We could call Cassidy’s approach—those proliferating and always-changing approaches, rather—”extreme,” but that would be unfairly reductive. A listen through The Crutch of Memory, whose pieces show not only Cassidy’s growth as a composer but also the surprising multivalence of his pieces’ deliberately unstable material, will quickly dispel that prejudice.
The residency is “designed to prepare students to enter today’s challenging classical music world” and “will support the school’s aim to shape artistic leaders who find creative new ways to engage audiences while maintaining the highest artistic standards.” The sextet will visit for four weeks each year beginning in October 2012.
Admittedly all music—if we are fully paying attention to it—requires a time sacrifice. And music’s time-based perceptual design is something of a liability in a world where time is such an unavailable commodity.
Though Milton Babbitt got his four seconds of Grammy love during the “In Memoriam” portion of Sunday night’s CBS broadcast, many of the artists who were recognized by the Academy received that acknowledgement away from the network cameras during a pre-telecast ceremony. Winners in 68 categories celebrated in the afternoon at the Los Angeles Convention Center.
The No Idea Festival recently celebrated its ninth year with seven days of concerts in Austin, Houston, and San Antonio. An international roster of artists participated in workshops and performances in spaces large and small and, as a run up to the festival, the No Idea Sunday Series featured four performances from local and regional improvisers.
The underlying concepts upon which one creates compositions may come from relatively different directions. After some back and forth, we came up with the idea that the difference was on which side of the creative “envelope” each of us tended to start when we made our art.
While the standard mythology of the jazz club owner has been one of reptilian and canine ancestry and cross-breeding (with a little porcine influence on the family tree), the truth is that there was quite a bit of dedication to presenting and cultivating new artists going on in the likes of Max Gordon, Bradley Cunningham, and Amos Kaune.
It seems the momentary topic of choice in the world of classical music journalism is musical “blind spots,” or rather, the music that you try to like—or at least appreciate—but somehow just can’t manage to get there. Is something important being missed by succumbing to blind spots?
Anyone only briefly acquainted with classical concert music of any color has likely had occasion to witness one of the most ubiquitous bluffs in the concert world: presenting one or more works from many years ago as an example of “contemporary” music.
The Library of Congress has established the new Dina Koston and Roger Shapiro Fund for New Music. Honoring the life and legacy of noted composer and pianist Dina Koston, the endowment will support commissions of new works and performances at the Library.
The reason people enjoy music is not for the sonic aspects alone, but for its ability to create an environment where we feel closer to one another.
Just when I thought I was out, they pull me back in—noteheads and stems, that is. No sooner, it seems, do I proclaim my intent to vacation away from standard staff-and-measure notation than I start a new piece making use of that very notation.
Subito Music Corporation has chosen Brian Ciach to be the first participant in the Subito Composer Fellowship program, developed in partnership with the Minnesota Orchestra Composer Institute.
Work in Progress, the second disc from the Taos-based duo Untravelled Path, features microtonal instrumental music they perform on their own hand-made creations as well as four not-quite songs—a group of free-form mini-epics fusing words and music which last between 5 ½ and 7 minutes. Their otherworldly music, according to them, might be “some of the very first New Music for the 99%.”
When we choose our aspirations wisely, we can better enjoy traveling along our career paths. We are better able to distinguish between true setbacks and temporary diversions. I find the best goals are those that allow for me to be easily sidetracked.
Martine Joste’s comments about the importance of teaching John Cage’s music to younger musicians really resonated with me. It was a perfect prologue to attending three of The Juilliard School’s concerts devoted to Cage.
The San Francisco Tape Music Festival presented three nights of fixed-media audio compositions with all the lights off at the newly renovated ODC Theater in the Mission in San Francisco; a few blocks away, an audience gathered for RE:COMPOSITION, a program curated by Julie Lazar using John Cage again as a touchstone.
According to trumpeter Jimmy Owens, recipient of the NEA’s 2012 A. B. Spellman Award for Jazz Advocacy, “None of the jazz clubs you go to, and spend your money at, pay into the musician’s pension fund for the musicians who are working there.”
Between self-publishing, creating performance opportunities through the initiation of new ensembles and concert series, managing commissions, and balancing the various challenges that accompany the life of the freelancing artist, composers find themselves in need of a wide swath of experiences outside of the classroom. Slowly over time, programs have been experimenting with ways to incorporate these additional concepts into an already-packed list of requirements.
There is such a thing as reaching for the next rung of the career ladder too early. Yet there comes a time for every composer when one must either expand or else stifle development. Composers would do well to stay attentive to their own needs right now, and not what their peers, friends, and competitors are doing.
This past Saturday, the Austin Museum of Digital Art presented the most recent concert in their performance series focused on experimental music and digital performance art. Though AMODA has no physical address (and really, isn’t that what you’d expect from a purely digital outfit?), their presence has been felt throughout the Austin area, and I was anxious to see what they had in store.
The more I think about what can happen in a piece of music, and about how many different ways there are to formulate and rationalize and structure and challenge and critique and embrace and magnify and problematize and thematize and reify these things, the less sure I can be that anyone else is liable to apprehend music the same way I do—or, for that matter, that I’ll apprehend a piece the same way one day as I do the next.
Bernard Rands navigates a variety of dualities both in his music and in his personal life. For someone approaching 80-years old, he is amazingly youthful and vigorous. Though he is steadfast in his routines, he’s constantly seeking and engaging with new ideas not only from music but also from art and literature. And all of this inevitably shows up in his own music.
I think that it’s emotionally unhealthy to set goals that lie beyond the realm of what we possibly can control. We can create art that more clearly expresses our ideas, but we absolutely cannot predict how that art will be perceived by any specific audience. I think that it’s important to place our goalposts carefully so that we always will be striving towards creating a better product.