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Elena Kats-Chernin

An Australian in Santa Cruz: An Insider's Report from the 2010 Cabrillo Festival of Contemporary Music

This was the first time I’ve ever experienced Marin Alsop live in concert and what a dynamic personality she is; the performance is also wonderfully precise.

Articles
Alexandra Gardner

Let It Stew

By Alexandra Gardner
On several occasions I have been gobsmacked by late-arriving inspirations that have rather drastically changed the form or some other aspect of a composition, definitely for the better. The ideas seem so obvious—when they finally show up!

Articles
DanVisconti

Borrowed or Purloined?

By Dan Visconti
Good composers borrow. Great composers steal.

Articles
Michael Straus

Ultima(te) Contemporary Music Festival: Sensory Overload

I really wanted to attend as much of the Ultima Contemporary Music Festival as humanly possible. I picked up an all-access pass (which can be purchased at any local 7-Eleven!) which gets me into eleven non-stop days of music.

Articles
Colin Holter

Perfect Timing

By Colin Holter
Give some thought to your time management strategies: They may just save your hide.

Articles
Ian David Moss

Composing a Life, Or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Dollar

Knowledge is power, and power is not something that composers have historically enjoyed. If you want to be in control of your circumstances instead of letting your circumstances control you, it might well be time for a different kind of education.

Articles
NewMusicBox Staff

Composer Scott Wheeler Among 2010 Classical Recording Foundation Award Winners

Composer Scott Wheeler is among the just-announced winners of the 2010 Classical Recording Foundation Awards. A total of four prizes will be presented at the foundation’s ninth annual awards ceremony and benefit on October 4, 2010, at Carnegie Hall’s Weill Recital Hall.

Articles
Alexandra Gardner

Sounds Heard: Kathleen Supové—The Exploding Piano

Kathleen Supové’s release on Major Who Media, The Exploding Piano, is aptly titled in that each work includes elements, both electronic and acoustic, that make the piano larger than life.

Articles
Frank J. Oteri

The Morning After

By Frank J. Oteri
What qualities in a performance make it seem faster or slower than its actual duration?

Articles
David Smooke

Making a Scene

By David Smooke
Is Baltimore ready for a new music naissance?

Articles
Nora Kroll-Rosenbaum

Look At This Music

By Nora Kroll-Rosenbaum
The role of great album artwork in enticing a listener into a great recording has changed.

Articles
NewMusicBox Staff

11th Annual Latin Grammy Nominees Announced

The 11th Annual Latin Grammy Award Nominees have been announced, including five composers in the Best Classical Contemporary Composition category: Miguel Del Aguila, Sergio Assad, Lalo Schifrin, Orlando Jacinto Garcia, and Tania Leon.

Articles
Ruby Fulton

Gaudeamus Music Week 2010: The Winners Announced

By Ruby Fulton
The winners are announced on the final day of Gaudeamus Music Week 2010.

Articles
Ruby Fulton

Gaudeamus Music Week 2010: The Final Stretch

By Ruby Fulton
The festival is drawing to a close but the music keeps on coming.

Articles
Ruby Fulton

Gaudeamus Music Week 2010: A Few Good Surprises

By Ruby Fulton
Johannes Kreidler’s video Product Placements, “Night of the Unexpected” at Paradiso, and canal dragging for bikes.

Articles
NewMusicBox Staff

Orpheus Chamber Orchestra's Project 440 Names 12 Finalists

Orpheus Chamber Orchestra’s Project 440 began with 60 composer candidates and will conclude with the selection of four Orpheus commission recipients who will be revealed in early October.

Articles
Ruby Fulton

Gaudeamus Music Week 2010: Gamelan By Heart

Ruby Fulton
It makes me wonder if rehearsing and performing are more like the same thing to a gamelan ensemble, as opposed to the Western model, where everything is meant to be performed perfectly in order to be deemed worthy of being put behind the display case in a museum fifty years later.

Articles
Alexandra Gardner

History and The Power of Place

By Alexandra Gardner
I think that physical surroundings can play a huge role in one’s work; it can create the sense that what you are doing somehow fits into an historical timeline, even if you can’t quite see exactly how yet. It provides grounding, or a sense of belonging within the grand scheme of things.

Articles
Ruby Fulton

Gaudeamus Music Week 2010: A Cornucopia of Composition

By Ruby Fulton
Day three of the Gaudeamus Festival was even more music packed than the previous days, with three concerts in three different venues, and performances of eighteen pieces, including seven world premieres. Yowza!

Articles
DanVisconti

Getting the Most Out of an Undergrad Education

By Dan Visconti
These comments are specifically aimed at those enrolling in colleges and universities, not because it is the only path available for a compositional education, but rather because the academic environment is often particularly confusing, full of distracting funhouse mirrors that tend to distort the problem of learning how to be a composer instead of illuminating it.

Articles
Ruby Fulton

Gaudeamus Music Week 2010: Getting the Grand Tour

By Ruby Fulton
It’s cool that there are so many venues involved in the festival, inviting listeners to explore lots of different parts of the city.

Articles
Colin Holter

For Want Of A Nail

By Colin Holter
Mark-Anthony Turnage must really have liked “Single Ladies”, because he sure as hell put a ring on it with his recent BBC Proms premiere of Hammered Out; anyone who tells you otherwise, including the composer, is being either deliberately deceptive or frighteningly naïve.

Matthew Guerrieri

Complexity Wars

The Complexity Wars flared up again this summer—that seemingly annual outbreak of the opinion that various types of atonal modernism are just too complicated for proper musical consumption.

Articles
Ruby Fulton

Gaudeamus Music Week 2010: Reporting Live

Composer Ruby Fulton, whose orchestral piece Road Ranger Cowboy has been nominated for the 2010 Gaudeamus Prize, is currently live in Amsterdam and will be filing reports of the ongoing festivities throughout the week.

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NewMusicBox receives major support from the Francis Goelet Charitable Lead Trusts.

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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 the Office of the Governor and the New York State Legislature, the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs in partnership with the City Council, and the National Endowment for the Arts; and with support from The Aaron Copland Fund for Music Inc., Alice M. Ditson Fund of Colombia University, 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. NewMusicBox is funded in part by public funds from the New York State Council on the Arts with the support of the Office of the Governor and the New York State Legislature, the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs in partnership with the City Council, and the National Endowment for the Arts; and with support from The Aaron Copland Fund for Music Inc., Alice M. Ditson Fund of Colombia University, 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.