Q2 streams live webcast of historic new music event
On Sunday, April 11, Q2, Classical 105.9 WQXR’s contemporary music stream, will present a live audio webcast of the historic first public concert from 110 Livingston Street, the future second home of Brooklyn-based performance venue ISSUE Project Room.
Starting at 11:30am, Q2 – in partnership with WNYC Culture – will provide a live audio webcast of a performance of Morton Feldman’s String Quartet No. 2, which will be played in its entirety. Lasting more than six continuous hours, the landmark composition has been called “a disorienting, transfixing experience that repeatedly approache[s] and touche[s] the sublime,” by Alex Ross of the New Yorker. The webcast will be available at www.wqxr.org/Q2 and at http://culture.wnyc.org/.
This free, pre-renovation, candlelit opening concert will be hosted by vocalist and performance artist Helga Davis, WQXR’s late-night host, and will showcase new music stalwarts Ne(x)tworks, who invite the audience – both in person and online – to come and go as they please. Contemporary music fans around the globe will be able to hear the groundbreaking work, which has never before been broadcast live, beginning at 11:30am EST and concluding around 5:30 in the evening.
“Exposing experimental music to larger and more diverse audiences was an important mission of our late Founder and Artistic Director, Suzanne Fiol,” says Steve Wax, ISSUE Project Room’s Board Chair. “This rare performance at our future home will provide a glimpse into the thrilling and superior programming that ISSUE will continue to provide to its audience and the community for years to come. The fact that WQXR’s Q2 shares this vision, and will broadcast this unique and unconventional performance to the corners of the earth, makes us proud to partner with them.”
Limor Tomer, WQXR’s Executive Producer for Music, comments on the partnership: “The event marks a pivotal moment not only for the new WQXR and Q2, but also for the community of active, exploratory and scene-changing artists and ensembles who have already found in the Gowanus venue of ISSUE Project Room a supportive environment and like-minded community of artists, administrators and audiences. We are thrilled to partner with ISSUE Project Room and to bring the work to an international audience.”
A member of the experimental New York School of composers that includes John Cage and Earle Brown, Morton Feldman was a pioneer of indeterminate music and a major figure in 20th-century composition. His String Quartet No. 2 (1983), which incorporates his signature free rhythms, muted pitches, and quiet and slowly unfolding music, dates from his period of experimentation with works of marathon length. Being the most extreme example, the second quartet has been performed in its entirety only a few times. The first of these, at Greenwich Village’s Cooper Union in 1999, was by the FLUX Quartet, which then featured two future members of Ne(x)tworks: founding director, violinist Cornelius Dufallo, and violist Kenji Bunch. “The focus at the time [of the premiere in 1999] seemed to be on how we were going to play for six hours without stopping,” Dufallo recalls. “As we immersed ourselves in the music, however, this began to change: we found that duration is by no means the most interesting aspect of this work. The ‘athleticism’ became more of a secondary concern to us. In this work, duration acts as a canvas, on which Feldman paints a stunningly beautiful encomium to the eternal marriage of sound and time. The piece must exist on a large scale in order to portray this relationship.”
Formed in 2002 in New York City, Ne(x)tworks specializes in new music by its own members, the New York School composers, their European counterparts, and more. The ensemble’s debut recording, Earle Brown: Tracer, is available on Mode Records. In a Time Out New York profile of the group, Steve Smith reflected:
“One need only read accounts of the spontaneity that Mozart and Beethoven brought to their concerts, or remember that Chopin and Liszt were major touring attractions, to find proof that composition, improvisation, and interpretation were once inextricably linked activities. The members of young New York new-music ensemble Ne(x)tworks are dedicated to reasserting that old synergy: each is a skilled performer, an inventive composer, and a capable improviser.”
ISSUE Project Room aims to provide an open and versatile environment where both established and emerging artists can conduct, exhibit, and perform new and site-specific work according to their respective visions, and it has curated more than 750 performances to date. As actor/director Steve Buscemi comments, “It’s rare to find spaces that are totally committed to the artist … [ISSUE Project Room] reminds us of the great performance spaces that we loved when we were doing performance work and experimental theater in the 80s in the East Village. To have it here in Brooklyn, where we live with our family, is a godsend.”
In 2008, ISSUE Project Room won the bid for a 20-year, rent-free lease to occupy the landmark theater at 110 Livingston Street, an architecturally significant (McKim, Mead & White, 1926) and stunningly beautiful 4,800-square foot performance space located in the former New York City Department of Education headquarters in Downtown Brooklyn. Once renovated, this space will offer opportunities to reach a wider audience, implement new programs, and advance Brooklyn’s place as a cultural epicenter.
“Ne(x)tworks is thrilled to present Feldman’s masterful Second String Quartet at ISSUE Project Room as our artistic endorsement of their fabulous new concert venue [at 110 Livingston],” says Dufallo. “The musical community of New York City has been eagerly awaiting the opening of this performance space.”
Q2 presents a live audio webcast of:
ISSUE Project Room’s inaugural concert @ 110 Livingston
Sunday, April 11, 11.30am EST
Ne(x)tworks performs Morton Feldman’s String Quartet No. 2
www.wqxr.org/q2 and http://culture.wnyc.org
WNYC Radio is New York’s premier public radio franchise, comprising WNYC FM, WNYC AM, and WQXR, as well as www.wnyc.org and www.wqxr.org. As America’s most listened-to AM/FM public radio stations, reaching more than one million listeners every week, WNYC extends New York City’s cultural riches to the entire country on-air and online, and presents the best national offerings from networks National Public Radio, Public Radio International, American Public Media, and the British Broadcasting Company. WNYC 93.9 FM broadcasts a wide range of daily news, talk, cultural and music programming, while WNYC AM 820 maintains a stronger focus on breaking news and international news reporting. Classical 105.9 WQXR is New York City’s sole 24-hour classical music station, presenting new and landmark classical recordings as well as live concerts from the Metropolitan Opera and the New York Philharmonic, among other New York City venues, immersing listeners in the city’s rich musical life. In addition to its audio content, WNYC produces content for live, radio and web audiences from The Jerome L. Greene Performance Space, the station’s street-level multipurpose, multiplatform broadcast studio and performance space. For more information about WNYC, visit www.wnyc.org.
Q2, available at www.wqxr.org/Q2, is an online music stream dedicated to exploring contemporary composers and the modern classical music movement. Q2 offers not only recordings by some of the most passionate and plugged-in musical minds of today, but also notable live events from venues around New York, including WNYC’s newly-opened broadcast studio and performance venue, The Jerome L. Greene Performance Space, and (L)e Poisson Rouge. Q2 may also be accessed through iTunes or on WQXR 105.9’s HD Channel 2.
For further information, please contact:
Jennifer Houlihan, WNYC/WQXR: [email protected], (646) 829-4497
Glenn Petry, 21C Media Group: [email protected], (212) 625-2038
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