Mazzoli, currently working on her second full-length opera, was chosen from over 100 applicants for the position and now has the opportunity to follow a personalized, three-year development track focused on the advancement of her career as an operatic composer.
Welch’s music is the by-product of an unlikely blend—Indonesian gamelan, Scottish bagpipes, and indie rock. While these types of music might initially seem completely unrelated, Welch has found his compositional voice in their common ground.
When I listen to this kind of music, I imagine I am like an animal listening to human music, perceiving some dim reflection off a distant surface.
The famous “zone,” the state of mind that allows people to do things that appear superhuman, seems to be a place where things slow down.
Taken as an album-length work, the collection of unique voices Composed encompasses as part of its scheme is impressive; that it all comes together so seamlessly is a credit to the strength of Bischoff’s singular one.
Without the exposure to all the music I hear in concerts and on the recordings I acquire when I’m on the road, as well as the conversations about music I have with people wherever I happen to be, the inspirational fuel I need in order to create my own music would be severely depleted.
This week, Opera America will hold its 2012 conference in Philadelphia, with a focus on new works and innovative strategies. It is fitting that this conference should take place in Philadelphia, which in the past few years has become a center for new opera in the United States.
ASCAP and the League present the awards each year to orchestras of all sizes “for programs that challenge the audience, build the repertoire, and increase interest in music of our time.”
In my thinking, the exclusion of audience participation means that measures have been taken to keep it from happening, but its disinclusion merely means that it was never taken up for consideration. Audience participation at orchestra concerts is not considered as essential to the music’s performance. And now that jazz-studies programs are nearly ubiquitous in American academic institutions, we should be concerned that institutional-based jazz-studies programs have the potential for disincluding the relatively experienced performer from their learning environment.
In many ways, writing music is very much like speaking a foreign language.
Out of a total 96 applicants, 38 New York City-based new music organizations have received funding totaling $152,000.
Turning pages might seem like an almost desultorily simple task. It is not. It is a skill, and a surprisingly delicate one at that.
Simply making “good music” in our idiom(s) of choice is not enough, when many people simply may not have the footholds to grasp our intended meanings.
Brandt’s music quickly moves past the New Age sound world as she piles on more and more layers of counterpoint, creating music that instead winds up sounding more akin to one of Phil Spector’s self-described “little symphonies for the kiddies,” albeit without the saccharine lyrics.
Recently, the Atlas Theater concluded its first season of its New Music series, as curated by Armando Bayolo, and announced plans for their 2102–13 season.
“He followed his own path, and it took decades to be recognized,” says pianist Sarah Cahill. “I think a lot of young composers today—not just in the Bay Area but across the country—are picking up on what he started.”
In the minds of many people, publishers are monoliths—giant, impenetrable entities that control the copyrights of others and draconically police their usage. But what was particularly heartwarming about the 2012 Annual Meeting of the Music Publishers Association was how deeply personal it all was.
A total of 49 publications, including scores of compositions by William Bolcom, Chen Yi, Valerie Coleman, John Corigliano, David Del Tredici, John Harbison, Charles Ives, Vijay Iyer, Robert Kyr, Paul Moravec, Steve Reich, David Evan Thomas, Maury Yeston, Neil Young, and Frank Zappa, were honored in the 2012 Paul Revere Awards for Graphic Excellence announced during the annual meeting of the Music Publishers Association.
A rare performance of Grisey’s Le Noir de l’Étoile: a work that is big, challenging, logistically elaborate, and best suited to a context where it can reign as the event that it is.
After all this time, we still haven’t figured out that there is enough room in our culture for each style, each genre, each musical language to not only stand on its own, but for others to present and interpret the music in new and unique ways.
Many people attending jam sessions look at them primarily as a place to perform, and not a place to listen and learn. It’s the latter attitude that is the key to appreciating, and making the most of, a jam session.
When Zoë Keating takes the stage, her charismatic presence—a perfect balance of focused performer and welcoming MC—exerts a magnetic attraction. She is a composer who, with a chair, her cello, a bit of software, and some amplification, conjures an entire orchestra of sound out of the timbres of this one instrument.
It is a composer’s prerogative to seek out new stimuli and accept new challenges in order to ward against stagnation. But there are also external forces which conspire to define composers and lump their work into handy pigeonholes.
Following up on some loose threads from last week’s post, I’d like to delve a little further into the many-layered and non-transparent relationship between composers, performers, and listeners in music.
