August 2010: News from Eric Salzman
Eric Salzman's "Brecht Suite," "Accord" and tangos of the rediscovered composer Oscar Strok (arranged by Salzman) are included in a program of Latvian ballads that is currently touring in Latvia. Performed with Laila Salins as vocalist with a string trio, including members of Quartet Undertango. This program is a collaboration between Center for Contemporary Opera in New York and the Music and Art Support Foundation in Riga, Latvia. Article from "Latvian Times"
Friday, Aug. 27, 8pm
The Clay Castle Manor
http://www.malpilsmuiza.lv
Saturday, Aug. 28, 10:30pm
3rd International Argentinian Tango Festival (Tango SunFestival)
http://www.tangosunfestival.lv/en/festival.php
Sunday, Aug. 29th, 4pm
The Dikls Castle
http://www.diklupils.lv
tickets: http://www.bilesuserviss.lv
Saturday, Sept 4, 6pm
The White Grand Recital Hall (Baltais Fligelis), Sigulda
http://www.liveriga.com
tickets: http://www.bilesuserviss.lv
Friday, Sept. 7th, 8pm
Aizkraukle Cultural Center
http://www.aizkraukle.lv/culture/culture_house
Thursday, Sept 9th, 8pm
Beta Novuss (floating arts center) AB Dam, Riga
http://www.noass.lv
tickets: http://www.bilesuserviss.lv
Friday, Sept 10, 7pm
Kuldiga Cultural Center
http://www.kuldiga.lv
tickets: http://www.bilesuserviss.lv
Saturday, Sept 11, 5pm
Dobeles Cultural Center
http://www.kulturaskarte.lv
Sunday, Sept 12th, 5pm
Cesis Exhibition Hall
http://www.tourism.cesis.lv
tickets: http://www.bilesuserviss.lv
July 2010
"The Opium Song" -- a setting from the French-language production of "The Good Person of Sezchuan" by Bertolt Brecht -- was performed on May 27th as part of 21st Century Salon Series: Aria produced by Beth Morrison at Galapagos Art Space in Dumbo, Brooklyn. (performed by Laila Salins and Bill Schimmel with a string ensemble.)
Salzman will be taking Accord/Discord to Latvia in late August and September for a series of performances, lectures and workshops. The tour will include three concerts in three outlying towns of Riga on the weekend of 8/27-8/29, a concert in Riga on 9/4, lectures on 9/6 and 9/9 and a final set of three concerts in three outlying towns on the weekend of 9/10-12.
The projected performance of Cassandra (text by Eva Salzman) by Kristin Norderval scheduled for this summer as part of the Vox Clamans Festival has been postponed until next season; new date to be announced.
The projected performance of Accord/Discord -- including "Accord", for solo accordionist, Brecht Suite and arrangements of Latvian and Argentine tangos -- scheduled for performance at the Music Festival of the Hamptons this summer has also been postponed; new date to be announced.
January 2010
The very successful performance of the Five Dances on October 30 at Bard was described by the John Cage Trust blog as follows:
"Given the paucity of arrangements in his own catalog, one might wonder what Cage would think of the two works that make use of his works that were featured at last month's John Cage at Bard College Symposium. Of all of the pieces included in the two evening programs at the Fisher Center for the Performing Arts on Oct. 30 and 31, these little-known arrangements were clear audience favorites. The first, Eric Salzman's Five Dances (1996-97), is an arrangement for string quartet of five works by Cage originally composed for prepared piano: Our Spring Will Come (1943), Dream (1948), Totem Ancestor (1943), In a Landscape (1948), and A Room (1943). While long available from C.F. Peters as EP 67725, the work is rarely performed. Here's the third movement from the feisty performance by four of Bard College's finest Conservatory musicians -- Fanghue He, Yue Sun, Leah Gastler, and Laura Hendrickson."
Listen to the excerpt:
Eric Salzman's article "Speaking in Tongues or Why Should Eclectic Be a Bad Word?" has just been published in the Up Front section of THEATER (volume 39, number 3) published by the Yale School of Drama and Yale Repertory Theater.
The New York premiere of Salzman's "Brecht Suite" -- music from the Theatre du Trident French-language production of the Santa Barbara version of the Brecht "La Bonne Ame de Setchouan" -- had its New York premiere on December 2, 3 and 4, 2009, at the cell theatre, produced by the cell with the Center for Contemporary Opera (CCO). The performers were mezzo Laila Salins, virtuoso accordionist Bill Schimmel, Machiko Ozawa and Marc Levine, violins, and Leo Grinhauz, cello. Schimmel also played Salzman's "Accord: Solo for Schimmel". Other works on the program included Schimmel's version of the "Poet & Peasant" Overture, a set of Latvian songs performed by Ms Salins (who is Latvian-American) and a rousing set of tangos by Osvaldo Pugliese as arranged by Schimmel. Harry Rolnick (ConcertoNet.com) had this to say: "Mr. Salzman redeemed himself triplefold with the music for Brecht’s "Good Woman of Sichuan". Mr. Salzman, as critic, musicologist and composer, is virtually synonymous with “music theater”, and when he found Brecht’s second working of the drama in Los Angeles, he was ecstatic. No music had been written for it (Kurt Weill was on the outs with Brecht), so Mr. Salzman took it in his own hands, resulting in a Quebec performance. The five excerpts here were splendid, with a typical Salzman surprise. The middle three songs did have that biting Weill-type melody. Ms. Salins didn’t have to do a Lotte Lenya: her own drama was fascinating enough. But the first purely instrumental work was eerily different. It had the resonance of 18th Century modal American church music, or like Virgil Thomson’s film music of America. What was it doing here? Not until the final song did we find out. The same music was used as background for a Weill-like ersatz anthem, performed beautifully by all five musicians." The entire program was recorded and should be available on a CCO CD and excerpts will be posted on YouTube. There are also plans for the program to tour abroad.
An extended review by Randy Woolf of the Salzman/Vasilevski "Jukebox in the Tavern of Love" (commissioned and performed by the Western Wind Vocal Ensemble) is in the current issue of the New Music Connoisseur
The Center for Contemporary Opera benefit/gala at the cell theatre on Friday, February 19, 2010, will feature the Chanson de l'Opium from Salzman's score for a French translation of the Brecht "Good Person of Szechuan". It will be performed by Laila Salins, mezzo-soprano, and Bill Schimmel, accordion who gave the concert premiere in December. The program also includes excerpts from Michael Dellaira's "The Secret Agent", Susan Hurley's "Anais" and a short opera buffa called "Review" based on a New Yorker story by Patricia Marx with music by Jeremy Beck. For ticket information go to brownpapertickets.com or call 1-800-838-3006.
In February, Salzman will be presenting his work and ideas at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem Institute for Advanced Studies (in collaboration with the Israel Science Foundation) at a conference on "Visible Sounds: Interrationships Among Music, the Visual Arts and the Performing Arts" in Jerusalem.
October 2009
On October 30, Eric Salzman's Five Dances for string quartet based on prepared piano music written in the 1940s by John Cage will be performed on a concert of Cage's music at Bard College as part of a three-day symposium on Cage, celebrating the Cage Trust at Bard. Read the full press release (PDF). Note that, although individual pieces have been performed separately ("Totem Ancestor" was widely performed and recorded by the Kronos Quartet), this is the premiere of the set as a whole.
On December 2, 3 and 4th Salzman's "Brecht Suite" of music from a French-language production of the Brecht "Good Person of Szechuan" and Salzman's solo accordion work, "Accord", will be performed at the cell theatre on 23rd Street in NY's Chelsea district. The Brecht Suite will be performed by Laila Salins, mezzo, William Schimmel, accordion (the same two who performed it last June at the Southampton Cultural Center) with Machiko Osawa and Marc Levin, violins, and Leo Grinhauz, cello. "Accord" is a solo piece written for Schimmel which not only requires him to play classical, pop and virtuoso accordion but also to stroll, sing, laugh and even break down crying.The program also includes a solo piece by Schimmel, a set of Latvian drinking songs and tangos and a set of tangos by Osvaldo Pugliese, perhaps the greatest of all the classic Argentine tangeros. The concert is at 8 pm and is part of the Center for Contemporary Opera's 2009-2010 season. Read the full press release (PDF)
The performances of "Jukebox in the Tavern of Love" in July at Bargemusic were a big success. Both performances were sold out and were well noticed in the press and online. A CD and DVD of the Western Wind performance of this work will be available shortly. "Jukebox" was commissioned from librettist/director Valeria Vasilevski and Salzman as a companion piece to a 1605 madrigal comedy by Andriano Banchieri and the two works are performed together as a double bill. Read reviews
Salzman's article, "Speaking in Tongues", mentioned in a previous news bulletin, will be published by the Yale School of Drama Theater Magazine in the fall, 2009, issue.
July 2009
On Wednesday, July 8 and Friday, July 10 at 8pm BAR LA BARCA, a unique double bill of “madrigal comedies” written 400 years apart will be performed by the Western Wind Vocal Ensemble at Brooklyn’s BARGEMUSIC at Fulton Ferry Landing. Read the full press release (PDF)
The E-zine NewMusicBox (Frank Oteri, editor) is running an excerpt from the Oxford book "The New Music Theater" and an interview with Eric Salzman. A different excerpt will appear in the next issue of the Kurt Weill Newsletter. Oxford has also submitted the book to the Kurt Weill Foundation which gives an annual award to the best book on the subject of music-theater.
A related article written by Salzman will appear in the next issue of the Yale Theater Review. It's entitled "Speaking in Tongues" or Why Should Eclectic Be a Bad Word? It will be illustrated by a lot of his work, past and present, and should be out by the fall.
The Western Wind performed excerpts from "Jukebox on the Tavern of Love" on May 16 at their 40th anniversary concert. That same evening, "Brecht Suite" had its premiere are the Southampton Cultural Center performed by Laila Salins, mezzo, William Schimmel, accordion, and Marc Levine and Leah Zelnick, violins.
April 2009
Eric Salzman's book, The New Music Theatre: Hearing the Body, Seeing the Voice, co-authored with Thomas Desi, has recently been published by Oxford University Press. Amazingly, it's the first book to cover the field of experimental and innovative music theater as it has developed over the years. You can buy it from Amazon or through any book store.
The Center for Contemporary Opera held a public panel or colloquium event on the subject of "The New Music Theater" in December at The Cell Theater in Manhattan with Eric Salzman, Thomas Desi and several distinguished colleagues -- Rinde Eckert, Steven Osgood, Diane Wondisford and Grethe Barrett Holby. Salzman visited Vienna in mid-January and a similar panel was held at the Kunstlerhaus (Artist House) there with Thomas, the Italian composer Maurizio Squillante and Laura Berman of the artistic staff of the Bregenz Festival. Salzman also did a program on his own music theater work -- with special emphasis on THE NUDE PAPER SERMON, THE TRUE LAST WORDS OF DUTCH SCHULTZ and JUKEBOX IN THE TAVERN OF LOVE -- at the University two days later.
Salzman and Desi are also working together on a production of the Morty Feldman/Sam Beckett "Neither" -- only opera/music theater work either of them ever wrote. The Center for Contemporary Opera will present a workshop version at The Cell in May with Keira Duffy in the principal role and featuring a mime and videographer from Vienna. The whole production will then move to Vienna where it will be performed at the Wien Modern Festival in November. Productions with full orchestra will follow in Vienna and New York in 2010.
Also in December, the program "Through the Opera Glass", hosted by Marc Laiosa, on WBAI-FM, held an extended, 3-hour interview with Salzman about his life and work, complete with generous musical excerpts (Salzman spent a couple of crucial periods of his life as music director of WBAI where he founded the legendary Free Music Store). Although the program seems to have vanished from WBAI archives (it was there briefly during December), it will shortly be posted on
An excerpt from JUKEBOX IN THE TAVERN OF LOVE was performed by the Western Wind Vocal Ensemble on their "O Beautiful American Music" program (originally created for National Public Radio) in November at the New York Historical Society and they will perform another excerpt or two at their big anniversary celebration on May 16. JUKEBOX is a "madrigal comedy" commissioned by the Western Wind on an original text by Valeria Vasilevski about six people trapped in a bar during a huge storm and blackout. The Western Wind has performed it, together with a madrigal comedy of 1607 by Adriano Banchieri about people on a ferryboat going from Venice to Padua, at the Tenri Center in Greenwich Village and at The Flea in downtown NYC. They plan to bring it back next season in New York and on tour; there will also be a CD and DVD of the work to be released later this year.
Other Salzman works are scheduled for performance this spring in California and Southampton. A new suite taken from his music for LA BONNE AME DE SETCHOUAN, a French-language production of the Bertolt Brecht "Good Person of Sezchuan" at Quebec's Theatre du Trident will be performed on May 16 at the Southampton Cultural Center by mezzo Laila Salins and accordionist William Schimmel.
An article/review on "Marie Galante" by Jacques Deval and Kurt Weill and its recent NY premiere at the Opera Francais de New York is in the current issue of the Kurt Weill Newsletter (v. 26, #2, listed as Fall 2008 although actually published only in early 2009). An excerpt from the music-theater book will be published in a forthcoming issue of the Newsletter. A piece on eclecticism in new music and music theater -- inspired by Zadie Smith's recent article "Speaking in Tongues" in the NY Review of Books -- will appear in the fall issue of Theater, published by the Yale School of Drama. And an essay on the rare appearance (and almost unknown calls) of Yellow Rails on his East Quogue marsh was published in the March/April issue of BIRDING Magazine.
January 2009
Buchpräsentation: Thomas Desi/Eric Salzman: "The New Music Theater. Seeing the Voice, Hearing the Body"
Thomas Desi präsentiert passend zum Operettenwinter in brut seine gemeinsam mit Eric Salzman verfasste jüngste Publikation The New Music Theater.
Mit diesem Buch liefern die beiden Autoren einen soziologischen und künstlerischen Abriss des Genres Musiktheater jenseits von Oper und Musical und erörtern in vielfältiger Weise wie Musik im Theater funktioniert. Mit einer Fülle an Beispielen und Beschreibungen, nicht nur von Inszenierungen, sondern auch von Ideen, Konzepten und Trends im Musiktheater zeigen die Autoren das Potential eines lange verkannten Genres auf. Zahlreiche Illustrationen und Bilder zu Arbeiten zeitgenössischer Regisseure veranschaulichen die neuesten Entwicklungen und Thesen im Musiktheater und machen The New Music Theater zu einem unverzichtbaren Standardwerk des Genres.
"As an artist who has worked between the cracks of art forms since the 1960's, I applaud Salzman and Desi for providing a fresh and inclusive survey of the important and evolving field of new music theater- a form that continues to expand our perception of what is possible in art that lives and breathes."
20 uhr
brut im Künstlerhaus/Foyer
Eintritt frei
December 10, 2008
The Center for Contemporary Opera will present a Colloquium on The New Music Theater based on the publication by Oxford University Press of the book with the same title by Thomas Desi and Eric Salzman. This event will feature both authors plus a panel consisting of Rinde Eckert, Steven Osgood, Diane Wondisford and Grethe Holby (also possibly Meremith Monk).
8:00pm at The Cell, 338 W. 23rd St., New York.
December 7, 2008
Eric Salzman will be featured on "Through the Opera Glass" with host Mark Laiosa on WBAI-FM 99.5 in New York, from 6–9am. You can also listen online.
October 2008: Salzman's Latest Book The New Music Theater to be Released
Eric Salzman's new book, The New Music Theater: Seeing the Voice, Hearing the Body, co-authored with Thomas Dési, is slated for release on October 29, 2008 by Oxford University Press.
May 29–June 1, 2008: Staged Premiere of Salzman's Jukebox in the Tavern of Love at The Flea Theater
Jukebox in the Tavern of Love, a modern madrigal comedy by Valeria Vasilevski and Eric Salzman, had its staged premiere from May 29 to June 1, 2008, at The Flea, an off-off-Broadway theater on White Street in New York's Tribeca district. The work was paired with a 'real' 1605 madrigal comedy by Adriano Banchieri, "La Barca di Venetia per Padova" or "The Ferryboat from Venice to Padova". The double bill was performed by the Western Wind which commissioned "Jukebox" and both pieces were directed by Ms Vasilevski. An audio CD and a DVD of the work will be available this fall; details to be announced.
In the meanwhile, two of the numbers, The Dancer's Story ("Brush, chug, shuffle") and the Utility Worker's Song ("All that is left of me," after Rumi) have been recorded for Public Radio International for a 4th of July American music program by the Western Wind that also includes music by Meredith Monk and William Bolcom.