Our dear Ben Johnston has just celebrated his 84th birthday this week. Ben has been a constant to me as a dear friend, inspiring mentor, challenging teacher, and willing collaborator, and I was happy to be able to see him for the occasion of a colloquium held in his honor at Wright State University this [...]
Upcoming concert in New York…
Published in November 11th, 2009
It was just announced that the opening concert of next season for the League of Composers will feature Ben Johnston’s String Quartet No. 4:
On Sunday, February 28, 2010 (3 PM), the Chamber Players of the League perform at New York’s intimate Tenri Cultural Institute. The inimitable ensemble of New York freelancers present a program featuring [...]
String Quartet No. 9 in Brooklyn!
Published in October 28th, 2009
The American Modern Ensemble is performing Ben Johnston’s String Quartet No. 9 next Tuesday November 3, 2009, at the Galapagos Art Space at 16 Main Street, Brooklyn, NY. The piece is part of a program called m&ms (microtones & minimalism) which also features works by fellow composers Philip Glass, Ingram Marshall, Steve Reich and Spencer Topel.
Ben will be [...]
Quintet for Groups in Donaueschingen and Berlin
Published in November 3rd, 2008
Premiered in 1967 by the St. Louis Symphony orchestra, Eleazar DeCarvalho conducting, Quintet for Groups emerged an imperfect and highly controversial work whose compositional basis, related to but distinctly different from Stockhausen’s Gruppen ( which at that time I had never heard nor seen) was using a large group (the entire orchestra) as the interaction [...]
Quintet for Groups
Published in October 22nd, 2008
The following is an essay written for the festival about Ben and “Quintet for Groups” by Marc Sabat, who was the guiding force in bringing about this performance.
Ben Johnston’s “Quintet for Groups”
by Marc Sabat (2008)
Some years ago I remember asking James Tenney about his experience with Harry Partch. I recall him telling me at [...]
Ben Johnston in Germany
Published in October 22nd, 2008
Ben’s piece “Quintet for Groups” was just performed at a sold out concert at the Donaueschinger Musiktage in Germany last Sunday. This was the European premiere of the piece and only the third time it has ever been performed (the other two were in St. Louis 40 years ago).
Read more about the about the world’s oldest [...]
House of Cards
Published in July 26th, 2008
Earlier this week I stumbled upon the new Radiohead music video for their song “House of Cards,” which I had been eagerly anticipating since they first posted screen shots from it on their site. The excitement came from the fact that the video was not shot with camera, but by using lasers to capture then [...]
Questions, please
Published in July 19th, 2008
If anyone has any questions, technical or other, that they would like Ben or I to address, please send them to info@newdissonance.com and we will post responses to them on here.
The Origins of this Project…
Published in July 15th, 2008
I’ve had to explain this more than a few times at this point, so i figured that I would just post the whole story:
Last year I came to Madison, Wisconsin to interview Ben for my documentary on the composer Harry Partch. For those who don’t know, Ben is the only person who can lay claim [...]
Preparations
Published in July 11th, 2008
The quartet has been doing their homework on this piece. Pictured above is one of Eric’s copies of the score, which thanks to the generosity of the publisher (Sylvia Smith of Smith Publications), they get multiple copies of to make notes on. The 10th quartet is comprised of so many difficult sections and requires such [...]