Corey Dargel

Interview on KALW San Francisco’s “Then & Now” with Sarah Cahill

admin — Mon, 23 Aug 2010 06:38:29 +0000

Sarah Cahill is a pianist and music critic whose radio program was named “One of the Hundred Best Things in the Bay Area” by Citysearch online magazine. Sarah’s KALW program, called “Then & Now,” focuses on the relationships between classical music and new music, encompassing interviews with musicians and composers, historical performances, and exciting recordings outside the mainstream. Sarah welcomed Corey Dargel to KALW’s studio for a live interview on her program August 22, 2010. Listen:

Ctrl-click or right-click HERE to download the mp3 file.

Move to Vermont [remixed to celebrate the Prop 8 decision]

admin — Thu, 05 Aug 2010 19:22:34 +0000

To celebrate Judge Walker’s decision that California’s Proposition 8 is unconstitutional, here’s a song from 2005. The lyrics are based on a true story.

Move to Vermont

Stream:

Direct Link (ctrl-click or right-click to download):
mp3

We drove for miles
To have our wedding
In the springtime
In the Green Mountain State
In a quiet church
In the quiet town of Redding
I’d have gotten you pregnant that night
If only I could procreate

I don’t know anymore
What it is that you want
Your kisses while still delicious
Are very rare and often forced
To get a civil union
All we did was drive to Vermont
But we’ll have to move to Vermont
To get a divorce

I’ll start a bogus non-profit
In Burlington
For six long months
I’ll pretend there’s work to do
I’ll be in the business
Of serving no one
I’ve had plenty of practice at that
With you

September 27, NYC, MATA Benefit Concert

admin — Thu, 22 Jul 2010 19:25:04 +0000

Monday, September 27th 6:30 pm

Chelsea Art Museum
556 W 22nd Street, New York, NY

a MATA benefit event honoring

Vivian Perlis & Frances Richard

With Special Performances by

Gabriel Kahane
JACK Quartet
Corey Dargel (with Kathleen Supové & Courtney Orlando)

and a one-of-a-kind Silent Auction featuring
signed CDs, scores, special concert ticket offers,
original artwork and much more!

Tickets $200 each
OR
3 for $500

Early Bird Special . . . . .$180 each
[until September 1, 2010]

GO HERE to purchase tickets

All proceeds support commissions and
performances of works by young composers during
MATA’s 2011 Festival of New Music.

:::::

6:30 pm: Cocktails, Hors d’Oueuvres, Silent Auction

7:30 pm: Philip Glass honors Frances Richard
Ralph Jackson honors Vivian Perlis

7:45 pm: Performances by Gabriel Kahane, JACK Quartet
(performing the music of Lisa Bielawa and Iannis Xenakis)
and Corey Dargel (with Kathleen Supové and Courtney Orlando)

8:30 pm: Cocktails, Silent Auction

:::::

2010 MATA Benefit Honorees

Frances Richard

Frances Richard, Vice President and Director of Concert Music at the American
Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers (ASCAP), has been a tireless champion
of young composers for decades. Prior to joining ASCAP she was a founding Director,
then Vice President of Meet the Composer. She has also served as Executive Director
of the National Council for Arts and Education, and has been a speech and policy
position writer for candidates for elective office and government officials. She has
served as grants adjudicator; score competition and commissioning panelist for the
NEA, State and private Foundations and agencies; and chaired many panels and
adjudication bodies. She has also served as a Trustee of the Barlow Endowment,
and the New York Foundation for the Arts. Currently, in addition to her position at
ASCAP, she is on the Boards of Meet the Composer, The American Music Center, and
serves on the Advisory Boards of numerous composers and new music organizations

Vivian Perlis

Vivian Perlis is an historian in American music, specializing in 20th century
composers. She is widely known for her publications, lectures, and recording and film
productions. On the faculty of the Yale School of Music, Perlis is founding-director
of Oral History, American Music, a unique archive of oral and video-taped interviews
with leading figures in the music world. This important collection of source materials is
well known and widely-used by scholars, historians, broadcasters, and producers, and
was recently deemed “the world’s definitive archive of historical material on American
music” by the New York Times. Book publications by Perlis include Charles Ives
Remembered: An Oral History and An Ives Celebration. Perlis has played a vital
role in preserving the unique musical voices of the 20th century, and MATA is honored
to celebrate her at our annual benefit event.

:::::

Silent Auction to include:

~Score of Jennifer Higdon‘s Pulitzer Prize-winning Violin Concerto – signed by the composer!
~5 pairs of tickets to upcoming New York Philharmonic concerts, including tickets to their CONTACT! new music series.
~CDs signed by Philip Glass, Robert Wilson, all four members of the Kronos Quartet, Pauline Oliveros and many more.
~Limited edition lithographs of original scores by Philip Glass, Meredith Monk, Pauline Oliveros and Laurie Anderson.
~Signed copies of books by Vivian Perlis.

And many more items added each week – keep checking our website for up-to-date details!!

:::::

2010 Benefit Committee:
Joan La Barbara
Missy Mazzoli
Jeffrey McKean
James Rosenfield
Eleonor Sandresky
Philip Glass
Yotam Haber
Ellen Hughes
Ralph Jackson
Jason Masimore (Chair)
Derek Bermel
Martin Brody
Myriam Ghazi

Frank J. Oteri on Someone Will Take Care of Me

admin — Thu, 22 Jul 2010 17:33:39 +0000

Frank J. Oteri writes about Corey’s new album Someone Will Take Care of Me at New Music Box:

For nearly a decade Corey Dargel has been making extraordinarily weird musical concepts sound natural and almost mainstream by packaging them as popular songs. Irregular meters and phrases, totalist polyrhythms, and unstable harmonic movement are commonplace throughout his oeuvre… But all of these advanced musical techniques are never ends in and of themselves; in fact, since these devices serve his songs so well, a casual listener might not even realize all of what’s going on in Dargel’s electronically generated song accompaniments… Ultimately Dargel’s pop-song trappings are a façade that lulls you into a false sense of security as a listener; before you know it, you’re bopping your head to a very complex series of beats, humming a melody that doesn’t quite line up with those beats, and thinking about the world in a way that you most likely would never have thought about it before.

But if Corey Dargel’s output has always been the work of a singer-songwriter who engages in heady compositional strategies, he completely ups the ante with…the double-CD Someone Will Take Care of Me…

Read the full essay here.

October 6, 2010, Baltimore, MD, Mobtown Modern Series

admin — Thu, 22 Jul 2010 01:36:13 +0000

Part of the Contemporary Museum’s Mobtown Modern music series of Baltimore, MD.

The thoughts, actions, and idiosyncracies of “wannabe amputees” supply the material for Corey Dargel’s Removable Parts. With pianist Kathleen Supové, Dargel will perform selections from his award-winning musical theatre piece Removable Parts and will be joined by violinist and Peabody faculty member Courtney Orlando in excerpts from Every Day is The Same Day, a song cycle that presents worst-case scenarios as the only possible alternatives to boredom and loneliness.

Wednesday, October 6, 2010, 8 p.m.
The Windup Space | 12 W North Avenue, Baltimore, MD 21218 | Click for directions
Tickets: $10 general admission and $5 for Contemporary Museum members and students with a valid ID

Visit Mobtown Modern’s site for more information.

Fingers (video) from REMOVABLE PARTS

admin — Mon, 19 Jul 2010 20:56:09 +0000

Fingers from REMOVABLE PARTS

featuring Corey Dargel and Kathleen Supové
directed by Emma Griffin
video by Kamala Sankaram

available on Corey Dargel’s album Someone Will Take Care of Me

REMOVABLE PARTS the “absolute highlight” of Opera Grows in Brooklyn

admin — Sun, 18 Jul 2010 22:28:48 +0000

Parterre Box praised Corey Dargel’s Removable Parts, calling it the “absolute highlight” of the Opera Grows in Brooklyn concert on July 9th, 2010 at Galapagos Art Space in Brooklyn, NY:

The absolute highlight of the evening for me was an amazing work about love and voluntary amputation. Composer and singer/songwriter Corey Dargel and pianist Kathleen Supové presented their song cycle/rock show/performance art piece titled “Removable Parts,” featuring Mr. Dargel singing, his voice oddly similar to Ben Gibbard of Death Cab for Cutie. The texts, also written by Mr. Dargel, have the most jarring combination of sweetly true love and disgusting details of the wish for amputation of healthy limbs. The experience was an intense, heartfelt, funny, emotional piece of contentious individuality and somehow without any hint of sarcasm.

Read the full review here.

October 14-30, Brooklyn, NY, performing with Laboratory Theater’s GIT ALONG LIL DOGGIES at The Brick Theater

admin — Mon, 12 Jul 2010 20:58:26 +0000

October 14 – 30, 2010

Laboratory Theater presents
GIT ALONG LIL DOGGIES

@ The Brick, 575 Metropolitan Avenue, Brooklyn, NY

“Brokeback Mountain” meets “Naked Lunch” in Laboratory Theater‘s newest work, a cowboy dance-drama about the spiritual imprint of the windswept landscape of the American west. In an impressionistic narrative inspired by the work of William S. Burroughs and Annie Proulx, two outlaws conjure the violent forces of nature through sex-magic to take revenge on an old adversary. Commingling elements of country-western line dance and gay pornography, the performance unfolds against a projected video landscape of repainted Marlboro cigarette TV commercials and within an immersive soundscape incorporating contemporary new age music for pedal steel guitar.

Directed by Yvan Greenberg. Performed by Corey Dargel, Sheila Donovan, Oleg Dubson, and Wil Smith.

More info coming soon.

November 12, Brooklyn, NY, Vital Vox Festival

admin — Sun, 11 Jul 2010 07:01:27 +0000

VITAL VOX: A VOCAL FESTIVAL explores the myriad power of the human voice in its solo and ensemble forms across a multitude of genres. This three day festival November 11, 12, and 13, 2010 at the ISSUE Project Room, will celebrate composer-performers in the vocal arts who stretch and expand the voice in new and original ways, continuing a strong contemporary tradition developed in the US.

Corey will perform on the November 12th concert, sharing the bill with composers/vocalists Samita Sinha, C Spencer Yeh, and Joan La Barbara:

Composer and singer/songwriter Corey Dargel will present the first incarnation of “Hold Yourself Together,” a collection of songs about composure — why we lose it, how we regain it, and for whom we keep it. The songs take a quizzical approach to the commonly held belief that we should “compose ourselves” when confronted with exciting or devastating situations. “Hold Yourself Together” will be performed by Dargel (vocals) with James Moore (guitars), and Wil Smith (synthesizers).

Interview with Jayson Greene & Album Review by John Schaefer on eMusic.com

admin — Wed, 30 Jun 2010 18:34:50 +0000

On the occasion of the release of his new album, Someone Will Take Care of Me, Corey Dargel recently sat down with eMusic’s Jayson Greene to discuss a few of his own songs as well as a head-spinningly diverse “Jukebox Jury” that makes stop-offs at Gary Numan, Magnetic Fields, Xiu Xiu, and Lotte Lenya.

You can read the full interview HERE.

In addition, eMusic’s John Schaefer reviews the album and gives it an “Editor’s Pick.” For those who are not eMusic members, here is the text of that review:

eMusic Review by John Schaefer

Intimate, witty, and often kinda creepy, Corey Dargel’s songs strike an uneasy balance between art and pop. Using some top-shelf musicians from New York’s contemporary music scene and singing in a pop style (usually multitracked), Dargel spins quirky, lyrical tales of dysfunction and delusion. Someone Will Take Care of Me is a reassuring title for an album full of songs about people in desperate need of reassurance. In Thirteen Near-Death Experiences, the first of the album’s two song cycles, Dargel is accompanied by ICE, the International Contemporary Ensemble, featuring drummer David T Little, for a series of skittering pop-inflected compositions. Imagine Franz Schubert composing a song cycle about hypochondria after listening to AM radio Top 40 and studying Thelonius Monk, and you might be prepared for “Twelve Year Old Scotch,” or “Sometimes a Migraine Is Just a Migraine,” or what I’m willing to bet is the first-ever art-song about Ritalin.

Even more unnervingly accessible is the second song cycle, Removable Parts, which takes a familiar love-song trope to its absurdist extreme. Old images of love hurting, blinding and tearing out one’s heart are here turned into songs in which voluntary amputations are a metaphor for ways to deal with a lover’s distance, or a lover’s unwelcome closeness, or the singer’s own self-doubts and lack of confidence. “Hooked For Life,” where the singer’s hands have been replaced by hooks, is a particularly clever and unsavory song: “You’ll feel obliged to be sympathetic/ You’ll let me hold you/ Even though you won’t want to.” “Toes” and “Hands” are equally unwholesome but winning compositions, and the finale, “Everybody Wannabe,” is as catchy as it is disturbing — which is to say, very catchy. Dargel accompanies himself with a variety of electronic keyboards, and the gifted new music specialist Kathleen Supove plays piano — a neat, if distant, echo back to the old voice-and-piano tradition of the classical song-cycle.