Michael Gordon’s Timber & Rushes Durham Fruit & Produce Company, Durham Saturday, April 23, 2016 On Saturday night, the Durham Fruit & Produce Company brimmed with thousands and thousands of tiny pulses. Each on its own was fairly insignificant, but the aggregate was overwhelming. This concert marked the first attempt at pairing Bang on a […]
Dan Ruccia
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Roomful of Teeth Sings the Sounds of the World
Roomful of Teeth Duke’s Baldwin Auditorium, Durham Saturday, April 30, 8 p.m., $10–$28 When I ask Brad Wells, the founder and director of New York vocal octet Roomful of Teeth, if there is a Roomful of Teeth “sound,” he just laughs. “It makes me think of the kids around town who refer to us and […]
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The Kindred Sonics of Timo Andres and Gabriel Kahane
GABRIEL KAHANE & TIMO ANDRES SATURDAY, APRIL 9 UNC’S MEMORIAL HALL, CHAPEL HILL 10;8 p.m., $10–$20 I was interviewing the young composer, pianist, and singer Gabriel Kahane on the radio when I made a mistake. I accidentally conflated him with Timo Andres, a slightly younger but certainly related composer. Kahane took it in stride. Turns […]
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The Kindred Sonics of Timo Andres and Gabriel Kahane
GABRIEL KAHANE & TIMO ANDRES SATURDAY, APRIL 9 UNC’S MEMORIAL HALL, CHAPEL HILL 10;8 p.m., $10–$20 I was interviewing the young composer, pianist, and singer Gabriel Kahane on the radio when I made a mistake. I accidentally conflated him with Timo Andres, a slightly younger but certainly related composer. Kahane took it in stride. Turns […]
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Live: UNC’s Festival on the Hill Culminates with an Outdoor Escapade
Festival on the Hill: John Luther Adams’s Sila: The Breath of the World UNC’s McCorkle Place, Chapel Hill Sunday, April 3, 2016 Standing in the middle of eighty or so musicians on Sunday afternoon, I was surprised at how soft they all sounded. It was 3:15 p.m., and I was in UNC-Chapel Hill’s McCorkle Place […]
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How Does Science Sound? UNC’s Festival on the Hill Has Some Answers.
Festival on the Hill: Music, Science, & Nature UNC’s Person Recital Hall and McCorkle Place, Chapel Hill Friday, April 1–Sunday, April 3, Free In 1893, physicist and amateur musician Max Planck, who would go on to pioneer quantum physics, made his first and only foray into musical analysis. In a paper, he argued that a […]
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Past St. Patrick’s Day: The Gloaming Rearranges Irish Tradition
The Gloaming Duke’s Baldwin Auditorium, Durham Saturday, March 26, 8 p.m., $10–$42 The story of the Irish music supergroup The Gloaming begins at an early rehearsal, with an anthology of folk songs turned randomly to page 44. Were The Gloaming a traditional Irish folk act, the song would certainly unfold in a hurry, with flute, […]
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Live: The North Carolina Symphony Nods to the Sky and the Earth—and the Electric Violin?
N.C. Symphony: Vivaldi’s Four Seasons Meymandi Concert Hall, Raleigh Saturday, March 19, 2016 Last weekend’s North Carolina Symphony concert, which the orchestra will reprise tomorrow night in Raleigh, was all about strings and the natural world. The show featured pieces that investigate natural cycles, performed by more violins than you can shake a poorly rendered […]
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Live: Deviant Septet Dances with the Devil and Duke Composers
Deviant Septet Duke’s Baldwin Auditorium, Durham Friday, March 11, 2016 Over the years, Duke Performances and the Duke University Department of Music have collaborated to bring amazing musicians to the area to collaborate with grad students in the music composition program. Sometimes the groups—Eighth Blackbird, Alarm Will Sound, the Hilliard Ensemble—read a few pieces before […]
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This Spring, Young Triangle Jazz Players Head to New York to Honor Ellington
For three days in May, two dozen Triangle-area high schoolers will venture to New York City to play jazz, or, more specifically, the music of Duke Ellington. The Triangle Youth Jazz Ensemble was just announced as one of 15 finalists for Jazz at Lincoln Center’s 21st annual Essentially Ellington High School Jazz Band Competition & […]