Summer Residency Snapshots: Where Trust Meets Productivity
With less pressure to produce concrete results, composers and performers tend to create with more verve. This week, a few more Avaloch New Music Institute examples illustrate how friendship can be a vital collaborative tool and how developing trust over a long period of time generates more interesting, sustainable work.
Showcase of Six New Operas-In-Progress plus an Entire New Opera to be Presented in L.A.
The L.A. based opera company, The Industry, has announced the third installment of its biennial West Coast workshop for new American operas. In February 2017, portions of six new operas-in-progress–composed by Nicholas Deyoe, William Gardiner, John Hastings, Laura Karpman, Marc Lowenstein, and Dylan Mattingly–will be presented as well as the concert premiere of Bonnie and Clyde by composer Andrew McIntosh and librettist Melinda Rice.
Jonathan Kramer’s Gift
Jonathan Kramer’s Postmodern Music shows how our contemporary experience colors and reshapes our audition of everything, from Beethoven to new pieces he never could have encountered. And so his last book, published this month and more than a decade after his death, is not only still relevant; it’s prescient.
California Sunshine: Remembering Bobby Hutcherson (1941-2016)
Hutcherson had his own distinct tone and sound on the vibes, very different from the prominent mallet players of the day, but as a composer and musical philosopher he was also one of the most important conceptualizers of music in the last half of the 20th century.
Wadada Leo Smith Receives $25K Mohn Career Achievement Award
Composer and trumpeter Wadada Leo Smith has received the Hammer Museum’s 2016 Mohn Award for Career Achievement “honoring brilliance and resilience.”
An Open Response to “… But I Hate Modern Music”
Subjectivity isn’t actually a matter of taste. It’s a matter of expectation. When it comes to art and artistic renderings, there is, unfortunately, often a disconnect between what an artist is presenting and what an audience believes their price of admission is buying.
Summer Residency Snapshots: Into the Workshop
Composer/performer collaborations may run in both directions at once: input from performers can help composers create more easily interpretive, idiomatic work, and composers can bring interpretive clarity to hard to parse scores while writing with their collaborators in mind.
Concerts in the Park and Modes of Listening to New Music
New music has been as much about challenging modes of listening and perception as anything else. What is most wonderful to me about the park experience was that all modes of listening are available simultaneously.
Whither Los Angeles: The Émigrés
Los Angeles is a place where cultural dichotomies are magnified, and the rift between American and European musical priorities illustrated by the experiences of émigré composers of the ’30s and ’40s offers a powerful case in point. This was a collision of worlds which never fully resolved or came to an agreeable integration, reflecting some of the fundamental fragmentation of Los Angeles.
Summer Residency Snapshots: The Composer / Performer Mind Meld
For ensembles of composer/performers, neither the tight, goal-oriented schedules of summer festivals nor the creative isolation of writers colonies fit. At Avaloch, both Triplepoint Trio and Invisible Anatomy were able to stretch their legs creatively while being inspired by the diverse community around them.
What Happens When Composers Make Opera
A collaborative conversation at Hunter College’s Ida K. Lang Recital Hall featuring some of the most prolific and interesting composers, librettists, and singers working in New York’s new opera scene.
Whither Los Angeles? New Music in Tinseltown
It’s hard now to find a week in which you can’t hear something new—really new—in Los Angeles. Perhaps like many composers who grew up grumbling about its pop culture backdrop and who are now witnessing the flowering of an LA new music community, I am wondering: how did we get here?
Summer Residency Snapshots: Lessons in Dynamic Collaboration
How can taking part in a close dialogue over the genesis of a piece lead to more sustained and flexible partnerships between composers and performers? How can being in an idyllic natural setting, surrounded by other interesting musicians and away from one’s normal routine, impact creative work? Is it important to be friends?
Carlos Simon Wins $15,000 ACO Underwood Emerging Composer Commission
Carlos Simon, recipient of the $15K 2016 ACO Underwood Commission, was chosen from seven finalists during ACO’s 25th Underwood New Music Readings on June 13-14, 2016. Simon won the top prize with his work Plagues of Egypt.
Stream the 2016 Bang on a Can Marathon
Tune in to this page to watch the Bang on a Can live stream from 4-10 PM on Saturday, July 30, 2016.
The Generalization Generation
When we elevate a certain kind of craft and its formal concerns above all else, this kind of gatekeeping doesn’t just hurt young composers, it also shuts out other potential voices, marginalized voices, voices that could bring new life to new music. It is completely inimical to the spirit of creativity that should animate and drive us.
Chamber Music America Announces $483,000 in Grants for New Works
CMA will distribute a total of $483,100 to 21 ensembles for the creation of new works. A total of $272,000 was awarded to nine jazz ensembles through the New Jazz Works program. Plus twelve grants totaling $211,100 have been awarded through the Classical Commissioning program.
Better Know a Composer: Disambiguation Edition
Was that Jefferson Friedman or Jason Freeman or Joshua Fried? Did you mean Hahn Rowe or Huang Ruo? Did I really just say Larry Polansky when I meant Paul Lansky?
Memories of Milton
We have all, at one time or another, had to come to terms with Milton Babbitt’s music, with his ideas about music, and with the place he helped define for composers. Anyone who can make us question the way forward so profoundly is helping us become ourselves, whether we like it or not. Even people who—to put it kindly—were not fond of Milton owe him a debt of gratitude.
What 4’33” Teaches Us
Whether Cage originally meant it in this way or not, 4’33” is an open invitation to critically engage with silence as a renewable pedagogical act. Andy Costello explores stories of silence—both inside and beyond the traditional classroom—that have little to say and plenty to teach.
...But I Hate Modern Music
If you happen upon an offensive or meaningless piece of visual art, you can just walk away. A live performance, on the other hand, holds you hostage. What responsibilities does this place on the presenter?
Electroacoustic Music with Video: Comparison with Sound for Film
If a concert composer is using video with their music, that composer is writing a film score.
Whose Classical Music? Assumptions and Representation in Online Participatory Projects
Online projects are meant to open up new forms of musical participation to people who would normally take part only as audience members. But they also bring up important issues regarding access, representation, and inclusion. Who ends up participating, and what does their participation mean?
NYFA and EtM Announce Fellowships and Residencies to NY Composers
The New York Foundation for the Arts has announced the recipients and finalists of its Artists’ Fellowship Program. The organization has awarded unrestricted cash grants of $7,000 to artists working in 15 disciplines, totalling $647,000 to 98 artists (including five collaborations) throughout New York State.
