{"id":9617,"date":"2011-06-26T12:47:57","date_gmt":"2011-06-26T21:17:57","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.furiousdreams.com\/blog\/?p=9617"},"modified":"2011-06-26T12:47:57","modified_gmt":"2011-06-26T21:17:57","slug":"contemporary-music-in-atlanta-sonic-palooza","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.furiousdreams.com\/blog\/contemporary-music-in-atlanta-sonic-palooza\/","title":{"rendered":"Contemporary music in Atlanta – Sonic Palooza"},"content":{"rendered":"

Atlanta’s\u00c2\u00a0Woodruff Arts Center<\/a> presented Sonic Palooza yesterday, June 25th, a 10 hour free festival of contemporary music that went on until midnight.<\/p>\n

I spent an hour or so over in the galleria and caught the first program; Steve Reich<\/a>, David Lang<\/a>, Tristan Perich<\/a> and Philip Glass<\/a>. All compositions were performed by Sonic Generator & Friends<\/a>, a Georgia Tech ensemble in residence founded in 2006.<\/p>\n

My little Canon caught some rough clips of the performances, of which I’ll include truncated versions below.<\/p>\n

David Lang – Press Release,<\/em> perfomed by Ted Gurch.<\/p>\n

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Steve Reich – Nagoya Marimbas<\/em>, performed by Tom Sherwood and Charles Settle.<\/p>\n

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Tristan Perich- A\/B\/C\/D<\/em>, performed by Jessica Peek Sherwood.<\/p>\n

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My favorite was the piano piece by Philip Glass- Mad Rush<\/em>, performed by Tim Whitehead.<\/p>\n

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And\u00c2\u00a0Glass himself plays the same piece\u00c2\u00a0from the television production Two Moon July<\/em> (1986). A friend took me to see him play a lengthy composition at Emory in the early 1980’s, and I recall being impressed with his stamina.<\/p>\n

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A first for Atlanta, this marathon should raise the profile for the composers and young musicians in the area who play contemporary music. The turnout at the event’s 2 pm start time was fairly good; about 50 rapt people (and kids) in the audience.<\/p>\n

San Francisco has a strong audience for new music, thanks to\u00c2\u00a0Michael Tilson Thomas<\/a>, the SF Symphony’s brilliant Director. He presented his second edition of American Mavericks<\/a> in the summer of 1997, a year after I had moved to the city. I remember being blown away by Steven Mackey’s<\/a> guitar and Lou Harrison’s<\/a> piano; his 80th birthday was celebrated during that program. \u00c2\u00a0Tilson’s\u00c2\u00a0inaugural marathon was repeated in 2000, albeit in a shorter program.<\/p>\n

My friend, music and WSJ’s<\/a> cultural critic Steve Dollar<\/a>, had tickets courtesy of his pal Tom Welsh at New Albion Records<\/a>, a longtime label out of San Francisco that promoted new contemporary music. Welsh<\/a> has gone on to be Music Director of the Cleveland Symphony, and Foster Reed<\/a> moved to upstate NY a few years ago.<\/p>\n

Here’s hoping that Atlanta’s music lovers will support efforts to bring innovative and exciting new works of music to the city.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Atlanta’s\u00c2\u00a0Woodruff Arts Center presented Sonic Palooza yesterday, June 25th, a 10 hour free festival of contemporary music that went on until midnight. I spent an hour or so over in the galleria and caught the first program; Steve Reich, David … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5,16],"tags":[1253,571,1248,1250,1258,1251,1255,1252,1256,572,568,231,1246,1245,1259,1247,1254,1257,1249,1244],"class_list":["post-9617","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-daily-meanderings","category-music","tag-american-mavericks","tag-contemporary-music","tag-david-lang","tag-festival","tag-foster-reed","tag-live-music","tag-lou-harrison","tag-michael-tilson-thomas","tag-new-albion-records","tag-new-music","tag-philip-glass","tag-san-francisco","tag-sonic-generator-and-friends","tag-sonic-palooza","tag-steve-dollar","tag-steve-reich","tag-steven-mackey","tag-tom-welsh","tag-tristan-perich","tag-woodruff-arts"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.furiousdreams.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9617","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.furiousdreams.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.furiousdreams.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.furiousdreams.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.furiousdreams.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=9617"}],"version-history":[{"count":70,"href":"https:\/\/www.furiousdreams.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9617\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":9693,"href":"https:\/\/www.furiousdreams.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9617\/revisions\/9693"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.furiousdreams.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9617"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.furiousdreams.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9617"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.furiousdreams.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9617"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}