Ian David Rosenbaum

Hello!

Last Spring, I got together with three really good friends (who also happen to be 3 of the most brilliant musicians I know) to record Paul Lansky’s beautiful percussion quartet Threads for Bridge Records – expect that record in the near future! We had a ton of fun with the project, and decided to keep playing together. The group is called Time Travelers and it consists of Gwen Burgett, Ayano Kataoka, Svet Stoyanov and myself.

We spent a while discussing what our next project would be and we decided that we wanted to commission a piece. Not just any piece – we wanted to commission a piece that would be a significant addition to the percussion quartet repertoire and would see a long life of performances beyond the premiere. We decided to commission my good friend and frequent collaborator Andy Akiho.

Now, if you’re a contemporary-music lover you may have heard Andy’s name by now. He’s a steel drum virtuoso who has made a huge splash on the composition scene with works for new music powerhouses like eighth blackbird, ETHEL and the Calder Quartet. Most recently, he was commissioned by the New York Philharmonic! If you’re in the NY area, you can check that premiere out on December 21st and 22nd.

Andy’s music is a ton of fun to play….we play in a group called Foundry together and I play his piece for marimba and string quartet all the time. This will actually be Andy’s first percussion quartet, and I can’t wait to see what he’s going to come up with!

We decided to fund this commission with Kickstarter, which, if you haven’t heard of it yet, is one of the more popular crowdfunding platforms. Basically, it allows anyone to back a project and help make it a reality. You can donate any amount that you want, and you’ll get a bunch of rewards for your support. In our campaign, we’re offering all kinds of stuff: lots of recordings (including previously unreleased ones), music lessons, drafts from Andy’s score and even a private concert for you and your friends! We liked the idea of it because we wanted to make this project about you, the people who will be listening to and maybe even playing this piece in the future. Anyone should be able to be a part of creating a new work of art, and with this project, you can be!

Please take a minute and watch our video and check out the campaign. I know that this is going to be an amazing piece and I can’t wait to share it with all of you!

Thank you so much, and happy holidays.

What a week.
For all of you reading this that were affected by the storm, I hope that you, your families and your homes are all OK. It finally seems like the city is creeping back towards normalcy after being essentially shut down for several days.

So, first: the bad news. Last weekend, the wonderful Lauren Rausch and I were supposed to play my friend and colleague Judah Adashi’s Eight Haiku by Richard Wright for violin and marimba at a faculty recital at the Peabody Institute in Baltimore. I was also supposed to play one of Judah’s newer compositions, Art and the Rain for solo marimba. Sadly, because of the ongoing problems with the transit systems both around and outside of NYC, I had to cancel. Those of you down in Baltimore, stay tuned: we will reschedule this performance!

Next, Le Train Bleu was supposed to play a show tonight, at DROM, a brand new venue for us. Due to the storm, we will be rescheduling our originally planned program and replacing it with a benefit for the victims of Sandy. I’ll be joining an all-star cast of new music performers to raise money for AmeriCares, a wonderful group that has set up emergency medical shelters in Staten Island and Queens. You’ll hear performances by Jeffrey Gavett, Melissa Hughes,Konstantin Soukhovetski, James Moore, Kathy Supové and myself: my contribution will be Frederic Rzewski’s hymn for flowerpots and text, To the Earth. The piece represents a dialogue between mother nature and mankind, something I thought was particularly apt this week. I hope you’ll join us – you’ll be helping people get back up on their feet and the show itself will be fantastic. Again – that show is tonight and there’s more info here.

OK, on to some Sandy-less news. A couple of weeks ago, I had my first show with the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center. I played an outstanding (and fiendishly difficult) duo for piano and marimba by Georges Aperghis with Gilles Vonsattel. It was an incredible evening all around, and you can read what the New York Times had to say about it here. If you missed that one, don’t worry: there’s another coming up just around the corner. On Tuesday November 13th, I’ll join Ayano Kataoka and Efe Baltacigil for a performance of Bruce Adolphe’s Self Comes to Mind for cello and two percussionists. Originally premiered by Yo-Yo Ma, Self Comes to Mind is the result of Bruce’s collaboration with the neuroscientist Antonio Damasio. Damasio composed a poetic and beautiful text specifically for the piece and Bruce has written some exquisitely beautiful music in response to it. This concert is in Alice Tully Hall, and you can get tickets and more info here.

The following weekend, Le Train Bleu joins forces with Opera Moderne for a run of Viktor Ullman’s rarely performed opera, Der Kaiser von Atlantis. Ullman wrote the work while he and librettist Peter Kien were prisoners in Theresienstadt, but it was banned by the Nazi’s after one rehearsal and was not performed during the composer’s life. Opera Moderne has been on a tear lately, and we can’t wait for our first collaboration with them! There are shows November 16-18 at the Czech Center on East 73rd Street. More info and tickets here.

In other news, Barack Obama was re-elected as the President of the United States. Forward.

A beautiful life, and a man who has done so much for our cause. Rest in peace, and thank you.

I had an interesting morning.

Let’s back up a second. A few weeks ago, two of my good friends from Yale, Colin Britt and Arianne Abela (who run this very awesome group) decided to have a little fun. Colin arranged Carly Rae Jepsen’s summer mega-pop hit ‘Call Me Maybe‘ for orchestra and choir and recorded a video to put on YouTube.

That’s when it starts to get interesting. The video went viral and to date has more than 1.5 million hits. It’s a really good video – both the arrangement and the performance are really classy, and let’s be honest, who wouldn’t want to hear that infectious song one more time? Here’s the video, if you haven’t checked it out yet:

Now, those of you that know me know that I really like this song. It’s really really good. Just listen to it once, and I promise it will never leave your head. That’s just how good it is. So, I was really sad to be unavailable when Arianne asked me to play percussion for this video.

Then, a few days ago, I get a random text from Arianne explaining that she had just gotten a call from the Today Show: they were going to play the song live on national TV, and would I like to join them? (p.s. I will have to show up around 6am)

Apparently, the video had gotten so much buzz that the producers of Today were willing to send two buses to New Haven at 3am to pick up 60 singers and instrumentalists along with a bunch of percussion gear and rent a harp for our usage in NYC.

So naturally, I said yes. A perfect opportunity to a) be on national TV and b) share my love for Carly Rae Jepsen with the world.

It was really really fun. I left my apartment a little after 5am (which is so early that the subway is still running on a late night schedule) and got to Rockefeller Center close to 6. It’s still pitch black. The first thing I noticed was a long line of people that were camped out in line to get tickets to Saturday Night Live. I guess this is what you have to do to see SNL….literally sleep on the sidewalk in midtown Manhattan for like two days.

I crossed the street and got to the plaza outside the Today Show. There were also people lining up already to stand outside and watch the show. We rehearsed a little bit, and they kind of told us what was going to happen. We were going to do one quick teaser of about 30 seconds of the piece live at 7 and then our big full performance + interview would be closer to 8:30. It was kind of awesome watching the production of the whole thing – it takes a lot of people and equipment to make the Today Show happen. Here we are getting ready:

Note, it’s still dark out. And yes, I’m playing glockenspiel.

So we hung out until a little after 8, and then came back up to the plaza to record a few more short spots to entice the audience to keep watching. Apparently, the folks ‘upstairs’ liked us so much that they wanted us to play and play and play. One of more of the anchors would come outside (to wild applause and screaming from the people waiting), talk for a few seconds into a camera, and then we would go. Here’s one of the anchors doing just that:

Maggie Gyllenhaal stopped by to give a 90 second interview:

Then our big moment came! The anchors came out and interviewed Arianne and Colin a bit about their concept and why they did this. Then we played through the whole piece….and the anchors joined in. Al Roker jumped in and sang with the choir, Savannah Guthrie ‘played’ trumpet and my friend Doug Perry even taught Willie Geist how to play the timpani:

And that was that, my debut on national TV and a really fun morning. Here’s the whole spot on the Today Show website in case you missed it. I was really banking on Carly Rae Jepsen emerging from the crowd and surprising us, but I guess that’ll just have to wait for another time.

I don’t know about you, but I’ve clung to summer as tightly as I possibly could these past few weeks….and the weather hasn’t helped me move on (yesterday’s rain and gloom excluded). But, the fall has found us…or dragged us, as the case may be. Since the last time we spoke, I’ve started to teach again at the Peabody Institute in Baltimore as well as began two exciting projects: the Twelve in 12 festival with Novus NY at Trinity Wall Street and my residency as a member of the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center’s CMS Two program.

Now, I think I mentioned these in passing in my last mailing, but I wanted to go into a little more detail here. First, Trinity. Novus NY is the contemporary music ensemble in residence at Trinity, and the group was founded by music director Julian Wachner and concertmaster Marjolaine Lambert about a year and a half ago. Trinity’s commitment to music, between the award-winning Trinity Choir, Trinity Baroque Ensemble and other groups, is astounding, and it’s wonderful that they have expanded their offerings to include contemporary music. To kick off this season, we’ve planned an extremely interesting festival: Twelve in 12. The idea is that we will play one piece by each of the 12 last winners of thePulitzer Prize in music. It’s a series of concerts where every single piece performed is by one of the best composers of our time – to say that the music is amazing is an understatement! So, we’re halfway through now. Last week, we played an incredible program of music by Jennifer Higdon, John Corigliano and David Lang. Trinity streams and records all of these concerts, and you can check last week’s concert out here. Last night, we began rehearsing for this week’s program: The Second Madrigal:Voices of Women by Yehudi Wyner and Einstein on Mercer Street by Kevin Puts. Both of these pieces have vocal soloists – soprano in the Wyner and baritone in the Puts – and both are really incredible pieces. The Wyner feels like a snapshot of Berg – it’s a bunch of short poems, each set to music in a completely unique way. The Puts blows me away every time I hear it – it’s an incredibly emotional 30-minute experience (coincidentally it was commissioned and recorded by the Pittsburgh New Music Ensemble – the group I played with last July). That concert is this Thursday (tomorrow!) at 1pm at Trinity, and is free. You can also watch it online (or stream it later at your convenience) right here. Stay tuned for next week’s tour-de-force of a program as well (same time, Thursday’s at 1): Henry Brant’s Four Skeleton Pieces, John Adams’ Son of Chamber Symphony and Steve Reich’s painfully beautiful Daniel Variations.

Last week I had my first rehearsal at the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center: Gilles Vonsattel and I sat down for a couple hours to work through Georges Aperghis’ marimba/piano duo: 4 pièces fébriles. It’s a striking piece – I’ve played and heard a bunch of other works that Aperghis has written, and almost all of them involve theatricality or some other extra-musical element. This one doesn’t. It’s straight-up/really-hard chamber music from beginning to end, and it’s a lot of fun. We’re going to play it as part of the New Music at the Kaplan Penthouse series on October 18th at 7:30pm. In addition to the Aperghis, this concert features a colleague of mine from Chamber Music Northwest, harpist Bridget Kibbey, and it will be streamed live for those of you who live out of town. For more information on that, or for tickets, click here. I’m beyond excited to start this three-year journey with CMS, and I’d love for you to join me for this first performance!

Up next on the horizon…..for you Maryland folks: on October 5th, Sandbox percussion will play on Washington College’s 12 @ Hotchkiss concert series. We’ve got some ‘old’ favorites (Steve Reich, Paul Lansky) as well as new interpretations of works by Brooklyn-based composer/percussionist Jason Treuting. Then, on October 16th, Le Train Bleu joins luminaries Anne-Marie McDermott and Nadja Salerno-Sonnenberg at Symphony Space for an all-Gershwin program. Tickets and more infohere.

That’ll do it! Sign up for my mailing list (top or bottom of this page) to get these updated delivered directly to your inbox and try to enjoy this last drop of good weather while we’ve still got it….