Scott Deal

Four Thousand Holes in New Yorker Magazine’s Top Ten Classical CDs of 2011

deal — Mon, 19 Dec 2011 09:52:35 +0000

New Yorker Magazine has listed the recording of Four Thousand Holes, composed by John Luther Adams, on its Top Ten Classical CD Picks for 2011 list. The work, which can be found on the Cold Blue Records CD of the same title, is a 33-minute tour de force scored for percussionist, pianist and electronics. Deal recorded the piece last year in Boston with his frequent collaborator, noted pianist Stephen Drury.

Jim Fox of Cold Blue Records states, “Four Thousand Holes is a sometimes lush, sometimes fragile, rhythmically complex and technically demanding work for piano, mallet percussion and ghostly electronic “auras”—electronic sounds created by processing the acoustic instruments’ sonorities”.

Four Thousand Holes is a beautiful, graceful work whose moods range from contemplative to ecstatic. It has truly been a very rewarding project. The world premiere of Four Thousand Holes was performed by Deal and Drury in Boston in June of 2011. The album is commercially available through the Cold Blue Music website. For the full list of Classical CD Picks of 2011, visit the New Yorker webpage:

http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/culture/2011/12/the-best-classical-music-recordings-of-2011.html .

Auksalaq Presented with Internet2 IDEA Award

deal — Thu, 13 Oct 2011 04:21:16 +0000

Internet2, the nation’s most advanced networking consortium, presented the Internet2 Driving Exemplary Applications (IDEA) award to Matthew Burtner of the University of Virginia and myself for the creation of the telematic and media-enriched opera, Auksalaq.

Photo: Jill Steinberg; Ear to the Earth Festival, 2010.
Link to the Press Release
Link to the Internet2 Press Release
Link to the Auksalaq Website

Performances in Boston, Idaho with the Callithumpian Consort

deal — Sun, 25 Sep 2011 19:17:05 +0000

I just returned from two weeks on the road with the Boston-based new music group Callithumpian Consort, directed by Stephen Drury. Great fun and a busy time performing concerts and giving presentations. The group performed Steve Reich’s Sextet, Tristan Murail’s Le Lac, Sonata for Two Pianos and Percussion by Bela Bartok, and The Credo in Us by John Cage. Audiences were great, the group rocked, and as usual, there was never a dull moment with Drury and Company. Click here to visit the website for the Idaho concert.

Performance: “Those I Fight I Do Not Hate”

deal — Sun, 17 Jul 2011 19:26:03 +0000

“Those I Fight I Do Not Hate” is a work by my friend and Big Robot co-conspirator Jordan Munson, composed for bodhrán, electronics, and video. Both of us made the trek across the pond to the UK in early August for two performances of the piece (me-bodhrán; Jordan-video and electronics) at the 2011 International Computer Music Conference. The bodhrán is a frame drum that is commonly used in Irish music, and is similar to many frame drums from the Middle East….an ancient instrument to be sure. It is generally 2-3 inches deep and 14-18 inches in diameter, with a goatskin head (or synthetic equivalent). In Jordan’s piece, the performer is called to rub, scratch and drum with the fingers on the head as well as the crossbar. Jordan composed the piece several years ago for percussionist Ryan Nestor, who penned the following program notes:

“Hinging structurally upon the unique tones and timbres present in the instrument, Those That I Fight I Do Not Hate is a solo composition for bodhran and tape, with live video. Immediately concerned with honoring the historical roots of the instrument, Munson researched Irish poetry, finding inspiration in the William Butler Yeats poem “An Irish Airman Foresees His Death”, from which the piece derives its title. Honoring the Irish origins of the instrument, while simultaneously pushing the sonic circumference of the bodhran in decidedly non-traditional ways, the global characteristics of Those That I Fight I Do Not Hate are numerous and far-reaching. Munson does not compose within the traditional boundaries of western harmonic practice, but rather, a global harmony, drawing upon the diverse timbres of our world, removing the bodhran from its traditional function and exploring the instruments diverse sounds. Anchored amongst the varied timbres of our world, Munson’s musical language dissects the sounds of various cultures and subsequently forges, in the realm of a single composition, a global music.”

~Ryan Nestor

Link to the ICMC performance, August 4, 2011, Huddersfield UK

New John Luther Adams Release: “Four Thousand Holes”

deal — Sun, 17 Jul 2011 14:59:44 +0000

I have had the opportunity to work with John Luther Adams on performances and recordings of his music since 1997, and as such, preparing Four Thousand Holes has been a homecoming for me. To quote Jim Fox of Cold Blue Records, “Four Thousand Holes is a sometimes lush, sometimes fragile, rhythmically complex and technically demanding work for piano, mallet percussion and ghostly electronic “auras”—electronic sounds created by processing the acoustic instruments’ sonorities”.

Steve Drury and I recorded this piece during the summer of 2010 in Boston, and subsequently premiered it this summer (2011) during the New England Conservatory Summer Institute for Contemporary Performance Practice, also known as “Sick Puppy”. Steve was awarded funding through Meet the Composer in order to commission John for the piece. I have been captivated by John’s music have ever since I was exposed to it as a graduate student at the University of Miami. On one level there is the experience of listening to it….always sensuous, elegant, and mysterious. On another level there is the experience of playing the music. I have grown to appreciate the aspects of the scores that are so particular to his compositional style. There are musical lines that look so simple, yet can be quite formidable. There are rhythmically complex passages containing 7′s-over-5′s-over-4′s-over-3′s; and there are plenty of notes spanning the extreme edges of whatever sonic materials he is scoring for in pitch and dynamics. John’s music demands focus, endurance, and restraint, and Four Thousand Holes is a good example of that kind of rigor.

The other rewarding aspect of this project is the fact that I recorded it with my great friend Stephen Drury. We first met at while presenting concerts at the Alternativa Festival in Moscow, Russia in 2001. Since then I have had the good fortune to collaborate with him on a fairly regular basis, most often as a fellow faculty member in Sick Puppy each June, but also in recordings and concerts. We recorded JLA’s Red Arc Blue Veil (released on a Cold Blue CD of the same title), as well as other works still in the can.

I originally was going to keep an inventory on this blog of the reviews for Four Thousand Holes (or “4KH“, as his recording engineer and producer, Nathaniel Reichman likes to say), but quickly realized that staying on top of that would not only require great effort, but that it would be doubling what Jim Fox is doing a great job of already. Instead, below, I have culled a few quotes from Jim’s much larger blog about the disc, posted on his Cold Blue Records website. Here is the page for complete info and reviews: Four Thousand Holes .

Comments from the Cold Blue Records 4KH Page

“Four Thousand Holes (2010) … Adams describes how ‘I limited myself to the most basic elements of Western music—major and minor triads and four-bar phrases—sculpting these found objects into lush harmonies and rhythmically complex fields of sound.’ The music duly unfolds as a sequence of piano chords over which vibraphone and bells elaborate a glistening timbral interplay which is given a sense of evolution through the presence of an electronic ‘aura’ that opens out the dynamic peaks and troughs for a constantly intensifying process of fading in and out of focus. The outcome, for all the simplicity of its components, is an enticing instance of how complexity in sound can be allowed to happen rather than being calculated down to the last detail: hardly a revelatory concept by any means, though one which has seldom been realized with the poise and creative self-effacement shown here. … The performances are as dedicated and as attentive as one could wish, captured in sound of undoubted spatial presence and physical impact…Make no mistake, John Luther Adams is a major figure and this disc—small but perfectly formed—is a notable addition to his discography.” —Richard Whitehouse, International Record Review   ”I know many of John Luther Adams’ works, and love them all. But this album has become my hands-down favorite among them. Adams tends to write very evocative music, often quiet, and also often metrically complex. While I don’t have the scores of these works, there are parts that do sound as if there are various rhythmic ratios played against one another. But none of that matters…Both works on this album are intensely beautiful and with repeated listening additional details seem to become apparent. So each time one listens to these works, there is something new about them…Four Thousand Holes is a work for piano, vibraphone/bells and electronics (in this recording, the electronics are provided by JLA himself). It is a very rhythmic piece and has some great chordal structures that all emanate from very basic elements…There is really not much more to say than that. This is a very worthwhile album, extremely well performed by all the musicians involved, and has postminimalist and totalist elements that I really like.”

—David Toub, Sequenza21

“I’m a fan of John Luther Adams. I would even go as far as saying that he is my favourite so-called contemporary music composer. Four Thousand Holes features two new works. The 33-minute title track consists in a soundworld of grandiloquent piano chords, percussion and electronics – the trite, the mundane, transformed through duration into a Zen state of change in stability. …and bells remembered… (10 minutes) is one of Adams’ most beautiful pieces: a delicate canvas of bells and vibraphones arranged in embedded cycles. Intelligent, sensitive, simple, appeasing. Bravo. His best Cold Blue record since The Light That Fills the World.”

—François Couture, Monsieur Délire’s Listening Diary

“On the one hand, John Luther Adams’s newest album offers more of the composer’s signature style: Large-scale works that harmonically hint at the isolated vastness of Adams’s adoptive state, Alaska. Yet, just as no two snowflakes are alike, Adams has been able to simultaneously mine the tundra soundscapes and produce works of startling singularity, and Four Thousand Holes sits chief among them. … Four Thousand Holes may simply be Adams’s best work to-date. … So far, 2011 has had its lion’s share of exquisite recordings, but this disc stands out as required listening. … Album of the Week.”

—WQXR/Q2 (NYC)

“The reputation of John Luther Adams has been building in recent years, as the lush, meditative music of this Alaska-based composer has begun traveling far from the western wilderness landscapes from which it draws its prime inspiration. … His recent piece, Four Thousand Holes, was in fact commissioned by the Boston-based pianist Stephen Drury, who will give its first performance on June 23 in Jordan Hall as part of this year’s Summer Institute for Contemporary Performance Practice—better known by its nickname, ‘Sick Puppy.’ In advance of that premiere the work has found its way onto a compelling new disc on the Cold Blue label, with Drury and percussionist Scott Deal. (Drury’s Callithumpian Consort takes on the disc’s second work . . . and bells remembered . . . from 2005.) … Despite a rather majestic climax, Four Thousand Holes unfolds at a measured pace, like a kind of contemplative walk in the woods in which the landscape changes slowly but dramatically over time. There is a spontaneous feel that belies the careful craftsmanship. Drury’s piano part is made up exclusively of chords based on major and minor triads, with Deal’s vibraphone and orchestra bells adding an extra sonic glitter. On top of it all, Adams generates a processed electronic ‘aura,’ derived from the piano lines, and it spreads out like a canopy of sound: dense, rich, and enveloping.”
—Josh Shea, Boston Globe

“I can’t stop listening to John Luther Adams’s Four Thousand Holes.”
—Alex Ross, Twitter

Percussion at “Sick Puppy”

deal — Fri, 15 Jul 2011 05:18:42 +0000

Sick Puppy Percussionists from left: John Andress, Gary Donald, Stephen Drury, Scott Deal, Stuart Gerber, Cory Bracken, Dave Tarantino, Jeff Kolega, Sayun Chang, Ryan Packard, Christian Smith. Not pictured: Jeffrey Means.

The New England Conservatory Summer Institute for Contemporary Performance Practice, affectionately known to its participants as “Sick Puppy” was held at New England Conservatory in Boston June 18-25. SICPP is an 8-day immersion into new and experimental music for advanced and professional musicians. SICPP began in the 1990’s when Artistic Director Stephen Drury, himself a concert pianist who specializes in new music, decided to create a contemporary music performance seminar for his advanced students. In the 2000’s Drury, gradually began to add composers, percussionists, vocalists and instrumentalists. It has now grown to include an Ensemble Program, an Electronic Music Workshop, and the New Works Program, which is a workshop where composers have the opportunity to study with the Composer-in-Residence (this year, the French composer Tristan Murial).

This year, 50 fellows (including 7 percussionists) were selected to participate from Canada, Mexico, United States, France, Italy, Columbia, Portugal, Mexico, Argentina, Germany, Taiwan, Japan, Greece, Puerto Rico and Turkey. The experience was eight full days of master classes, lessons, colloquia, rehearsals and concerts, which presented the fellows with an opportunity to experience in a short amount of time a large selection of new music from all over the world. Each year the Institute invites guest composers and performance faculty that work directly with the fellows throughout the week. Past years have seen composers such as Michael Finnessy, Walter Zimmerman, Frederic Rzewki, Helmut Lachenmann, Christian Wolfe, Jonathan Harvey, and Jo Kondo. Fellows rehearse and prepare works alongside faculty as well as with members of the Calithumpian Consort, a chamber ensemble in residence at SICPP. This year’s percussion faculty was comprised of Stuart Gerber and Scott Deal together with Consort percussionists John Andress, Jeffrey Means and Nick Tolle. The Calithumpian Consort is a mixed ensemble comprised of professional musicians in the Boston area, directed by Stephen Drury. Their repertoire encompasses a large musical spectrum; from classic works of the last 50 years to works of the avante-garde, as well as experimental jazz and rock music. They have commissioned and premiered new works by John Cage, Lee Hyla, John Zorn, Michael Finnissy, Franco Donatoni, Lukas Foss, Steve Reich, Helmut Lachenmann, John Luther Adams, Frederic Rzewski, and Christian Wolff, to name a few.

Tristan Murail is a leading composer of Spectral Music, and as such, during his residency, the musical programming highlighted this school of musical expression. Spectral composition originated in France in the early 1970s and was later refined at the Institut de Recherche et Coordination Acoustique/Musique. In the creation of Spectral Music, decisions are often informed by a process of computer-based sound spectrum analysis that generates descriptive data of audio content. Using this technique, features of a particular sound can be visualized using a spectrogram, and then composers can use the analysis to craft works based on the analytical information. SICPP performances included a large number of works by Murail, as well as other spectralists, including Gérard Grisey and Joshua Fineberg. Counterfactual by Joshua Fineberg and Lachrymae, by Tristan Murail, were both commissioned and premiered by the Calithumpian Consort as part of SICPP.

One of the highlights of the week was an afternoon recital of percussion works performed by the fellows. The program included: Ferneyhough Mix by Mark Applebaum, performed by Christian Smith and Ryan Packard; Rebonds A nd B by Iannis Xenakis. (A performed by Cory Bracken, B performed by Dave Tarantino); Omar I, by Franco Donatoni, performed by Ryan Packard, and POWER I: CIN(shift) by Marek Poliks, performed by Christian Smith. Other percussion solos performed either in master classes or concerts included Phénix by F.B. Mache, performed by Yu Hsin Chang, Dreams, by John Cage, performed on marimba and vibes by Gary Donald, Raison D’etre by Arthur Jarvinen, performed by Jeffrey Kolega, Zyklus by Karlheinz Stockhausen, performed by faculty member Stuart Gerber, and the marimba solo Dark N’ Stormy, by SICPP composition fellow Masaki Hasebe, performed by David Tarantino.

Each evening contained a concert presented by the either the Calithumpian Consort or visiting guest artists. The Consort performed numerous works of interest to percussionists, including Giancinto Scelsi’s Okanagon, Tristan Murail’s Le Lac, and Tamar Diesendruck’s Still Telling, which was commissioned for the Consort. One of the evening concerts was comprised of two works for percussion, piano, and electronics that matched pianist Stephen Drury with percussionists Stuart Gerber and Scott Deal. The first work, Kontakte (piano, percussion and electronics), by Karlheinz Stockhausen is an early and important piece in the repertoire for piano/percussion. The performance was noteworthy in that Gerber is regarded as a Stockhausen expert, having recorded and presented numerous premieres of Stockhausen’s works, and served as faculty for the Stockhausen-Courses since 2005. The second half of the concert featured the world premiere of Four Thousand Holes by John Luther Adams, performed by Drury and Deal. The work, commissioned by Stephen Drury through Meet the Composer, is a 33-minute work for piano, vibraphone/glockenspiel, and electronic “aura”.

The main event for Sick Puppy occurs on the final Saturday with the presentation of a ten-hour series of concerts known as “The Iditarod”, named after the 1000-mile Alaskan Sled Dog race of the same name. This year’s Iditarod consisted of 8 concerts containing almost 40 pieces of chamber music, including the crowd-drawing Music for 18 Musicians by Steve Reich. Other works highlighting percussion included: Ryonji by John Cage, Trasparenze d’ Accenti by Davide Ianni, Tombeau in Memoriam Gérard Grisey by Phillipe Hurel, Hymn I by Alfred Schnittke, Trá by Luciano Berio, For Morty by Christian Wolff, Refrain and Kreuspiel, both by Karlheinz Stockhausen, Currents by Shawn Allison, Paradigm by Lukas Foss, New England Drift by Lee Weisert, Percussion Responses: Ergodos II by James Tenney, and Madrigals, Book III by George Crumb.

Next year’s Institute (www.sicpp.org) will occur in mid-June at New England Conservatory, and promises to be once again a rich experience for percussionists performing new and experimental music.

Performance with Percussionist Peter Kates: Indiana to Norway

deal — Sun, 01 May 2011 12:04:25 +0000

Peter Kates (onstage, Norway) Scott Deal (onscreen, Indiana)

On April 27, I performed online in concert with Peter Kates, of the Bergen Philharmonic Orchestra in Bergen Norway. The work was “Response 1″ by Norwegian composer Arne Nordheim, for two percussionists and electronic tape. The concert was a recital in Norway presented by Peter and this work was on the program. I performed from the Tavel Lab at IUPUI, Indianapolis.

Big Robot Awarded Arts Institute Grant

deal — Fri, 22 Apr 2011 14:52:03 +0000

Big Robot was awarded an Indiana Arts and Humanities Institutes (at IUPUI) grant. This funding gift has been awarded for the production of the upcoming Big Robot DVD, due for release in 2012. The DVD will be a combination of music and video graphics composed by the ensemble, and represents their current concert repertoire. For more information on Big Robot, please visit their website.

Harp-Percussion Concert with Erzsébet Gaál Rinne

deal — Sun, 17 Apr 2011 02:54:30 +0000

Harpist Erzsébet Gaál Rinne and myself collaborated on a duo concert on March 24th, featuring works for harp and percussion and electronics.

Program:

Arpercussionata (2009), by Máté Hollós

Night Piece (2009), by Gyula Pintér
Erzsébet Gaál, Harp; Scott Deal, electronics

Burst, from The Mathematics of Resonant Bodies (2004), by John Luther Adams
Scott Deal, Percussion

Goldstream Variations (2011), by Scott Deal

E-GAL (2009), by Miklós Sugár
Erzsébet Gaál, Harp; Scott Deal, Electronics

Miniatures (1965), by György Kósa

Maracanga (2000), by Katalin Pócs

Big Robot at University of Illinois Urbana Champaign

deal — Sun, 17 Apr 2011 02:13:03 +0000

Big Robot presented a concert at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign on April 14. We premiered Jordon Munson’s new video for our piece Noir. The following day I had a great time with the percussion professors Bill Moersch and Ricardo Flores, and their students, in a clinic presentation on percussion and interactive music.