New Morse Code

Interesting Things from New Morse Code

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Curious what New Morse Code is all about?  Check out our new video, "Meet New Morse Code!"

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Nice preview of our upcoming show in Ithaca on 1/29. Hope you can make it!

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New Morse Kerekes

In a few weeks we're presenting a concert with our dear friend Paul Kerekes, featuring his music and  pieces by his colleagues and influences, including fellow Yale School of Music alumni Hannah Lash, Marc Mellits and David Lang.  In addition to being a great composer, Paul is a terrific pianist, and will be joining us for the concert.  

The program will center around two trios, Kerekes' Three Rooms, written in 2012 for us, and Marc Mellits' exuberant and quirky Tight Sweater. The concert will also feature two of Paul’s other works: Vantages for solo piano and Reach for cello and piano, as well as duos by Hannah Lash and David Lang.

We're playing November 23rd in New Haven at Trinity Lutheran, and the 24th in New York at Spectrum.  For more information, check out press releases for the New Haven and New York performances.  

November 23, 2013

New Morse Code & Paul Kerekes

7pm, Trinity Lutheran (292 Orange St.), New Haven, CT

$15 suggested donation

November 24, 2013

New Morse Code & Paul Kerekes

3pm, Spectrum (121 Ludlow), New York, NY

$15/$10

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Coming soon to NYC and New Haven!

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NMC currently in residence at Avaloch Farm Music Institute, a place for us to work intensely on some new repertoire and circle the wagons on some New Morse Code classics.  We've brought composer pal Sam Adams with us, and are working together on a new piece, as well as reading some trios, going apple picking, and canoeing in the nearby lake.  More news soon!

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Hard at work on David Lang's Stuttered Chant. A second bow is on the "to buy" list.

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So here’s Beethoven’s 9th played on 167 theremins built inside Russian dolls. Oh, and wait for the boogie. (Really.)

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21

Our new recording of Andy Akiho's 21 is online!  Take a listen!

Thanks to Greg DiCrosta and everyone at Firehouse 12 Studios.

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Tonia Ko: Hush, for cello and percussion

I. The Tongue is but a Clapper

II. How—Hush!

III. Simplicity Itself Text by Virginia Woolf

Recorded live at Cornell University, February 9th, 2013

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Inspecting the brenograph and the Art Deco restoration at the Smith theater in Geneva, NY, after leading a movement class at Hobart and William Smith colleges, as part of the ARTS Experience, a festival on inclusion in the arts.

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Last year, NewMusicBox, an online magazine for contemporary classical music, published an essay by the composer Amy Beth Kirsten entitled “The ‘Woman Composer’ Is Dead.” (via Alex Ross: Female Composers Edge Forward : The New Yorker)

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It’s kind of awesome to see the New Yorker writing about our magazine. Happy Monday, world.

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SO many friends getting some press!

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Great montage of shots from the dress rehearsal for the premiere Caroline's piece for Hannah and I, Boris Kerner.  

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Great first rehearsals for Tonia Ko's Hush this weekend in Ithaca.  The piece is based on Virginia Woolf's short story "The String Quartet," and both of us are required to speak and/or sing.  I get to play flowerpots and sandpaper blocks.

Hope you can join us for the premiere February 9th at Cornell!   

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News from Mike re: NMC fav. Andy Akiho!

Last May, I had the distinct pleasure to go to LA with Andy Akiho—everyone’s favorite composer-workaholic-pan player—and an all-star group of percussionists for the West-Coast debut of Andy’s Alloy, a new take on traditional Trinidadian steel band music.  The occasion was the LA Phil’s laudable Green Umbrella series; a program featuring Berio’s Recital 1, a new percussion concerto by Joe Pereira (performed by Colin Currie) and Alloy. The piece welds (get it, “welds”?) a powerful timbral imagination (watch for the foot-operated junk metals, the scrap-heap drumkit and the creative extended pan techniques) with a fluid and intuitive rhythmic sense.  You can read Mark Swed’s review,  where he extols the “wonderfully engaging variety of sounds a dozen players can get from Caribbean drums (with the help of found materials, including drums made from satellite dishes),” here. A few days before the concert, a few of the group suggested to Andy that we needed a video of the piece.  We joked that it would be just perfect to find a warehouse in which to record it, a film crew that would work for cheap, a recording engineer who knew what he was doing, and a truck (for free).  We were still joking as Andy told us all to find black t-shirts (we didn’t), still kidding as pulled into LA’s warehouse district in a borrowed truck and a rented van, and maybe only a little serious as we began pushing aside cardboard boxes of imported toys to set up the pans.  The result, as you can see, is wonderful!  

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"Numerical Phrase Inflation."  One can really tell that Fred Shapiro has gone the whole 7 yards on this etymology 

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NMC's recording of Robert Honstein's "Patter" (with the wonderful Anne Lanzilotti) is featured on I Care If You Listen's Winter 2012 Mixtape, alongside great music by Florent Ghys and Missy Mazzoli. Give it a download!

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Great piece on NMC friend Andy Akiho in preparation for his NY Phil debut this weekend at the Met and Symphony Space.  There's also a great promo video here.  Andy's music has wonderful vibrancy and imagination, and I'm not surprised at all he's getting the recognition he deserves!  You check check out New Morse Code performing Andy's 21 here.