Jacob Greenberg

I’m gearing up for a very busy winter. The end-of-year holidays were blissful–really, my favorite time to be in New York–and I was thankfully able to get a lot done. A few nice things happened, including a ten-best-list mention in Time Out Chicago. Now the whirlwind starts.

Terrestre, Claire’s new disc which I perform on and which I produced, is out in a matter of days. We give a preview event at Poisson Rouge on Tuesday the 17th, and the album is available for sale on the New Focus site immediately after. I’m really proud of this one, and Claire is simply an irreplaceable artist at the peak of her form.

And much more is on the docket…in the meantime, I’m as greedy as ever for new experiences inside and outside music. I’m following through on a resolution to check out albums I’ve forever been meaning to get around to, classical and otherwise, and there are lots of performances around New York and Chicago that I can’t wait to get to.

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A crazed September and October are finally behind me, mostly; it’s time to regroup. After a few days with Claire in North Carolina, along the Outer Banks–where we played a private concert series, booked for us by Concert Artists Guild–I realize how much connecting with the shoreline is good for my soul. I’ll be spending some time along Rockaway Beach in the next week, as I keep practicing my Debussy Etudes…and more Busoni.

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The new season’s upon me. ICE had a brilliant run of three performances of James Dillon’s Nine Rivers at the Miller Theatre this week, and the next few weeks will be rather nuts. A recording project with Tony Arnold begins next week–five opuses of Webern songs for Naxos–and in between, I’ll conduct Du Yun’s new chamber opera Angel’s Bone in Philly. A fuller-than-usual September and October, though I know I’ll make it through.

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The operetta that I wrote in fifth grade, “King Hybrid’s Court,” an homage to and, at the same time, a rip-off of Gilbert and Sullivan, was penned with the help of an early notation software program named Music Construction Set. It took a long time to input notes, but at the time I thought the playback feature was downright futuristic. Before long, I was writing a piano part for the piece which was physically impossible, but sounded completely awesome when the program played it back. I remember the synthesized piano sound very clearly.

In inputting my new Brahms transcriptions into Sibelius software, I’m realizing how far things have come. Still some stuff to get used to, but I’m slowly becoming an expert.

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The new disc is ready. I’m very proud of this one. Onwards, upwards!

Physical discs here, high-quality downloads available here. A big thank you to all!

I spent a blissful Independence Day weekend in Northampton, MA, cat-sitting and having a practice room to myself at Smith College. No performances until Mostly Mozart with ICE next month, but there’s much new repertoire to learn, solo and otherwise.

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I’m very excited for tomorrow night’s free Poisson Rouge ICElab concert with the brilliantly intuitive composer and percussionist Nathan Davis. It’ll feature The Bright and Hollow Sky, written for the group three years ago and, among our people at least, already a classic. Rebekah Heller creates sounds never before heard on the bassoon with On Speaking a Hundred Names, and I’ll play and conduct the premiere piece with soprano Tony Arnold and the ensemble, On the Nature of Thingness, from which the title of this post comes. Come one come all.

In other news, the new solo disc of Schumann and Busoni is done, at long last. Stay tuned for its actual physical appearance in two weeks.

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I’m kind of proud of this photo from today’s Times. “It was quite a night for triangle virtuoso Jacob Greenberg,” they’ll say.

But truly, it was a special performance for ICE at Alice Tully, opening the Tully Scope festival, and an amazing installation from Nathan Davis. I just wish we can do the Webern again–it was seven minutes of pure pleasure, but far too short.

I can relax a bit in the next week. Claire and I record the Boulez Sonatine at the beginning of March, and there are some new ICE education events in Brooklyn. But I’m looking forward to enjoying the city a bit, and traveling home for a day.

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In between trips here: San Diego was a wonderful week, and ICE was very lucky to work with the amazing folks at UCSD, who treated us like kings. My recital with Claire was a fun one, and we’ll do it again this week in Chicago. Now: practice, gym, teach.

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A busy January: finishing my sessions for the new solo disc, trips to San Diego and Chicago with ICE, and rehearsing, rehearsing. For our February concert in Minnesota, I’ve been asked by ICE to write the first of my Bach transcriptions for ensemble, of which there will eventually be many. And somehow, I have to make my way around all this snow in Brooklyn.

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Some good things in the last week, and I’m looking forward to what’s next. Claire and I began work on the Beethoven flute/piano Serenade, which we’ll debut in San Diego in January. ICE began its first high school residency in New York, under my direction, at Baruch College Campus High School, where ninth-graders are now composing graphic scores. And I’m finishing practice for my next Close Range show, at Klavierhaus on December 10.

For those who keep up with these things, my great friend Alexander Hurd is officially a Barihunk. I’m honored to be playing for him on the featured track.

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