Intersections & Dissections
Mode Records asked me to create a realization of Morton Feldman’s graphic orchestral piece Intersection I. This article follows the conception, execution, and destruction of my work.
Sounds Heard: Amos Elkana—Casino Umbro
The music of American-born, currently Israeli-based composer Amos Elkana, featured on the new CD Casino Umbro, is a clear by-product of his internationalism which includes a very strong American influence, particularly in its stylistic eclecticism.
Scratch That: It's Over!
There’s just no easy way to do January. It’s cold, it’s dark, and your husband made you take the Christmas tree down two weeks before you were emotionally ready. There’s only one thing that’ll get you through it: concerts.
How to Affect Popular Culture
The 800-pound gorilla in the room is how popular culture is determined and disseminated. Not so long ago, composers ranging from Igor Stravinsky to Thelonious Monk graced the cover of Time magazine. John Cage even appeared on nationally broadcast television programs. Yet it seems like a pipe dream for anyone other than a million-dollar-grossing pop star to get similar attention now. Why?
Auld Acquaintances
With his “The Music They Made” feature, the NYTimes Magazine editor Wm. Ferguson is using his position to shape his idea of the “mainstream” by adding a few names that only indie, rock, and punk devotees would recognize while, at the same time, protecting it by disavowing not only classical music but jazz and Broadway as well.
Business As Usual
How audiences receive a movie or a musical performance is an expression of cultural stratification. Whether or not we feel that direct sales of their works is more ethical than viewing them second-hand for little or no cash outlay has a lot to do with how we’re raised.
Open House: Del Sol Days
The Del Sol String Quartet, an integral and seemingly ubiquitous part of the San Francisco Bay Area’s new music community, celebrated its 20th anniversary last month with Del Sol Days, a five-day festival of performances, open rehearsals, and other public events.
San Francisco Sampler: Chamber Music Day
By lowering the barriers of cost, time, and distance, Chamber Music Day offers a zero-commitment way for audiences to hear a wide variety of Bay Area musicians, including those they aren’t familiar with.
Scratch That: Glance Back, Look Ahead
Chicago-area music makers review the year that was and preview what’s ahead.
Conrad Cummings: In Conversation With My Peers
Composing music is usually a solitary act, but Conrad Cummings is by nature a very sociable person. This has drawn him into some of the most fascinating collaborative projects such as Photo-Op created with the painter James Siena and The Golden Gate based on a novel in sonnets by Vikram Seth.
The Power of Persuasion
As with the Instagram debacle, it will take a concerted effort by many to attract the attention of a company as large as Spotify and motivate them to make changes, and we should not be adverse to putting forth that effort.
The Second Oldest Profession? (Part 4)
A connection I have with Dave Brubeck is the state of Indiana, where both of our paternal grandfathers are from, but in all of the obituaries I’ve read about Brubeck there is no mention of his Native American background, a point vital to his music as well as jazz in the big picture.
ensemble dal niente: Hard Music Hard Liquor
As the performers stepped onstage for the seventh of nine pieces on ensemble dal niente’s Hard Music Hard Liquor program Friday night, I whispered to my husband: “This is going to be a really hard concert to write about.” By the end of an evening this aesthetically diverse, your head is spinning a little.
Recycled Instruments
Most Americans have never seen anything like Cateura, Paraguay, a city built atop a sprawling landfill in which most residents subside by foraging, repurposing, and selling useful bits scavenged from the trash. And most readers would admit that this seems like a highly unlikely location for the formation of a community orchestra.
Beata Moon: Finding Her Own Voice
While Beata Moon eschews conforming to any particular compositional camp, generous melodicism and unusual metrical patterns have been a hallmark of her music since she veered away from her rigorous training as a concert pianist and began composing in her late 20s.
My Mentor, My Collaborator, My Father: Dave Brubeck
Some sons go camping or on a fishing trip with their fathers when they know that time is winding down. I wanted to create a new musical work with my dad. At first he insisted he was too old to get involved. Just hours after my dad left the planet, I learned that Ansel Adams: America had received a Grammy nomination for Best Instrumental Composition. This felt like my dad was winking at me, grinning and giving me a congratulatory hug from the other side.
Scratch That: Chicago Unites, Beck Composes, and Dale Clevenger Hangs On
A quick round-up of new music news from the Windy City.
NewMusicBox Mix 4: 2012 Staff Picks
For this installment of the NewMusicBox Mix, the intrepid New Music USA Staff has chosen some of their favorite tracks from 2012.
Performers and Composers
Many performers want to advocate for the music of their time, work that allows music to live beyond the premiere and to grow through multiple interpretations. Most composers want to work with you in order to make your experience, and that of the audience, as gratifying as possible.
Separating Art from Politics
My response to reading all of the diatribes against 2012 Nobel Laurate Mo Yan has been to go out and buy some of his books and start reading them. I’m totally smitten, but also reminded of a key difference between literature, which is all about what the words mean, and music, which, by its nature, is inevitably ambiguous.
The Second Oldest Profession? (Part 3)
I was thrilled to see and hear the recent release of never previously issued recordings by the seminal guitarist John Leslie “Wes” Montgomery. Until now, there was no audio record of his work available from the six years of his life he spent playing music on a half-mile long stretch of night clubs in Indianapolis that catered to jazz musicians and aficionados known as “The Avenue.”
Talkin' 'Bout My Generation!
I almost missed Dan Joseph’s article last week decrying the absence of composers from his Gen X generation. Were we born at the “wrong” time? I think our generation has the unique luck to have connections to both the social turmoil of the 1960s/’70s as well as the changes in technology and social interaction of the 1990s/’00s.
2013 CMA/ASCAP Adventurous Programming Awardees Named
Three ensembles and five presenters will be recognized with CMA/ASCAP Awards for Adventurous Programming during the 35th Chamber Music America National Conference in New York City. A ceremony will be held at the Westin New York at Times Square on January 20, 2013.
