An excessive use of acronyms makes me cool. (Wait, doesn't it?)
ICE: International Contemporary Ensemble. I've blogged about these people enough recently to make me a groupie without, I hope, compromising my groupie status in my own group.
JACK: a New York-based string quartet, including, not coincidentally, Opera Cabal's own violinist, Christopher Otto.
LPR: le Poisson Rouge, a bar & performance space on Bleecker Street that for fortuitous reasons is interested in promoting new music. Not to be confused with Poisson Rouge, which makes toys for French babies.
ICE and Jack shared a concert bill last Tuesday night in preparation for the departure of both ensembles for the Darmstadt Summer Course. As usual, these folks' playing leaves nothing to be desired, and the sound engineering for the show was laudable. The real show-stealing moment, however, was the deafening crash of what sounded like a fish tank from the direction of the bar in the hushed silence that followed the final piece.
But the reason I'm blogging is more specific. Before Tuesday, I had never heard of Caleb Burhans. The JACK played his "Contritus" (2010), a piece that, while technically "new music," was an outsider choice on a program that otherwise featured the more recognizably new musicky sounds of Earle Brown and Jason Eckardt. Caleb's music by contrast is tonal without sounding new-Romantic. "Contritus" was like a cross between Beck's Sea Change and Ben Johnston's microtonal arrangement of Amazing Grace. I'm now internet stalking Caleb & I suggest you do the same.
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