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Reblogged from meg's new music blog:

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I always applaud music organizations that program concerts full of fresh pieces by young composers. Thus, though they may have overshot the mark a bit by programming no less than eleven pieces on Friday, I give due credit to NYC-based Quiet City for an ambitious, eclectic performance of new music.

The evening began with "No Hipster Hats" for trumpet and tape by…

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Meg Wilhoite, NY new music blogger, covered the Quiet City Presents show last Friday at the Secret Theatre, upon which I joined a bill of fellow sonic pioneers to present some of the stuff I've been up to recently. I'm happy to repost her writing, which is motivating; I often find it difficult to gauge an audience's interest while in the middle of performing, and so reading that there was visual interest in what I was doing comes as much appreciated feedback. Whereas my personal, internal criticisms are the fuel for seeking improvement, constructive review is a reassurance that I'm communicating with some level of effectiveness. I'll also take a moment to shout out Luke Schwartz and Vasu Panicker - they're doing something quite cool with the Quiet City music network, and I'm eagerly awaiting their future endeavours.

Prince (John Kelly) and Lisa (Lauren Worsham)

Let’s talk about Dog Days, because it’s a relatively rare circumstance for a piece of art to compel me to hop on a bus to New Jersey two weekends in a row. This post-apocalyptic opera was so dense with subtleties in the score and staging, topics of existential crises, and straight up gorgeous moments of performance, there was too much to fully absorb with just one viewing. But as I sit here trying to write about it, I’m finding it somewhat difficult to pinpoint what specifically lured me to a second performance.

And a bare warning for the rest of this post, I will be merciless with spoilers. It’s rather difficult to talk about the important stuff without spoiling the best scenes.
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Soundcheck for Steve Reich’s Cello Counterpoint. Photo courtesy of Matt Frey

by Adam Cuthbért

W4 New Music Collective, a team of young composers fresh out of NYU, brought their Kickstarted Cellophilia production to the main stage of 92Y TriBeCa for a delightfully large crowd. Interested in curating themed shows full of newly composed pieces, the team chose the many faces of the cello as their topic of the night. With nine tunes on the program spanning nearly two hours, the show gave us a wonderfully diverse “how-to” on the cello as it explored different ensemble sizes (from one to eight), staging possibilities (on the stage and surrounding the audience), electronic integrations, and aesthetic possibilities of one of the most tried and true instruments of the Western music canon.
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