aworks :: "new" american classical music

The Concerto for Violin & Electro-Acoustic Band” (1996-1997). Paul Dresher

Jason Victor Serinus reports of an upcoming Paul Dresher concert at Carnegie's Zankel Hall:

The Paul Dresher Ensemble’s New York concert mainly features repertoire heard on Dresher’s just-released, beautifully recorded “Cage Machine” CD (New Albion). “The Concerto for Violin & Electro-Acoustic Band” (1996-1997), which combines acoustic instruments with the unique timbres of electronic instruments, was written for Dresher’s favorite musician and “muse,” Oakland violinist David Abel, whose “expressiveness and depth inspire me to write my best.”

This is part of the John Adams-curated In Your Ear Festival, with concerts by the saxophonist Joshua Redman (son of Dewey Redman), Evan Ziporyn and others. 

Sound Stage (2001). Paul Dresher

Adam Hertz on To Wish for Impossible Things blogs about Paul Dresher's musical theatre work Sound Stage:

What an incredible experience. The music is performed on a combination of traditional instruments (violin, piano, bass clarinet, xylophone) and a collection of larger-than-life instruments that Dresher designed specially for the work...The music was deep, moving, sonorous, filled with longing. Violinist Yuri Merzhevsky was superb. Influences of Steve Reich, Terry Riley, etc. I heard snatches of Balinese and Javanese influences, as well as a healthy dose of African-style drumming.

From the composer:

Thus I proposed to [the musicians of] Zeitgeist that I would invent a stage set comprised primarily of large-scale invented musical instruments and that I would compose a work which combined these invented instruments with their traditional instrumentation and electronic music. In other words, a piece that combined pretty much all the important attributes of my work since I was a teenager.