Music We’d Like To Hear – (UN)PREDICTABLE

Tom Johnson – Predictables (1984) *
Paul Newland – things that happen again (again) (2016) ***
Makiko Nishikaze – trio-stella (2008/12) *
Alvin Lucier – Twonings (2006) *

Apartment House:
Mira Benjamin (violin)
Anton Lukoszevieze (cello)
Philip Thomas (piano)

The central concert of our 2017 series plays on expectations, confirmed and confounded.

Works for piano trio and duo are programmed around a new commission from Paul Newland (supported by RVW Trust), a unique British voice and former student of Jo Kondo.

The pared-down transparency of Newland’s music is contrasted with the work of Japanese composer Makiko Nishikaze, whose mysterious and fragile music holds us gently in a suspended present. At the opposite extreme, a piano trio by Paris-based elder statesman of American experimentalism Tom Johnson, who considers music of complete predictability in a classic work from 1984 which he describes as sounding “a little like Beethoven”. Finally, an exquisite recent work from the ceaseless inquisition of pioneering American sound artist Alvin Lucier.