FEATHER & STONE | First Review
Damjan Rakonjac wrote this incredible review of our new CD FEATHER & STONE for his blog: the Artificialist He totally gets it: “Wild Up is a phenomenon. It’s also an ensemble. In the span of just a few short years, Chris Rountree, the group’s founder and director, has not only created the most prominent new music collective on the West Coast (other organizations might
10 Questions for Andrew McIntosh
WORK | Andrew McIntosh about Andrew: Composer, violinist, violist, and baroque violinist Andrew McIntosh has a unique and diverse approach to music-making, prioritizing his work as a composer and focusing his performances primarily around the repertoire of compelling and experimental music from the last 800 years. He is known for being a specialist in alternate tuning systems and also for being a member of the
1,000 Facebook Likes today.
A momentous occasion. Damnit, we love you too.
Program Note | Andrew McIntosh: The Symmetry Etudes
Jim Sullivan and Brian Walsh are two very good friends of mine and we have been playing music together for 5 or 6 years in various contexts. They are both phenomenal musicians and are the reason that these crazy pieces (the Symmetry Etudes) exist. They often meet with each other once a week or so to practice tuning and other kinds of technical clarinet things and
Nick Deyoe on A New Anxiety
a new anxiety for 20 players – Nicholas DEYOE Loud. Fast. Aggressive. When Chris Rountree invited me to compose a piece for wild Up, he asked for something loud, fast, aggressive, and inspired by Slayer or Meshuggah. With styles existing at opposite ends of a particular spectrum, I took this as an opportunity to engage with forms of acoustic intensity and brutality rather than
Inch and Mile
There are 63,360 inches in a mile. At the time that I was writing this piece I was thinking a lot about the cumulative nature of human interactions. For instance, it takes thousands (or millions, rather) of little arrogant, adverse, or uncompromising actions between individuals on a daily basis over a long period of time to create a military conflict. Likewise, it takes
Prepared Piano for Kids!
Chris Kallmyer and Melinda Rice — teachers. Awesome.
Richard Valitutto talks about playing Messiaen
Richard Valitutto talks about playing Messiaen, Highland Park roosters, and being a librarian.
Ornithology Premiere: double tui
double tui piano and ‘small orchestra’ of winds and percussion ~ ~ ~ the fantasy of being mobile finds you cycling through the night to find the dawn chorus which turns out to be quite complicated as the farewell symphony {to the wondrous memory of maurice till – a fantastically enabling and generous mentor} ~ ~ ~ double tui is part of a series of compositions i’ve written
Ornithology Premiere: Andrew Bird arrangements
I am nowhere nearly as hip as anyone else associated with wild Up, including the guy who tends the bar. So when Chris contacted me about orchestrating some Andrew Bird songs I had to take an auditory crash-course through the artist’s body of work. Fortunately, being a fan of acoustic indy pop in the Elliot Smith tradition and self-overdubbing madmen like Jon Brion,
Ornithology Premieres: Bird of Paradise (in Paradise)
I was browsing through a Charlie Parker tunebook to get some ideas for the upcoming wild Up concert when the title “Bird of Paradise” caught my eye. To be honest I was originally interested because it reminded me of those amazing Planet Earth documentaries involving unique birds, but soon after the notes became attractive as well. The tune has a simple four-bar melody played
Ornithology Premieres: this nest, swift passerine
I often work with field recordings, but i don’t often work with chamber orchestras. I make recordings of rivers, trains, farms, cows, trees, wind, fog horns, church bells, traffic noise, and coffee shops. These mundane things yield the most rigorous and beautiful sounds that I use in installations, and compositions. When asked to work on a piece for wild Up, I jumped at the