The last time I went to Dan Lilley’s house was for a recording session with my group, Cyanotype. It was a bright Saturday afternoon in November. I was greeted by a pair of barking schnauzers. “It’s OK,” Dan assured me. “They’ll quiet down once you start playing.” He hadn’t had the dogs before, so I […]
Dan Ruccia
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The HIP Festival Aims to Salvage Classical Music So Old Symphonies Often Forget It Exists
North Carolina HIP Music Festival Various Venues; Chapel Hill, Durham, Raleigh Saturday, Feb. 6–Sunday, Feb. 28, $20–$60 Quick: Name the oldest piece of music you’ve ever heard at an area festival. A Bill Monroe number at the World of Bluegrass in Raleigh, maybe an old-time fiddle tune in the Shakori Hills woods? Something by Jelly […]
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Live: N.C. Opera breaks Tchaikovsky out of his dense tomb
N.C. Opera: Eugene Onegin Meymandi Concert Hall Sunday, Jan. 24, 2016 We mostly know Tchaikovsky for a handful of symphonic works—ballets, symphonies, concerti and a few overtures thrown in for kicks. Those pieces are so overexposed, so drilled into our collective musical consciousness that it’s hard to approach them with anything near freshness. But the […]
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Live: Suspense and tragedy with the North Carolina Symphony
N.C. Symphony plays Andrew Norman, Beethoven and Brahms UNC’s Memorial Hall, Chapel Hill Thursday, Jan. 14, 2016 Of the three pieces on the North Carolina Symphony’s program at Memorial Hall in Chapel Hill last Thursday, only two brashly announced themselves as orchestral works. Brahms’ Tragic Overture begins with two lacerating minor chords that hint at […]
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Live: Ensemble InterContemperain extends textures and techniques in Chapel Hill
Ensemble InterContemperain UNC’s Memorial Hall, Chapel Hill Tuesday, Nov. 10–Wednesday, Nov. 11 I’m gonna geek out here for a minute about sound. It’s the only way to address properly the music that Ensemble InterContemporain (EIC) made Tuesday and Wednesday night at Memorial Hall in Chapel Hill. Director Matthias Pintscher constructed the concerts to showcase music […]
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Live: Caroline Shaw shines in Raleigh with the North Carolina Symphony
The North Carolina Symphony with Caroline Shaw Meymandi Concert Hall, Raleigh Friday, Nov. 6, 2015 Friday’s North Carolina Symphony concert was an undeniably affable affair. It began with a work that hasn’t been played by the orchestra, at least in anyone’s memory: Beethoven’s King Stephen overture, from 1811, which may be the composer’s most unabashedly […]
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This weekend: Pulitzer Prize-winning, Kanye West-collaborating N.C. native Caroline Shaw comes home for the symphony
According to some ads running on WUNC FM, this weekend’s North Carolina Symphony concerts feature Beethoven’s Eighth Symphony and a violinist named Caroline Shaw. They give no hint that Shaw is a North Carolina native, that she won the 2013 Pulitzer Prize in composition, that she’s recently been hanging out with Kanye West or that […]
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Pierre Boulez’s Ensemble InterContemporain continues to test the boundaries of classical music
Ensemble InterContemporain Tuesday, Nov. 10–Wednesday, Nov. 11, 7:30 p.m. $10–$49 Memorial Hall at UNC 114 E. Cameron Ave., Chapel Hill www.carolinaperformingarts.org 919-843-3333 When local listeners last heard from French composer Pierre Boulez in March, heor at least his compositionsempowered the gleeful demolition of the piano, the musical establishment and our way of hearing music altogether. […]
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The North Carolina Symphony’s Mission Red program explores the intersection of brass and electronics
Mission Red Thursday, Oct. 29, 9 p.m. $13–$15 Kings 14 W. Martin St., Raleigh 919-833-1091 www.kingsbarcade.com Playing with electronics isn’t forgiving,” explains trumpeter Alex Fioto. “You press Play, and that’s it.” Indeed, until the last two decades, it was very difficult to control and manipulate electronic sounds in real time. Composers created fixed tape parts […]
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Live: With the N.C. Symphony, Sarah Kirkland Snider’s Hiraeth thrums with the persistence of memory
N.C. Symphony: Sarah Kirkland Snider’s Hiraeth Meymandi Concert Hall, Raleigh Friday, September 25, 2015 In April, the North Carolina Symphony played three songs from Sarah Kirkland Snider’s Unremembered, just as she was putting the finishing touches on Hiraeth, a commission the body premiered last week. Unremembered is all about exploding genres, bringing Van Dyke Parks […]