Every project that Jeanine Tesori has worked on—whether it’s a musical, an opera, incidental music for a play, or a soundtrack for a motion picture or an animated film—has a storyline. She claims she needs one to get started. But the storylines to which she’s been most attracted are about people who society has deemed not worthy of being protagonists which has been a hallmark of the five shows of hers thus far that have been produced on Broadway: Fun Home; Caroline, or Change; Violet; and even Thoroughly Modern Millie and Shrek The Musical.
The continuing popularity of silent film showings with live music means that there is plenty of room for experimentation in composing new scores for old pictures—and that audiences can experience individual silent films with multiple soundtracks as fits the occasion or mood.
Sometimes music is a counterbalance to tragedy. And in times of personal grief, I also turn to composition. It’s the role of the artist to dream beyond the borders of current circumstance.
We all know that the soundtrack changes the way we experience a movie. Buster Keaton’s 1927 comedy “The General” is a popular choice for showings with live accompaniment, and here Kendra Preston Leonard walks us through an illuminating assortment of approaches.
A sense of place can be the impetus for a piece, motion can be the catalyst. Sometimes a place can affect the music more indirectly.
It’s obvious that our physical world is in deep trouble. Old and new technologies are out of control—polluting our air, water and soil, poisoning our health, heating up the climate to extreme weather changes, and destroying the ecosystems upon which our lives and all living things depend. What is it that we, ordinary people, can… Read more »
Many cue sheets for silent film show notations where the performer swapped out a suggested piece with one they already knew or owned. Claire Hamack, an accompanist whose scores, photoplay albums, and cue sheets are now online at SFSMA, often made changes—including adding her own original music.
Roy Hargrove (1969-2018) was always only in the moment, hard and sincerely. In that moment, he meant everything he did; he meant every word he said; he felt everything he felt. But it is hard to go through life in that way when everyone else around him wanted more than that moment.
The absence of music by black composers in concert programming and academic institutions tells them that they are not wanted, no matter how much success they gain. The new music community has not only the responsibility, but also the incentive, to change this.
It’s August and I can finally turn my head to a collaboration with Polish violinist Kinga Augustyn for a concert in mid November—a piece for solo violin influenced by Bach’s Chaconne in D minor. I’d been blown away by how Bach took this repetitive form and developed it so profoundly. I aspired toward such a depth. Could I do it? And how? The answer that came: Be yourself.
The advent of the moving picture brought about the development of an enormous amount of new music composed specifically to accompany film. There are hundreds of pieces in the Silent Film Sound and Music Archive to discover and use for accompaniment or analysis, all of it once an influential force on the development of the cinematic score.
There are a great number of interlocking gears in motion behind every orchestral programming decision. Understanding this can help all of us in the new music community be constructive, rather than reactive, advocates for the repertoire we want to hear.
Looking at life through a musical lens, I see many correspondences that are perhaps easier to see in a city like New York, where the counterpoint of life is omnipresent.
Born in Macau, educated in Hong Kong and California, and now dividing her time between Paris and Upstate New York, Bun-Ching Lam creates music that is shaped by her multicultural experience as well as her extreme curiosity. But she is skeptical of fashion.
Our friend and colleague Vanessa Ague agreed to curate a Halloween-themed playlist with works that she sourced from across the New Music USA platform. She found some great tracks!
Originally recorded for Counterstream Radio in 2008, Diamanda Galás presents selections from “The Exorcist” (1973), “Squirm” (1976), “The Alligator People” (1959), “The Mechanic” (1972), “Blood of Dracula” (1957), “Sisters” (1973), and also the music of MaryAnne Amacher.
Montage: Great Film Composers and the Piano was a collaboration that was bound to happen one day given my years of living in Los Angeles and working with composers.
Paul Elwood confesses that he used to become jealous, mildly enraged, or depressed by the accomplishments of others until he realized how pointless it was to hold his own creative experiences up against those of others. “I’m composing every day, teaching, playing gigs, and staging concerts. Our successes are self-defined and they can’t be narrowly conceived….Forty years later, I’m still doing it. I consider that to be a successful career in spite of never winning (or being nominated for) a Pulitzer, never placing in the Walnut Valley National Banjo Competition, and never being named teacher of the year.”
The only way you fail at art is if you stop doing it. There’s no reason a composer can’t be a plumber or an electrician instead of a teacher. All you have to do is keep writing.
The idea for playing some joint recitals with Terry Riley was conceived in January 2017 when I met up with him at one of his solo concerts at Los Angeles’ Geffen Contemporary gallery. In an email shortly afterwards, he wrote, “It will be a challenge as you mostly play written music and I almost always improvise, but I am sure it will be great and hopefully fun for both of us.”
This week, Paul Elwood shares his essential composition tips.
Ben Weber was an enigma. He was a twelve tone composer whose lushly harmonic music is often described as tonal. He was a deeply serious, intellectual artist in the metaphysical mold of Schoenberg and Busoni. At the same time, he was famous in artistic circles for his impromptu, hilarious yet oddly poignant drag performances of opera performed for close friends at his West Village apartment.
Creating sound for a large outdoor installation had been a dream of Neil Leonard’s for years. But when the opportunity finally arrived, it was filled with a list of elements that couldn’t be tested in advance and were subject to change—even after he finished the music.
Steven Stucky died much too soon—and for so many of us, unacceptably—at the age of 66. The CD recording Garlands for Steven Stucky is a collection of short piano pieces written by Steve’s countless composer friends; they are 32 individual, deeply-felt relationships.
