SUNDAY, SEPTEMBER 30, 2012
Week one of To Begin the World Over Again went wonderfully with Delirious Dances and Numinous! Read some enthusiastic reviews here and here, and then come this Thursday, Friday, and Saturday to see for yourself. And don't forget there are some FREE community events Oct. 2, 3 and 6th too!

Dancers: Angel Chinn, Victor Gonzalez, Jenni Hong, Sharifa Linton, Devin Oshiro, Ricarrdo Valentino and Michael Henry as MC.

Musicians: Mike Baggetta (guitar), Greg Chudzik (bass), Brenda Earle (piano), Andy Green (guitar), Nancy Harms (vocals), Jackie Ludwig (cello), Ana Milosavljevic (violin), Rob Mosher (woodwinds), Chris Reza (woodwinds), Stephanie Richards (trumpet), Sara Serpa (vocals), Carmen Staaf (keyboard),  Ben Thomas (bass; 9/29 & 10/6 only), Melissa Stylianou( vocals), Emilie Weibel (voice, 9/29 only).


To Begin the World Over Again

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 7:07 PM 

We reached our Kickstarter goal last week for our project To Begin the World Over Again! Thank you to all that helped us and we look forward to seeing you sometime in these next two weeks for the performances and community events. 

Rehearsals have been going wonderfully and after hearing and seeing everything together, I can say (even if I wasn't biased) that it's going to be beautiful.

To Begin the World Over Again
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 2:42 PM 

There are some wonderful events associated with my Thomas Paine project To Begin the World Over Again with Edisa Weeks and Delirious Dances. We have a number of free events that tie in with the some of the themes that Thomas Paine spoke of and which are relevant today. We hope you'll check out the performances and some of these events as well.

To Begin the World Over Again

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


Free Community Events
The community events are organized by Purpose Lounge and designed to give people an opportunity to actively engage with the ideals of liberty, democracy and equality that Thomas Paine believed were America’s promise and gift to the world – ideals that greatly influenced American identity, history and mythology.

The Promises and Realities of America

An exhibition in the gallery space featuring art that addresses issues of liberty, democracy and equality. 
Thursday, September 27 from 3pm – 6pm

Friday, September 28 from 3pm – 6pm

Saturday, September 29 from 12pm – 6pm, Opening Reception from 3pm – 6pm

Tuesday, October 2 from 3pm – 6pm

Wednesday, October 3 from 3pm – 6pm

Thursday, October 4 from 3pm – 6pm

Friday, October 5 from 3pm – 6pm

Saturday Oct. 6 from 3pm – 6pm

Why “United States”

Tuesday October 2 from 6pm – 9pm

A discussion about the structural benefits and negatives of the United States social / political system.

Point No Point

Wednesday October 3 from 6pm – 9pm

A discussion about how the American political system is analyzed and contextualized through the lens of American media.

The Promise of Promise

Saturday October 6, 2012 from noon – 6pm

A day-long exploration into Thomas Paine's vision and concerns during the forming of the United States of America - featuring a documentary film, food, poetry throw-down and a discussion with Harvey Kaye – award winning Scholar, Historian, and author of Thomas Paine and the Promise of America.

POSTED BY NUMINOUS AT 4:14 PM 

"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 

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 

...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 

With all that's going on in Congress these days, I just needed a little Common Sense: 

The more men have to lose, the less willing are they to venture. The rich are in general slaves to fear, and submit to courtly power with the trembling duplicity of a Spaniel.
-Thomas Paine, Common Sense 

Paine Collected Writings. New York: The Library of America, 1955. pg. 42.

POSTED BY NUMINOUS AT 6:04 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 

A few weeks ago I posted video of my dance piece, The Distance of the Moon, featuring TAKE Dance and the Pulse ensemble. Now I have the footage from my other dance collaboration this year: "These are the Times that Try Men's Souls". Performed as a works-in-progress on June 3rd and 4th 2010 at the Tribeca Performing Arts Center, this work is part of a larger piece, To Begin the World Over Again. Based on the writings of Thomas Paine, this collaboration with choreographer Edisa Weeks and Delirious Dances is partly funded through the American Music Center's Live Music for Dance grant and will premiere in June 2011 at the Irondale Theater.

The June 2010 performances featured:
Cristal Albornoz, Paul Hamilton, Maxx Passion (dancers); Ben Kono, Steve Lyon (woodwinds); Stephanie Richards (trumpet); Amanda Monaco, Mike Baggetta, (electric guitar); Megan Levin (harp); Deanna Witkowski, Aaron Kotler (keyboards); Charenee Wade, Sara Serpa, Melissa Stylianou (voice); Jared Soldiviero (snare drum); Ana Milosavljevic (violin); Will Martina (violoncello); Shawn Conley (bass); Joseph C. Phillips Jr., conductor

POSTED BY NUMINOUS AT 8:39 PM 

THURSDAY, MAY 27, 2010
Next Thursday and Friday Numinous will be participating in a works-in-progress performance of To Begin the World Over Again, my collaboration with choreographer Edisa Weeks and her Delirious Dances Company.

Although I've only been publicly talking about the project beginning last summer, Edisa and I have been in the planning stages of the project for about three years. So for us it is wonderful to be moving forward to the DEFCON 2 writing music-choreographing stage. Here's the official short blurb about the project:

To Begin The World Over Again is inspired by the writings of Thomas Paine who was influential in the forming of the Declaration of Independence and who through his spirited advocacy for freedom and democracy inspired people to fight for independence. To Begin The World Over Again (whose title comes from a quote from Paine's Common Sense) fuses the vision of composer Joseph C. Phillips Jr. and his ensemble Numinous, and choreographer Edisa Weeks and her company Delirious Dances, to explore: what is the relevance of Paine’s words to America today? How are freedom and democracy packaged and promoted? What is the “Promise Of America” that Paine so fervently believed in and wrote about? Is America living up to that promise?

June 3 & 4, 2010
8pm
Tribeca Performing Arts Center – Theater 2
FREE
Borough of Manhattan Community College (BMCC)
199 Chambers St. NYC 10007
by the West Side Highway; walk up the ramp and enter through the glass doors. Theater 2 is on the right.

For the June 2010 performances we will be showing two short sections: "These are the Times that Try Men’s Souls" and a shorter interlude entitled "Reel Liberty", followed by a Q & A. I will be conducting Numinous featuring: Ben Kono, Dan Willis (woodwinds); Stephanie Richards (trumpet); Amanda Monaco (guitar); Mike Baggetta (guitar); Megan Levin (harp); Deanna Witkowski (keyboard); Aaron Kotler (keyboard); Charenee Wade, Sara Serpa, Melissa Stylianou (voices); Jared Soldiviero (percussion); Ana Milosavljevic (violin); Will Martina (cello); Shawn Conley (bass).

"These are the times that try men's souls" is the oft quoted (and more oft misappropriated) stirring opening to Paine's The American Crisis. These words were written by Paine in 1776 as he was traveling with George Washington's troops on their long retreat from the Battle of New York, just steps ahead of enemy soldiers; and just before their famous Christmas night crossing over a frozen Delaware River in order to surprise the British and Hessian soldiers. The story is that Paine wrote these following words by campfire on the head of a drum:

These are the times that try men's souls. The summer soldier and the sunshine patriot will, in this crisis, shrink from the service of his country; but he that stands it now, deserves the love and thanks of man and women. Tyranny, like hell, is not easily conquered; yet we have this consolation with us, that the harder the conflict, the more glorious the triumph. What we obtain too cheap, we esteem too lightly--'tis dearness only that gives everything its value. Heaven knows how to set a proper price upon its goods; and it would be strange indeed, if so celestial an article as freedom should not be highly rated.

The project received a grant from the American Music CenterLive Music for Dance Program in order to commission me to write the music and to help pay for the costs of the live Numinous musicians to perform it.  The full evening performance of To Begin The World Over Again will premiere in June of 2011, which will include a symposium with leading historians, scholars and thinkers on democracy, social justice, and where America stands now in relation to its promise. But for now, we would love to see you on June 3rd or 4th, as your input would be invaluable in helping shape the evolution of the work.

(Photo credit: Thomas Paine from http://www.thomaspainefriends.org/paine-portraits-and-images.htm)

POSTED BY NUMINOUS AT 8:00 AM 

Last week I got word that the Delirious Dance Company just received a 2010 Live Music for Dance grant for the new project To Begin the World Over Again that I'm collaborating on with their founder and choreographer Edisa Weeks. This highly competitive grant is sponsored by the American Music Center and helps dance companies to "meet the costs of hiring musicians for live accompaniment of dance performances and for commissioning composers to create new works for dance." Both Edisa and I are extremely excited and honored to have been awarded the grant and look forward to sharing a glimpse of the project in June when Delirious Dance and Numinous perform one section from the piece at the Tribeca Performing Arts Center. The entire evening-length project, based on the writings of Thomas Paine, is slanted for a Spring 2011 premiere.

POSTED BY NUMINOUS AT 8:40 PM

The next Composer Salon is on Monday February 1, 2010 from 7 pm to around 9 pm at the Brooklyn Lyceum (227 4th Avenue in Park Slope, Brooklyn). And the price is right for our troubled economic times: FREE! The Lyceum is literally above the Union Street M, R Train stop in Brooklyn. The Lyceum does have various inexpensive libations including different beers, wine and other non-alcoholic beverages, as well as coffee and baked goods. If you are a composer/musician in New York City area, regardless of genre, style, or inclination, I hope you can come out, meet some new and old faces behind the blogs and comments and listen or join the discussion.

Salon Topic #4:
“You need a certain dose of inspiration, a ray from on high, that is not in ourselves, in order to do beautiful things….”—Vincent van Gogh, in a letter to his brother Theo

“Basically, music is not about technique, it’s about spirit.”—Terry Riley

As some of you know in June 2010, I'll be premiering one section of a new collaborative project based upon the writings of Thomas Paine, To Begin the World Over Again with Numinous, dance choreographer Edisa Weeks, and her company Delirious Dances. The full project will take place in the spring of 2011. In my research and reading for the project, I read David McCollough's wonderful book 1776, a riveting account of that pivotal year in American's revolution against England. And while the book only talks about or mentions Thomas Paine briefly, both occasions were stirring. One was an account of the retreat of the American troops from New York City to New Jersey and the famous crossing of the Delaware River. Thomas Paine, who as an aide to General Greene, was among the retreating troops. Inspired by the American's incredible resolve and determination against frigid weather and a seemly invincible opponent, Thomas Paine began writing the words which eventually became his American Crisis. Whose famous words, "these are the times that try men's soul's" echo the graveness of the times then and have been appropriated by many since then. The other account in 1776 was an aside about how Common Sense, which was published on January 9th, 1776 (not the 10th as is commonly thought), was read to the soldiers of the fledgling colonial army and how the moving words of Common Sense changed the conflict in the minds of those soldiers (as well as in the mind of General Washington) from a struggle against the meddlesome but generally welcomed rule of a benevolent crown to a war for freedom and independence against a foreign invader. I thought about how the words of Thomas Paine inspired the Revolution and recently it got me think more generally about inspiration itself.  

Last week, I, along with my Pulse colleagues Darcy James Argue and JC Sanford, were a part of the Festival of New Trumpet Music (FONT) where we were commissioned by founder Dave Douglas to write 'arrangements' of Ornette Coleman tunes. Before our concert was a performance of composer Charles Wuorinen's brass music. At the conclusion of the Wuorinen concert, I was talking with a fellow composer who remarked, something to the effect of how they were "amazed at what different music is in people's heads." This was not meant as a direct criticism of the Wuorinen music we just heard, but rather a general wonderment at how different people hear different things and how that manifests itself in sound and music. Certainly Charles Wuorinen's soon to be completed opera Brokeback Mountain will sound completely different than Gustavo Santaolalla's score to the movie? And what a different creation is the movie when compared to the Annie Proulx's short story? How does the same short story inspire such different outcomes? What inspires someone to compose the way they do? I also thought about the great music Darcy, JC and myself came up with in reimagining Ornette Coleman's music into something new. What inspired us to hear Coleman's music in such a way that, while certainly referencing Coleman, sounded less like Coleman and more like Darcy, JC, and me? It is really fascinating to contemplate (well, at least to me anyway) and I thought the idea of inspiration might be an interesting discussion for others in the Composer Salon as well. 

I. German poet Rainer Maria Rilke said,
“always at the commencement of work that first innocence must be reachieved, you must return to that unsophisticated spot where the angel discovered you when he brought you the first binding message.”

How do you approach the start of a new composition? What inspires you to begin a composition? Is it purely the working out of musical material, an extra-musical association, or a combination that inspires the beginning of a work? 

II. Composer George Crumb states that in composing
“there’s always a balance between the technical and the intuitive aspects. With all the early composers, all the composers we love, there was always this balance between the two things…that’s what all music reflects.”

How do you reconcile and balance the two forces? Do you really need to?

III. Composer Alvin Lucier, in his essay The Tools of My Trade, speaks of a temptation, when first conceiving a piece, “towards greater complexity” in his principal musical idea, but eventually reducing the idea to its’ minimum. This idea of reducing ideas to only their barest essence (and the difficulties inherent in that) is also spoken about by Ernest Hemingway, Gertrude Stein, Mark Rothko and many other artists, writers, musicians (as well as philosophers and theologians). Do you fight the temptation of “greater complexity” in your own music? How do you do it? What ways/techniques help you achieve the 'right' way to convey your musical idea(s) in your composition? When do you know if it is 'right'?

If you are a composer or musician or music lover in the New York City area, consider coming down to the Lyceum and joining the discussion, or if you don't live in New York or can't make it, adding your thoughts in the comments. Hope to see you on February 1st! 

Previous Composer Salons
Composer Salon #1: The Audience
Composer Salon #2: Future Past Present
Composer Salon #3: Mixed Music-Stylistic Freedom in the 'aughts

POSTED BY NUMINOUS AT 12:02 AM

Here is an insightful article about how the words of America's 'lost founding father' Thomas Paine find themselves in Sarah Palin's new book, Going Rogue. The article's author is historian and Paine scholar Harvey Kaye, whose book Thomas Paine and the Promise of America (which you should read by the way) along with, of course, the actual writings of Paine, was one of the catalyst and inspirations to my dance project in June 2010 with choreographer Edisa Weeks, To Begin the World Over Again. The article cogently argues that Palin along with other conservative politicians and thinkers wrongly decouple Paine's words with the actual radical and progressive thoughts behind them. 

POSTED BY NUMINOUS AT 7:20 PM