Music

Reviews

Posted on Friday, Feb. 01, 2008

NewEar’s British invasion: Composers’ lips are anything but stiff

By PAUL HORSLEY
The Kansas City Star

Harrison Birtwistle’s “The Axe Manual” for piano and percussion grabs your lapels and shakes you and doesn’t let go for 25 minutes.

It is dense but ingeniously transparent, atonal but oddly melodic, and so full of fascinating rhythms that I looked down and noticed folks around me trying tap a foot to its insanely complex pulses.

Written for pianist Emanuel Ax and percussionist Evelyn Glennie in 2000, it was the centerpiece of NewEar’s concert Friday at All Souls Unitarian Universalist Church.

 

Sound Clips

What does a gamelan sound like? newEar's next concert will feature the colorful instruments of the Balinese gamelan orchestra along side traditional western instruments.

Gamelan Genta Kasturi performing Puspanjali by I. Nyoman Windha [mp3]