Musicians at Work: Ensemble Residencies as Social Relationships
Entrepreneurialism is celebrated by many in the arts scene, but the reality is less sunny than the image often projected by consultants and administrators. Because it valorizes flexibility, opportunism, and social relationships, entrepreneurialism demands constant work. When every moment has potential meaning, it can be hard to relax.
John King: It All Becomes Music
John King composed 14 pieces last year which clock in at more than six hours. But that’s just the tip of the iceberg. To date he has created well over 200 works in a staggering array of styles and formats–from 28 string quartets and 7 experimental operas to electric guitar solos, orchestra pieces, canons for chorus, and even a few Baroque imitations and a North Indian classical raga exposition. What ties most of his work together is a commitment to indeterminate processes.
New Music USA Awards $310,820 to 60 Projects
New Music USA has announced its sixth round of project grants awards, totaling $310,820 in funding to support artistic work involving a wide range of new American music. The 60 awarded projects include concerts and recordings as well as dance, theater, opera, and more, all involving contemporary music as an essential element.
Electroacoustic Music is Not About Sound
Narrative structure and pitch specificity are now rarely considered in electroacoustic music. To claim that pitch specificity is important is to risk being labeled a reactionary or, worse yet, conventional. An even more profound change has taken place in our discourse regarding time. There is the strong suggestion that it is quaint to think of music as a narrative form, unfolding in time.
Queer and Loathing in Las Vegas: Performing Community in Hagen’s Vera
The first half of the 20th century saw the demise of the great operatic heroine and out of the fracture arose a focus on male roles, ensemble casts, and female roles singing in a completely new way. And as opera became a more racially integrated affair, new disconnects emerged while similarly allowing for new audiences to see their bodies presented as operatic vehicles.
Towards The Future: New Music in the 21st Century
At a time when our most immediate collective reality is not only mediocre, but also dangerous and pathologically against the creation of fairer worlds, I would like to believe that there is some work to be done in our field, where perhaps we can reclaim creativity and imagination.
Timbre, Envelope and Variation in Electroacoustic Music
Timbre and envelope are intricately related and are major determinants of how effective a sound event in music will be, whether in acoustic music or electroacoustic music. Since the sound events used in electroacoustic music often have little or no distinct pitch characteristics, traditional contrapuntal sequencing devices often may not generate identifiable or interesting variations, but other techniques, including models borrowed from rhetoric, can be used effectively.
Imagining Community at Bang on a Can's First Marathon
Essential to the construction of community is the creation of a shared history: a rhetoric and a narrative about who the community is, and what its values are. And in order to create a new kind of community, Bang on a Can had to overplay its hand. Community had to be performed.
The Defeat of New Music
Because of Babbitt and others, contemporary music gained access to academia and did find some solace, but the price of admission was nevertheless very high. By fundamentally treating contemporary music as a field of scientistic exploration, this type of music neglected most of its bonds with modernity and its emancipatory project based on self-critique.
2017 NEA Jazz Masters Fellows Announced
The National Endowment for the Arts has announced the 2017 NEA Jazz Masters Fellows, which is the United States government’s highest honor in jazz.
The Opportunity of Electroacoustic Musicology
The musicological exploration of electroacoustic music, its historical and social dimensions, is long overdue. In fact, as so many pivotal figures pass away, I cannot fathom why there has not been a rush to collect primary source material, let alone to interpret it.
New Music USA Announces the Inaugural Impact Fund Cohort
The Impact Fund, a new project of New Music USA, represents the first major effort to aggregate and amplify the voice of the New York new music community online.
Forging Institutional Networks through BAM’s Next Wave Festival
Sometimes radical new art needs an institutional network of support to be fully realized. Attributing Philip Glass’s success entirely to his creative iconoclasm ignores the substantial community of impresarios and patrons who have influenced his work and reception history.
2016 Pew Arts Grants Announced
The Pew Center for Arts & Heritage has announced their 2016 grants in support of the Philadelphia region’s cultural organizations and artists. Fifty three grants totaling more than $10 million will provide funding.
Opera Philadelphia Names Rene Orth 6th Composer in Residence
Opera Philadelphia, in collaboration with Music-Theatre Group in New York, has announced that composer Rene Orth has been selected as its sixth composer in residence. Funded by The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, the position combines an individualized plan of study with a living stipend and health benefits.
New Music Is Not (Necessarily) Contemporary Music
New Music is at its core an artistic project based on critique: this is its link to modernity—what fundamentally defines its nature. It questions past, dysfunctional normative models as a means to generate newer, more appropriate aesthetic fields through which another future may be built.
Music Publishers Association Announces 2016 Paul Revere Awards
The 2016 Paul Revere Awards for Graphic Excellence were announced during the luncheon of the annual meeting of the Music Publishers Association at the Redbury Hotel in New York City on Friday, June 10. Among the award-winning publications were scores by Steven Mackey, William Kraft, John Harbison, Augusta Read Thomas, and Daniel Dorff.
Structural and Playback Issues in Current Electroacoustic Music
I’ve composed works using electroacoustic technologies since 1963, and I want to share with you over the next several weeks some of my thoughts about the current state of the medium. Since I am trained as a Western classical composer, my comments will be from that perspective. 1. Structural Issues in Current Electroacoustic Music The… Read more »
Thirteen Emerging Composers Will Participate in Two of USA’s Most Prestigious Orchestra Programs
Thirteen emerging composers will participate in the 2016 ACO Underwood New Music Readings and the 2017 Minnesota Orchestra Composer Institute.
“People Power”—The Communal Ethos of Satyagraha
The cultivation of community is fundamental to new music. Philip Glass’s first commissioned opera, Satyagraha, was the product of this collaborative ideal. But how does this communal ethos actually translate into music?
New Music: A Product of Modernity (and Capitalism)
As long as music is supplied in exchange for economic capital, musicians participate in the logic of capitalism. The question is whether this is perceived as an issue that needs to be addressed or, on the contrary, if it is an inevitable consequence that cannot be tackled through the music itself.
The Rush of Performing vs. Merely Being a Witness
I get a rush when I perform, especially premiering a new piece in front of an audience, or when the musicians that I’m playing with sound exceptionally good—when we are all gelling, the stars align and we’re breathing together, and that exact moment is the only moment and it is perfect. It’s a different feeling than when I’m in the audience, listening to others play the music I write down on paper. My heart races. Time slows down and I hold my breath. I am merely a witness to the music.
Six Emerging Composers Chosen for All-Scholarship Program at Copland House
The six composers selected to participate in CULTIVATE, Copland House’s annual all-scholarship intensive creative workshop and mentoring program for emerging composers, were chosen out of nearly of 93 applicants from 26 states and 3 countries
One Year as a Composer, Computer Musician, and Teacher in Taiwan
Ever since I decided to become a composer, I’ve longed for the opportunity to spend a year abroad and immerse myself in a different culture. So after regularly travelling to Taiwan and learning about the new music scene there, I decided to apply for a Fulbright to spend a full year there.