Blog Posts

an audio garden

7/22/2018

I've begun recording a few pieces that I'll periodically release on youtube through the remainder of the summer.
Tonight, I've posted a vocal version of Florence B. Price's "Adoration", and Kenneth Gaburo's "Cantilena One"--a setting of Rabindranath Tagore's thirteenth Vaishnava Song. New(er) releases will also be posted on this youtube playlist. There's no rhyme or reason to this curation of classical music beyond carving out a personal, non-cynical "sharing is caring" space in spite of this current sociopolitical climate.

(The backdrops are close-ups of my own painting.)

August +

8/1/2017

Upcoming highlights:

August 15, 9:00pm
with Charlie Looker Ensemble and Daisy Press
Union Pool, 484 Union Ave, Brooklyn

September 27, 7:00pm
Solo recital with Bennington faculty guests
Deane Carriage Barn, Bennington College, VT

September 29, 8:00PM
Annea Lockwood's "Bayou-Borne, for Pauline" with Christian Wolff (percussion), Ross Karre (percussion), Nate Wooley (trumpet), Michael Pisaro (electric guitar), and Jessica Pavone (viola).
ISSUE PROJECT ROOM, 22 Boerum Place, Brooklyn

November 15, 8:00pm
world premieres of Alison Nowak's "The White Birds" and Tina Davidson's "Spring After Spring"
Deane Carriage Barn, Bennington College, VT

Add. info on Past Spring/Summer '17 Highlights:

In April, I premiered Emiliano Branda's "Queens Anthem" at the Queens Museum as part of "Protest Forms: Memory and Celebration: Part II" for the opening of Marinella Senatore's exhibition.

In May, I had the opportunity to revisit curation for an evening at St. Lydia's Church in Brooklyn for Angela Morris's Brackish Series. which happens monthly. All the short sets were centered on text and the voice, dance, and music. I had the great good fortune of working with and presenting these wonderful artists:

First Set: improvising with Dafna Naphtali (voice, Max MSP), Sarah Bernstein (voice, viola), Martita Abril (dance) --all original texts by each of the musicians (and yours truly), in addition to Adrienne Rich's "What Kind of Times Are These"

Second Set: Jasmine Wilson (voice, composition, text), Anjna Swaminathan (Carnatic violin), Maria Grand (saxophones), and Martita Abril (dance).

Third Set: Sasha Zamler-Carhart (voice, texts by Afro-Panamaian poets), Jesse Greenberg (glockenspiel), and Quilan Arnold (dance).

Fourth Set: Anaïs Maviel (voice, percussion), Asiya Wadud (spoken word, text), and Shantelle Jackson (dance).

In June, I was involved in 6 dance pieces as composer and/or performer in the culmination of Wally Cardona, and Jennifer Lacey's 5-year project, THE SET UP in collaboration with master dancers I Nyoman Catra (Balinese Topeng) Proeung Chhieng (Cambodian), Junko Fisher (Okinawan), Saya Lei (Mandalay-style, classical Burmese), Jean-Christophe Paré (French baroque), Kapila Venu (Indian Kutiyattam) and Heni Winahyuningsih (Javanese refined) on Governor's Island.

Spring Highlights

4/8/2017

Recent:
February: First go at American Traditions Competition in Savannah Georgia

3/18 8:30pm at The Stone: Denman Maroney's "Claudius Smith" with Lisa Karrer, David Simons and Ratzo Harris

Upcoming:
4/9 4:00pm at The Queens Museum: Opening for Marinella Senatore's Protest Forms: Memory and Celebration Part II

4/14 8:30pm at The Knockdown Center: Charlie Looker's "What Dawn is This"

4/17 10:00pm at 65Fen: Trio with Andie Springer and Devin Gray

5/3 6:30pm at Williams Club: Screening and talk for A Marvelous Order (Schubert plays Jane Jacobs)

5/6 7:00pm at National Sawdust: Sophia Subbaya Vastek's CD release

5/18 8:00pm at St. Lydia's Church, Brooklyn: Angela Morris' BRACKISH SERIES, curated evening of collabs with musicians, poets and dancers

JUNE: RIVER TO RIVER FESTIVAL TBA dates and times on Governor's Island for Wally Cardona and Jennifer Lacey's THE SETUP with Jonathan Bepler

Face(book)ing Trump

1/25/2017

My choice to leave Facebook wasn't to become an internal emigre or to escape "political discussion", but that I knew that this baseball card collection & ad platform of my friends family and acquaintances was not enhancing my sense of community or bettering my relationships. And it finally became too saturated to continue being a useful networking tool for my work as a musician (averaging 20+ invites a day).

—> Never mind the constant changes on privacy settings without consent, never mind the limited choice on how my life is displayed in this internet scrapbook with facial recognition, never mind the increased labor/interaction required to successfully curate the experience, never mind the ethically questionable social experiments Facebook has conducted, etc. But now the proliferation of fake news and a board member like Peter Thiel make it clear that I made the right choice back in September.

I stay active on twitter, more for amplifying voices I believe in, and will focus on resisting in less watered-down, performative ways.

Since I pay for this ad-free space, I would like to say the following.

Donald Trump is not a legitimate president. I choose to post this publicly on my website in solidarity with all the dissenters, especially those standing with #blacklivesmatter, those for reproductive freedom and sex workers' rights, and the safety of immigrants, Muslims (#NoBanNoWall), and the LGBTQA community, and those who rally around the support of climate science, those about to lose healthcare, and just a growing list of groups and individuals this administration targets.

September News

9/27/2016

Photo with Ralf Buschmeyer, Minsoo Sohn, and Laura Reid right after our Canadian premiere of David Lang's "death speaks" in Calgary, Alberta as part of the Honens Festival and Bison Noir. Also performed F. Schubert's Death and the Maiden and E. E. Cummings settings by yours truly.

"This You" by Tino Sehgal wraps up 9/29/16 in City Hall Park as part of the Public Art Fund's exhibit "The Language of Things".

Taking part in the Robert Rauschenberg Artists Residency for the beginning of October at Captiva Island, Florida to continue work on The Setup.

Upcoming Highlights

5/21/2016

May 28 @ 8pm
World premieres of music by Ty Citerman and Jeanann Dara
Greenwich House Music School
46 Barrow Street, 2nd Floor
http://antisocialmusic.org/performances/Interrobang.shtml

June 9 @ 7:30pm
Visual Artists at the Atrium: Jeremy Couillard and Ben Hall present Alien Puke Consciousness
complementary music
David Rubinstein Atrium, Lincoln Center
http://www.lincolncenter.org/show/visual-artists-at-the-atrium

June 11
9:30 Anagram Ensemble: Works by James Ilgenfritz, Natacha Diels, Elliott Sharp
Firehouse Space, Brooklyn

June 23-24 @ 9pm
June 25 @ 8pm
The Set Up: Kapila Venu
http://lmcc.net/event/cardona-setup-kapila/
South Seaport Museum, NYC

June 28-September 29 @ sunrise
Tino Sehgal "This You"
Public Art Fund event
City Hall Park, NYC
http://www.blouinartinfo.com/news/story/1371243/new-yorks-public-art-fund-to-show-tino-sehgal-carol-bove-in

September 9 @ 10pm
Canadian premiere of "death speaks" by David Lang
premieres of new settings by Megan Schubert
also Franz Schubert's "Der Tod und das Mädchen"
2016 Honens Festival Alberta, Canada
http://www.honens.com/PerformancesEvents/Category/2016-Honens-Festival/Bison-Noir.aspx

Fall
Recitals in Bennington, VT and NYC TBA

Ongoing projects:
Judd Greenstein's A MARVELOUS ORDER (role of Jane Jacobs)
Kitty Brazelton's ART OF MEMORY (role of St. Augustine)
Wally Cardona and Jennifer Lacey's THE SETUP
album in the works

The Set Up: Proeung Chhieng (FRANCE) October/November

10/2/2015

The Set Up : Proeung Chhieng
October 31, 2015 & November 1, 2015 at 4:00 pm

Arquebuse Garden
1 Avenue Albert 1er
21000 Dijon
France

Original Music: Megan Schubert
Dancers: Rebecca Warner, Wally Cardona, Jennifer Lacey
Mr. Chhieng, master of Hanuman (white monkey), was a principal dancer with the Royal Cambodian Ballet and played a major role in the post-war reclamation of Cambodian dance.

Part of a series of 8 dances by Wally Cardona & Jennifer Lacey
and 8 international masters of existent dance forms

“These collaborations carry within them many pre-existing notions around cultural exchange; contemporary & traditional practice; access, privilege, survival, economics, policy-making; dance-making; pedagogy; belief & doubt; presence, re-presence & representation; encoded systems & production tropes; identity – of dance, of body; the role of expectation in perceiving; ‘pure’ dance; exoticization; and how ‘the other’ is a man-made distinction that lends itself an air of inevitability.

Many of these notions are long-held. They can never be under-interrogated.

The Set Up challenges these notions and preconceptions, held by people in and outside of the project. It does not seek to demonstrate, represent or display. But it does seek to embody, engage and create movement around these notions within the work itself, its multi-stage process and responsive product.”

Premiered May 2013 at LMCC’s Project Space - indoors, 30’x40’ gallery-like white box

Stone shows in October

9/28/2015

thestonenyc.com
(Corner of Avenue C and 2nd Street, NYC)

10/14 Wednesday (EP)
8 pm
Anagram Ensemble plays The Ticket That Exploded
Anne Rhodes, Megan Schubert, Nick Hallett, James Ilgenfritz (voices) Ty Citerman (guitar) Eyal Maoz (guitar) Denman Maroney (piano) Julianne Carney (violin) Meaghan Burke (cello) Jay Rozen (tuba) Sam Kulik (trombone) Dan Blake (sax) Robbie Lee (woodwinds) John O’Brien, Andrew Drury, Vinnie Sperazza (drums) Nicholas DeMaison (conductor)

10/16 Friday
8 and 10 pm
Experiments In Opera: The Travel Agency Is On Fire
Megan Schubert, Nick Hallett, Michael Douglas Jones (voices) Pauline Kim Harris, Sarah Bernstein (violins) James Moore (guitar) Jonathan Singer, Brian Chase (percussion) James Ilgenfritz (basses) Nathan Koci (conductor)

10/21 Wednesday
8 pm
World Premiere: Psalms from Hell Cycle
Megan Schubert (soprano) Nate Wooley (trumpet) Christopher Hoffman, Mariel Roberts, Shanda Wooley, Eleanor Norton (cellos)

Skit: "Generation Debt"

6/25/2015

Written for and premiered on the 65Fen Music Series with Jamie Jordan 6/22/15

M: So… You don’t think I could get more than $500 for this room full of furniture and the upright piano…?

J: mhmm

1x (tune) [i] vowel

M: I was reading a kidney goes for $250,000.

J: WHO’S SELLING A KIDNEY?!

M: Well, … me!

J: ...

M: mhmm

3x (tune) whistle

J: But you’d have to pay somebody… to remove that… illegally, right?

M: Right. The surgeon, and then the organ broker who’d take a cut…

J: mhmm (looks)

3x (tune) hums

M: Well, if I get a lung removed during the same surgery… Hey… those go for like $400,000…

J: Wait. ...Lung. But you’re a singer…

M: mhmmm

J: hmmm?

M: Yeah, yeah. I’ve thought it through. So I won’t get to sing Brunhilde roles… I’m OK with that.

J: So you’re going to compromise your career?

M: (responds with a look)

J: Next thing you’re going to tell me is that you’ll get an eye removed, wear an eye patch and just do studio work?

M: Oh, naw. Eyes don’t go for that much money.

J: WHAT. You thought about that too?

M: Mhmmm

4x (tune) overtones

J: WHY ALL THIS ANYWAY?

M: Well, I didn’t want to default on my student loans…

J: UHHHHH

M: Ehhhh

J: Ummmm

2x (tune) hums

M: But you think I could sell this furniture for $500 though?

J: mhmmm

M: mhmmmm…

J: (looks)

M: I found out I could sell my hair for $650…

J: Well, at least that grows back…

M: Yeah…

J: mhmm

M: mhmmm.

J: (shakes head 10 secs)

M: (nods 10 secs)

J+M look at each other then at audience

Performances in June

6/17/2015

6/18 & 6/27
Art In General
Andrea Galvani's "The End"

6/21
HONK 210Hz - Make Music NY by Merche Blasco
Highline Observation space at 10th Ave and 17th Street

6/22
65Fen Music Series
9pm Josh Sinton and Nate Wooley
10pm Jamie Jordan and Megan Schubert

6/24, 6/25 & 6/26
River to River Festival
The Set-up: SAYA LEI
by Wally Cardona, Jennifer Lacey and Jonathan Bepler