Archive for January, 2023

Music I Am #10 – Miranda Cuckson, violin

The moment when you knew you wanted to be a musician:

There wasn’t a moment but since I was a young kid I always loved playing the violin and music, always was eager to play. And by the time I was 11 or 12, music was clearly a huge part of my life.

An important skill for a career in music that does not have anything to do with an instrument or making music:

Keep learning and keep rethinking (even if you come back to the same)

Two ways you stay motivated:

1) the world is big and life is big, wherever you look from – there is always something else to explore and learn or something to go back to again

2) Stay true to myself and what I want at any given time with my music-making, not behave a certain way so that I’m limited by anyone’s expectations. I want to be a full, complex person with a genuine perspective.

Latest album or recording project:

Világ – Bartók solo violin sonata and new solo pieces by Manfred Stahnke, Aida Shirazi, Franco Donatoni, and Stewart Goodyear.

     

What inspired it:

Bartók and the many cultures of the world and how those cultures are meaningful to people nowadays.

Who’s on it:

me and composers Béla Bartók, Aida Shirazi, Stewart Goodyear, Manfred Stahnke

 

How do you discover new music?

I’ll check out one thing I know about or heard about, then one thing leads to another and another and another…

One living and one dead musician that deserves more attention:

Dead: violinist Erica Morini (she was quite celebrated but seems rarely mentioned now). I don’t love everything she did but she was a major artist. Living: I’ll just say be aware of and listen to NewMusicUSA’s Counterstream radio. They are connected with the community of American music and they play things you might know or not be familiar with.

Where can we find you online?

Website 
Management 
YouTube
Instagram
Twitter

Album Review – God’s Time in The Arts Fuse

Classical Album Review: “God’s Time” — Guitarist Aaron Larget-Caplan Plays the Music of J. S. Bach

JANUARY 26, 2023
By Jonathan Blumhofer

Guitarist Aaron Larget-Caplan new release is arresting for how natural the transcriptions sound: it’s as though they’d been intended for this instrumentation all along.

Read the complete review –> https://artsfuse.org/267728/classical-album-review-gods-time-guitarist-aaron-larget-caplan-plays-the-music-of-j-s-bach/ 

Then there are the performances, themselves, which are consistently graceful, transparent, and well-shaped. Textural clarity and a strong sense of direction are hallmarks of Larget-Caplan’s performance of the Prelude, Fugue, & Allegro in E-flat, while he manages to whip up quite the little tempest in the Chromatic Fantasy in D minor.

A pair of preludes from The Well-Tempered Clavier (nos. 1 and 8) flow serenely, while his arrangement of the radiant prelude to the cantata Gottes Zeit is die allerbeste Zeit – possibly the most beautiful thing Bach wrote – ought to take its place next to György Kurtág’s two-piano transcription. The D-minor “Fiddle” Prelude and Fugue is, likewise, smartly paced and cleanly voiced.

Thank you Jonathan Blumhofer and The Arts Fuse!!

Music I Am #9 – Kathleen Supové, pianist-composer

The moment when you knew you wanted to be a musician:

It wasn’t until sophomore year of college. Otherwise, I had thought it would be a lifelong avocation!

An important skill for a career in music that does not have anything to do with an instrument or making music:

Diplomacy!

Two ways you stay motivated:

Pressure of public events, and the joy they bring! The prospect of discovering a wonderful new piece!

Latest album or recording project:

Latest solo album already released: Eye to Ivory on Starkland. Latest collection Lockdown And Loss, music of Neil Rolnick, on Other Minds Records. Upcoming: Migration project recording, big solo project.

4a.     What inspired it:

It started with my interest in an event in Portland, Oregon, the yearly migration of Vaux’s Swifts, where they think a chimney is an overnight roost. This has become a spectator sport there. But it lead to an interest in migration of animals, peoples, and even plants! It’s hard to read the news today and not be inspired by the migration of fellow humans.

4b.     Who’s on it:

The recordings I mention are of solo projects. I’ve been fortunate to record with the following people in the past year: Neil Rolnick, Tessa Brinckman, Guy Barash, Nick Flynn (poet, reading his work), Frank London, and Ayal Maoz, Gilbert Galindo, Iktus, and the Argus Quartet.

How do you discover new music?

Going to concerts when I can, which isn’t often enough. Word of mouth is extremely powerful, at least towards getting me to check something out. Sometimes, I will listen in an exploratory way at home, I wish that worked better. I’m usually much more clear in evaluating something when I hear it go out live to a room of people.

One living and one dead musician that deserves more attention:

Ahhh, so tough to narrow it down: Living: Urmas Sisask Deceased: Horatiu Radulescu

Where can we find you online?

Website 
Youtube
Facebook
FB page
Instagram

Next Concert: 

Feb. 4 at the Longy School of Music

Music I Am #8 – Cellista, performance artist

The moment when you knew you wanted to be a musician:

I was ten. A string quartet performed late Beethovens at my elementary school. I was sitting on the floor by the cellist, who was well over 6’3″ and sported an afro and eye patch. He was the coolest person I’d ever encountered. As he played, I could feel the cello’s vibrations and that was that. I fell in love with cello. It was decided, I’d be a cellist.

An important skill for a career in music that does not have anything to do with an instrument or making music:

Time management and writing skills.

Two ways you stay motivated:

Well, truthfully, my general feeling of inadequacy makes me work hard, and the feeling (since COVID) that everything could be taken away in an instant. Sorry if that was a bit a downer.

Latest album or recording project:

PARIAH – an operetta composed for immersive audio

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

4a.     What inspired it:

It draws on the narrative threads of previous projects, all of which have something to do with themes of exile, otherness, and serenity.

4b.     Who’s on it:

hahaha! More than thirty collaborators including the rapper DEM ONE, the soprano Carla Canales. Composer Daniel Felsenfeld, wrote the preface to the accompanying book I wrote with my father, the philosopher Frank Seeburger.

How do you discover new music?

Most of the time, it’s from playing or performing in a wide variety of strange shows where you wouldn’t usually find a cellist. I love the noise community, buskers on the streets of the Bay area, burlesque shows, circus act, the list goes on.

One living and one dead musician that deserves more attention:

I refuse to give more attention to dead composers. And ALL living composers deserve more attention and programming, especially composers coming from marginalized communities.

Where can we find you online?

cellista.net | Twitter/IG: @xcellistax | Fb.com/cellista.music

 

Photo: JD Lenzen, 2022

Music I Am #7 – Peter Yates, composer-guitarist

The moment when you knew you wanted to be a musician:

Tomorrow morning – as I sit down [or stand] to practice.

An important skill for a career in music that does not have anything to do with an instrument or making music:

The sense, or rather the ‘conceit’, that there are things that ‘need’ doing, that the world needs to hear, that you’ve been waiting for and are getting tired of not encountering. So, you do it yourself. It helps if it seems risky – as in not what you’re ‘supposed’ to be doing.

Two ways you stay motivated:

First is an awareness that the ‘glow’ we seek in music is, while elusive, always closer by a single step. Blend is an example – minute adjustments in voicing of parts or layers reliably pay huge dividends in ‘matteringness’. It’s like free money, every time. Second is the conceit mentioned above – the need to do the undone.

Latest album or recording project:

My ‘sell-out’ holiday album, The 12-Tones of Christmas, currently being engraved, and soon to be recorded.

4a.     What inspired it:

Aaron Larget-Caplan’s ‘New Lullaby Project’.

4b.     Who’s on it:

Me. It is my rare foray into truly solo guitar composition and performance. For more typical, collaborative projects, see ‘PopArt Songs vol. 1 [calguitar.com], or my many posts at youtube/peterfyates

How do you discover new music?

By thinking, composing, and performing.

One living and one dead musician that deserves more attention:

Dead: Juan Vasquez [16th-century] Songs derived from his madrigals, as intabulated for vihuela by Miguel de Fuenllana.

Living: Peter Yates. I don’t need more attention, though my stuff rewards attention. I know this mainly from collaborating on it with other musicians. Also, in the days of cars with CD players, I’d give discs to musicians to play on their drives from LA to San Francisco. With [again, in those days] not much else to do, they’d get the message. A third example is a guy who had a crush on my singer, so he followed my stuff closely, got hooked.

Where can we find you online?

Calguitar.com – California Guitar Archives

Youtube/peterfyates 

Email: pyates@ucla.edu

Peter F. Yates – woodcut with yucca

Peter F. Yates Mask

Music I Am #6 – Laura Strickling, soprano

The moment when you knew you wanted to be a musician:

When I sang my first solo in the church Christmas pageant at the age of 5

An important skill for a career in music that does not have anything to do with an instrument or making music:

Organization, Administration, Networking (Basically, business skills)

Two ways you stay motivated:

(1) Dreaming up new projects and devising ways to accomplish them (2) Knowing that I am working hard and doing my job to the best of my ability – putting in the hours to make that a reality.

Latest album or recording project:

The 40@40 Project – Coming on the Bright Shiny Things label in Feb (?) 2023

 

 

 

 

 

 

4a.     What inspired it:

A desire to be a part of making the future of art song bright by commissioning new works.

4b.     Who’s on it:

Myself and pianist Daniel Schlosberg, performing songs by 20 Composers

How do you discover new music?

Social Media. Attending my colleague’s concerts.

One living and one dead musician that deserves more attention:

Juhi Bansal (living) and…I dunno! 🙂

Where can we find you online?

www.laurastrickling.com
Spotify

Photo by Alexandra Querrard

Photo by Alexandra Querrard