NewMusicBox

2010 Minnesota Orchestra Composer Institute Blog: Day 3

By Taylor Brizendine
“It is always humbling to hear a musician play your music, and realize that they have been practicing it for months.”

Reach Out and Touch Them

By Colin Holter
To whom, and with what, do we want to reach out?

Lei Liang: Taking Sound to the Extreme

Following in the footsteps of composers such as Tan Dun, Chen Yi, Bright Sheng, and Chou Wen-chung, composer Lei Liang was able to learn a great deal through their example, but he has also felt a particular need to make his own way and develop a voice uniquely his own.

What's in a Band? Getting There

This week, I’m in Rochester, New York, rehearsing with the Eastman BroadBand, a contemporary chamber orchestra at the Eastman School of Music, in preparation for our upcoming tour to Mexico.

The Long Hello

By David Smooke
Today marks the official release of my first professional recording—a piece from 2003—but as long as this is my only recording, I’ll feel a bit strange, as if an outdated picture were always attached to my biography.

2010 Minnesota Orchestra Composer Institute Blog: Days 1 & 2

By Taylor Brizendine
“Never abbreviate the word Tuba.”

Sounds Heard: Harold Meltzer—Brion; Sinbad; Exiles

Harold Meltzer revels in unusual timbres and has an uncanny ability to seamlessly weave variants of short motives around them.

Precious Things

By Frank J. Oteri
So many of us have been seduced by the ease of access that the internet offers us, but few have paid close enough attention to the resultant value and attention we give to what we’re accessing.

2010 Minnesota Orchestra Composer Institute Blog: Before Minneapolis

By Taylor Brizendine
I get called a composer frequently, but composition is just the artistic medium I am most familiar with right now.

Rhythm Is A Dancer

By Alexandra Gardner

The process of collaboration, whether it is with dance, theater, visual art, film, or what have you, is surprisingly similar to living in a foreign country!

All in the Family

By Dan Visconti
I’ve often been fascinated with the music of Tin Pan Alley and with the golden era of recreational music-making; whether for pure recreation or for humanitarian effort, it heartens me to see that some American families still have high hopes for the role of music in their lives, and also what music might mean in the lives of others.

Inside NOTAM (Norwegian Center for Technology in Music and the Arts)

By Michael Straus
NOTAM exists to help local and international artists who might lack the technical knowledge or resources needed to realize a project. For over fifteen years, the organization has assisted artists and musicians working within the field of technology in the arts.

Playing It His Way

By Colin Holter
In order to decide how to approach pieces like YLEM, Aus den Sieben

Tagen, one of the questions that we’ve had to ponder is what the
performer’s role really is: Are we improvising, or do we need to
reconsider our “performer” job descriptions such that they might
include the formulation of material to Stockhausen’s specifications, as
well as the interpretation and presentation of already-written
material?

Lukas Ligeti Receives 2010 Alpert Award in the Arts

Lukas Ligeti is among the five recipients of the 2010 Alpert Award in the Arts, The Herb Alpert Foundation and the California Institute of the Arts have announced.

On New Opera and Film Music

I’ve often been asked why I would want to compose an opera and while I actually expect this question to arise among those who know me primarily through my work as a film composer, when it’s asked by accomplished composers who have also composed operas, it seems that its answer lies more in the philosophical than the practical.

Womb Music

By Nora Kroll-Rosenbaum
I’m at the end of pregnancy, and in addition to now owning a car seat and burp cloths, the pressing question in the minds of the two composer parents is, “what will he listen to?”

But Is It Music?

By Frank J. Oteri
During the JACK’s performance of Peter Ablinger’s WACHSTUM UND MASSENMORD, someone (who apparently is an important official at SWR) threw paper airplanes at them and soon thereafter the audience started clapping over the proceedings, forcing them to end; I initially thought all of those shenanigans were actually part of the piece but it turned out not to be.

Sounds Heard: Sarah Kirkland Snider—Penelope

Penelope, a brand new song cycle by composer and New Amsterdam Records co-founder Sarah Kirkland Snider, features a genre-blending style compelling enough to throw categorizations to the wind and revel in its unique dialect.

It's Not About Me (It's Never About Me)

By David Smooke
When I was younger, I used to love talking about my music. As I become better at composing, however, I say more in the piece itself, leaving less to be explained verbally.

Four Project 440 Winners Announced

Clint Needham, Andrew Norman, Alex Mincek, and Cynthia Wong have been named the winners of Orpheus Project 440, a collaboration between Orpheus Chamber Orchestra and WQXR 105.9FM.

Silence Is Golden

By Alexandra Gardner

I definitely believe that the sounds that we encounter on a daily basis are just as important to our physical and mental well-being as the food we eat and the air that we breathe.

Notes on Notes

By Dan Visconti
I wanted to write a few words about a topic of great interest to me: how composers scribe their ideas on physical media.

Minding the Memorex

By Colin Holter
Compared to other electronic music festivals, Spark was characterized just as much by something it didn’t have: fixed-media audio pieces.

Yanks in the UK

The technology of the 21st century may have numbed the exoticism that comes with living overseas and rendered the sense of national rootedness more fragmentary and ephemeral. But the creation of identity—a trigonometry of closeness and distance, allegiance and rejection, composition and reception—remains an essential one for any artist.