Happy Birthday, Counterstream Radio! Today we’re celebrating 10 years of broadcasting to listeners around the globe.
Greg Lewis (a.k.a. Organ Monk) has been drawn to jazz specifically because it has been such a socially conscious music. His third album features five pieces he created in memory of those killed during altercations with the police, which he collectively calls The Breathe Suite in honor of Eric Garner’s tragic last words.
While we wanted to provide a wide variety of music for the band directors, we knew that we still needed to pay the composers for their time and thus keep the number realistic. In the end, we settled on five total composers—myself, Max, Scott Senko, Neil Quillen, and Dylan Carlson.
I composed on evenings and weekends when I had the energy, and stole time away during the day job to handle some of my musical admin tasks and to “network” on Twitter. The 10-to-6 thing didn’t bother me overmuch, but more often than not I came home from the job frustrated and angry and in no mood to be creative.
We’ve profiled the work of many female creators on NewMusicBox. In celebration of #InternationalWomensDay, here are just a few examples for your back pocket the next time you meet someone who is having trouble finding any ladies in the house. There are plenty more in the archives!
In the wake of the presidential election, many in the new music field have demonstrated a desire help marginalized and vulnerable communities. Jack Curtis Dubowsky applauds these moves, but also urges us to explore what improvements we can make towards broader inclusivity within our own organizations even as we support the important work of others.
Putting together a consortium with alumni band directors was a smart idea, but putting together a consortium collective with alumni band directors AND alumni composers was a great idea.
Muhammad Ali was so much more than a boxer, so much more than even just himself; he is a symbol and has a story that leads to broader implications and subjects.
To realize Mike Johnson’s musical conceptions, the musicians in his band Thinking Plague—like members of a contemporary music ensemble—read from fully notated scores. Because of its instrumentation and volume, it still sounds somewhat like rock but it is light years away from popular music.
It is no coincidence that Caribbean musical genres inspire joy in those who listen to, play, and dance to it—this music has always been deeply connected to the patterns and rhythms of nature which stand in stark contrast to the oppressive system of plantation slavery which brought so many people to the Caribbean in the first place.
One of the questions that I get all the time is “Where are the female composers?” While there were a number of female composers of note, they were often overlooked compared to their male counterparts. Fortunately today, that seems to be changing. As part of this year;s festival, we’re showcase the extraordinary range of American female composers.
The most immediate confrontation leveled upon its audience by David Lang and Mark Dion’s 75-minute chamber opera anatomy theater proves to be the confounding experience of witnessing outright, unflinching, center-stage misogyny. Lang and Dion lead the audience through a normalization process that allows us to accept atrocity.
Bringing people together is not a side benefit of the Nile Project; it is its primary goal. In dramatic contradiction to the dynamics of global environmental politics, common humanity is regarded by the Nile Project as THE mechanism through which true sustainability takes place.
The ASCAP Foundation has announced the recipients of the 2017 Herb Alpert Young Jazz Composer Awards. The recipients, who receive cash awards, range in age from 15 to 30, and are selected through a juried national competition.
Music is one of the remaining professions where the master/pupil relationship still thrives, but it’s extraordinarily rare for the conductor/music director of a major city’s orchestra to make the effort to be a mentor to a young musician.
Helping society to cultivate a habit of hearing may be the timeliest goal a company of composers might undertake together today. I suggest that composers give up using their music to change people’s minds (their beliefs, opinions, and convictions). Music is poorly suited for that. But music is very well suited, or at least it can be, for helping people to change their habits, especially habits of thinking and perceiving.
Michael Daugherty’s Tales Of Hemingway was the big new music winner at the 59th annual Grammy Awards celebration. Third Coast Percussion playing Steve Reich and John Corigliano’s The Ghosts Of Versailles also picked up trophies.
The geopolitics of our time frequently divides the world’s people and ecologies into two categories: “center” and “periphery.” The world of global environmental politics is not particularly appreciative of the musics of the “periphery”—or of music in general, for that matter.
When I came to the Louisville Orchestra as music director, one of the first things I wanted to do was to think about ways of reconnecting with the orchestra’s heritage—incredible, almost unheard of numbers of commissions, world premieres, and recordings which were a result of an extraordinary partnership between the Louisville Orchestra and the city of Louisville.
Having produced new music recordings for 40 years, I’ve seen some tectonic shifts in both the welcome expansion of the stylistic landscape of the music itself, as well as huge transformations in how new music is delivered to listeners.
Percussionist Steven Schick, the International Contemporary Ensemble, New Music Detroit, and Michigan’s Grand Valley State University New Music Ensemble have been announced as the headlining performers for the third annual New Music Gathering, this year slated for May 11–13, 2017, on the campus of Bowling Green State University in Ohio.
Perhaps it is music—the music of nature in particular—that can help us understand the practice of sustainability, and the means through which we can all participate in the co-creation of a more sustainable world.
For the Israeli-born American composer Avner Dorman, being true to his own personal artistic point of view has never meant remaining in any particular aesthetic comfort zone. His music is constantly evolving and he is constantly challenging himself to go places he has never gone before—even sometimes to places that are decidedly uncomfortable.
What really makes or breaks a relationship with a freelance composer working in the advertising business is the revision process. Composers who can make changes in a quick and friendly way rise to the top of the list, whereas those who constantly present resistance and debate fall to the bottom of the list.
