Numinous The Music of Joseph C. Phillips Jr. |
The Numinosum Blog
The schedule for the 2012 BAM Next Wave Festival was just announced yesterday and this year the Festival will include Numinous! I have been commissioned by the Next Wave Festival to compose an original score to the newly restored silent film, The Loves of Pharaoh by director Ernst Lubitsch. Numinous will perform the score live with the film at the new Steinberg Screen at BAM's Harvey Theater. We are deeply honored to be apart of the one of the preeminent festivals in the country, especially in this its 30th year. This has been in the works for a while now so I'm happy to (finally!) share the news. Here's the info: October 18, 19, 20, 2012 7:30 pm The Harvey Theater 651 Fulton Street Brooklyn Academy of Music Tickets: $25, $35 Subway: 2, 3, Q, B, to Atlantic C to Lafayette N to Pacific Street Film runs about 100 minutes, with no intermission Tickets are available at www.bam.org/nextwavefestival. There will be an Artist Talk on Friday October 19 after the showing, featuring myself and Thomas Bakels of Alpha-Omega Digital GmbH, who did a wonderful job with the restoration (they also did the digital work on the 2001 and 2010 restorations of Fritz Lang's Metropolis). Released in 1922, this film was Lubitsch's last silent film in Germany before coming to Hollywood; in fact, this film was a calling card to Hollywood to show he could direct spectacle and "a cast of thousands" as well as D.W. Griffith in his infamous influential The Birth of a Nation (1915). Like that film, as well as later epic films such as Fred Niblo's Ben-Hur (1925) or Cecille B. Demille's The Ten Commandments (1923), The Loves of Pharaoh is grand in scope and ambition and shows a master director's skill even though it was a few years away from the famous musicals and comedies that cemented him and his "Lubitsch touch" in the pantheon of great Hollywood "Golden Age" directors from the 1930s and 1940s. (photo credits: top photo, scene from The Loves of Pharaoh from Alpha-Omega; bottom photo, German poster from IMDb) POSTED BY NUMINOUS AT 3:47 PM
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While Black Mamba was the most celebrated and lethal member of DeVAS (Deadly Viper Assassination Squad), there was actually one "forgotten" member who was more funky and kickasstastic: Red Mamba. Sometimes know as Ana Milosavljevic, Red Mamba debuts May 18th, 2012 at the Tribeca New Music Festival during an event entitled, The Red Viper Project. While usually operating under stealth conditions, some clandestine video footage of Red Mamba in action has been uncovered. Be warned, after viewing you might feel the urge to seek out Red Mamba on May 18th at The Cell Theater 338 West 23rd Street (btw. 8th & 9th Ave.) 8 pm to witness her kickasstery for yourself.
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"Beauty is unbearable, driving us to despair, offering us for a minute the glimpse of an eternity that we should like to stretch out over the whole of time."-Albert Camus
POSTED BY NUMINOUS AT 6:23 PM Outer Space from Sander van den Berg on Vimeo. The Tribeca New Music Festival line-up was announced recently and while there are many wonderful performances you should check out, there is one that is of special significance to the humble host: violinist Ana Milosavljevic's The Red Viper project on May 18th, 2012 at The Cell Theatre (338 W. 28th Street (between 8th & 9th Ave.) in NYC). Among a number of works Ana will be performing on her viper, she will be premiering a work she commissioned from me called Red Mamba. While I will have a post about my piece as we get closer to the premiere, let's just say it has something to do with the movie Kill Bill... Tickets go on sale March 20th. POSTED BY NUMINOUS AT 8:56 PM Sold out! If you didn't get tickets to our 321 Band concert this afternoon Sunday February 12 at 2:30pm at P.S. 321 (180 7th Avenue in Park Slope, Brooklyn) there's always next year... POSTED BY NUMINOUS AT 10:00 AM "The talent’s there, but sometimes the opportunity isn’t. It takes the right circumstances and timing..." I like this quote because it can be true about many of those, whether in athletics, music, or society, who are often overlooked or "invisible" to the gatekeepers of influence and power. POSTED BY NUMINOUS AT 9:58 AM Here is an interesting Q&A in the Village Voice with Philip Glass on "Black Music and African-American History." It's part of a series that's going on about Glass: "Life as an East Village Voice."
POSTED BY NUMINOUS AT 9:34 AM Last night ended a quite successful run of the project FIVE POINTS with Pulse and Take Dance! Thanks to all that came to Merce Cunningham Studios to fill the house each night. Here's a good write-up with photos from Oberon's Grove, also here's a link to an interview I gave to Sequenza 21 about FIVE POINTS.
POSTED BY NUMINOUS AT 1:23 PM THURSDAY, DECEMBER 8, 2011 We made it! We reached our Kickstarter goal, so thank you to all who are helping to make our Pulse-TAKE Dance collaboration happen. Now, if you haven't bought your tickets, they are selling fast so you might want to click this link so you don't miss out... FIVE POINTS TAKE Dance + Pulse: Part II FEATURING COMPOSERS: Jamie Begian, Melissa Dunphy, Joseph C. Phillips Jr., JC Sanford, Joshua Shneider MUSICIANS: Hannah Levinson, Jacob Garchik, Ana Milosavljevic, Chris Reza, Mariel Roberts CHOREOGRAPHERS: Takehiro Ueyama, Jill Echo, Kile Hotchkiss, Kristen Arnold, Milan Misko DANCERS: Kristen Arnold, Brynt Beitman, John Eirich, Jillian Hervey, Kile Hotchkiss, Gina Ianni, Cliinton Edward Martin, Sarah Mettin, Milan Misko, Nana Tsuda Misko, Lynda Senisi, Kristi Tornga and Marie Zvosec. Where: Merce Cunningham Dance Studios, 55 Bethune Street, NYC When: DEC 15-16 @ 9:00PM DEC 17th @ 8:00PM Tickets: $20/$15 Students & Seniors Can purchase tickets in advance only, HERE POSTED BY NUMINOUS AT 9:05 AM Pulse, the composer's federation I lead, will present "FIVE POINTS" on December 15-17, 2011 at the historic Merce Cunningham Studios in NYC. Tickets are ONLY available in advance, which you can get here. Our second collaboration with Take Dance, FIVE POINTS "showcases an omnivorous collection of 'synaesthesia', i.e. an exploration of the potential mash-up of the senses including touch, sound, vision, etc…" Representing five distinct points of view, each piece is by five different choreographers of TAKE Dance (Kristen Arnold, Jill Echo, Kile Hotchkiss, Milan Misko, and Takehiro Ueyama) set to new post-classical music by the five different composers of Pulse (Jamie Begian, Melissa Dunphy, Joseph C. Phillips, Jr.,JC Sanford, and Joshua Shneider) performed by five musicians of Pulse (Chris Reza, woodwinds; Ana Milosavljevic, violin/Viper; Hannah Levinson, viola; Mariel Roberts, cello; Jacob Garchik, accordion, laptop, trombone). From our press release: FIVE POINTS is a true marriage of contemporary dance and music inspired by the senses and synesthesia – people’s different perceptions on reality. In Summer Collection 2012, choreographer Takehiro Ueyama pairs up with composer Melissa Dunphy to examine the deceiving sense of vision. Influenced by Edvard Munch’s “The Scream” painting, it takes a look at the blurry line between beauty and terror. Choreographer Kile Hotchkiss brings together six female dancers in The Substance of Things Unseen, an exploration of the science of Cymatics, the visual and physical impact of sound upon matter. The music of Joseph C.Phillips, Jr., creates "adventitious synesthesia", altering personal perceptions and amplifying an integrated state of mind. The third piece, From Over Here, brings together choreographer Milan Misko and composer Jamie Begian. Instead of probing the actual senses, they’re probing the brain and how it processes sensations out of normal context such as mystery, confusion and enlightening analogies. In Views from the Inside, composer JC Sanford questions the universal truth through the usage of a “sonic palette.” Staged for seven dancers and choreographed by Jill Echo, the recurring ‘sonic palette’ evolves, leaving the dancers to question their own individual truths. Finally, unclearly departed investigates phantom limb syndrome - the sensation of an amputated or missing limb still being attached to the body and capable of moving. Featuring choreography by KristenArnold and music by Joshua Shneider, the piece delves into the intersection of science and art and the aspects of human resilience in response to a physical change. We need your help to make this project happen. We have a Kickstarter fundraising campaign that we are trying to raise $4000 to allow us to realize this incredible project (check out the great video above). Hope you can help and/or hope to see you at one of the shows! POSTED BY NUMINOUS AT 8:45 PM
This Thursday my school P.S. 321 will suffer a most mellifluous invasion of cello. This is all in preparation of Friday's Neighborhood Classics performance by Zuill Bailey of selections from J.S. Bach's Cello Suites.
Now I've mention this before, but cello is my favorite string instrument so I'm going to enjoy this musical assault thoroughly. A number of cellists will be coming to the school to perform selections from the Cello Suites for various classes throughout the school day (I'll even have some come by my kindergarten music classes; the kids will be excited to see and hear the cello especially since we are talking about different family of instruments at the moment and since my cello skills are a little...rusty, it will be great having a professional demo rather than me). Now some of the cellists coming to the school are old friends: such as Jody Redhage (who has a great new album out) or Eric Schoen-Rene (who was at some of the first Numinous rehearsals many, many years ago); one, Laura Metcalf, I know of, but haven't worked with yet. The rest are new to me, but I look forward to meeting: Sang Yhee, Patrick McGuire, Alex Green, Caleigh Drane, Analissa C. Martinez, Audrey Nadeau, Claire Bryant, Alice Levine, Karen Ouzounian, Martha Siegel, Kieran Campbell, as well as a few cello students from the Special Music School. This is going to be a fun event and if I have a chance I'll try to post a few photos from the cello surge... POSTED BY NUMINOUS AT 2:03 PM Monday night September 12th, I attended the CD release concert of cellist and vocalist Jody Redhage's newly released recording of minutiae and memory (New Amsterdam Records NWAM031) at DROM on Avenue A on the Lower East Side. Jody is a "cello emeritus" with Numinous, having been in a number of performances over the years as well as on the Vipassana recording. Her emeritus status comes as she has been increasingly in demand and out of town, for example, playing with Grammy-winner Esperanza Spalding on her world tour. But I digress, so seeing how back in 2008 I was at Jody's All Summer in a Day CD release concert at the old Galapagos Art Space, I believe (which happened to be one of the first release and public shows of New Amsterdam Records), it seemed fitting to hear how Jody's stirring mix of cello and voice has developed since that earlier recording. The night opened, not with Jody, but with Corey Dargel and Cornelius Dufallo and a set of art pop songs for voice and violin. If you don't know Corey's music, you probably should check out this feature in the New York Times earlier this year. Going in, I was a bit skeptical about how intriguing voice and violin really could be. But with Cornelius doing a great job of electronically looping various motifs/riffs and then subsequently playing other figures over them/with them, as well as Corey's always compelling and droll words and vocal delivery, I felt the instrumentation complemented the compositions wonderfully and provided a smooth transition into Jody's solo set. Just after intermission, as Jody was setting up music on her stand, the house music died out and clearly something quite different started to play over the PA. The audience did get quieter, although I think everyone was trying to figure what was going on. Some were kind of listening and others continued with their intermission activities. Once the piece was over however, Jody mentioned that it was Anna Clyne's "paint box" from of minutiae and memory that was played as a sort of prequel to the live performance. Jody proceeded to perform all the compositions from the new recording although not in album order. All of the pieces fit in a more somber, contemplative emotional zone and I could clearly see how some kind of visuals or lighting design coupled with the compositions would make for an even more powerful performance experience (maybe something similar to Maya Beiser's World to Come). As it was, I enjoyed most of the music and Jody's playing was passionate, heartfelt, and well-done. As she mentioned at the end of the show, all of the pieces on the new album spoke to her strongly and that love came through beautifully in her playing and singing. Some compositions featured Jody's signature (singing while playing the cello) and a few pieces were just for cello alone or cello with electronic backing tracks. At the halfway mark of the concert I thought my favorite piece was going to end up being Missy Mazzoli's "A Thousand Tongues." I'm a fan of Missy's work (her group Victorie's album Cathedral City is one I get continual listening pleasure from) and love how she subtly mixes electronic textures in acoustic environments in many of her compositions and this piece was no exception. This quote from composer Sarah Kirkland Snider sums up what I like about Missy's work in general and "A Thousand Tongues" specifically: [Missy's music] inhabits a weird emotional space that's dark and anxious…. there are so many odd notes and clashing chords…. there isn't a lot of traditional goal-directed motion, but rather this feeling of a pot forever on the boil — yet you're left feeling like you've gone somewhere. While I enjoyed "A Thousand Tongues" thoroughly, it was a later piece, "Static Line" by Wil Smith, that ended as my favorite of the night. From an opening with drone-like sliding figures that evoked a similar sonic world of Michael Harrison's just intonation drones to a later motivic sensibility that vaguely reminded me of South Indian classical vocal writing to a beautifully elegiac melodic build-up toward the end, I was completely engaged in "Static Line" and look forward to exploring it, as well as all the other compositions, in more depth on the actual recording. (photo credit: Joseph C. Phillips Jr.) POSTED BY NUMINOUS AT 8:00 AM
The past two years I have posted about my experience on September 11, 2001 and the subsequent composition, The Spell of a Vanishing Loveliness, that came from that experience. Recently there was that big (in the new music community at least) controversy of the cover of the new Steve Reich recording of his composition WTC 9/11 which showed a slightly darken image of one of the planes about to strike one of the towers; such was the uproar that Nonesuch Records decided to remove the image from the recording. Despite some beautiful and powerful moments (the sections with the singing of the Psalms and Exodus were especially riveting), overall I was not particularly moved by WTC 9/11 when I heard the NYC premiere at Carnegie Hall on April 30th. Some of the reasons for my ambivalence can be read in some of my tweets after the Reich cover photo went live:
C'mon @NonesuchRecords, yes we know the @stevereich piece is about Sept. 11 don't hit us over the head with "9/11!" sanctification #subtlety 20 Jul I wasn't thrilled w/"WTC 9/11" when heard @carnegiehall, because, for me, it represented precisely what having that photo on the cover means 20 Jul not against Sept. 11 pieces per se just when they draw too much attention as 9/11! pieces (ala Rudy "noun, verb, 9/11" Giuliani)#endofrant 20 Jul As far as my response, The Spell of a Vanishing Loveliness is not about September 11 but rather a reflection of the reality that even in horrific experiences, there can be found beauty and knowing this is a part of being human. With all of the events and artistic responses set for the 10th anniversary, I think it is good to remember that there is a difference between "9/11" and "September 11": one reflects simple binary thoughts ("good vs. bad", "right vs. wrong", etc.) and often jingoism and the other speaks of universal complexity and subtlety of emotion and feelings. This September 11th I'm wishing for more of the later in the artistic responses than the former. To paraphrase Dr. Ian Malcolm in the movie Jurassic Park, I hope artists thought not only of whether they could respond to September 11, but to think if they honestly should. Here is my story: It has been 8 years since the events of September 11, 2001 and recently I've been thinking about John Adams's, and subsequently my own, musical response to that day. John Adams in an interview originally posted on the New York Philharmonic website (and now on his site), talks about his trepidations when asked to write a work, On the Transmigration of Souls, to have been performed almost exactly one year after the attacks of 9/11: "I didn’t require any time at all to decide whether or not to do it. I knew immediately that I very much wanted to do this piece–in fact I needed to do it. Even though I wasn’t exactly sure what kind of a shape the music would take, I knew that the labor and the immersion that would be required of me would help answer questions and uncertainties with my own feelings about the event. I was probably no different from most Americans in not knowing how to cope with the enormous complexities suddenly thrust upon us. Being given the opportunity to make a work of art that would speak directly to people’s emotions allowed me not only to come to grips personally with all that had happened, but also gave me a chance to give something to others." I started the composer group Pulse in May 2004 with an initial meeting of six other like-minded composers. From this initial fellowship gathering, all through that summer and fall, we worked on organizing our premiere performance to be that December. For that first performance, I knew I wanted my piece to be based on 9/11, but was unsure of what direction to take. Like John Adams stated, it felt too big and too raw an event to process my feelings enough in order to create something decent let alone meaningful. After a few sketches and false starts, which looking back now, tried to do and say too much, I decided that the best way for me to approach the composition was to reflect on my own experiences that day. To create something with simple and direct expression that did not tackle 9/11 directly, but tangentially; something not exactly programmatic but still able to convey the story of an unexpected pulchritudinous moment that day. I was in Brooklyn at the time of the attacks, substitute teaching a high school math class at the Brooklyn International School, in a building next to and overlooking the Manhattan Bridge. I first noticed something was wrong when I casually looked out the window to see the usual bustling rush-hour car traffic flowing over the bridge was non-existent. Someone eventually came to the classroom I was in and said that a plane had hit the World Trade Center. Many of the students became visibly upset. I looked out the window again and where just a few minutes before no one or thing was coming over the bridge, now the bridge was beginning to fill with people streaming from Manhattan eastward across the roadway. The first tower had fallen before I had a chance, during my prep period, to run out onto the bridge toward Manhattan (just before the police stopped anyone from traveling westward) to see what was happening for myself. I reached the center of the bridge and could see the top of the second tower in flames. Less than a minute later the second tower, hauntingly silent and seemly in slow motion, imploded upon itself with audible gasps and cries of horror from the crowd which turned to look. After retuning to the school, you can imagine that it was difficult to focus for the remainder of the school day. With people passing in front of the school, it was a constant reminder of the enormity of that morning's events. The fear and confusion was particularly palatable in the students. As the news coverage slowly uncovered the terrorist plot, this being a high school of all recent immigrants (many of whom were Muslim and wore Islamic veils and scarfs), it was hard not to control my own fears of what would happened to the students when school let out and they would have to pass through the crowd on their way to the subway. Despite the police presence, would they be blamed and suffer verbal or physical abuse from the understandably bewildered and upset crowd coming over the bridge? At the end of the day, many of the teachers, myself included, decided to walk with some of the students to the subway to make sure they were ok leaving the school. Later in the early evening with two other friends, I was on a townhouse roof in Carroll Gardens, Brooklyn surveying the entire lower Manhattan cityscape. I watched as a distant flickering mass seemed to be coming closer toward us from the World Trade Center site. At first it looked like a swarm of white butterflies, glittering in the evening sun, but as it got closer we realized that it was paper rising with the heat from the site and floating toward us from lower Manhattan. An immensely beautiful and ethereal sight, none of us spoke as the swarm came directly over us with some of the many pages from law books and computer printouts fluttering above and some landing all around the roof. We watched as the swarm passed over us and quietly continued farther into Brooklyn. No more than five minutes, this small and ephemeral moment, still resonated with me all those years and when I was ready, found outlet in my composition. The Spell of a Vanishing Loveliness premiered at the inaugural concert of Pulse on December 1, 2004. The performance featured Amy Cervini (vocals), Sebastian Noelle (guitar), Jody Redhage (violoncello), Diana Herold (vibraphone), with me conducting. It was one of those moving performances where everyone in the audience and the musicians (including myself) were wrapped inside an all-encompassing bubble of the moment. After the piece ended and we were changing over to the next composer, Jody remarked "Did you feel that?" and indeed, the air seemed charged with something tangible and indescribable during and just after the performance (I realized had goosebumps during the end of the piece as the vibraphone and guitar drifted into their final nothingness). There was something magical, real, and true about the performance with the events of 9/11 only three years removed and still so close to people's emotions. It remains one of my most special musical memories so far in New York. POSTED BY NUMINOUS AT 9:00 AM I'm still around! While my postings over the past year have been, let's say sporadic, it has been with good reason. I was writing my thesis and completing my Masters degree in Music Composition from Stephen F. Austin University. Now that I'm an official Master, my blog writings will be a little more frequent including a future post detailing some of my grad school experiences including some of my thesis: The Music CompositionMISCĒRE, the Historicity of Mixed Music and New Amsterdam Records in the Contemporary New York City Mixed Music Scene (sounds scintillating, right?!). Also, while it won't be called Miscēre, you'll be hearing some of the music from the thesis as a future large-scaled Numinous project, premiering in 2012!
One thing that has been great since graduating is now I actually have time again to read for pleasure and NOT for school (not that school reading was unpleasant, actually much of it was, but I think you understand what I'm sayin')! Before the research for my thesis began in earnest I was enjoying reading the George Lewis book A Power Stronger Than Itself about the AACM. Needless to say, I had to put it down as I focused on more things immediately pertinent to the thesis. Actually I wished I hadn't put it down, because as I began reading the book again from where I left off (had just started Chapter 7-"Americans in Paris") I've found that some of it was/could have been quite useful to the thesis, particularly some of the fascinating later discussion such as in Chapter 9 ("The AACM in New York") about new music, mixing genres, society and culture, especially the lack of cross-pollination and critical acceptance within the general new music community of the 1970s to some African-American composers/performers who were working in similar modes of expression as those "pan-European" composers in the "downtown art world" nexus. Oh well, if I decide to continue to a PhD., perhaps the Lewis book will find its way into my research. Frankly anyone interested in the current debate in the new music community about music that fuses elements from a wide variety of sources and inspirations including vernacular music (the mixed music, alt-classical, post-classical, indie classical, is-it-classical-or-is-it-pop-or-is-it-jazz-or-WTF-is-it debate) really should read the book. POSTED BY NUMINOUS AT 12:52 PM ...as we are running the next generation into debt, we ought to do the work of it, otherwise we use them meanly and pitifully. In order to discover the line of our duty rightly, we should take our children in our hand, and fix our station a few years farther into life; that eminence will present a prospect, which a few present fears and prejudices conceal from our sight. -Thomas Paine, Common Sense Paine Collected Writings. New York: The Library of America, 1955. pg. 25. POSTED BY NUMINOUS AT 6:05 PM |
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Thanks and credit to all the original photos on this website to: David Andrako, Concrete Temple Theatre, Marcy Begian, Mark Elzey, Ed Lefkowicz, Donald Martinez, Kimberly McCollum, Geoff Ogle, Joseph C. Phillips Jr., Daniel Wolf-courtesy of Roulette, Andrew Robertson, Viscena Photography, Jennifer Kang, Carolyn Wolf, Mark Elzey, Karen Wise, Numinosito. The Numinous Changing Same album design artwork by DM Stith. The Numinous The Grey Land album design and artwork by Brock Lefferts. Contact for photo credit and information on specific images.