Nexus

NEXUS with 1926 Wurlitzer Band Organ

admin — Thu, 17 May 2012 05:44:56 +0000

NEXUS and the 1926 Wurlitzer Band Organ

Click HERE to listen to a recording of NEXUS performing “Fluffy Ruffles” with a 1926 Wurlitzer Band Organ.

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NEXUS - Zwilich - Percussion Rochester

Bill Cahn — Wed, 16 May 2012 01:29:44 +0000

On May 5, 2012, as part of the new “Percussion Rochester” festival, NEXUS performed Ellen Taaffe Zwilich’s “Rituals for Five Percussionists and Orchestra” with the Eastman Philharmonia, conducted by Neil Varon. The Zwilich piece was premiered by NEXUS in 2005 and shortly thereafter recorded by NEXUS with the IRIS Orchestra under the direction of Michael Stern (Naxos CD #8.559268).

NEXUS with the Eastman Philharmonia, conducted by Neil Varon in the Eastman Theatre on May 5, 2012. (left to right in the back - Bill Cahn, Bob Becker, John Beck, Russell Hartenberger, Garry Kvistad)

Percussion Rochester was the brainchild of its three producers - Michael Burritt, the Professor of Percussion at the Eastman School of Music, Kathleen Holt, a community supporter of contemporary music (Kathleen and her husband - Dr. Stephen Lurie - were co-commissioners of the Zwilich work, along with NEXUS), and myself. Planning for Percussion Rochester began in 2010. The process involved budgeting, fund raising, contracting with guest artists, scheduling, and numerous communications with the Eastman School of Music administration and staff, without whose enthusiastic support, the festival would have been impossible.

The festival’s 25 events took place over three days - May 3, 4, and 5. There were 17 free events open to the public, and 8 ticketed events in the Eastman Theatre and the Eastman School’s Kilbourn Hall. Among the artists who performed in Percussion Rochester were, Anders Astrand, John Bacon, Rob Bridge, Peter Erskine, Beverley Johnston, Rohan Krishnamurthy, Tony Padilla, Kishan Pandya, Gordon Stout, Rich Thompson, and Jim Tiller.

Performing Ensembles included the C.A. Palmer Fife and Drum Corps, the Drum Joy Ensemble directed by Ruth Cahn, the Eastman Percussion Ensemble featuring violinist Juliana Athayde, the Rochester Philharmonic Marimba Band, the Steel Alchemy Community Steel Band, and NEXUS.

Participating local school ensembles included the Caulkins Middle School Percussion Ensemble, Hilton High School Winter Percussion Drumline, Nazareth College Percussion Ensemble directed by Kristen Shiner-McGuire, the University of Rochester West African Ensemble directed by Kerfala Bangoura, and the University of Rochester Percussion Ensemble directed by Matthew Witten.

The theme of the inaugural Percussion Rochester was “Percussion with Other” - percussion in various mixed-instrument ensembles. A major highlight was the world premiere of the composition that won the new John Beck Composition Prize. This year’s guidelines called for an original work scored for solo percussionist with a mixed-instrument ensemble of up to eight non-percussion instruments. The winning composition was “Night Wind” by the California-based composer, Naomi Sekiya. It was performed by the Eastman Musica Nova ensemble, conducted by Brad Lubman and featuring percussion soloist, Matt Evans, a graduate student at the Eastman School. The premiere was rewarded with an immediate standing ovation from the sold-out audience in Kilbourn Hall on May 4.

After the intermission, the program shifted to the Eastman New Jazz Ensemble directed by Dave Rivello and featuring guest artists - drummer Peter Erskine, vibraphonist Anders Astrand and Latin percussionist Tony Padilla. The contemporary arrangements - including some from Weather Report - received another standing ovation.

The May 5 evening concert featured the world premiere of Michael Burritt’s “Duende Concerto for Percussion and Wind Orchestra” with the Eastman Wind Ensemble conducted by Mark Davis Scatterday. The second-half of the concert was the Zwilich piece featuring NEXUS with special guest, John Beck.

(L to R) Bob, Russell, Neil Varon, Bill, John Beck, Garry

Bill

Bob

Special Guest, John Beck

Russell

Garry

All of the photos in this posting were taken by Lauren Vogel Weiss, who along with her husband, Ron, traveled to Rochester from Texas to attend the NEXUS performance. Her article on Percussion Rochester is to be published by the Percussive Arts Society.

Percussion Rochester was clearly an artistic success. Discussions have already started on the next Percussion Rochester in 2014.

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NEXUS in NEW YORK CITY June 18th !!

Peggy Feltmate — Mon, 14 May 2012 17:16:41 +0000

(le) poisson rouge

NEXUS will be performing at (le) Poisson Rouge in NYC on June 18th, 158 Bleecker Street between Thompson and Sullivan. Tickets are $15. Doors open at 7 pm, the music begins at 8 pm. The event is “So Percussion’s International Night of Awesome(ness)”, with NEXUS, Amadinda from Hungary, and So Percussion from New York. WHAT A LINE-UP! And there’s more! Also performing will be the Meehan/Perkins Duo , Mantra Percussion , Akros Percussion Collective , Tigue and Siren!

After a wondrous evening of great playing, the evening culminates in an “all-play” of Terry Riley’s In C!
To avoid disappointment, please note the Table Seating Policy when you go to the event website. Getting there Early is Better. Standing Room tickets are available too.
Prepare for a night of luminous awesomeness!

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NEXUS: “the men in back were the rock stars”

Peggy Feltmate — Mon, 07 May 2012 18:50:22 +0000

Photo by Lorraine Dillard

NEXUS is home from a great performance of Zwilich’s Rituals at Percussion Rochester! Here is an excerpt from Rochester City Newspaper’s review by Ron Netsky:

“One look at the Kodak Hall stage at Saturday’s Percussion Rochester finale told you all you needed to know about the balance of power.

“With conductor Neil Varon at the podium, the percussionists extraordinaire of NEXUS - Bob Becker, Bill Cahn, Russell Hartenberger, Garry Kvistad, and honored guest John Beck -occupied large amounts of space in back with vast arrays of instruments. In between were the 55 student musicians of the Eastman Philharmonia.

“There was plenty of melody and harmony for the youthful strings and horns to play, but the key to this piece was rhythm; the men in back were the rock stars.

“Rituals for 5 Percussionists and Orchestra by Ellen Taaffe Zwilich proved to be a four-movement workout for everyone concerned. But instead of simply providing a foundation for the orchestra, the five percussionists drove the piece with every percussion instrument you know, and a few more from another planet. It was as exciting visually as it was aurally.”

You can read the review in its entirety by clicking here. Michael Burritt’s new Duende Concerto for Percussion and Wind Orchestra was premiered on drums, hand drums and a new marimba that he has co-designed, and Netsky calls it “a tour de force in both composition and performance” saying “Burritt was a whirling dervish” and that his technique was “breathtaking”. The Eastman Wind Ensemble under the baton of Mark Davis Scatterday also performed “a superb rendition” of Leonard Bernstein’s Overture to Candide.

Congratulations to all the performers on these wonderful accolades!

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NEXUS with wind ensemble/chamber orchestra/wind band

Peggy Feltmate — Mon, 30 Apr 2012 19:10:12 +0000

This week I have been writing to presenters about NEXUS’ wind ensemble/chamber orchestra repertoire. On Saturday night NEXUS is performing with the Eastman Philharmonia conducted by Neil Varon, and it struck me that perhaps you don’t know about this area of NEXUS performances.

A couple weeks ago I blogged about Zwilich’s “blockbuster piece”commissioned for NEXUS entitled “Rituals”, “one of the most melodious and harmonious of percussion concertos and one of Zwilich’s most exciting compositions” (NewMusic Box).

A little later this year NEXUS is looking forward to a performance of the Eric Ewazen commissioned percussion concerto “The Eternal Dance of Life, a percussion concerto written for NEXUS with wind ensemble. The piece has been performed by NEXUS with the University of Toronto Wind Ensemble and the Southern Methodist University Meadows School Wind Ensemble in Texas. Reviewers describe its “sweeping melodies” as “wildly exhilarating”. It’s a terrific piece, and brings the audience to its feet at every playing. The November presentation is by special request, so the piece’s reputation is spreading.

Last but not least, Bill Cahn has arranged a selection of NEXUS’ audience-delighting ragtime repertoire for NEXUS with wind band, a wonderful way to round an evening’s program.

You can read more about the Ewazen piece by clicking here, and here.

You can learn about the Naxos recording of NEXUS and the IRIS Orchestra performing Zwilich’s “Rituals” here, and you can check out the April blog post where Ellen Taaffe Zwilich talks about the writing of the piece, here.

So there you have it: NEXUS with winds: an exciting evening of sweeping melodies, wildly exhilarating drumming, and virtuosic delights!

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Quick Links Guide to NEXUS Press, Promo, and Information

Peggy Feltmate — Mon, 23 Apr 2012 23:16:25 +0000

Looking for something in particular? Click on the links below. (If the links are not working for you, click on the title above, or on “Read more” below, and you will see them highlighted in yellow and ready to go!)

Most Recent PRESS QUOTES AND REVIEWS

Most RECENT EVENTS

Season HIGHLIGHTS

Most Recent PRESS RELEASES

Quick QUOTES: a delicious melange of press quotes from around the world

Fast FACTS: NEXUS in a nutshell

Downloadable High Res PHOTOS for your promo needs

BIOGRAPHICAL MATERIAL: NEXUS as a group as well as individual bios for each member

FORTY YEARS OF NEXUS, an extensive article by Dan Smithiger
with interviews and plenty of great material

Spectacular PRESS QUOTES from the Ojai, California concerts

SPECIFIC REPERTOIRE: Click HERE and scroll down to the “Information?” section to find a Downloadable document of quotes about specific repertoire including the Reich Mallet Quartet, The Zwilich Concerto “Rituals”and Takemitsu’s “From me flows what you call Time”.

ARCHIVES: Dig around in here for all sorts of goodies!

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Zwilich talks about writing “Rituals” for NEXUS

Peggy Feltmate — Mon, 16 Apr 2012 20:04:07 +0000

NEXUS is performing Ellen Taaffe Zwilich’s concerto Rituals at Percussion Rochester on May 5th. She shares her thought on writing this work for NEXUS, in an interview with Frank Oteri at New Music Box called Goose Bumps In The Candy Shop. She has some intriguing comments about percussion instruments and their intrinsic nature:

FJO: My favorite piece of yours still is Rituals, which is a concerto for percussion ensemble and orchestra, but you chose to call it something else. You give it an evocative name.

ETZ: Well I’ll tell you why. When I got this commission, I had no idea what I was going to do. That’s something I enjoy. I like to do it, and I don’t know how I’m going to do it. That to me is one of the pleasures. I went up to Toronto where Nexus has most of its instruments and where they rehearse. I spent a day or so with them and listened to them rehearse. I asked them what their favorite setups were. Things they particularly like to play. And I was immersing myself in all of these instruments, and most percussion instruments are connected very basically with some kind of ritual, whether it’s Asian, or American, or African, or whatever, they evoke things. Even one of my movements reminded me of the old movies in the ’40s and ’50s where somebody dies in the town and the church bells ring to announce to people that something has happened. So what I wanted to do in that piece is to dwell on the fact that these are ritual instruments. And not try to be something I wasn’t. I’m not Asian. I’m not African. I’m not a Hindu. I’m not necessarily a part of that, but to bring my feelings to each of these things. The first movement is called “Invocation.” In a lot of these cultures, before you play an instrument, it has to be blessed, or you have to be blessed. And they invoke spirits. The second movement is called “Ambulation,” and it runs through all kinds of things: dancing things, marching things, things that have to do with the kind of movement that you hear percussion with; they’re the very basis of those kinds of movements. The third was called something like “Memorial”; I don’t remember what I called it. And the last starts out as a friendly competition and ends up kind of like war. In another words, I wanted to get into the instruments in that way. I really do feel that the instrument has to tell you what kind of piece it wants. And these instruments told me they didn’t mind playing together. They came from all over the globe to one place. They like playing together, but they had a certain karma, and I wanted to sort of get into that. So that’s what that piece is about.

FJO: And that last movement even had sections that are improvised, which is unique in your compositional output thus far. Performances are never the same way twice.

ETZ: That’s right. Boulez used to say that when performers improvise you hear the music they know. But it’s very appropriate for these instruments you know, because that’s part of their karma. They’re not just laying down a drum track. They have this little flexibility and fluidity, and so there is some improvisation in there. I kind of gave them nuggets to work from. But I was happy, and I’m always happy when I hear another performance is different from the last one I heard because that means it’s living and breathing. And then breathing is something else that you don’t hear about in much of the discussion of certainly 20th-century music. Music has to have breath. It has to have line, it has to have breath, it has to have gut feeling, it has to have all of these things that are in us as humans. And that affects this thing that we call music.

You can read the entire interview (it covers a lot of interesting ground) by clicking here. You can also see a portion of the interview on YouTube here. We hope to see you at the Percussion Rochester performance of Rituals on May 5th. Victor Carr Jr of Classics Today calls Rituals “a total delight”!

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NEXUS preparing for Percussion Rochester May 4 & 5

Peggy Feltmate — Mon, 09 Apr 2012 21:32:56 +0000

NEXUS is preparing for Percussion Rochester, a new festival debuting on May 4 & 5. Bill Cahn says, “The idea behind Percussion Rochester is to showcase an eclectic mix of music that features percussion – classical, jazz, Latin, pop and world music.” NEXUS will be performing with the Eastman Philharmonia conducted by Neil Varon, presenting the Rochester premiere of Pulitzer Prize–winning composer Ellen Taaffe Zwilich’s “Rituals”. This piece was commissioned for NEXUS. Frank Oteri of New Music Box calls it “one of the most melodious and harmonious of percussion concertos and one of Zwilich’s most exciting compositions”. Paul Horsley of the Kansas City Star calls it “vigorously entertaining.”

As well as NEXUS, Percussion Rochester will feature Peter Erskine, Michael Burritt, Anders Astrand, Tony Padilla, Rohan Krishnamurthy, Dr Kishan Pandya, Percussion Plus, Musica Nova, The Eastman Wind Ensemble and Eastman Philharmonia, and Eastman New Jazz. There will be three world premieres which will add to existing percussion repertoire: the John Beck Composition Prize winning piece Night Wind by Naomi Sekiya, Michael Burritt’s new percussion concerto, and Weijun Chen’s commissioned piece for Eastman Community Music Schools Drum Joy ensemble.

Beyond the performances at the festival is the emphasis on education and exploration: opportunities to attend master classes with world-renowned educators, open rehearsals, and an open forum in which composers discuss their work. These events and more, available to ticket holders and to students through scholarships and discounts, are as vital to Percussion Rochester as the higher-profile evening concerts.
The festival will also include free community events - such as performances by area student ensembles, marching drums, and Indian and African percussion groups - provides an entry for families and the general music-loving public to experience Percussion Rochester.You can read more from Bill Cahn and from John Beck at the Percussive Arts Society site here.

The ticketed evening concerts take place in Kilbourn Hall and Kodak Hall at Eastman Theatre, and you can get full information on tickets and schedule by clicking here.

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Blog Bits: Russell Hartenberger as a Musical Child

Peggy Feltmate — Mon, 02 Apr 2012 22:44:14 +0000

Today’s post is fun. Toronto’s Whole Note Magazine runs a monthly feature and in Spring 2009 our own Russell Hartenberger was their choice for Musical Child. Click here (and scroll down a short way) to see Russell’s rosy-cheeked baby picture and read mJBuell’s entertaining interview of Russell that will take you down a Memory Lane featuring baseball, bell-ringing, border crossings, and a little bit of “Thunder and Lightning”. Three astute readers won the “Guess Who” contest, and were presented with NEXUS tickets and CDs.

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“Composer of the Day” app from Wittenberg University, Ohio

Peggy Feltmate — Mon, 26 Mar 2012 19:14:54 +0000

Weaver Chapel

Tomorrow night, NEXUS is appearing at the Weaver Chapel - Wittenberg University at 7:30pm. Address: 200 W Ward St., Springfield, OH. A couple weeks ago I wrote about Wittenberg’s innovative music department. Well, here is another of their innovations: Check out the university’s “Composer of the Day” iPhone App - . It’s free, for both iPhone and iPod touch. It is “a daily dose of music information: 366 composers (yes, one for Feb. 29 too!). Concise, one-sentence biographies. Links to sound clips for each composer.’ (And of course John Chowning is included - he gave his name and tremendous support to Wittenberg’s Laboratory for Music Technology)

Composer of the Day was designed and developed jointly by Wittenberg Professor of Music Daniel Kazez and his son Ben Kazez of the Michigan-based mobile travel app startup Mobiata. The biographies were created by a team of Wittenberg music majors, faculty, and alums. USA Classical music station WQXR named Composer of the Day one of the Top Five Classical Music iPhone Apps. (Their list of 5:
Los Angeles Philharmonic
Oxford Dictionary of Music
Wittenberg’s Composer of the Day
Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra of Amsterdam
Karajan: Music and Ear Trainer),

The Lowe Piano Studio listed Composer of the Day in their “Wish List of iPhone Apps That I’d Like For Droid [Android Smartphone].”

If you have questions regarding Composer of the Day, you can contact Professor of Music Daniel Kazez (dkazez@wittenberg.edu)

Now I think the NEXUS members are arriving in Springfield as I write this, so Get Ready, Wittenberg!!

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