Neighborhood Classics to Present Contemporaneous' DON'T EVEN, 2/11
By: Emily Stubbs Jan. 17, 2013
The Neighborhood Classics concert series presents new music group Contemporaneous on Monday, February 11 at 7pm, at P.S. 142 (100 Attorney St., NYC) on Manhattan's Lower East Side. The evening, entitled DON'T EVEN, will be hosted by James Matheson, composer and Neighborhood Classics Artistic Director at P.S. 142. The program includes Sean Friar's Clunker Concerto (world premiere, revised version), Jeremy Podgursky's Mindjob (East Coast premiere), Judd Greenstein's Octet 1979, Andrew Norman's Try, and David Lang's increase.
Sean Friar's original Clunker Concerto was commissioned and premiered in 2011 by American Composers Orchestra, as part of its "Playing it UNsafe" series at Carnegie Hall. Sean Friar's work is a percussion ensemble concerto for junk car (scavenged from a local junk yard) and orchestra. The revised version will have its premiere on February 11.Of Clunker Concerto, Friar says, "Whether it is a gong made of sheet metal whose pitch spectrum informs the orchestral harmonies played against it, or the acoustic beating of two closely-tuned car wheels mimicked by woodwind multiphonics, or even the inherent pitch abilities (or more aptly, limitations) of a fender being used to determine the orchestra's melody notes; I try to explore the nuances and capabilities of each junk instrument as carefully as I would were I writing for a violin, clarinet, or any other traditional instrument. I was happy to discover that by using the idiosyncratic and often wonky natures of the junk instruments as a starting point, I was able to come up with musical ideas I would have never otherwise thought of."Videos