FCM Review

   This was the third time I attended the Festival of Contemporary Music (there is some good to being friends with two of the artistic directors), and I have to say that this year's was one of the best I attended.  Yes, I only went to the Saturday concert... I had to work ALL day on Friday.  This is a review for Saturday's concert date. 

   The pieces that really impressed me was the composition "Triglyphs" by Joe Dangerfield, and the two wind quintets, "Woodwind Quintet" by Martha Stoddard and "First Light" by John Bilotta.  While many can say (AKA Brian Bice) that those picks might be biased because I studied piano when I was younger and I am a collaborator of a wind quintet composition by Brian, these are the pieces that really spoke to me.

   "Triglyphs" is an amazing composition that uses entire register of the piano very expertly.  "First Light" is an amazing nocturne-esque composition with an interesting mix of elements of Chopin and Satie.  The only thing I could compare Stoddard's "Woodwind Quintet" to is a good serving of sorbet served at the end of meal.

Even though I singled those 3 compositions, there were still plenty of excellent compositions.  The 2 electronic compositions,- "Firmament" by Kari Beshare and "Staring at the Sun" by Andrew Cole- offered a different interest mixed into the program of mostly acoustic compositions and interesting solo pieces "Kaval Imaginario" by Pablo Chin and "Schematic Nocturne" by bruce Bennett were amazing compositions that explored the range and expressive qualities of the solo instruments they were written for ("Kaval Imaginario" was for solo clarinet, "Schematic Nocturne" was written for solo piano).

I am already antsy for next year's festival (mostly because a certain composer-read Brian Bice- indicated to me that it is almost 100% probable that part of our collaboration will be performed at the festival) because I am interested to see how much this festival will grow over the next 2-3 years.

I'm done sounding off... (and actually with this particular entry, I don't anticipate any reaction from the readership)