Schott Music Corporation and European American Music Distributors, LLC have announced the launch of Project Schott New York (PSNY), a digital music publishing platform which aims to facilitate the discovery, purchase, and discussion of new music online. Thus far over 70 works by a total of 35 composers are featured on the site.
Over the last few weeks, I’ve had the opportunity to hear nearly 100 pieces live, by over 50 different composers. Most of these works have been new to me, as have many of the composers, and nearly all had something to offer an interested listener. All of this has me wondering again exactly what constitutes “good music.”
Much is made in the music press of violinist Hilary Hahn’s stunning technique, impeccable poise, and unshakable intonation. In that picture of perfection, however, one of her most striking character traits—her seemingly insatiable curiosity—can get a bit lost. Still, though she doesn’t flaunt her boundary pushing with unusual concert dress or radical interpretive choices, she resolutely pursues her own interests with care and focus.
There should be a sea-change in how the hallowed halls of so-called high culture market themselves to the world at large. Their current approach sends a deafeningly loud and clear message that they are the gatekeepers of masterpieces from the past and that the here and now need not apply. Case in point, New York City’s classical radio station WQXR is poised to embark on a massive advertising campaign, starting tomorrow, for something called “Beethoven Awareness Month.”
Bringing to light the latest generation’s approach to music, a few courageous folks recently set out to show us all what today’s music is really like and just how expansive it can be. Showcasing over 100 composers from six continents (all age 40 and under), 16 ensembles, and dozens of premieres, the SONiC Festival—which ran October 14-22 in venues all over New York City—brought the sound of the 21st century to life.
Recently, the Center for American Architecture and Design, The School of Architecture, and The Sarah and Ernest Butler School of Music hosted Music in Architecture • Architecture in Music, an international symposium to “explore the connections between architecture and music through research, composition, design, installation, and live performance.” The four-day event featured papers and presentations from an international gathering of artists and scholars, plus a collaborative composition/architecture competition.
On Wednesday night, the Gully Low Jazz Band dedicated their performance at Birdland Jazz Club to author, critic, and archivist Dan Morgenstern, in honor of his 82nd birthday. Morgenstern has been writing about jazz since 1958, served as editor for three major publications, and for many years has served as the director of Rutgers University’s Institute of Jazz Studies.
Yesterday a competition was announced that not only takes the delicate cost/gain balance of such events into account for the composers potentially taking part, but demonstrates a well thought-out holistic concept that could be considered as a model for others to follow.
A Poe celebration, an Amanda Palmer appearance, and a Laurie Anderson production were all on Matthew Guerrieri’s beat this month. Come for the art song, but be sure to stick around for the ukulele.
Composers are very quick to dismiss their “past selves” in the interest of giving what might be considered an accurate impression of the composer as s/he is in the moment. The only problem is that each moment passes so quickly!
Although some two dozen performances had already happened by that point, the official opening concert of the 2011 Ostrava Days—a biennial new music festival in the Czech Republic founded by the Czech-born, U.S.-based composer and conductor Petr Kotik—began with a massive orchestra on the floor, a pair of percussionists on the stage, and disembodied voices intermittently echoing through the hall, a meditation interrupted by brash, ritualistic themes and romantic interludes combined with an unusual pathos, moderating between militance and stillness.
If an amateur is writing music with the expectation that it will be performed (and if this expectation is met) the situation gets much more uncomfortable for us professional composers to confront: What separates the amateur, a composer whose music receives program space, from me, a composer whose music receives program space?
I’ve had several pieces that have seemed to me to be purely unlucky. There was the quintet that lay dormant for three years before receiving its premiere, the duo that’s been performed nearly a dozen times but has only been recorded during performances that didn’t go very well. To paraphrase Tolstoy in a way that surely will cause him to spin in his grave, all successful pieces are alike but each miserable piece is unique.
Benjamin Broening’s catalog is rich in electroacoustic works, and as founder and artistic director of the University of Richmond’s Third Practice Festival he has likewise affirmed that the marriage of experimental sonic expressivity with an almost vocal sense of line is not merely one of convenience, but rather a deep source of inspiration.
For most of my life, I have been much more immediately drawn to the rich and extremely varied contemporary art work that has been created during the past century in this country than in the relatively small and seemingly insular canon of acknowledged “masterpieces” made by people from long ago and faraway. Nevertheless, something seems completely wrongheaded to me about a series of recent attacks on some of America’s prominent cultural institutions.
Because composition education has created a feedback loop; there is an overriding perception by most musicians and non-musicians that composition is something that only a very few extremely talented individuals can and should pursue, and that perception creates a self-fulfilling prophecy through a lack of composition education at the pre-college level.
The decade between the middle of the 1950s and 1960s saw a dramatic change in how the cutting edge of the jazz community approached making music; there was a gradual, but marked shift from relying on formal structures for improvisational unity to more “free” situations where individual performers could perform the music as they saw fit.
As you know, one of the things we do here at NewMusicBox is produce video profiles of composers and musicians. The most difficult part of the endeavor is obtaining performance footage—not because it is difficult to get permission to use it, but because very few composers have high quality (or for that matter, any at all) visual documentation of performances!
New World Records has announced the completion of their project to re-issue the complete Composers Recordings, Inc. LP catalog in digital form. Approximately 350 titles, representing releases by Composers Recordings, Inc. which had not previously been re-issued, are now available as on-demand CD-Rs and will soon be available as downloads as well.
What would happen if Sun Ra, Link Wray, and Stockhausen made a recording together and had King Tubby do a dub mix of it all? Well, it might sound a little like the musical universe of guitarist and composer Roger Kleier.
Surely there are liabilities having to do with funding, participation, and even aesthetics for new music in its relationship with the university, but let’s not forget that intellectual curiosity—which after all should be a chief requisite for composers—is nowhere better fed than in the academy.
Last weekend, I had the distinct pleasure of visiting Bowling Green State University in Ohio in order to experience the MidAmerican Center for Contemporary Music‘s New Music Festival 2011. I was heartened to enjoy the camaraderie among the dozens of composers who came from as far away as Germany and Holland to enjoy the performances, and was astonished at the major figures on the new music scene.
Every now and then some music comes along containing a clash of sensibilities that forces listeners to confront head on the limitations of listening to music within the context of a genre, whatever genre, as well as attempting to listen beyond genre. Take, for example, the seemingly innocuously titled Modern Music, recently released by Nonesuch. While it is ostensibly a series of duets performed by jazz pianists Brad Mehldau and Kevin Hays, the disc’s digipack cover and spine contain the additional credit “composed and arranged by Patrick Zimmerli.”
Like living out of a suitcase in a hotel room (which is what I have done for the majority of the past two months), packing and unpacking boxes is a constant confrontation with randomness and uncertainty. While this can be an incredible distraction for actually getting work done, it’s actually ironically very healthy for creative thinking.
