Vijay Iyer’s music might have some rigorous concepts behind it, but the end goal is always a direct and visceral engagement with the audience. Read more…
By Dan Visconti
A function of my particular circumstances (composing mostly acoustic music for live performances) is that after a huge, tense period of composing in which my mind is primed, there is usually a long hiatus (sometimes as much as a year) before rehearsals, which frequently tend to be not much before the premiere date.
By Colin Holter
It’s remarkable that you can revisit a piece years after first encountering it and understand it so much better than you did before
but not because you know more about music than you did then.
By Frank J. Oteri
Large portions of the general public need to be brought into the audience if a Composers’ Day is to ultimately mean something significant in our society.
Even as I was signing up for the American Composers Orchestra’s “Compose Yourself” classes last year, I wasn’t sure it was because I wanted to compose; but I hear a lot of new music and sometimes write about it, so I thought this would be a great opportunity to get inside the composer’s head, to understand more of the process and therefore have more insight into the music.
There is something elusive in the “man and machine” conversation inside this music that digs its claws deep into the ear and invites repeat visits.
A total of 22 young jazz composers, ranging in age from 15 to 29 and selected through a juried national competition, were recipients of the ASCAP Foundation’s 2010 Young Jazz Composer Awards.
Connecticut-born David Bruce has been based in England since he was six weeks old but his extremely independent-minded compositions have a great deal in common with much of the music being created here today and continues to grab attention at many of America’s most high-profile venues.
By Dan Visconti
If even a few ensembles of the caliber of the 18-piece East Coast Chamber Orchestra were to tour throughout the U.S. full-time, how much could be done to loosen the strangle-hold that our major orchestral institutions continue to exert over programming, commissioning, and the possibility of real progressive change?
By Colin Holter
I don’t foresee an opportunity to play Ceylon again in the especially near future, but if I ever get the chance to prepare it
again, I want to take a much more essentialist stance about what the
piece truly is.
By Frank J. Oteri
I have almost never entered a competition in my life, either one with a fee or one without one.
6 Questions About 4 Bunnies
The “snowpocalypse” which has blanketed vast areas of the northeastern United States over the past week has even taken its toll on our intrepid world-traveling Chatterer
By Colin Holter
I doubt very much that Susan McClary was worried about what white male heteronormative composers from the future would think of Feminine Endings, but I’ve been rereading it and enjoying her arguments.
My week and a half at the Festival de Música Contemporánea in Havana, Cuba was much more than a musical education: it was a remarkable artistic immersion that left me sad and frustrated that the U.S. travel ban is depriving other Americans of access to this rich culture.
By Frank J. Oteri
What the world would be like if digital dissemination had happened to wine or sports instead of music.
By Frank J. Oteri
Phyllis Chen’s debut CD, Uncaged Toy Piano, mixes old and new solo pieces and works featuring toy piano in combination with a CD player, a toy boombox (cute), a music box, a frying pan, and bowls; not quite the kitchen sink, but close enough.
By Dan Visconti
A cat on your lap, or better on your keyboard, is one of the best things that a composer could ask for!
By Colin Holter
Are classical music listeners ready to cut loose from the tyranny of the compact disc?
By Frank J. Oteri
Last week a postal clerk asked me if I was interested in purchasing an Ella Fitzgerald CD which was issued by the USPS as part of a promotion around their Great Singers series of stamps.
By Trevor Hunter
As a drummer, Tyshawn Sorey is beguiling to an extreme: in his work with Iyer, Lehman, and others, his tight, complex, shuffling beats are accomplished not only at hypersonic speeds, but with an incredible musicality as well. Compositionally, however, Sorey’s own music seems to exist on a whole other planet from what he plays as a sideman.
While Taylor Swift has been all over the news today for winning the highly coveted Album of the Year award, attention should also be paid to the fact that Jennifer Higdon’s Percussion Concerto has received the 2010 Grammy for Best Classical Contemporary Composition.
Margaret Brouwer’s unapologetically polystylistic compositions are a personal response to centuries of music. Read the interview…
By Dan Visconti
Is our tiny community so desperate for concerts that we must welcome and tolerate the behavior of anyone willing to buy a ticket?
