Serial Underground
“the subversive nightclub series” (Time Out NY)

Sunday, December 4 6:00 pm (doors open at 5:45)
Jed Distler, host
@ The Cornelia Street Café
29 Cornelia Street bet. (6th and 7th Ave.), NYC (map)

Dear Friends,

Please join me on December 4th, 2011 for “Double Trouble”, presented by Serial Underground, hosted by Jed Distler and Composers Collaborative, inc.

This concert will pair me with the wonderful violinist/composer ANA Milosavljevic who will perform a set of solos and improvisations.

I will be joined in my portion of the concert by the always brilliant Jed Distler on piano for the premieres of my compositions Giuffre Sketches and The Love We Made, as well as performances of some of my other works.

Here are the program notes to Giuffre Sketches:

Giuffre Sketches is dedicated to the memory of my teacher, jazz musician and composer Jimmy Giuffre, who passed in 2008. It uses motives and phrases from some of Jimmy’s lesser-known compositions as source material for both the written and improvisational elements. The work also uses two well-known pieces that are interwoven to create a structural element: the folk song The Train and the River, and Jimmy Van Heusen’s Darn That Dream. Both of these pieces have special meanings for me, most especially the Van Heusen, which was the basis for one of my first conceptual epiphanies while I was working with Jimmy.

The Love We Made was one of the works that I composed during my residency at ARTErra in Portugal this past summer. It is a jazz ballad, influenced by Wayne Shorter, Weather Report, and even the band Styx.

I am delighted to be a resident artist at Serial Underground for the 3rd season, and even more delighted to announce that I have been appointed curator of the 2012-13 season. There will be more on this later when the time is right.

I hope you can join us on the 4th of December!

Thank you again for your support!

Sincerely,

Demetrius

Rounded third, gunning for home…

[Non-U.S. readers: this is a baseball reference...it basically means that almost done with my endeavors...one of these days, I may very well reference the 'Infield Fly Rule'...be wary]

The last couple of weeks at my residency have been focused on preparing for upcoming concerts as much as writing and editing my music. The last endeavor to prepare for was today’s concert with Benoit Granier and Paul Miller (aka DJ Spooky) in which we combined traditional Chinese music, experimental improvisation, and new technology. I also premiered my new work for solo saxophone, entitled Soho Sophisticate, which I wrote during my residency. It was a successful afternoon, so I am pleased with the results.

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I’ll tell you, though: one of the great perks of being in residence at Flushing Town Hall has been the vibrant visual and performing arts presentations that they give year-round. I was very lucky to be given a ticket for the NEA Jazz Masters concert on Friday night in which I got to see a number of great musicians whom I had never actually seen live. This concert featured saxophonists Jimmy Heath and Frank Wess, and pianist Barry Harris. These mainstays of the jazz firmament really presented an amazing concert. It’s funny: when I listen to ‘classic’ jazz–basically that style of the 1950′s which has been put onto a pedestal and unfortunately over-copied in recent decades in every college in the US–I have the same reaction as to when I’m listening to other ‘period’ music, like Baroque. It is wonderful in all of these instances to hear great masters of that given music play, which this concert was. I mean, heck, these guys *created* that style, so they have every right to play it to their heart’s desire. And they kept it *fresh*, which is dramatically important, especially when playing tried and true standards by Armstrong and Ellington. I was especially impressed with Frank Wess’ playing, which I really didn’t know as well as Heath’s. The almost 90 year-old Wess, was helped to the stage and to be seated, but he played some really great jazz solos on tenor sax and flute. I can only hope that I’m still doing it all that well by that age…

It does, however, give me ideas about going full-throttle with a ‘classic’ jazz quartet project (tenor sax, piano, bass, drums), but doing only my music. As you recall, I wrote a number of tunes/charts for that combination while at ARTErra in Portugal this summer…still deciding exactly what to do with them and where to go with them…most of them (as I now look at the music a few months after writing it all) could be expanded into more of a ‘progressive’ style that I am known for–if you remember from my summer blogs, these pieces were rather ‘fusionesque.’  A lot of my more ‘classical’ works can–with a wee bit of tweaking–easily be rewritten into having more of a progressive jazz vibe…food for thought…

…speaking of food for thought, I am going to miss lunch in Flushing over the weekends…may have to escape there at least one day a week for my Chinese food fix…

The next residency blog will be my last for this project, since this is my last week there. It may happen next week, or I may wait until I organize my final report to Con Edison/Exploring the Metropolis and post that…we’ll see how inspired I am

Until soon,

Demetrius

October to December…the busiest time of probably my life. Between teaching, performances (and their preparation), composition deadlines, redoing my website, writing various applications, and keeping up with general publicity it’s been quite a couple of months…thus continues my residency work, which in many ways has been a Godsend in keeping me above water. Mainly, it’s been great for writing and practicing, but I have at times used the space and solitude for my other more mundane work.

[Note: I promised never to use the time for college-related work, regardless of how far behind I am...and I haven't]

Just to catch you all up, we had the Best Buddies Carnegie Hall show on Thursday where I was soloist, premiered my composition for solo saxophone Around Monk-night (which I wrote immediately before the residency began), and had the debut of William Susman OCTET. We played a great, full audience and raised much money for the charity. Now, begins the preparation for the next series of concerts…

Next up on the block is my collaboration with Benoit Granier, Ding Xue’er, and Paul Miller at the Soho Gallery for Digital Art on November 20th. Here is the information on the project. It will be on this concert/presentation where I will premiere my new work Soho Sophisticate, which I wrote a couple of weeks ago here at the residency. Maybe I’ll play it while I’m live processed through laptop/smartphone…we’ll see how I feel at the time. Could be a trip.

This week here, I started preparing the music for my annual solo concert as a resident artist of the Serial Underground new music series, created by the Composers Collaborative, inc. at the Cornelia Street Cafe on December 4th. I’ll be playing all of my own music, including the premieres of The Love We Made and Giuffre Sketches. Giuffre Sketches will be the main work, three times the length of anything else on the program. The piece was scheduled for premiere on last year’s show, but had to be postponed due to a colleague’s illness. It’s a big piece, and I play multiple instruments on it: clarinet, tenor sax, and baritone sax. I’ll go into more detail about the piece and its significance on a later post (when I promote that concert) but the piece is a dedication to my late teacher Jimmy Giuffre and those three instruments are the ones he played the most. The tenor sax and clarinet are what I tend to play the most now, too, but this season its just been soprano and alto saxophones (save for some tenor and flute stuff early on), so my main horns have been on the back burner, but easily recoverable; considering that the winter will be heavily clarinet, this is a good thing. The baritone sax–which is the horn I played almost exclusively in my 20s–and I have had a rough relationship in recent years. It doesn’t take too long to come back, like an old friend, but it doesn’t feel as automatic as it once did, plus it’s really heavy for me now, so it’s awkward to play. Practicing it today was nice, but it did hurt some. The wonderful and talented Jed Distler and I will be rehearsing the two pieces (mentioned above) tomorrow, so we’ll see how it all goes. I do have to drag the arsenal of equipment all the way to the West Village for rehearsal, but that”s alright. The piece needed to be for these instruments.

One of the main projects I have had to accomplish this fall is the redesign of my website. This is also in the final stages, but has taken much work and time. Thankfully, I’ve smartened up enough to hire a web designer to facilitate the changes, but still…I spent a good deal of time this weekend working on mp3s, gallery photos, and design lay-out. Like the practicing and the re-acquaintance with the baritone sax, it had to be done…I’m glad I had the space–and the quiet solitude–to do it.

I will say, however that the China project(s) are going full steam, and that many other facets of this will be coming into fruition in the next couple of weeks, including potential meetings with more traditional instrumentalists…so stay tuned…

Until soon,

Demetrius

Please visit the original website posting here:

http://biz.ifeng.com/v/special/lephone/

News and information
Concert + demonstration
@ Soho Gallery for Digtal Art
November 20th from 2-4 pm
Address: 138 Sullivan St., New York, NY 10012

This event is part of a world wide traveling project of “China doer, Action at Once-Fun to be a doer” sponsored by Lenovo Lephone S2 , we invited musicians from different areas to work together to realize a new experimental concert at Soho Gallery for Digital Art at 2 pm. , 20th, Nov. in New York City.
During that time you will experience a new feeling of music produced by both real instruments and phone application instruments.
You will see how you can phone-remix music and become a DJ.
Without any effort you can realize the dream to connect with established composers and play music with them, jamming on your own phone, how cool is that!
There will be interactive games on stage, meetings with established composers, players, DJs and researchers from New York and Beijing.
Free and open to the public.

People:

Paul D. Miller aka DJ SPOOKY is a composer, multimedia artist and writer. His written work has appeared in The Village Voice, The Source, Artforum and The Wire amongst other publications. Miller’s work as a media artist has appeared in a wide variety of contexts such as the Whitney Biennial; The Venice Biennial for Architecture (2000); the Ludwig Museum in Cologne, Germany; Kunsthalle, Vienna; The Andy Warhol Museum in Pittsburgh and many other museums and galleries. His work New York Is Now has been exhibited in the Africa Pavilion of the 52 Venice Biennial 2007, and the Miami/Art Basel fair of 2007. Miller’s first collection of essays, entitled Rhythm Science came out on MIT Press 2004. His book Sound Unbound, an anthology of writings on electronic music and digital media was recently released by MIT Press. Miller’s deep interest in reggae and dub has resulted in a series of compilations, remixes and collections of material from the vaults of t he legendary Jamaican label, Trojan Records.

Ding Xueer is born in the Quancheng Jinan. she started to study gushing at the age of 5 at the Mr./Mrs. Shi Congyu Jinan Vanguard Song-and- dance troupe Yan Wei. At 9 years old Ding Xueer obtain her first title: the Jinan “the healthy, studious, and helpful student” award. In 2000 Ding Xueer went on study with the renown gushing professor Professor Li Meng to study. In 2001she entered the Middle school attached to the Central Conservatory of Music. during that time of her studies, She continuously obtains “the specialized outstanding scholarship. In 2007 Ding Xueer was accepted at the the Central Conservatory of Music.

Benoit Granier is a French Composer living in Beijing (China), he studied composition with Arturo Gervasony, Guy Rebel, Donnacha Dennehy, Roger Doyle as well as Fergus Johnston at Trinity College Dublin where he completed a PhD degree in Computer Music and Composition in 2007.
When moving down to Beijing, He founded the Timi Modern Music ensemble, Beijing renown amplified new music Band, in 2008. Among the pieces premiered by the Timi were work by emerging composers such as Tony Deritis, John Mallia, Gerry Chenoweth as well as Benoit Granier. The work that the composer did with the performers open new possibilities in music and introduce himself to the notion of music and culture…

Award winning composer and performer Demetrius Spaneas travels the world as a musical ambassador, connecting classical, jazz, and traditional music throughout the US, Eastern Europe, and Asia to create international dialogue through artistic collaboration. He has worked with such diverse artists as John Cage, Ray Charles, and Kyrgyz traditional musicians, and has been featured soloist and composer at major concert venues and international festivals in the three continents.
He currently has two solo recordings on Capstone Records, When Wind Comes to Sparse Bamboo (2003) and From a Far-off World (2006), both of which will be rereleased by the Naxos Online Library. In 2010 he released Sfumato, a collection of improvisations with vocalist Galina Parfenova under his own label, DSM.

THE SOHO GALLERY FOR DIGITAL ART is the “heartchild” of John Ordover, son of the late lawyer Jerry Ordover, a leading figure in the Modern Art community. His father’s clients over the years included artists such as Roy L ichtenstein, Frank Stella, Richard Serra, Nam Jun Paik and preeminent gallery owner Leo Castelli. “Growing up around the brilliant, spontaneous and off-beat crowd my father introduced me to,” Ordover said, “that creative energy drove my work as a writer and editor; opening a gallery is simply coming full circle.”

Mr. Ordover is also open to the idea of installations created specifically for the gallery and to other creative uses of the space. “We don’t accept any limitations, ” Mr. Ordover said. “Beyond our primary function as a gallery, we intend to use our facilities as a screening room for short films, a stage for experimental theater and other such cultural events — we want to make ourselves into a suppor tive center for the entire SoHo cultural community.”

Links

Dj Spooky:
http://www.djspooky.com/
Demetrius Spaneas;
http://www.dspaneas.com/
Benoit Granier
http://www.granierb.net/
Ding Xue’er
http://www.granierb.net/timi/dingxueer.html/
Soho Gallery
http://sohodigart.com/

Well, here I am; rounding third on my residency, heading for home…I may just slide in under the tag, too…

I finished Autumn Yearning…completely…editing done. It was very good to leave it for a couple of weeks. There were a few measures of music that really weren’t doing it for me, some that I wrote 2 months ago…a little bit of distance really does makes a grand difference.

Editing is always the hard part. The music writing, albeit tumultuous at times, is the enjoyable and creative part. The editing is, well, editing…adding phrase markings and articulations and dynamics…basically making the music practical for performance.

But…when editing, you can actually rethink quite a bit. case in point, if I weren’t editing after the fact of composing, I may not have come up with the ways to fix the measures I didn’t like. So again, distance combined with precision has merits.

However, unfortunately, I am only able to come here one day this week–today–due to other professional obligations. Tomorrow, I am playing with the Broadway/”Glee” star Idina Menzel at the Tilles Performing Arts Center. This will be an afternoon/evening affair where we rehearse in the afternoon (our only one, of course) and perform that evening. Sunday, we have the first real rehearsal with OCTET for our Carnegie Hall debut on Thursday, which is the same concert that I will be a soloist on and premiering my Around Monk-night.

It’ll be a fun week!

But that’s not the end of my residency project work for the week…no sir…it just won’t be happening at the residency. I have finally connected with Paul Harrigan, the gentleman from Dublin who will be the Irish pipes soloist for our concert in Beijing in March where we will premiere my Roots Music with the TIMI ensemble. I will also be meeting with folks from the New York State Council on the Arts who are connecting me with other Chinese musicians based in NYC (more on this next time). Now comes the time where I start taking the various elements that I have been exploring and will begin to construct Roots Music.

Now the fun begins…rounding third…that outfielder has got a good arm, but I think I can beat him

Until soon,

Demetrius