An eternity since my last post, but this is a good one: my Messiaen disc with the unbelievable Tony Arnold is ready, and set for release on June 1.
It’s been a busy spring, and ICE’s tour to Paris and London last month was a fine trip. It was amazing to be recorded for the BBC, and we think the show turned out very well.
After a remarkably full summer–between Brazil, Lincoln Center, and much music with ICE–it’s unmistakably fall. The air’s clearer, more transparent, and New York’s really beautiful this week. So was Chicago, over last weekend: I was thrilled to play a solo program as a benefit for my former synagogue–some nice press is here–and now I’m in for the long haul in New York.
There was some great time away in August: Seattle, Cape Cod. But it’s nice to be settling back in.
March has been unusually busy, but some great things have come up: a tour with the amazing Amy Williams for her Cage prepared-piano project, which brought us to Boston and North Carolina, with Chicago dates to follow; and last weekend, a gig with the Philharmonic. Dohnányi was conducting. I had seen him many times in Cleveland when I was at Oberlin, and I still maintain a deep respect. It was really great to see him work from the other side.
I’m also hard at work editing Xenakis for ICE’s latest release on Mode Records, and I’m immersing myself in Kaija Saariaho’s music again, with many projects this spring and summer: ICE portraits in New York and Boston, and the New York premiere of Émilie, at this summer’s Lincoln Center Festival, for which I’ll be working one-on-one with Elizabeth Futral.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
The latest from Jacob Greenberg
