News

Read Lawrence Cosentino’s entire review of Their Eyes Are Fireflies, David’s new concerto for trombone and orchestra for Ava Ordman, in the Lansing City Pulse.

The words ‘introspection’ and ‘trombone concerto’ are seldom heard together. Let’s work on that. Symphonic fireworks and cataclysms are great, but Thursday’s Lansing Symphony concert featured something very different — a profound meditation on life’s mysteries, issuing in low tones from a long metal tube…This was deeply personal music, very different from the flashy back-and-forth volleys that fill most violin or piano concertos. The pure, coppery tones curling out of Ordman’s instrument went up your back, into your neck and straight up the base of your brain…The music was constantly on the verge of resolving into a juicy melody or sweet series of chords — i.e., an easy answer — but it never did…It’s no wonder the seemingly archaic concerto form has lasted so long. It has evolved from a way to show off one musician’s virtuosity against a fancy backdrop to something much deeper – a perfect platform for playing out the relationship between a soul and the universe around it…The concerto itself is a fabulous mystery that deserves to be heard again.

David will serve as a mentor composer along with Bright Sheng, Derek Bermel, and Margaret Brouwer for the American Composers Orchestra EarShot Readings with the Grand Rapids Symphony, September 25-30.

The Pittsburgh New Music Ensemble’s performance of Red Vesper was given a glowing review in the Pittsburgh Post–Gazette:

The first piece, Mr. Biedenbender’s “Red Vesper,” stole the show. Spacious and ceremonious, the work is inspired by national parks in the American West, where the Wisconsin-born composer would often go for reflection and meditation.

His experimentation with sound was like a true nocturnal Western adventure. The piece started with flute mimicking the whistle of the wind or an animal, accompanied by electronic nature sounds, violin, cello, clarinet and piano. The work’s polyphonic writing brought out the timbre and melody of each instrument. Slow but methodical at first, it crescendoed into a vesperal epiphany and steadily drew to a close as the creatures and instruments each fell asleep. The end result was a nature’s hymn to the wild.

Philip Campbell of the Bay Area Reporter reviewed Tim Higgins performance of Radiant Spheres at the San Francisco Symphony Soundbox series:

“…the contemporary pieces that came later proved to be both explosively dramatic and intriguingly experimental. Radiant Spheres (2014) by David Biedenbender, which Higgins commissioned, managed to say an awful lot in just six minutes. From bluesy and introspective to anguished and finally pacified, the beautiful work for trombone and piano alerted us to a real emerging talent.”

David has been commissioned by David Alan Miller and the Albany Symphony to write a new work for their American Music Festival.

Host John Schaefer broadcasts the Akropolis Reed Quintet‘s new Innova Recording of Refraction on WNYC’s New Sounds.

Listen here.