"We have it in our power to begin the world over again...the birth of a new world is at hand."
-Thomas Paine, Common Sense (1776)

POSTED BY NUMINOUS AT 9:43 AM 

Here's the official trailer from BAM for our Next Wave Festival performance in October. Tickets are available here. In a few weeks I'll post video and discuss a completed scene featuring a full version of the music you hear in the trailer, so check back!

POSTED BY NUMINOUS AT 11:43 AM 

SUNDAY, AUGUST 19, 2012
Though I care as little about riches as any man, I am a friend to riches because they are capable of good.
-Thomas Paine, Agrarian Justice, 1797

Live Music. Dance. Thomas Paine. Panel Discussions. Art Show. The Promise of America.

Give.

To Begin the World Over Again
featuring Delirious Dances and Numinous

September 27, 28, 29
October 4, 5, 6
Irondale Center
85 South Oxford Street
Brooklyn, NY
8:00 PM
Tickets here
$20 General Admission/$15 Students and Seniors

POSTED BY NUMINOUS AT 11:30 AM 

On this day we celebrate America, we should also be thinking about and appreciating the 'Forgotten Founding Father' Thomas Paine. To read some of Paine's writings such as Common Sense, The American Crisis, or The Rights of Man is to realize how much he has meant to the formation of the ideals of America and how those ideas are still resonant today, even if America hasn't always lived up to those ideals (or acknowledged Paine's full role in them). Beyond Paine's words themselves, check out Harvey Kaye's wonderful book, Thomas Paine and the Promise of America, which in many ways helped to stoke the fires that became To Begin the World Over Again.

To Begin the World Over Again
Dance Performance, Panel Discussions, Art Exhibition, Teach-in's

September 27, 28, 29
October 4, 5, 6
2012

by Edisa Weeks and Joseph C. Phillips Jr.
performed by Delirious Dances and Numinous
co-produced by the Irondale Center

Irondale Center
85 South Oxford Street
Brooklyn, NY

check back here or at www.deliriousdances.com for more information

POSTED BY NUMINOUS AT 12:00 PM 

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 

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.

POSTED BY NUMINOUS AT 9:38 AM 

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 

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 

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 

Today the first day of summer also was Make Music New York, where musicians spread out throughout the entire city and burst into songs, jams, and noise. I took part in the New York premiere of Mauricio Kagel's Eine Brise for 111 bicyclists sponsored by Red Light New Music. Cornelia Street was closed down and all 111 bikes (well, really about 30 of us) rode down the street ringing bells, whistling, and making various (prescribed) sounds. It was a lot of fun, although very short (less than a minute). In fact once we got to the end of Cornelia Street, we all turned around and had an impromptu encore performance going back the way we came! 

There were a number of video takers so when the video is up I'll post a link to it. But here are a few shots as we were gathering before the performance.

POSTED BY NUMINOUS AT 7:30 PM 

Dreams of Wonders Undreamt

"...may your generation see wonders undreamt."
-Carl Sagan, The Pale Blue Dot

Dreams of Wonders Undreamt is another part of my dance project, To Begin the World Over Again, based on the writings of Thomas Paine. For this new piece, I set some words of Paine from Common Sense ("...the sun never shined on a cause of greater worth") in counterpoint to a passage from John Wintrop's City upon a Hill sermon from 1630 (the famous "we shall be as a City upon a Hill" that Ronald Reagan made famous) and Nicholas Black Elk's On the Battle at Wounded Knee from Black Elk Speaks ("Now that I can see it all as from a lonely hilltop...", describing the terrible massacre in 1890, this last major battle in the "Indian Wars").

Dreams of Wonders Undreamt takes its title from the dedication Carl Sagan wrote to his son at the beginning of his book The Pale Blue Dot. Where he envisions for his son a more global hope of future wonders, I have translated the phrase to a more local level: the wonders and potential that the promise of America presages, and of which, by implication, has not fulfill. This might seem a critique on the state of America, and in many ways it is. However, Dreams of Wonders Undreamt does not come from a place of political polemics, where any critique or questioning is an apostasy. Rather, my composition is a love song to the promise of America, to that unbound potential and ideal that Thomas Paine wrote and spoke about so eloquently and which I believe all Americans would like to see it be even more worthy to.

Numinous
Monday March 21, 2011 9 PM to 11 PM
$10 suggested donation
Tea Lounge
837 Union Street
Park Slope
Take the M, R Train to Union Street

 Check back as I'll post some more crib notes about the compositions we'll be performing.

POSTED BY NUMINOUS AT 11:19 AM 

FRIDAY, MARCH 18, 2011
19 

“…we must fight for your life as though it were our own—which it is—and render impassable with our bodies the corridor to the gas chamber. For, if they take you in the morning, they will be coming for us that night.”
James Baldwin, from 
An Open Letter to My Sister, Miss Angela Davis

19 is inspired by two, seemly disparate sources: Arnold Schoenberg's Sechs Kleine Klavierstücke Op. 19 from 1911 and Angela Davis. The initial musical impetus was with the Schoenberg, specifically it was one of my "what if" questions, where I challenge myself with a compositional quandary. In this case, can I make Schoenberg funky? But the emotional timber of 19 is inspired by the activist Angela Davis, specifically her iconic status in Black culture of the 1970s. Particularly I was moved by James Baldwin's An Open Letter to My Sister, Miss Angela Davis from November 19, 1970, which while condemning the arrest of Angela Davis a few months before the letter, also goes on to describe, in biting and incisive commentary, the state of racial dynamics in the United States and paints Davis as a soldier in that on-going struggle for racial and social equality.

19 is one part of a larger, as of now untitled, mixed music composition that will be recorded next year.  

Numinous
Monday March 21, 2011 9 PM to 11 PM
$10 suggested donation
Tea Lounge
837 Union Street
Park Slope
Take the M, R Train to Union Street

 Check back as I'll post some more crib notes about the compositions we'll be performing.

POSTED BY NUMINOUS AT 9:07 AM 

Miserere

I first heard J.S. Bach's cantata Ich habe genug BWV 82 in the hauntingly beautiful version sung by mezzo-soprano Lorraine Hunt Lieberson on her much praised 2003 Nonesuch recording. The German title, which translates as "I have enough," is a sublime spiritual expression about fulfillment and acceptance of the life waiting beyond the living. 

I first heard Donny Hathaway's "Someday We'll All Be Free" sung by Aretha Franklin on the end credits of the great Spike Lee movie Malcolm X and later found the original on Hathaway's last studio album, Extensions of a Man.  

Whereas the words and music of the Bach and Hathaway reflect a faith in salvation in the hereafter, my Miserere does not seek any kind of religious statement or connotations. While most Miserere's in music come as a setting of the 51st (or 50th) Psalm ("Miserere mei, Deus", translated as "Have mercy on me, O God"), I am using miserere in one of its other non-religious meanings: as a vocal lament. In ancient Greek drama and later in operas, the lament was a moment of focused expressive intensity in the overall formal structure of the drama or opera. 

Taking inspiration from the Bach, my original lyrics open with "I have had enough" and continue to expresses a weary frustration and doubt in the ability to solve or come to terms with the many struggles and problems facing us. Although like the Hathaway song, with its optimism that someday will come, I do convey a muted sense of earthly hope in the face of a seemingly increased hopelessness; and perhaps it is by that hope in hopelessness and doubt, that we will "emerge from all the suffering that still binds [us] to the world."

Miserere is one part of a larger, as of now untitled, mixed music composition that will be recorded next year. 

Numinous
Monday March 21, 2011 9 PM to 11 PM
$10 suggested donation
Tea Lounge
837 Union Street
Park Slope
Take the M, R Train to Union Street

 Check back as I'll post some more crib notes about the compositions we'll be performing.

POSTED BY NUMINOUS AT 11:10 AM 

Memory of Red Orange Laid Out in Still Waves

Memory of Red Orange Laid Out in Still Waves was originally commissioned last year by Dave Douglas and the 2010 Festival of New Trumpet Music (FONT). It premiered featuring Lew Soloff and Taylor Ho Bynum as trumpet soloists. For the Numinous concert, I've recast the trumpets as alto saxophones as well as expanded the ensemble from the original version.

The title comes from a line in the opening of the sobering book by Edward P. Jones, The Known World which, while a work of fiction, was based upon the true incidents of African-Americans owning slaves during the 19th century. The book's subject, as well as the beautiful Kathelin Gray from the Ornette Coleman/Pat Metheny 1986 album Song X, are refracted and transmuted into an original composition that hopes to express the truism of James Baldwin's words about African-American culture (in An Open Letter to My Sister, Miss Angela Davis from 1970, which actually more directly inspired another composition for the 21st gig):
There is always, of course, more to any picture than can speedily be perceived and in all of this—groaning and moaning, watching, calculating, clowning, surviving, and outwitting, some tremendous strength was nevertheless being forged, which is part of our legacy today.
Memory of Red Orange Laid Out in Still Waves will also be one movement of a larger, as of now untitled, mixed music composition that will be recorded next year. 

Numinous
Monday March 21, 2011 9 PM to 11 PM
$10 suggested donation
Tea Lounge
837 Union Street
Park Slope
Take the M, R Train to Union Street

 Check back as I'll post some more crib notes about the compositions we'll be performing.

POSTED BY NUMINOUS AT 11:14 AM 

This Friday evening, March 18th at 7pm Simone Dinnerstein's Neighborhood Classics concert series returns with Simone playing piano with Grammy winning clarinetist Richard Stoltzman. As always the concert is at P.S. 321 in Brooklyn (180 7th Avenue, between 1st and 2nd Streets in Park Slope). The dynamic duo will be performing two pieces I love Steve Reich’s New York Counterpoint (a work written for Stoltzman) and Johannes Brahms' Sonata for Clarinet and Piano in F minor, Op. 120. The program will be rounded out by a work of J.S. Bach Sonata for Viola da Gamba and Keyboard in D Major.

Tickets are no longer available online, but you are welcome to come by the school in the morning (8:30am to 9:00am) where they can be purchased in the lobby.

Neighborhood Classics, started by Simone last year, is a great series of concerts (previous concerts of the new season of the series featuring cellist Maya Beiser in October and harpist Bridget Kibbey in January). In addition to concerts at P.S. 321, the series has expanded to P.S. 142 on the lower East Side and ALL of the proceeds from each concert goes to each school (the musicians donate their time and services) and will help mitigate some of the effects the MAJOR budget cuts will inflict on all schools next school year. I teachkindergarten music and math at P.S. 321 and know firsthand how much the proceeds from the Neighborhood Classics has helped our school, even now. So beyond the great music, you'll be support the kids by coming out to theNeighborhood Classics.

POSTED BY NUMINOUS AT 9:45 AM 

Like many people I am thinking of Japan after the devastating earthquake, tsunami, and on-going nuclear danger. I am wishing the best not only for my friends, former students and their families, but for all of the people affected.

To Kyoto

Ando Hiroshige Station 48: Sakanoshita-juku, Mie PrefectureIn anticipation of the upcoming Numinous concert on March 21st, in the spirit of my Inside Vipassana series, I started a Numinous Crib Notes series to profile the compositions for the show. First up To Kyoto, a composition from our first CD and my homage of sorts to Steve Reich. I wrote the piece back in 2000 after my first trip to Japan, which did include a trip down from Tokyo to Kyoto. Here's my original program note for the piece:

Tokaido Road was feudal Japan’s most traveled route. From Edo (old Tokyo) to the ancient capital Kyoto, it was used by nobles and peasants alike. Tokaido Road’s scenic landscapes of distant mountain views, open sea, and quaint towns and villages along the route, inspired Ando Hiroshige’s (1797-1858) famous painting series, Views from the Fifty-Three Stations of the Tokaido. Today, the scenery is still inspiring, as seen from the Shinkansen (bullet train), which follows the old Tokaido route to Kyoto.

Numinous
Monday March 21, 2011 9 PM to 11 PM
$10 suggested donation
Tea Lounge
837 Union Street
Park Slope
Take the M, R Train to Union Street

 Check back as I'll post some more crib notes about the compositions we'll be performing.

POSTED BY NUMINOUS AT 10:14 AM 

Come help Numinous celebrate J.S. Bach's birthday at the Size Matters Large Ensemble Series at the Tea Lounge in Park Slope, Brooklyn (837 Union Street). It's a new instrumentation and new works, including: one piece partly inspired by papa Bach's great cantata Ich habe genug BWV 82; previews of two compositions from a new, larger multi-movement mixed music work (that will be recorded next year); a new composition as part of my Thomas Paine dance project, To Begin the World Over Again (I won't be dancing though); and a Numinous favorite. Hope you can come out next week, have a drink, some food and listen, feel, think, and know Numinous.

Numinous
Monday March 21, 2011 9 PM to 11 PM
$10 suggested donation
Tea Lounge
837 Union Street
Park Slope
Take the M, R Train to Union Street

Ben Kono, Rob Mosher (woodwinds), Amanda Monaco, Sebastian Noelle (guitars), Tom Beckham (vibraphone), Carmen Staaf, Mike Eckroth (keyboards), Jean Rohe, Sara Serpa (voices), Kiku Enomoto, Scott Tixier (violins), Nick Revel, Surai Nesrine Balbeisi (violas), Will Martina (violoncello), Evan Gregor (electric bass), Joseph C. Phillips Jr., (conductor, composer)

 Check back as I'll post some crib notes about the compositions we'll be performing.

POSTED BY NUMINOUS AT 12:06 PM 

Yesterday was our first rehearsal combining the live musicians and the dancers for the Pulse project The Distance of the Moon. So, while I've heard all of the pieces from our musician's rehearsals and have seen video of the dancers rehearsing my piece "The Distance of the Moon", this was the first time seeing and hearing everything together. And I can say it is going to be quite a dynamic and exciting show; you really should make one of the evenings (details below).

BTW, next week on Wednesday October 13th from 6pm to 9pm some of us Pulse-sters will be hosting WKCR's Jazz Alternatives Musician's radio show where we'll be talking about our music, the upcoming project, and our influences.

TAKE Dance and PULSE present
the world premiere of
THE DISTANCE OF THE MOON
Featuring choreography by Takehiro Ueyama, Jill Echo, Kile Hotchkiss, Julie Tice 
Music by Darcy James Argue, Jamie Begian, Joseph C. Phillips, Jr., JC Sanford, Joshua Shneider, Yumiko Sunami

October 14 and 15 at 8:00 PM
Judson Memorial Church
55 Washington Square South at Thompson Street
Purchase tickets online now at: BROWN PAPER TICKETS
Help us meet our fund raising goal !!!
visit our project at: KICKSTARTER
WE HAVE UNTIL OCTOBER 10th to reach our goal!!!

DANCERS
Kristen Arnold, Elise Drew, John Eirich, Kile Hotchkiss, Gina Ianni, Mariko Kurihara,
Clinton Edward Martin, Nana Tsuda Misko,  Jake Warren, Marie Zvosec

MUSICIANS
Woodwinds: Ben Kono
Guitar: Pete McCann
Violin: Ana Milosavljevic
Cello: Will Martina
Bass: Eva Lawitts
Percussion: Max Jhin Jaffe

For more information contact TAKE Dance
[email protected]  |  917.591.1413

(Photo credit: all by Joseph C. Phillips Jr.) 

(also posted slightly differently as "Survey of the Distance of the Moon" at the Pulse blog: www.pulsecomposers.typepad.com) 

POSTED BY NUMINOUS AT 8:00 PM