Decolonizing music involves a conscious decision to move away from an “either/or” “colonial” mentality to a “both/and” “decolonized” mentality.
Bio writing raises everyone’s self-esteem issues, but you have just one brief moment to get people to stop and focus. Grabbing attention doesn’t mean you have to have won a Pulitzer or a Grammy. What readers really want is a human connection. How will you tell your story?
Difference is not a threat. Difference is an opportunity: a chance to hear a new voice, see a new perspective, feel a new inspiration. Even and especially through wrenching change, we’ll remain devoted to our values and be ever watchful of new ways to put them into practice for the benefit of both New Music and the USA.
I’m very proud of my new CD, released last Friday, which features some of the finest musicians working in the jazz field today. The catch? The music was recorded on June 16, 1992—almost 25 years ago! Looking back at music that I wrote so long ago has provided an occasion to reflect on the changes that have occurred since. How does a composer’s body of work change and develop over their lives? And how have our very responses to this kind of question changed over time?
As this fraught election season draws to close, Chris Rountree considers the roles of vulnerability, struggle, and failure in art–the moments in which we are forced to deal with something that we don’t want to deal with and the powerful messages we can draw from that space.
Writing about yourself is hard, writing about music is ridiculous, and writing about your own music can be excruciating. But these words can motivate people to click and listen, to attend, to collaborate, to promote, book, and fund your music. So it’s time to admit it: your bio could use an upgrade, right?
What is the accepted intellectual justification for excluding the center of the aesthetic spectrum from our current musical discourse?
Before turning 30, Michael Torke had become a towering figure in the new music community. He was signed by a major publisher, had an exclusive record contract on a major label, and was the de-facto composer-in-residence for New York City Ballet. In his early 40s, he went totally DIY both self-publishing and running his own boutique record label. Now in his mid-50s, Torke claims to feel “disconnected from everything” but he remains at the top of his form as a composer.
How do we straddle the line between individuality and the cosmos without becoming homogenized masses or superficial categories?
16 beautiful things that have fueled Chris Rountree’s creative life
Donald Buchla and I remained close for 53 years, although for about 30 years, the friendship was without the virtual electric connection we had in the early days. But he showed me how his new 200e worked and I took it with me to Europe on tour. At the end of the first concert there, for an encore, I looked at the 200e, made a few adjustments, and it was as if it was 1966 in my studio on Bleecker Street. I was ecstatic; the audience was ecstatic. Since then until his recent death, we shared again, that wonderful electric heat of creativity.
The human body offers a reservoir of largely unexplored creative material. When we design music with an understanding of biology, we further remove ourselves from static practices and embrace fundamental aspects of creativity.
We naturally only skimmed along the surface of the program during the event (and I haven’t had the chance to trial it), but even from the short presentation we had, Dorico looked incredibly deep and nuanced.
In 2012 came move number 19 and I left the records when I left the apartment. It was an impulsive yet life-altering decision that on occasion still keeps me awake at night. A few year later, when Bob Attiyeh of Yarlung Records and I decided to start raising money for a new CD project featuring three works of mine, we hadn’t discussed a vinyl release and I thought maybe someday. But it soon became clear that Bob was thinking big.
New music is an important focus in the 2017 Musical America awards which have just been announced. Among the awardees are composer Andrew Norman and the new music ensemble Eighth Blackbird.
Music is a choice the listener makes and the difference between music and noise is a matter of perspective. The streets can be our concert halls, and every listener can be an artist. We are not limited. So what do we want to contribute to our physical, social, and musical environments?
An exploration of knowledge and belief in the search for meaning in art (and life)—and the vital role of humor, friendship, and failure along the way.
Beyond the mainstream commentary and think pieces bound to follow, John Corigliano is in a unique position to reflect on Bob Dylan’s Nobel win. We asked him about the literary merits and character of Dylan’s text, from his perspective as someone who set the songwriter’s work in 2000.
Richard Peaslee possessed an openness to the unconventional and untried, along with a streak of irreverent humor and wildness that drew him to subject matter and musical expression outside the mainstream.
When Hafez Modirzadeh pushed Aakash Mittal to move beyond ethnic stylizations towards a concept of universal music, it was a life-changing moment that sent him down a path of inquiry, exploration, and creative destruction that he is still traversing to this day. Could he really abandon an idea so integral to his identity?
To further showcase the spirit of the community Ear Taxi is organized to celebrate, we asked a diverse roster of local creators to highlight stand out (but quite possibly under-the-radar) aspects of the scene—to pull back the curtain on Chicago for those in the know about new music but maybe a stranger to the city. Add your favorites!
Patricia Morehead arrived in Chicago in the fall of 1984 and went on to found and direct the CUBE Contemporary Chamber Ensemble for 20 years. In the midst of the Ear Taxi celebration, she takes a moment to reflect back on her history in the city and praise its evolving new music community.
Chicago is a city of individuals with an entrepreneurial streak and a DIY mentality who work hard to build from the ground up, but who are also very interested in finding their shared identity. And Seth Boustead finds that all voices, unique as they may be, are welcome in the search.
Chicago is a particularly concentrated expression of confluences in current culture, and the evidence of this is both the explosive energy of the city’s new music community in recent years and also how hard its characteristics are to pin down.
