The M6

We’re in rehearsals this week, preparing for the “Songs of Ascension” recording sessions! @Digifiddler Todd Reynolds, taking a break from playing, took this video on the fly of the Montclair State University Singers, conducted by Heather Buchanan. (Astute viewers will spot a couple M6ers scattered about…)

We’re thrilled to be invited by Darmstadt “Classics of the Avant Garde”, the Brooklyn-based contemporary music series led by Zach Layton and Nick Hallett, to perform Dolmen Music at this year’s Essential Repertoire Festival at ISSUE Project Room on December 4. Check out our video of excerpts from Dolmen Music on YouTube.

Info on the full three-concert series here, and details about our performance below.

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DARMSTADT: “Classics of the Avant Garde”
presents its second annual
ESSENTIAL REPERTOIRE festival

“Yes, we’re prone to hyperbole on occasion, but trust us when we say that Darmstadt’s Essential Repertoire series…is one of the most significant musical presentations of the season” –Time Out New York

Friday, December 4 at 8pm
The M6, Jon Gibson, Phill Niblock

ISSUE Project Room
At the Old American Can Factory
232 3rd Street, 3rd Floor, Brooklyn
718-330-0313 [map/directions]

Admission: $20 door, $15 advance
Tickets available at ISSUE Project Room or at Other Music

This year’s festival celebrates the 30th anniversary of the seminal New Music New York concerts curated by Rhys Chatham and held at The Kitchen (then on Mercer Street), which put the still-burgeoning Downtown Scene – at the crossroads of minimalism, interdisciplinary performance, and various strains of post-punk – under a mainstream spotlight and redefined the presentation of experimental music.

DARMSTADT’s cross-section of composers involved in the original festival includes “Blue” Gene Tyranny, Connie Beckley, David van Tieghem, Jill Kroesen, Jon Gibson, Ned Sublette, Peter Gordon, Peter Zummo, Petr Kotik, Phill Niblock, and a performance of Meredith Monk’s Dolmen Music by the M6. The festival will be held from December 3 through 5 at ISSUE Project Room. All concerts begin at 8pm. Tickets will be $20 at the door/$15 advance (.)

Meredith Monk – Dolmen Music (1979); Performed by the M6: Meredith Monk Music Third Generation

Jon Gibson – Criss Cross (1979) and other works; Performed by the composer

Phill Niblock – “Four Arthurs” (1978) superimposed with “Two Octaves and a Fifth” (1975); performed by the composer with Leslie Ross (bassoon) and Christa Robinson (oboe)

If you’ve just heard about The M6: Meredith Monk Music Third Generation via Primal Song, the article about Monk in the November 9 issue of the New Yorker, welcome! In his official New Yorker blog, Unquiet Thoughts, Alex Ross singles out our video of excerpts from Monk’s Dolmen Music, reposted below, as being “particularly striking.”

Members of the M6 joined Meredith Monk and Vocal Ensemble, the Todd Reynolds String Quartet, the Stonewall Chorale and additional singers for a five-night run of Monk’s Songs of Ascension at the Brooklyn Academy of Music’s 2009 Next Wave Festival. Check out some video from New Yorker music critic Alex Ross’s new blog, Unquiet Thoughts:

This Thursday night, M6 members Peter Sciscioli and Emily Eagen will perform a suite from Facing North as part of Voice & Light Systems, a series at the New Museum created by Nick Hallett.  Thursday’s performance also includes Hallett’s interpretation of a selection of songs from Meredith Monk’s Our Lady of Late, a cycle for solo voice and wineglass drone from 1972.

Peter also returns to the New Museum on Thursday, May 14, to sing Karlheinz Stockhausen’s Stimmung, performed with Hallett and others in the second installment of the Voice & Light Systems series.

As a teaser for Thursday’s performance, here’s Peter and Emily performing one of the duets from Facing North at Symphony Space last year!

Nick Hallett: Voice & Light Systems
Part of RE:NEW RE:PLAY Music / Performance

Thursday, May 7 @ 7:00 PM
New Museum Theater

New Museum
235 Bowery (just south of Houston)
R to Prince/F to 2nd Avenue
212.219.1222
Tickets: $12 Members, $15 General Public