summer in the city

I'm very excited about the first of the Music at Close Range concerts, which is being planned for mid-August. Some stuff I've played before, and there are some new things too: I'm hard at work on the Stravinsky neoclassical Serenade in A, new to me, which was music for a recent dance by Mark Morris.

ICE was busy with the Bang on a Can marathon this past weekend, and it was a real experience--our first concert for a huge audience on a rock-concert scale. The indie rock band Yo La Tengo "opened" for us, which we thought was quite a coup. David Lang's piece Men, which ICE played to close the marathon concert, is a forty-minute score written in very broad strokes. It's for an eleven-person ensemble with solo trombone, and the two pianists trade roles, alternately playing long chords in the bass and a tremolo single note in the treble. Cory Smythe, my ICE piano comrade, played the other part.