DON'T PANIC: 60 SECONDS FOR PIANO
Track Listing
Dan Warburton: Speed Study 1
Jonathan Katz: WENDIGO
Daniel Landau: Losing it again
Carl Faia: What if I just said …
Roger Kleier: Step out of the Car
Donal Fox: The Scream
James Baiye: Database of Desire
Roberto Andreoni: “scendi un minuto”
Brian Escriv: Mason and Dixon
Annie Gosfield: Brooklyn, October 5, 1941
Paul Beaudoin: re: dance (PNMR)
Marek Zebrowski: Ex tempore
Louis Andriessen: not [an] anfang
Christopher Culpo: Spangles
Isak Goldschneider: 42 Second Piano
Richard Brooks: Conflict of Interest
Danielle Baas: Joke
Charles Shadle: Cowboy Song
Sophie de Wit: Who asked you?
Pepe-Tonino Caravaggio: EIGHT 8
T.J. Anderson: Watermelon Revisited
Paul von Hippel: Kodaly Music Box
Eilon Aviram: NA’OU’RA (the Wedding Dance)
Jonathan Norton: 59” of Piano
Alan Frederick Shockley: cold springs branch, 10 p.m.
Moritz Eggert: Hämmerklavier XI
Derek Bermel: MEDITATION
Tuyet A. Tran: Tonal Imagery
Fritz Lauer: Slusha, for C.E.
William Bolcom: A 60-second Ballet (for chickens)
Joshua Cody: Two-Chord Warp
Joanna Bailie: GIRO 1
Martial Robert: 1’ de Tonio Kröger (op. 10)
Patricia Elizabeth Martinez: Absolutis-s
Riccardo Vaglini: PASSATEMPO
Gene Pritsker: im afraid you might ask for a fragment of my soul
Newt Hinton: Nakano-ku (à S.D.)
Ketty Nez: Moondrunk
Patrick Cahallan: xxx.rhapsody
Yoichi Togawa: prelude 1
Barbara Engel: Punch and Judy’s Waltz
Joseph Rovan: Miro Sketch: Mostly Yellow
Frederick Frahm: Sonata Moirai
Victor Ekimovsky: Jenseits des Guten und des Bösen
Alper Maral: Verschiebung
Stéphane Leach: Piano Piece for Guy
Ketzel Cotel: piece for paws
Vanessa Lann: DD (Double D)
Walter Haven: Minute Rice
Giovanni Mancuso: Saltarello for Guy
Sergio Pallante: Polis
D. Andrew Stewart: réveil
Elliott Sharp: Snaps
Robert Eidschun: Specks
Lionel Sainsbury: Prelude
Richard Carrick: Slowness
Walter Sanchez: Thinking
Atsushi Yoshinaka: HARU NO YOI – Miyabi no Uta
Atanasio Khyrsh: Parce que je le vaux bien
Lansing D. McLoskey: Theft
Review from the New York Times
ENSEMBLES that play only new music are plentiful these days, but soloists who play recitals devoted entirely to newly commissioned works are scarce enough to seem heroic or eccentric, or perhaps a bit of both.
For a soloist, after all, a specialty in new music is a double-edged sword. It is a time-honored way for players to distinguish themselves from colleagues who play only more familiar fare; yet it has its limitations as a career-building strategy, not the least of which is the disinclination of many listeners to take chances on new works and composers. There is also the danger of becoming typecast as a new-music player, a problem for musicians who also want to play recitals of standard repertory.
Still, the conservative, eclectic and openly populist trends in contemporary composition over the last couple of decades have started to erode listeners' resistance. As audiences lose their terror of new music, and the boundaries between the standard and the modern become more porous, typecasting is likely to evaporate as an issue. Guy Livingston, a 32-year-old American pianist who lives in Paris, has assembled a program of recent works that may be quirky enough to appeal to listeners who have doubts about modern musical language.
In 1995 he set out to commission 60 composers to write him works lasting a minute or less for a program that he calls ''60 Seconds for Piano.'' He ended up with about 150 newly composed miniatures, written for him by composers in Europe, Asia and North and South America, and he tends to reshuffle them -- retaining a core of about 20 works -- whenever he plays one of his ''60 Seconds'' concerts. So far, Mr. Livingston has played the program in South Africa, the Netherlands, Italy, France and Germany, and he is to play it tonight (1/21/2000) at the Miller Theater at Columbia University. The pianist argues that among its virtues is variety: a range of styles from the crashingly dissonant to the gently Minimalist are included, and a listener who doesn't like a particular work will not have to endure it for long.
''This is definitely a program of the end of the 20th century,'' Mr. Livingston said. ''Very few of these pieces could have been written in the 1960's. And yet I don't know if I would call the music avant-garde. My composer friends wrote some exciting, wild pieces, but the music doesn't necessarily have the daring and hardness -- almost hard-core edge -- that a lot of music did in the 50's and 60's. One of the things I find fascinating about the turn of the century is that that's no longer the aesthetic. Contemporary music is no longer as scary as it used to be. I find that appealing, but also somewhat surprising.''