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NewMusicBox Staff

Meet The Composer Awards $245,000 for the Creation of 19 New Works

Meet The Composer has awarded $245,000 to 32 organizations to commission 19 new works via the 2010 Commissioning Music/USA program.

Articles
Frank J. Oteri

Music is Time

By Frank J. Oteri
There is often an extreme difference between the time it takes to compose, say, ten minutes of music, and ten minutes.

Articles
Alexandra Gardner

The Five Stages of Composition

By Alexandra Gardner
For many composers the creative process can be a psychologically (and physically) charged beast, which we are destined to battle over and over with every new project.

Articles
DanVisconti

The Element of Surprise

By Dan Visconti
While on the surface it might seem that synced scoring and stage scoring were close cousins, the sudden juxtaposition of the two has only made clearer what a laughable comparison this actually is.

Articles
Colin Holter

Lessons In Contemporary Telemarketing

I’m not sure what the medium-term future holds for the Minnesota Orchestra—lots of pops concerts and warhorses, if their upcoming season is any indication—but every time I get a phone call from their salesminions, I’ll tell them to let me know when they start programming contemporary music.

Articles
David Brensilver

Passing It On: Zappa on Playing Zappa

Shortly before the band embarked on a 40-plus-date tour this past spring that included stops across the United States, as well as in Mexico, British Columbia, Nova Scotia, the Netherlands, Belgium, Israel, Italy, France, and the UK, Dweezil Zappa and I spoke about the challenges and the preparation that has gone into presenting his late father’s music to both new audiences and longtime fans.

Articles
Nora Kroll-Rosenbaum

Audio Flashbacks

By Nora Kroll-Rosenbaum
Do the short bleeps with beautiful attacks of vintage video game soundtracks live happily as the 20th-century harpsichord?

Articles
Frank J. Oteri

Sounds Heard—Dawn of Midi: First

Dawn of Midi’s music has an expansiveness reminiscent of Albert Ayler’s pianoless masterpiece Spiritual Unity and yet at the same time the surehandedness of the Bill Evans Trio’s legendary Village Vanguard sessions.

Articles
David Smooke

For Those About to Learn (We Salute You)

By David Smooke
The three labors (nine less than Hercules!) with which I charge any student entering a graduate program.

Articles
Frank J. Oteri

"Why Can't We Be Friends"

By Frank J. Oteri
The whole notion of “new music” implies that there’s “old music” that’s somehow no longer as vital or valid.

Articles
Alexandra Gardner

Changing the World

By Alexandra Gardner
Who wouldn’t want to change the world?? Would I really have to give up writing instrumental music in order to make that happen?!

Articles
Jonathan Russell

Can Music Really Be Political?

By Jonathan Russell
Right now, I’m way more fired up about the Proposition 8 lawsuit and the controversy over the proposed Islamic Cultural Center near Ground Zero than any piece of music I’m writing; writing abstract music at all feels like it pales in importance compared to these issues.

Articles
Molly Sheridan

Tristan Perich: Getting to the Essence of the Sound

Tristan Perich’s 1-Bit Symphony stands quite eloquently in contrast to the 21st century’s love affair with the endlessly copyable digital file. While CDs have been traded for the instant gratification of the easily distributed MP3, Perich has shifted the frame and managed to make the fragile plastic jewel case once again worthy of shelf space.

Articles
Colin Holter

The Music Matrix

By Colin Holter
If we’re trying to sort out the relationship(s) between the practices of vernacular and cultivated music in present-day America, my suspicion is that it would be much easier to take a cue from Pierre Bourdieu and chart the positions of various kinds of music within the field of production—in other words, by the conditions under which they’re produced and consumed. I grabbed the nearest envelope and got to work.

Articles
Frank J. Oteri

"I Need You to Be Madeleine for a While and Then We'll Both Be Free"

By Frank J. Oteri
Even though I think I was experiencing something of an aural mirage, I could not help hearing echoes of the soundtrack to Vertigo in all the music that was played during Cabrillo’s final concert at the Mission San Juan Bautista, the site where Vertigo’s denouement was filmed.

Articles
Alexandra Gardner

Sounds Heard—ETHEL: Oshtali

ETHEL’s latest CD Oshtali is a collection of vital, engaging compositions by a talented group of young composers that not only provides a tribute to the heritage and future of the Chickasaw Nation, but that also creates a strong sense of optimism for the future of contemporary music in the US.

Articles
David Smooke

First Drafts

By David Smooke
I feel the need to remind myself of this process, because I’m beginning a new piece—one that is larger than any I’ve attempted to date—and I’m frightened.

Articles
Joelle Zigman

The End

By Joelle Zigman
Upon reflection on my first blogging experience, I’ve come up with at least ten life lessons I’ve learned from the past six months of thrusting my opinions into the public.

Articles
DanVisconti

The Language of the Tribe

By Dan Visconti

I began working on a commercial scoring project with a video artist this week, and although the collaboration has been very fruitful it’s also been riddled with minor awkwardness and misunderstandings that come with trying to communicate musical concepts to non-musicians.

Articles
Alexandra Gardner

Somebody Pinch Me

By Alexandra Gardner
I did all that really fun stuff and they’re going to (*gasp*) pay me for it?! Sweet!

Articles
Colin Holter

Overtaken By Alt-Classical

By Colin Holter
In what respect is “alt-classical” contemporary music?

Articles
Ann Starr

Moving Away from the Center of Jazz: Thomas Wirtel, a.k.a. Thomas Shabda Noor

Soon after Thomas Wirtel, a.k.a. Thomas Shabda Noor, met Morgan Powell at North Texas State University in 1957, experiments in group improvisation commenced on a weekly basis, experiments profoundly informed by music of the 20th-century avant garde.

Articles
Frank J. Oteri

To Be There or Not To Be There

By Frank J. Oteri
The reason film is a remarkable medium is because it’s a mirror; the reason music is a remarkable medium is because it isn’t.

Articles
David Smooke

What is a Successful Composer?

By David Smooke
Like music itself, success (and its inverse: failure) is a difficult phenomenon to pin down, and that the more I work to create a specific definition of a successful composer, the more the issue becomes slippery and difficult to grasp firmly.

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NewMusicBox receives major support from the Francis Goelet Charitable Lead Trusts and The ASCAP Foundation.

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NewMusicBox is funded in part by public funds from the New York State Council on the Arts with the support of Governor Kathy Hochul and the New York State Legislature, the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs in partnership with the City Council, the National Endowment for the Arts, and with support from The Aaron Copland Fund for Music and The Amphion Foundation, Inc. Support for New Music USA and its many programs and activities is provided by foundations, corporations, government agencies, and hundreds of individual contributors.

NewMusicBox receives major support from the Francis Goelet Charitable Lead Trusts and The ASCAP Foundation. NewMusicBox is funded in part by public funds from the New York State Council on the Arts with the support of Governor Kathy Hochul and the New York State Legislature, the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs in partnership with the City Council, the National Endowment for the Arts, and with support from The Aaron Copland Fund for Music and The Amphion Foundation, Inc. Support for New Music USA and its many programs and activities is provided by foundations, corporations, government agencies, and hundreds of individual contributors.