The 2012 Kontact sonoreS started out with an intriguing set by Polish group Karbido, The Table. Four guys are seated around an amplified table, and no ordinary table, either, but one designed to make different sounds in different places, supplemented by many and various ...
writing about music for people who like music
Category Archives: Events
Asymmetry archives (1): Ultima 2009
[Asymmetry has quite a backlog of material on concerts and festivals, going back to 2008. We have pledged to get caught up with that material in 2012 and to stay caught up with current happenings in the world. But we don't want that material from years past to be lost just because it's not current. ...
March’s Modern Music Month
Monday evening, the fifth of March, was the start of Portland's month-long celebration of modern music. Celebration and cerebration, as this evening's events included a panel discussion with a few of Portland's prominent musical thinkers. But first, Robert McBride introduced a "performance" of John Cage's 4'33" ...
Feldman’s 2nd in Portland
On Friday the 24th, around two hundred people took advantage of a rare opportunity to hear at least some of the four hour performance of Feldman's 2nd string quartet that Third Angle put on in the Ellyn Bye Studio of The Armory ...
Festival Densités 2009 and 2010
Asymmetry visited the '09 and '10 Festivals Densités in Fresnes-en-Woëvre, once as Michael E. Karman and once as Michael S. Karman. This fortunately confused no one. Densités is a very bright, very tight little festival. High-powered music making with some of the most talented musicians ...
Futura ’09
Futura '09 was the second Futura festival Asymmetry has been able to attend. It is a short festival, only a weekend, but it is jam-packed with electroacoustic goodness. The initial draw for me in '09 was the chance to hear another Bokanowski piece live ...
Ostrava Days 2009
It is truly amazing after all these years, over a hundred of them, how fresh and new Ives' The Unanswered Question still sounds. At the 2009 Ostrava Days festival, this piece was performed as perfectly as one could ask for, leaving only the one ...
2010 Truax Retrospectives
Barry Truax's involvement with electroacoustics goes back to 1949, although perhaps the early seventies is a more realistic date for the beginning of his involvement as a composer. Time enough, in any case, for there to be retrospective concert of his music, starting with the ...
Muzikos Festivalis „Gaida” 2010
Šiu metu spalio 22-20 dienomis Vilniuje vyko 20-asis aktualiosios muzikos festivalis „Gaida”. Tai vienas didžiausiu šiuolaikines muzikos festivaliu Lietuvoje kasmet susilaukiantis ivairiu diskusiju ir dažniausiai nepaliekantis abejingu šiuolaikines muzikos megeju ir profesionalu tarpe. Jau antra dešimtmeti šis festivalis pateikia lietuviu ir pasaulio menininku šiuolaikines muzikos opusus, kuriu pasirinkimas iš dalies atskleidžia kulturos kaita, vienija tam tikra menininku rata ir liudija šiuolaikines muzikos sklaidos raida Lietuvoje. Po dvidešimties metu festivalio gyvavimo isitikiname, jog galvos kraipomos visaip ir i ivairias puses. Kaip ir kiekvienas reiškinys, šis renginys susilaukia daug diskusiju, vieni nusivilia, kiti vis dar atranda, taciau ir nusivyle ir atrade sudaro ta pacia bendruomene, kurie ši festivali laiko vienu svarbiausiu Lietuvos meniniame gyvenime.
GAIDA festival – 2010
The Gaida festival, one of the biggest contemporary music festivals in Lithuania, took place in Vilnius from the 22nd to the 29th of October this year. An intense week of rarely performed contemporary music, Gaida featured compositions both very clearly Lithuanian and those very clearly not, both showing the change of culture over time: the festival links together different artistic circles and is clear evidence of contemporary music dispersal in Lithuania. The attempt to find coherence among these 43 pieces (21 of which were Lithuanian, 22 of which were from around the world) distinguished the individuality of Lithuanian music in the context of the festival. Indeed, the atmosphere of the festival was distinctly “Lithuanian”
