Anya M. Wassenberg's Blog: Art & Culture Maven, page 78

It's Just Craig - Dark Corners (Independent - June 30, 2017)

It's Just Craig - Dark Corners
(Independent - June 30, 2017)

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Enjoyably inventive within a traditional genre, Dark Corners is the second release for the ensemble It's Just Craig, the brainchild of Craig Helmreich. The Intro sets the tone with a fuzzy antique piano line and leads into Go, the next track. The song builds on a minimalist acoustic opening, shuffling in a languid pace to a lush arrangement that includes keyboards and jangling guitar.

Americana, Goth Country, or whatever label you want to put on the genre, is all about drawing the emotional heart out of the everyday, both when it comes to words and music. It's Just Craig takes the premise and adds a modern sense of production. Craig et al specialize in catchy hooks and songs that are more complex than they first sound, with a soft rather than strident approach to vocals. There are jazzy riffs in songs like Captain and Siren Sings, with a lot of rhythmic variation throughout all the tracks.

Goodnight is the lead single from the release, a synthy, danceable track with a stuttering percussion line and lyrics that are typical of the album's understated sentiment.

I'm sick of good night...from six feet away 
It's Just Craig by Kyle Helmond
It's essentially a concept album in a gothic Americana sort of vein. Tracks 1-8 follow the story of the captain of a cargo boat and his journey across the sea. It's sometimes a lonely story, sometimes an exciting one. Track 9 is blank, a space before the "hidden" track. Track 10 is the odd one out, a song called Thirty-Nine, inspired by the hedonistic mid-life crises of he and his friends.

He's assembled the same group of musical friends for the follow-up ride to his debut releaes, Blood On The Table. Along with the personnel, he reprised the approach, with lots of live tracking, very few takes, minimal overdubs, 100% analog. Marc Ford (Black Crowes/Ben Harper/Magpie Salute) is on guitar, joined by Elijah Ford on bass, piano and electric/acoustic guitars. Craig plays guitar and sings, with Jason Slota on drums, Rob Shelton on keys, John Vanderslice producing, mixing and playing keys on Goodnight (with Rob Shelton). New on this outing are Jess Von Strantz and Kels Von Strantz on vocals and vocals/cello, respectively.
It's Just Craig by Kyle Helmond
In his other life, Craig is a corporate attorney working and living with his family in Fishers, Indiana. The vinyl version is likely to be released in mid to late August.

Websites:

www.itsjustcraig.comFacebook.com/itsjustcraigTwitter: @justcraigmusicInsta: itsjustcraigofficial

Win a Trip to Africa via Ethiopian Airlines to Celebrate Canada150

From a media release:

Ethiopian Airlines Canada asks Canadians to share their video story to celebrate Canada150, for their chance to win a package trip to Africa!

June 8, 2017, Toronto, Ontario- Ethiopian Airlines Canada wants to hear from Canadians by video submissions, asking them, "Why they love Canada so much" and then posting it on the airlines' social media Facebook page.


• The most creative and engaging video will win a trip to Africa! A 10-day vacation package from Toronto to Victora Falls, Zambia and then to Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. The contest winner will experience breathtaking adventures as part of the itinerary and Ethiopian Airlines Cloud9 Business Class.

"This is a very exciting year for Canada and Ethiopian Airlines Canada, we are both celebrating big milestones, " said Birhan Abate, Ethiopian Airlines Canada Country Manager. "Canada is a multicultural country which unites many different cultures. We wanted to create a fun interactive contest for our 5th Anniversary operating in Canada in the spirit of the Canada 150 celebration. Something that would allow Canadian's to share their special heart warming stories of why they love Canada."

Abate said the response Ethiopian Airlines Canada received from the first social media contest launched last year was positive and "overwhelming." He said he wanted to do something special to mark the sesquicentennial year.
Victoria Falls, ZambiaHow it works:
Create up to a 60 sec video entry to share with us "Why do you love Canada so much?"Upload the video to Ethiopian Airline Canada's Facebook pageLike our Facebook pageTop 5 videos selected by Ethiopian Airlines Canada managment team to be posted on Ethopian Airlines Canada Facebook page.The selected Top 5 videos to be judged by fans.Based on point values one video winner to be announced in August 2017.   Full details of the contest on our promotions page www.ethiopianairlines.ca and on Ethiopian Airlines Canada Facebook page.
About Ethiopian Airlines
Ethiopian Airlines (Ethiopian) is the fastest growing Airline in Africa. In its seven decades of operation, Ethiopian has become one of the continent’s leading carriers, unrivalled in efficiency and operational success.

Ethiopian operates the youngest and most modern fleet to 93 international destinations across five continents. Ethiopian fleet includes ultra-modern and environmentally friendly aircraft such as Airbus A350, Boeing 787, Boeing 777-300ER, Boeing 777-200LR, Boeing 777-200 Freighter, Bombardier Q-400 double cabin with an average fleet age of five years. In fact, Ethiopian is the first airline in Africa to own and operate these aircraft.

The airlines operates three direct flights weekly from Toronto to Addis Ababa with connections 53 destinations.

Ethiopian is currently implementing a 15-year strategic plan called Vision 2025 that will see it become the leading aviation group in Africa with seven business centers: Ethiopian Domestic and Regional Airline; Ethiopian International Passenger Airline; Ethiopian Cargo; Ethiopian MRO; Ethiopian Aviation Academy; Ethiopian In-flight Catering Services; and Ethiopian Ground Service. Ethiopian is a multi-award-winning airline registering an average growth of 25% in the past seven years.

Akropolis Reed Quintet: The Space Between (Innova Recordings, March 24, 2017)

With material from a release:

Akropolis Reed Quintet: The Space Between
(Innova Recordings, March 24, 2017)

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Does it sound disrespectful to say a new music release can be a highly entertaining listen? I hope not, because I was entertained, cajoled, intrigued, and transported in probably equal measures by The Space Between, the new release from the Akropolis Quintet.

I loved their playful take on the iconic themes of classical European music. In the first track, jesus is coming, you hear a sampled child's voice over a strongly rhythmic pulse of wind instruments, with other spoken voices and snippets of dialog, shouting, children crying...It sounds like a dog's breakfast but turns out to be a seamless fabric of sound that cries out for a modern dance interpretation.

Refraction ties dissonant harmonics and a fluid sense of melody together with a hypnotic rhythm. It's a highly evocative piece in several sections. At the base of it all is a superb sense of musicianship that allows for the complex texture of the music.

The mood turns elegaic on Gallimaufry, with its sinuous interplay of melodies on the various instruments. The album closes with John Steinmetz’s “Sorrow and Celebration,” which imitates a ceremony or ritual, calling people together to mourn and rejoice.

The Space Between Us is the third studio release from Akropolis Reed Quintet, a group with a singular instrumentation, well on its way to redefining how modern wind chamber music groups present classical music. It’s an album about conflict and resolution, a story of how art and its reflection on life can bring people together.

Formed in 2009 at the University of Michigan and winner of the 2014 Fischoff Gold Medal, the Akropolis Reed Quintet takes listeners on extraordinary imaginative musical adventures. They have commissioned more than 25 new reed quintet works, published a catalog of original and arranged reed quintet sheet music, and have garnered more than 22,000 online views for the Web Premiere video series of new reed quintet repertoire. Akropolis injects its dynamic repertoire into communities and schools around the country, and in 2015 won the Fischoff Educator Award. The group was recently awarded two grants from Chamber Music America and the Michigan Council for Arts and Cultural Affairs for a January 2017 community residency in Detroit.

Woodwind instruments tend to be neglected overall in the musical canon of any genre; it's nice to hear the fresh innovation of this appealing collection of new music compositions.

Rose Hall Estate - Jamaica's Haunted Mansion

Rose Hall Estate
Jamaica's Haunted Mansion
Today, the property is a luxury resort  with two award-winning golf courses and oceanviews not far from Montego Bay, Jamaica. But long with the modern resort facilities, there is Rose Hall Estate, a whitewashed mansion with a darker history that is one of its present day attractions - hauntings.

Rose Hall EstateMany of the so-called Great Houses - the homes of colonialists - in Jamaica were burned to the ground during the slave rebellions of 1831 to 1838. Rose Hall Estate, somehow, escaped with less damage than most others. Many claim that it is because the mansion was haunted, even before the rebellions came along.



Annie Palmer - The White WitchAccording to local legend, the house is haunted by the spirit of one Annie Palmer, also known as the White Witch. The story of Annie's ghost has been growing since her death in the 1830s. She's been the subject of a dozen or more novels, including The White Witch of Rose Hall by H. G. De Lisser, published in 1928.
A Picturesque Tour of Jamaica by James Hakewill, 1778
The mansion dates from 1750. As the story goes, Annie Palmer arrived in Jamaica in the spring of 1820 at the age of 18, having married John Rose Palmer. She had been raised by a nanny after being left an orphan in Haiti. The nanny had taught her the art of voodoo, and some say that Annie had used it to entice Palmer to marry her.

According to the legend, Annie Palmer murdered three husbands and too many of the male slaves she coerced into her bed to count during her decade as mistress of Rose Hall Estate, which was then a plantation. Nowadays, some believe that it was the lead content in her china dishes slowly drove her insane.
Bedroom - Rose Hall Great House by Sarah Ackerman
Finally, one of the slaves she was sexually abusing had enough and murdered her. It was said that he buried her and performed voodoo spells to keep her evil spirit from returning, but the spells weren't done correctly.

Some say the whole story is a myth, and that there never was an Annie Palmer, but many people have reported sightings of the White Witch over the decades.

Nowadays, it's an intriguing stop on a Jamaican vacation.

Society for New Music: Various Composers - Music Here & Now (Innova Recordings, Apr 28, 2017)

With material from a release:

Society for New Music
Various Composers - Music Here & Now
(Innova Recordings, Apr 28, 2017)

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The two-disc set commissioned by the Society For New Music offers a variety of moods and approaches to new music composition through the work of several composers. Rob Deemer's Cantos is full of drama, propelled by a kinetic sense of rhythm that whirls around, building momentum. It's a striking piece that carries you through to a cathartic end. Jacaras, a piece for piano, violin, and cello by Ricardo Zohn-Muldoon, changes the mood to a more emotional, distraught sensibility.

A melancholy oboe/clarinet opens Jorge Villevicencio Grossmann's Whistling Vessels, an intriguing journey in sound with several sections. Libations, a composition by 'Doctuh' Mike Woods, takes a driving jazz bass line and adds an avant garde sense of harmonics. The result sparkles with a fresh sense of both genres.



Music Here & Now brings the new music field - often accused of and viewed as obtuse and elitist - into the purview of the more adventurous listener, of which there are more and more. The focus is on the emotional heart of the music with results that should please those reluctant to endorse new music along with its longtime fans.

Urban hubs like Brooklyn, Chicago and San Francisco have long been seen as incubators of creative cross-pollination, but since 1971, the Society for New Music has been making the case that cultural and artistic collision and germination can happen away from the city lights. With the release of Music Here & Now -- their fourth album on innova Recordings -- once again shows that new music is alive and well in the heart of New York state.

Based in Syracuse and comprising composers and creatives from New York, the Midwest, Peru, China, Mexico and beyond, the Society for New Music is the oldest new music organization in the state outside of Manhattan and commissions at least one new work each season from a regional composer. Music Here & Now pulls together works from Rob Deemer, Ricardo Zohn-Muldoon, Gregory Wanamaker, Zhou Tian, Jorge Villavicencio Grossmann, “Doctuh” Mike Woods and Mark Olivieri. Encompassing a wide range of styles and influences from Mexican to Peruvian folk music to jazz to classical to the natural world to social and political concerns, the music here stakes a claim to an aural world informed by but not bound to geography or genre.

The award-winning Society for New Music is comprised of a core of dedicated professionals who live in the heart of New York State, but who are nationally and internationally renowned. Most have performed and recorded together for 15 to 20 years or more. They all bring their passion for new music to the enterprise.

Society for New Music’s mission is to commission, premiere and record new works by regional composers; advocate for new music via Fresh Ink on WCNY-FM and its affiliates; provide regional musicians an opportunity to perform the music of their peers; encourage young composers (Israel Prize, Rising Stars, Young Composers Corner and workshops); and bring new music to as broad an audience as possible, plus composers-in-residence in the public schools.



Composers:
Illinois native Rob Deemer was educated at the Univ. of Texas-Austin, Northern Illinois, and USC. SUNY Fredonia wisely lured him to Upstate NY. His experience in film music was useful in this collaboration with videographer Courtney Rile for Cantosin 3 movements - Hammer, String, Wind. They captured aurally the sounds of nature matching the visual beauty of Upstate NY.

Born in Mexico, Ricardo Zohn-Muldoon earned his doctorate at the U. of Pennsylvania. Now a Professor at Eastman School of Music, he was a Pulitzer finalist in 2011. “Jácaras” were popular ballads interspersed between the acts of a play to entertain the audience. Each variation in Ricardo’s Jácaras evokes a type of folk music from México.

Gregory Wanamaker, a native of Skaneateles, NY, earned degrees at Shenandoah Univ. & FL State before returning to teach at the Crane School-SUNY-Potsdam. SNM paired Greg with Carrie Mae Weems to collaborate on a music/video they titled A Story within a Story, reflecting on the persistent struggle for civil rights in the U.S. on the basis of gender, race and religion. Carrie Mae went on to win a MacArthur Genius award.

Born in China, Zhou Tian was educated at Curtis, Juilliard and USC. He came to ‘the heart of NY’ to teach at Colgate University. His Morning after the Deluge was inspired by a landscape painting by William Turner (1843). The shifting landscape dissolving into layers of mist against a rising sun inspired Mr. Zhou to design the same for the music.

Jorge Villavicencio Grossmann hails from Peru via Brazil. After earning his DMA at Boston University he settled in Upstate NY to teach at Ithaca College. Whistling Vessels  makes use of his Peruvian heritage by incorporating indigenous ancient Incan whistling (singing) vessels with contemporary chamber ensemble.

Ohio native ‘Doctuh’ Mike Woods studied at Indiana & the Univ. of Oklahoma,the first African-American to receive a doctorate in composition from Oklahoma University. Hamilton College made it worth his while to settle in the ‘heart of NY’. Libations is written as if it were a drink used in a ceremony, but the wine and/or the inebriation is the effect of the jazz solos.

Born in Upstate NY, Mark Olivieri is also a pianist, as equally versed in vernacular idioms as he is in jazz and classical music. While earning his doctorate at Buffalo, he served on the Brockport faculty, then Hobart-William Smith Colleges snapped him up. Commissioned for SNM’s annual Vision of Sound  new music with dance program, Stress Test seamlessly weaves these styles together.

New Music: Juri Seo: Mostly Piano (Innova Recordings, Apr 28, 2017)

With material from a release:

Juri Seo: Mostly Piano
(Innova Recordings, Apr 28, 2017)

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As promised, Juri Seo's new release focuses on her beautifully liquid piano compositions...mostly. She plays it on the first track, a jazzy piece entitled #three, with percussion and bass. It was inspired by noted jazz trio The Bad Plus, merged with elements of late Romanticism. It's Beethoven meets jazz.

“Three Mini Etudes in C”, played by Thomas Rosendranz, begins with the familiar arpeggios of piano studies, then veers into semi-chaotic, agitated territory, covering a gamut of emotions and approaches.

Her Piano Sonata No. 1, appropriately titled “La Hammerklavier” (or Hammer Piano) is percussive, speeding up and slowly down in a dizzying whirlwind. Pianist Steven Beck brings it to life with an assured sense of its style. The piece takes its cue from Beethoven’s Op. 106. and pianist Steven Beck navigates the piece’s extreme registers of expression deftly.



“Études for cimbalom” is the exception to the piano-focused release, performed by Nicholas Tolle, one of the most adventurous players of the Eastern European hammered dulcimer in contemporary music. It is moody and striking, offering a range of dramatic expression. The final track, “vi,” bring together Rosenkranz and and percussionist Mark Eichenberger to conjure strangely consonant music flecked with chromatic twists and turns.


Through the piano, that most traditional of musical filters, Seo pours her eclectic influences and the results are coherent, but refracted and many-hued: Beethoven meets 20th-century avant-garde meets modern jazz. She scales the heights and plumbs the depths of the instrument, attempting to engage with the widest scope of pianistic possibilities.

Born and raised in Korea, Seo came to the United States in 2005 for graduate studies at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. Currently, she is an Assistant Professor of Music at Princeton University.

2017: Millennials and Travel

2017: Millennials and TravelMillennials are a unique group in so many ways, it should come as no surprise that their travel habits and preferences are different than their predecessors too.
Mass MediaBased on research by Topdeck Travel, 35 percent of Canadian millennials say they have made a decision on where to travel based on a movie they saw. That figure is backed up by similar studies in the U.S. More interesting details about Canadian millennials:

• 21% decided on their travel destination because of a food trend that went viral on Instagram or other social media, like cronuts, the doughnut/croissant cross made famous by Dominique Ansel Bakery in New York City, or rainbow bagels from The Bagel Store in Williamsburg, Brooklyn.
• 10% said their trip destination was inspired by a favourite celebrity.
RomanceCanadian Millennials love to travel, that's the easy part. The rest is often surprising.
• 32% of Canadian millennials said they would cut down or even give up dating to save money for travel.
• 16% said they were on the lookout for a romantic relationship during their travels.
• 10% use dating apps more often while traveling abroad than they did at home.
• 31% said that socializing while they were traveling was an important aspect of their trip.
• 23% reported that they have passed up on opportunities to travel in the past because they couldn’t find anyone to go with them.
• 25% felt badly about how little they’ve traveled in their lives.


Similar surveys by Contiki, a European tour operator specializing in the 18-35 market, found that many millennials had given up on the traditional goal of buying a home in the overheated real estate markets, opting instead to spend their money on travel. Thirty-three percent of 18-to-21 year olds, and 39 per cent of 22-to-36 year olds, surveyed said they were happy to borrow money to go travelling.


Business TravelIn the U.S., millennials make up about a third of the work force, and they're changing business travel too.

• Digital World - constant connectivity is a must for any accommodations;
• They are more likely to use Uber or Lyft (81%) than rental cars or regular taxis;
• They prefere Airbnb to a luxury suite.
• With more millennials taking more business trips than previous generations, the practice of adding a few days of vacay time to a business trip is on the rise too.

What's driving them is what is driving the travel industry, and changing travel for everyone. It's also opening up whole new market forces.

New Music: Ross Feller - X/Winds (Innova Recordings, Feb 17, 2017)

With material from a release:

Ross Feller - X/Winds
(Innova Recordings, Feb 17, 2017)

• Buy the CD

In the liner notes, composer Ross Feller talks about "thorny, angular gestures" that pervade his music, and that's a good description of its energy. It's kinetic, agitated, an emotional roller coaster ride, tempered by a grand sense of style - a kind of refined chaos.

Feller lets the contradictions in these elements animate the music, their clashes generating the energy of the pieces. Throughout, there is an emphasis on a deep-seated sense of resonance, and tactile and physical attributes of sound as they are experienced. This is muscular Modernism at its most immediate and urgent, in the grand tradition of Charles Ives and Henry Brant.

In “Triple Threat,” labyrinthine patterns are mapped onto various musical parameters, then disrupted by Gilles Deleuze’s and Felix Guattari’s three fractured lines: break, crack, and rupture. In places, parts are obscured through masking techniques such as pitch and timbral overlapping and in others, sheer force pushes elements into the foreground and shoves others to the back.

More meditative and less forceful, “Still Adrift” nonetheless reflects Feller’s interest in juxtaposition and sound as a physical force. Processed and resynthesized piano samples to amplify the live piano’s resonance and suggest the sense of a virtual, acoustic space.

The title track – blown to great heights by the Oberlin Conservatory Wind Ensemble – navigates the space between these two ends of the spectrum, conjuring mayhem through webs of textural densities, and employing conflicts between various contradictory impulses that build to a frenzy, eventually leaving only resonant trails and air.

A Chicago native, Feller began in high school to systematically explore the boundaries of his saxophone through improvisation, and experiment with various compositional techniques. He co-founded the avant-garde, jazz-rock ensemble Dot Dot Dot, and then went on to study composition at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. He currently teaches at Kenyon College, Ohio.

“Feller sees sound itself as a primary material of his music, no matter how rigorously he structures pitch and rhythm. Sound is bent and smeared, layers bleed into one another and then detach. Instruments overlap and create morphing meta-instruments. All this is guided both by a scrupulous ear and by the metaphysical programs animating the flow… Feller proves that the idea of exploring new worlds, of breaking molds isn’t dead at all. Modernism for him is a tradition of freedom and experiment, mixed with an intellectual armature of rigor and paradox. For listeners who have grown up with indie rock, free improv, industrial noise, this will be familiar terrain. Likewise those who like their art with a dash of conceptualism and philosophy will find plenty to satisfy their appetite. Dig in.” – Robert Carl, composer and music critic.

Bypassing the Ogre

Skateboarders vs. Minimalism: Rodney Mullen at the Drake Hotel Toronto June 23-24 2017

From a media release:

SKATEBOARDERS VS. MINIMALISM
JUN 23 2017 RODNEY MULLEN X SHAUN GLADWELL @ THE DRAKE HOTEL
JUN 24 2017 SKATEBOARDERS VS. MINIMALISM BLOCK PARTY @ DRAKE COMMISSARY

• Tickets for Rodney Mullen
• RSVP Block Party

TORONTO - Don’t miss street skating legend, Rodney Mullen, in an intimate conversation with artist Shaun Gladwell as they discuss how skateboarding led to a fascination with contemporary art. Monkey Shoulder will be on hand with custom cocktails and a lucky few will have the chance to meet Mullen.

Then, coast to Drake Commissary to see a live demo of Gladwell's video work, Skateboarders vs. Minimalism with skaters creatively misusing replicas of minimalist sculpture followed by a full-on block party of DJs, food trucks + Monkey Shoulder mixes. Find the party in the parking lot with neighbour Henderson Brewing.

Check out Rodney Mullen:

Raise the Caliber - Art Creates Change at Only One Gallery - Toronto June 1-15, 2017

From a media release:

Raise the Caliber - Art Creates Change
Only One Gallery - Toronto
June 1-15, 2017

• Check out the Facebook Event

TORONTO - Raise the Caliber – Art Creates Change is an art exhibit coming to Only One Gallery in Toronto from June 1 to June 15 that aims to drive awareness about illegal gun violence and gun control issues. Featuring multi-medium works from artists Doug Schwartz (DetroitWick) and Tracy Hiner (Black Crow Studios) who use decommissioned guns and bullets, confiscated through amnesty programs, these artists show how tools of destruction can be transformed into beautiful works of art.
Photograph by Tracy HinerLaunching May 31st 2017 and running for two weeks (June 1-15), this will be the first showing outside of the US for both artists with their Raise The Caliber® art and we are tremendously excited to be able to bring it to Canada.

Accompanying Doug and Tracy for the opening will be Carey Lowell - celebrated actor and talented ceramicist, featuring her collection of Hummingbird Candles. All these artist were united by Jessica Mindich - jewelry designer and founder of Raise The Caliber®, an advocacy campaign raising awareness about illegal gun violence. Mindich will also be featuring her Caliber Collection® jewelry in a Pop-Up Shop during the show.

Scary Statistic: There were 355 firearm related injuries a year between 2008 and 2012 in Canada involving youth under 25.
* Taken from SickKids/ICES study was published in the Canadian Medical Association Journal.
Lucite Sculpture by Doug SchwartzSome of the people behind the show:
*Jessica Mindich (jewelry designer and founder of Raise The Caliber; also uses recycled gun-metal to create accessories for women and men)
*Doug Schwartz (artwork encases decommissioned guns and shell casings in solid lucite to create three-dimensional sculptures)
*Tracey Hiner (immerses guns and shell casings in fish tanks filled with water with added coloured liquids to create incredible photography prints)
*Carey Lowell (actress and designer at Hummingbird Ceramics; creates hand-crafted ceramic candles featuring shell casings swept from crime scenes)
*Toronto’s Sebastien Centner (driving force behind the team bringing the exhibit to Toronto. He is also executive director of Toronto-based hospitality company Eatertainment, and always has his hands in interesting things happening in the city)
Photograph by Tracy Hiner**Works of art featured in the exhibit will be available for purchase throughout the duration of the exhibit.
**The presented artworks’ prices range from $195 to $20,000 CAD, with portions of the proceeds benefiting Raise The Caliber.