Music Style contemporary classical, new "art" music

Musical Influences Ligeti, Tenney, Ives, Messiaen, Machaut, Sibelius, John Lennon, Nono

Artist History For three decades, Carson Kievman has followed an independent course that has blended New Music with the theatrical, visual, and literary arts. Yet neither his music nor his career have found their way into easy categories. His symphonies, operas and experimental works have been performed internationally in stage, concert, dance, and museum settings, from the Berkeley Art Museum in 1975, the Pennsylvania Ballet in 1983, and a music-theater retrospective at the Nationaltheater-Mannheim in 1995. The recipient of numerous international awards, Kievman was most recently honored with a Naumberg Fellowship to Princeton University and a commission from Niedersachsen Musiktage / flächengrößte Festival in Germany.Although Kievman’s works had been performed worldwide, including at The Tanglewood Music Festival and Joseph Papp’s New York Public Theater, with the 1996 release of his first CD, Symphony No. 2(42), Kievman’s musical work was made available to an even wider audience. The New Albion recording led to critical acclaim from reviews such as the All-Music Guide, which wrote: "In the tradition of such visionary pieces as R. Strauss's Tod und Verklärung (Death and Transfiguration), H. Berlioz's Symphonie Fantastique, Toshiro Mayazumi's Mandala Symphony, etc., the program of this four-movement work is transcendent and epic in scope… A truly original and artistically sensitive work." From Spoleto Today: "It provides one of the most powerful musical experiences I have had in recent times." Kievman’s recent release on CRI Emergency Music release of The Temporary & Tentative Extended Piano represents all of Kievman’s works for solo piano (thus far). Pianist David Arden was responsible for many of the works original premieres. Earlier commissions include two "Soundtheater" works for Joseph Papp's New York Shakespeare Festival (1987-91 and 1978-79), as well as opera commissions from the Tanglewood Music Festival (1977-78) the Donaueschingen Festival / Sudwestfunk (1982-84), and an orchestral commission from the Florida Philharmonic (1991). More recent projects include Sine Nomine (Auctore Ignoto) for the English Vocal group the Binchois Consort (premiered in 1999); Henry Eight’s Harvest a commission from Henry's Eight Ensemble of London, a new work for the Brentano String Quartet, as well as upcoming performances of Symphony No. 4. 2001 has seen the release of his Symphony No. 3 (hurricane) on Mystery Park Arts Records.

Albums Symphony No. 2(42), Symphony No. 3 (hurricane), The Temporary & Tentative Extended Piano

Press Reviews BOSTON GLOBE (August 11m 1978) WAKE UP IT'S TIME TO GO TO BED! "SOUNDRAMA CAUSES STIR AT FROMM FESTIVAL." "The Soundrama actually takes place in a single moment - the moment that hovers between one thing and its opposite. Keats talked about it in a line; Joyce expanded it into "Finnegan's Wake." Our Orpheus has a crownded mind early in the morning, and in it childhood memory, present loss, and future resolution are simultaneous presences... like the primordial beginnings of Wagner's 'Das Reingold' ... It recalls the dawn-garglings of Ravel's 'Daphnis and Chloe', Why one wonders, should the Fromm Foundation subsidize someone's therapy? On the other hand, great art is suppose to be theraputic for those who make it and for those who respond to it. And it was hard not to respond to this piece. Conflicting and ciompelling personality emerge from it. I was fascinated and oddly moved - Richard Dyer" CLASSICAL NET (Fall 2000)THE TEMPORARY & TENTATIVE EXTENDED PIANO " It's reminiscent of Arvo Part's music at its most hypnotic and personal" "Carson Kievman came to my attention several years ago with his Symphony No. 2(42), a weighty, transcendent and sometimes hallucinatory memorial to Mozart that rang the changes on music from the Viennese composer's Requiem, specifically the "Lacrymosa." When New Albion Records released their recording of Kievman's Symphony No. 2(42) in 1996 (NA081CD), they indicated that a New Albion CD of the composer's complete piano music, as played by David Arden, was forthcoming. That disc never appeared, now it's here, albeit on a different label. The classical music recording industry is full of mysteries! Kievman was born in 1949 and received his Masters of FIne Arts degree from the California Institute of the Arts in 1977. He's spent most of his time in Germany and in the United States, and his music has been used by dance companies and in museums, as well as in the more traditional theaters and concert halls. Recently, Kievman was granted a Naumberg Fellowship to Princeton University. He's been around and received some acclaim, yet I believe that this is only the second all-Kievman CD to become available. This disc's overall title is The Temporary & Tentative Extended Piano, which is the earliest work here, and the last on the CD. It is a kind of mad music theater, one performing version of this piece requires a page-turning "Butler" and several other "Servants," and the pianist sits on a spring-supported platform where he also has access to cowbells. The work ends with the performer collapsing in exhaustion. It is in this format that the work was performed for Joseph Papp's New York Shakespeare Festival, and page 3 of CRI's booklet has the photograph to prove it. The work starts like Messiaen (a Kievman mentor and becomes progressively more disheveled, as an angry shout from the pianist further suggests! It alternates between obsessive bell-ringing (on the keyboard, more than away from it) and grimly tolling passages in the piano's lower regions. Six minutes in, a vulnerable melody appears in the right hand, but is soon borne away by the vertiginous action that culminates in the pianist's staged breakdown. What it all means is anyone's guess, but it is fun, even without the visual component. The other substancial piece on this CD is Meditation, which was begun in 1992 and completed in 1998. It is in two sections and is 24 minutes long. The booklet describes the first section as "a descent into Hades in slow motion," and Kievman requests very slow tempos from the pianist. The juxtaposition of very loud and very soft chords (with many pregnant pauses in between) creates a frozen or marmorcal effect. Kievman reinforces this effect with nature noises -- thunder, rain, cicadas -- another mysterious choice, but again, one that is moving rather tha New Agey. Later, the music takes on a nostalgic -- but not sweet! -- quality. Bells toll again, both in the piano and apart from it. It's reminiscent of Arvo Part's music at its most hypnotic and personal. The other four works on this CD complement the two featured pieces. All except Harpo (1986, the composer's return to composing after a three-year hiatus) were written in the 1990s. The booklet aptly describes Toccatada as "an almost dadistic toccata... in the spirit of Nancarrow playing Prokofiev playing Bach." The tempo is "as fast as possible." David Arden, a true hero to composers of modern keyboard music, makes Kievman's quirky creations viable. The engineers have gifted Arden and Kievman with good sound. This unusual CD is well worth your explorations." -- Raymond Tuttle ALL-MUSIC GUIDE - REVIEW (Fall 1999) SYMPHONY NO. 2(42)" A truly original and artistically sensitive work" This orchestral work was commissioned by the Florida Philharmonic Orchestra to honor the 200th anniversary of the death of Mozart. In the radition of such visionary pieces as R. Strauss's "Tod und Verklärung" (Death and Transfiguration), H. Berlioz's "Symphonie Fantastique," Toshiro Mayazumi's "Mandala Symphony," etc., the program of this four-movement work is transcendent and epic in scope, depicting "a metaphorical journey from youth through death, and beyond." In the first movement, "Prerequiem," youthfulness is depicted not with the usual cliché of footloose and fancy free joy, but is shown as a struggle to create and maintain some independent existence in a relatively hostile world. A main theme, built of modal and chromatic steps, perfectly describes this unsettled, restless soul (unusually orchestrated with strings in unison with a melodic (!) tympani line). The melody goes through many variations (psychological modes perhaps), sometimes collapsing into chaos and despair. Eventually a matured tone is attained in a Maestoso section. The initial energy is still heard in recapitulations of the main theme with underlying rushing figures, but that is shaded with the timbres of funereal bells, and the violins and violas played with guitar picks, a sound depicting the mastering of opposing forces. The first movement then slips into its last few minutes as a richly orchestrated elegy including deep bells, church chimes and low horns reminiscent of Russian Orthodox chant or Buddhist ceremony. The second movement begins with a slow, steady melody that alternately evokes despairing, dissonant lines surrounding it, or moves into the rich harmonies of an enlightened understanding achieved toward life's conclusion. The movement concludes with gentle chimes and strings. The third movement, "Passage," begins with a phantasmagoria of chromatically whirling strings and winds, punctuated with percussion, with laughing slides from the brass. This gradually works itself into a flowing landscape of heavenly and hallucinatory imagery, an amazingly original sound. The music settles into a profound and universal peacefulness. The fourth movement suggests a passageway into a new dimension, equally heaven's periphery, the Egyptian (or Greek, etc.) underworld, or another non-earthly transcendent state. The original theme is heard accompanied by quiet drones and gentle undulations, and a flowing, profound and serious peacefulness reigns. The soul however still seems to be pushed on toward ascension to further realms with occasional rushing modulations, by heavenly visions announced by widely spaced bell sounds, and by choral voices urging the soul ever upward. Gamelan-like pulses are heard, and suddenly the Lachrymosa from Mozart's Requiem is quoted. It's chromatic undulations are then sequenced continuously into a massive extension both historical (hints of Mahler, Ives, Ligeti and further 20th-century moderns) and cosmological in its poetry. Then the music just ceases, eternally silent. A truly original and artistically sensitive work. -- "Blue" Gene Tyranny FANFARE MAGAZINE (Summer 2000) THE TEMPORARY & TENTATIVE EXTENDED PIANO" This is the antithesis of dentist-office music, but late at night, and with maybe a bottle of good scotch at the side, this music should get the wheels turning." "But is this music listenable? Very much so. Kievman writes with craft, humor, and imagination. The first two brief works, Introdictus and Toccatada, are virtuoso cascades of notes, but are tautly conceived, in the manner of the Chopin Etudes. Harpo is a longer, more elastic composition that honors the remarkable combination of focus and freedom in the jazz piano work of Keith Jarrett and the late Bill Evans. Meditation is the most ambitious work on the program, long and full of silences. At 24 1/2 minutes, the piece presents a serious challenge to the patience of the listener for this type of material. Most performances of the monumental slow movement of Beethoven's Hammerklavier are shorter. Does Kievman live up to his audacity? Yes and no. Beethoven is a faulty comparison, as his music is linear and ariose. Kievman seems to be influenced, more than anything, by the primeval rhythms of nature, which do not always correspond to the man-made laws of music in the Western world. In some sections, the pianist plays sparsely arrayed chords as cicadas chirp and streams burble on tape. Elsewhere, the piano mimics the relentless noise of the general ambient landscape. The contrast of the faultless logic of the natural sonic environment and the contemplative, very human exposition of Kievman's musical ideas is poignant and provocative. The composer might disagree, but this sounds like existential music to my ears. This is the antithesis of dentist-office music, but late at night, and with maybe a bottle of good scotch at the side, this music should get the wheels turning. Kievman's interest in the music of nature is overtly confirmed in the piece Nuts & Bolts, which, like his 1995 Symphony ("Hurricane"), was inspired by the composer's own devastating experience during the 1992 hurricane disasters in South Florida, where he lives [NOTE: Carson Kievman now lives in Princeton, New Jersey]. The music is less abstract and intellectual than in Meditation; indeed, it is virtually programmatic. An interesting touch is the inclusion of the "Fate" theme from Beethoven's Fifth Symphony in the coda, an illusion, perhaps, to the composer that most closely resembles a force of nature in the human form. The title work on this CD, The Temporary & Tentative Extended Piano, arrives at the end of the program as a sort of summary of the clutch of musical ideas that Kievman presents in the preceding material. This is a theater work, and there are, we are told, a number of visual effects that enhance the piece. The work is enticing as a stand-alone musical piece, full of humor and surprise. Pianist David Arden, the dedicatee for this 1977 composition, plays it with the same power and intelligence that he displays on the balance of the program." -- Peter Burwasser SPOLETO TODAY. THE POST AND COURIER. SYMPHONY NO. 2(42) (Summer 1996) "It provides one of the most powerful musical experiences I have had in recent times." "The 13-minute second movement is a elegiac meditation, written shortly after the death of the composer's father. Its sustained string sonorities suggested it may have dropped from the "Sorrowful Songs" of Henryk Gorecki, so angst-ridden and sinewy their tortured harmonic cortege. The ensuing seven-minute "Passage" is a demonic scherzo, a "Totentanz" with Death as a mad jester. Its mania yields to Mahlerian visions of Elysium, with its tintinnabulous imagery of the afterlife providing a serene conclusion. The full symphony, lasting nearly an hour, was written to commemorate the 200th anniversary of Mozart's death. Its final movement is a choral rumination on the "Lacrymosa" from the Mozart Requiem. It provides one of the most powerful musical experiences I have had in recent times." Vincent Plush

Location Princeton, NJ - USA

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