Ever since I was very young I’ve tended to “jump into the deep end,” so to speak, in so many aspects of my life—even if I had never been taught to “swim.” This, of course, has not only been the cause of much consternation for my family over the years, but it has shaped the way I think about what I do as a teacher and advocate of new music.
Producing my opera The Face outside of the world of traditional opera companies has been both challenging and freeing. Major companies have a significant infrastructure and financial resources, but they also tend to focus on a full season of standard favorites. A new music ensemble or small independent production company can dream and create independently.
It’s all fine and good to make music for its own sake, but that’s not quite enough for me, and I don’t think it should be enough.
Taken as a whole, the work included on From Japan may stand as a document to Carl’s multifaceted exploration of the intersection between American and Japanese musical culture. In much broader and perhaps simpler terms, however, it is evidence of how careful a listener Robert Carl is, and how generously he invites us all to listen with him.
As soon as I began to think about form beyond the traditional models, I found a teeming mass of great art created outside of these molds. Eventually, I realized that aberrant structures are truly normative, that the standard forms exist mainly as theoretical constructs and are rarely evinced in interesting and successful works of art.
While my own personal political views on the recent trial and sentencing of members of the Russian punk band Pussy Riot on the charge of “hooliganism” are beyond the scope of this particular publication, which is dedicated exclusively to music, specifically new American music, there might be important musical matters around this particular issue that are worthy of discussion and debate on these pages.
When Marvin Hamlisch was inventing music, his focus and concentration were extraordinary. He would look at the words I had brought in for 30 or 40 seconds and hear something in his head. His hands would then take over. After that initial “idea” phase in the composing, there seemed to be no time-lag between his continued musical impulses and his ability to simply play them.
What American concert work or works have somehow influenced you personally, artistically, or otherwise? What American concert work or works would you add to NPR’s list of music that you think has had an important impact on the country as a whole?
Improvisation is still a mystery to many non-jazz trained musicians and intellectuals who want to quantify, and possibly codify, the elements and techniques that go into it. Jazz improvisation is about tapping into a state of awareness where the self is connected to others—not different, but the same—and when that state is reached, the music happens.
The Festival of Contemporary Music produces an annual, temporary, vibrant community—at times, it feels like a new music networking event with added concerts—but one set apart from the customary Tanglewood crowds. It’s genial to outsiders, but also prone to bewilder them.
As the week progressed, it became clear that JCOI is not merely about “jazz composers tak[ing] on the classical orchestra,” as has become the program’s slogan, but in fact about finding justification, perhaps even necessity, for this task in the two musics’ inextricable bonds with each other.
Washington, D.C. isn’t noted for its plethora of new music-related events, so it is fitting that an exhaustive exploration of one of American music’s most cherished figures will be taking place just where a healthy injection of funny-smart-weird Cageian goodness is most needed.
Plenty of composers flourish within the halls and harbors offered by academia, developing their artistic voices and finding their professional footing; Randy Gibson understood pretty quickly that he wasn’t one of them.
Whenever I’m asked to elucidate my creative process, it occurs to me that the vast majority of what I’ve learned is nothing remotely deep or profound, and in many cases it doesn’t even seem applicable to anyone else.
Questions of “real” or “fake” are dialectically put aside on the Boston Modern Orchestra Project’s new recording of music by Anthony De Ritis, music in which, in a way, everything is real and fake all at the same time. Or, more precisely: this is music which is constantly, enthusiastically directing your attention to the materials out of which it’s fashioned.
As I write this, the Olympic closing ceremonies are concluding. I adore these sorts of grand spectacles. Each Olympic host nation tries to outdo the previous presentations in a sort of creative arms race that has reached recent culminating points in the precision of the Beijing games and in the whimsy of this London edition.
When I encounter, say, someone’s third symphony, my immediate reaction after hearing it (and sometimes even before hearing it), is to seek out that composer’s first and second symphonies. Yet I wouldn’t want to use such a title for one of my own compositions.
Now available everywhere.
Scheduled to be available in December, Beck’s new album will consist of a collection of 20 new songs published only as sheet music. Here, for what they’re worth, are my initial takes on the project.
When I realized that Glenn Miller had little interest in music as an expressive act, I lost my interest. To be sure, I find his music fairly boring anyway, but the socio-political apathy I understood to be part of his message really turned me off for good. When I hear jazz, I hear a music that’s about socio-political issues.
sfSound’s most recent concert celebrating the centenary of John Cage featured works spanning over half a century. The following week, the experimental music collective Outsound Presents presented the annual Outsound New Music Summit.
Oregon-based composer Kevin Walczyk has been named the $25,000-winning recipient of the ninth Raymond and Beverly Sackler Music Composition Prize, which was awarded for the composition of a concerto for brass quintet and wind ensemble. Among the finalists were Justin Dello Joio, Augusta Read Thomas, and Roshanne Etezady.
Composer, musicologist, record producer, and genre bending pioneer İlhan Mimaroğlu (1926-2012) died last month after a long illness. Composer Bob Gluck was one of the last people to do an extensive interview with him so we asked him to describe this one-of-a-kind music maker for us in memoriam.
With the future of Sibelius in question, I’ve been thinking about my issues with the notation software that’s currently available. While I know there are a variety of existing options out there, I’ve been having more fun imagining hypothetical alternatives.
