Bobby Previte Awarded 2015 Greenfield Prize
The award includes a $30,000 commission, residency at the Hermitage Artist Retreat, a performance by a professional arts organization, and assistance with future performances.
Dotting Dots
What happens when you stop practicing under the weight of worship and start playing to see what you can add to the conversation?
Gelsey Bell: Get a Little Closer
With a background that spans music theater, woman-at-the-piano club shows, and the presentation of experimental work, Gelsey Bell finds herself most at home in spaces of creative risk and vulnerability.
How to be While in Rehearsals
I know people who have purposely worn dark colors to rehearsals because of the secret world of sweating that happens with a new work. But when in doubt about how to behave in the rehearsal room (or in meetings or when drafting emails, for that matter), always default to professionalism.
Decisions Made
For better or worse, I have become more interested in the ways in which people think and grow than I am in their ability to reproduce subtle variations on a limited personal language, regardless of how successful that language may be.
Can’t See the Trees for the Forest at the 2015 Grammys
If the Recording Academy feels that certain awards they give are not worthy of exposure on network television (which ultimately are the awards that wind up getting reported on in most of the media outlets and therefore the ones that most people are aware actually of), why give the awards in the first place?
"This is My Design"
Composers need to control their materials and, to an extent, their musicians. This is true for the murderer Gesualdo and the gentle John Cage, more so for the latter. Most composers are autocrats; Cage was totalitarian. And autocracy and totalitarianism, in their view of and relationship to human beings, are the political equivalents of malevolent psychopathology.
American Composers Forum Announces 2015 Champions of New Music
Over the course of the next four months, the American Composers Forum will present “Champion of New Music” awards to Michael Morgan, Claire Chase, and the American Composers Orchestra at public ceremonies in Oakland, Brooklyn, and New York City.
2015 New Music Bake Sale Line-Up Announced
The New Music Bake Sale brings you cookies and new music on March 15 at Roulette.
We Won't Be In Love Much Longer: Online Premiere
As the notion of genre is becoming increasingly difficult to define in today’s musical landscape, artists are actively embracing this ambiguity not only as a happy byproduct of our endless channels through which ideas are shared, but as an artistic advantage.
Advocating for New Music
As with any political issue, your inner Che Guevara might be telling you to organize a protest or to occupy a square on your campus. While that could be a good way to draw attention to an issue, it’s clearly not the best way to get lasting results.
Come Away - Ezra Sims (1928-2015)
Ezra Sims came to a place so uniquely his own that it has no siblings, no cousins, no counterparts. His ear made the demands, and once he found the sound his ears sought, he drew the map for us to retrace his steps back to the music traditions he loved. He was not an iconoclast, but a logical evolutionist, who ironically arrived at his destination by a leap of faith.
2015 ASCAP Herb Alpert Young Jazz Composer Awards Announced
The ASCAP Foundation has announced the 26 recipients of the 2015 Herb Alpert Young Jazz Composer Awards who will each receive cash awards and range in age from 16 to 30.
Lessons Learned
It is easy to believe that we are enriching ourselves, and those around us, by becoming living content providers. But we need to supplement this presentation of material with some shading of our humanity.
What About Those Great American Symphonies?
There’s been a “desert island nine symphonies” game making the rounds on Facebook. (Pick nine different numbered symphonies, 1-9, by nine different composers.) Here are some American repertoire ideas.
Digital to Analog: Poems and Histories
What Andrew Pekler’s project and Vicky Chow’s recital had in common was that they both prompted consideration of a particular feature of technology: the technology you notice is almost always, at the same time, pushing another technology into the unnoticed background.
Talking About Contemporary Music in a Helpful Way
I believe that by skillfully connecting new listeners to contemporary music, we can bring more challenging works to a much wider audience without sacrificing a single note of music.
Our Responsibility to the Next Generation
Making our music survive is about a lot more than just writing it down. It has to do with teaching our harmonic language and melodic style to those who learn from us. It has to do with nuance, experience, storytelling, and subtlety.
Mason Bates Appointed Kennedy Center’s First Composer-In-Residence
During his three-year residency, Bates will compose music across artistic genres and curate a new contemporary music series. He will also advance initiatives that use technology to educate audiences and will encourage the inclusion of local artists and DJs in performances at the Kennedy Center.
Psychedelic Citizenship: Jimi Hendrix as Tone Poet
Jimi Hendrix’s “Woodstock Banner” is among the most iconic moments of rock history—a symbol of the art’s social and political potential. For Hendrix, “anthem” was not a noun, but a verb—a song in motion.
Blogging from Estonia: Creative Energy and New Perspectives
Here in Tallinn, I am under the impression that if one has even the smallest idea for a concert, it will happen with little to no red tape.
The 2015 CMA/ASCAP Awards for Adventurous Programming and Other New Music at CMA
The 2015 CMA/ASCAP Awards, the “New Music from CMA” commissions’ concert, and the majority of the ensemble showcases at the 37th national conference of Chamber Music America provided a real immersive new music experience—one in which definitions were constantly being expanded and which celebrated diversity and inclusivity.
Rugged Individualism Meets the Orchestra—A Snapshot of the 2015 Minnesota Orchestra Composer Institute
The hall was full, energetic, anxious for the Future Classics concert, the culmination of the Minnesota Orchestra Composer Institute. But one must ask the question. If the appetite for new music is so huge here, why aren’t more American orchestras doing this?
New Music USA Awards $284,250 to 62 Projects
New Music USA announced yesterday its third round of project grants awards, totaling $284,250 in funding to support artistic work involving a wide range of new American music. The program recognizes and supports the multiple roles composers and contemporary music practitioners play in the artistic landscape and responds to the creative spirit of collaboration between artists… Read more »
