This show took place on June 2, 2016. See what’s coming up at The Jazz Room.
SPECIAL 10 PM SHOW, as part of Open Ears 2016! Free for GRJS Passholders!
Perhaps no single movement in western music has fractured and divided audiences, performers and composers alike as the rise of serial, atonal music – no more major or minor, and sounding to some like the beep-boops of machines or random noise generation. Dubbed the Second Viennese School by some (or the death of melody by others), Arnold Schoenberg, Alban Berg and Anton Webern abandoned tonality and traditional harmony for the egalitarian symmetry of the twelve-tone scale.
For those (lucky people) who are unfamiliar with the jargon, the Coles notes are here and a video of Canada’s most notorious proponent of serial music, Glenn Gould, playing Webern is here.
Inspired by this great Bad Plus arrangement, Kyle Brenders has taken it upon himself to arrange a group of these compositions for his intrepid Big Band, based on the theory that everything sounds better with a beat, and there’s no such thing as too much funk. Staunch romantics and proponents of major/minor might find themselves loving these amazing arrangements – “it has a great twelve-note tune, and I can dance to it.”
Opening act Allison Au comes to the Waterloo Region fresh from the Juno Awards, where she took home the award for BEST JAZZ ALBUM with the Allison Au Quartet.
