whatever. Usually the best way to find the good stuff is to talk to somebody whose opinions you respect, but sometimes just random folks can tell you about neat new stuff — some person at a party, a friend of a friend, or whoever. And sometimes...

Composer/conductor Armando Bayolo tried to go through the usual channels in order to form the chamber ensemble he envisioned. Gathering paperwork and networking was unsuccessful, so he turned to every musician’s best friend, Craigslist. The call led to seven area musicians coming together to form the core of what would become Great Noise Ensemble (GNE). The initial plan was to have a small ensemble, but there was enough interest in the group that after some extra recruiting efforts, GNE grew to its present lineup of eighteen instrumentalists and two singers. Tonight, this new music ensemble will begin its third performance season at the Capital Fringe Festival.

By DCist contributor Paul Ghosh-Roy Artist? Junglist? Selector? Hip-Hop DJ extraordinaire? DCist cannot answer this question. Maybe the best title, should DJ Spooky choose to pass out a DC style business card, would simply read, “Paul D. Miller, Turntablist.” Because, if a turntablist uses the tables to create new music and improvise, and not just play records, then Washington, D.C.’s native son Paul D.Miller (nom de disc, "DJ Spooky that Subliminal Kid") claims the title...

Things are a little slow this week in classical music, because of Easter and all that. There are still a few good things to be heard, but the list is shorter than normal. Besides, it's hard to tolerate being indoors when those trees are doing their whole pink thing.

Last January, as my girlfriend and I were making our way down towards U Street en route to see some Unbuckled alumni play the 9:30 Club, she talked me into checking out Nethers, the opening band, instead of grabbing a few drinks at DC9. "You never know, they might become your new favorite band." Little did she know how right she would be. I was immediately smitten with the laid back, psychedelic folk rock...

We’re mourning the latest casualty of the war on jukeboxes, as news comes to us via Rock Creek Rambler that earlier this month Fox and Hounds took the plunge and replaced their jukebox with a new-fangled super computer known as the Touchtunes digital music player. While the old jukebox was beloved by many for its rustic charms and eclectic CD collection, the Touchtunes cares not for the trifling whims of mortals. The ersatz jukebox is not really a box at all, nor does it juke. It is a flatscreen portal hanging on the wall, and rumor has it that if you stare at it for too long you start involuntarily singing “Fergalicious.”

Monday >> Hear the man behind the sound. Don Zientara runs Arlington's legendary Inner Ear Studio, and has been behind the board for more of this town's seminal punk records than we can count. But it turns out after all these years that Zientara is also an excellent songwriter in his own right. His 2003 collection of stripped down solo tunes garnered solid reviews, and he is joined by Sentai and Shift tonight at the...

Well, Washington, we may not have a Shostakovich festival (*sniff*), but there are some concerts of contemporary music to lead off this week's agenda. Nothing is scheduled for Halloween itself, so before that alcoholic "ghastly goblin" feeling sets in or after it has finally worn off, you should get out there and hear some new music. CONTEMPORARY: >> Monday night is a big one, with a recital of new music (October 30, 7:30 p.m.) by...

On Tuesday, American composer Steve Reich turned 70, as mentioned in last week's Classical Music Agenda. While New Yorkers are enjoying a month-long festival of performances of Reich's music, here in Washington there was only one opportunity, a concert Saturday night by the recently formed Great Noise Ensemble at the Unitarian Universalist Church in Silver Spring. The Great Noise Ensemble may have the distinction of being the first new music ensemble formed through a listing on craigslist.com. Their core membership are young area musicians who answered the ad placed by the group's founder, Armando Bayolo, and they are now embarking on their second season of concerts.

In last week's Classical Music Agenda, I led with a concert on Sunday afternoon in the Corcoran Gallery of Art's acoustically splendid auditorium. It was the first concert of the season from the Contemporary Music Forum, but not even the Washington premiere of a major piece of new music, Paul Moravec's Tempest Fantasy, could draw more than a sparse audience.

One of those stereotypes about classical music that I would like to explode is that it is the musical equivalent of a dusty museum. Yes, classical musicians often play music from previous centuries, but the performances themselves are very much modern and of our time. What's more is that often classical musicians play new music, and that is an exciting thing to hear. RELATIVELY NEW: >> A favorite local group devoted to contemporary music, the...

In wanting to further refine his ability to predict what new music might appeal to you based on your current tastes, Tim Westergren, founder of the amazing streaming music service Pandora.com has spent the spring traversing the U.S. hosting town hall-style meetings to discover new and legendary artists and sounds at the grass roots level, taking in local venues and bands along the way. For the curious of the lot, Pandora is the webcast interface of the Music Genome Project, Westergren’s 10,000+ artist database which has rated over 100,000 songs drawing from all genres based on 400 different musical attributes such as tempo, instrumentation and vocal styles. Using this database, Westergren created an algorithm which takes your music preferences and returns other artists in the database with similar musical qualities (hear Tim describe how Pandora works in this podcast interview courtesy of TWiT.tv). So, if you’re a big Barry Manilow fan, Pandora can help you find other artists featuring blues influences, jazz influences, demanding vocal performances, acoustic sonority, and major key tonality to take you to your happy place.

Over the past several years, the dynamics of music marketing and promotion -- both locally and nationally -- have drastically shifted under the tectonic changes in the old school music industry and its marketing institutions. Corporate radio playlists by the likes of Clear Channel have done away with diversity on the airwaves, while the once-novel MTV is hardly an option to sort through new music. Today’s music connoisseurs often resort to digital downloading both legal...

After reporting yesterday on Dutilleux's Correspondances with the National Symphony at the Kennedy Center, I made the trip up to Baltimore in the pursuit of new music. In this case, it was the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra's performance of John Adams's On the Transmigration of Souls at Meyerhoff Symphony Hall. It is the most celebrated work of music written to commemorate the victims of the September 11 attacks, having won the Pulitzer Prize for Music in...

This is your last weekend to take part in Take a Friend to the Symphony Month, the brain child of music blogger Drew McManus at Adaptistration. The big news in classical music this week is that the area's two leading symphony orchestras are both offering great concerts that feature 20th-century music and even some from the 21st century. We are going to try to review them both for you. MODERN SYMPHONY: >> Former music director...

We know that this whole blog thing is confusing. We're pretty comfortable with it, but we certainly understand and sympathize with those who aren't. So when we receive press requests that assume we're obligated to run everything we're sent, we respond gently. When prospective writers stop emailing upon hearing that they won't get paid, we understand. But we receive enough of the following requests — surprisingly many, in fact — that we thought some clarification of our place in the universe might be in order:

Thought one of the sharp minds at DCist could help me with an article I'm writing. An editor here at [ glossy local lifestyle magazine ] wants a piece on the newest music gadgets; home, car, portable or otherwise. The criteria for said gadgets is that they will be available by June and that it's not just a mauve-colored Nano but something new and different. Personal experience with these gadgets (tired of that word already) is a huge plus. Thanks for your help and keep up the good work.

We certainly appreciate the kind words, but a free, RSS-enabled, no-attribution-needed research service, we're not. And honestly, for this sort of lifestyle fluff — the stuff we think we're good at — we're inclined to keep our insights for, you know, ourselves. But as our readers surely know, we often link to and expand upon work by other quality area publications. So we have a deal for the emailer. We're going to outsource this further to you, our readers, whose tips are generally much better than ours, anyway. In the comments, please let us know what nifty new music gadgets you're playing with or looking forward to (Apple has to be debuting three or four new iPods before June, right?). Our anonymous friend will presumably compile the best ideas, then sell them back to you in June along with the preceding month's important developments in cheap restaurant-ology. All we ask from magazinonymous is a hat tip. What do you say, readers? Safer ear buds? A music playing Segway? A gyroscopically balanced two-wheeled MP3 player? Let us know. Picture used is from www.apple.com.

To those readers who missed their Classical Music Agenda last week, apologies are in order. Your faithful chronicler was in Paris for the week and experiencing a general lack of Internet connectivity. Now I am back, and there a lot of concerts to tell you about. We may not emphasize this enough, but "classical music" does not mean only music that is old. In fact, living composers are still writing works that continue and modify...

This week, local classical music events are overshadowed by the visit of the Kirov Opera, who are performing at the Kennedy Center. It's not the only thing to hear this week, obviously, but their performances are the ones that are getting our attention. Worry not: we have lots of other concerts to tell you about, too. If you want more options, check out our Classical Week in Washington feature at Ionarts.

Back in January, when WHFS morphed suddenly and without ado into El Zol, it seemed rock radio in the Washington area was all but dead. Such old media rock listeners as still existed were forced to take in the corporatized nu-metal of DC 101 or static-y bursts of college radio, while the rest of us bought XM receivers and loaded our iPods with downloaded tracks, 'casts, and mashups. Conventional wisdom has become that, in a world where the music of one's choice is so readily available and where the latest in new music is a podcast away, why would anyone tune in to a near random selection of commercial rock, programmed to appeal to the broadest audience possible?

Today we bring you the second installment of the November Three Stars, an interview with DJ Will Eastman. Yesterday, we reviewed Plastic Explosives, the new album from The Caribbean, and tomorrow this Three Stars will conclude with coverage of the Routineers. DCist Kyle Gustafson assisted in the preparation of this piece. DJ Will Eastman Since 1998, DJ Will Eastman has been haunting the clubs of DC, spinning the newest and best in pop (indie, Brit,...

Catherine Andrews contributed to these picks FRIDAY: >> It's your duty as a local music loving citizen: you must make it out to the Black Cat tonight to catch the line up of Washington Social Club (read our interview here), Monopoli, and Cartel. Their live shows range from frenetic to slowburning to melodious, and they're all a treat. DCist will be there with stacks of t-shirts to sell and info about the site. 9:30,...

Good evening, D.C. This weekend was certainly hot. Capital Weather's forecast indicates more of the same, with a chance of storms for much of the week. And there's good news for the Nationals -- their winning streak now stands at 10 wins. This photo, taken by Remain Fabulous and posted in DCist Photos, is of Saturday evening's Annual Pride Parade, which was part of the 30th anniversary of Capital Pride In some quick news items...

June is finally here, and that means that this DCist can direct you to a few more concerts this week for your classical listening enjoyment (see more at Ionarts), after the lull of late May. You can plan your concert schedule for the entire month of June with our Classical Month in Washington (June), or your summer opera listening with Opera in the Summer 2005, both at Ionarts. Our activities will taper off again in August, before getting back into full swing in the fall.

(Classical music agenda contributed by Charles T. Downey of Ionarts) Want to hear something classical to impress your family and friends? At DCist, we have some quick picks for you, and can you say free concerts? That's right, Washington has more excellent classical music to be heard for free than probably anywhere else, and we're here to tell you about it. For more information, see our Concert Schedule at Ionarts. LIBRARY OF CONGRESS: >> Free...

A new blog hopes to highlight local music. D.C. MP3, which launched this week, intendes to select one song each week from the Washington Post's MP3 website, which provides "Self-publishing by and for the Metro region's music community." The site make downloading the MP3s simple - no registration, just clicking a legal agreement not to sell the music.