The music of Keeril Makan contains multitudes: pulsating rhythmic gestures, noise and abstraction, beauteous slow-moving harmonies, and long-breathed modal melodies.
It has never been fashionable to reference a woman’s experience in music, or even generally understood.
I think being on two different TV stations at the same time might up the ante for composer success.
Submissions for the 2009 Pulitzer Prize in Music are now being accepted.
A very accomplished German composer confessed to me that he had never been able to enjoy the Berg Violin Concerto; he said it “lacked a strong theoretical consistency” and found it “lazy in its references to the past.” This exchange really hit home how strong some of the fundamental differences between American and European composers remain today.
The Ives Vocal Marathon is hosting a competition to complete Ives’s unfinished song “Smoke,” built on text by Thoreau.
In 2001 Coleman was a recipient of one of the residence grants supported by Japan-US Friendship Commission, and he used his time to make important connections so as to lay the groundwork for future
collaborations.
Is the progress from a common practice to a diverse one truly progress, when it compels us to choose between a reactionary, audience-friendly idiom, an exclusionary avant-garde, or a sober modernism or ironic postmodernism that hovers between these two extremes?
There’s something to be said for a finite period of self-imposed exile; it’ll give me a chance to make sense of all the music I’ve heard so far in London and Huddersfield and to regain my focus as I make war against a hard deadline for the first time in years.
The Carter celebrations represent the first time any composer has ever composed new works during his own centenary. This would be merely statistical gobbledygook if the music didn’t continue to be so compelling.
Composer Nathan Currier has won the Raymond and Beverly Sackler Music Composition Prize.
The Brooklyn Philharmonic has named Christian Davis, AKA Elan Vytal, and Ryan Brown its composer fellows for the 2008-2009 season.
The 51st Annual Grammy Awards nominations have been announced and the complete, 110-category list is available on the Grammy website. The “Best Classical Contemporary Composition” has Marc-Andre Dalbavie, Michael Gandolfi, John Corigliano, George Tsontakis, and Chris Walden vying for the sparkly statuette. Works by Meredith Monk, Elliott Carter, Tan Dun, and slate of new music performers, recording producers, and labels are also tucked into the listings. A bit strange to see Sweeney Todd in the “Best Compilation Soundtrack” category, but that’s Hollywood, I guess. And we haven’t even gotten to all that jazz yet! Get some coffee (you’ll need it!) and scan your way through all your favorite genre nominees here. And for the true Grammy obsessive, you can follow the twitter feed. -MS
Getting in touch with people as a visitor to Japan without asking for a gig, or simply making contacts by attending events such as concerts, openings, receptions, and so forth can be important first steps to performing here.
So Percussion has announced plans to offer an intensive percussion training institute this summer.
The Paul Sacher Foundation has entered into an agreement with Steve Reich to take over his musical archive, which will shortly be made accessible to scholars at the foundation’s premises in Basel.
If you think you have a solid grasp on the state of
contemporary music today, you’re almost certainly wrong.
We’ve heard forever and a day that the internet has the potential to turn more people onto music than other medium has thus far due to the ease at which it can disseminate disembodied digital transmissions, but the internet can also be a catalyst for an intimate in-person musical experience.
Australian composer, violist, and conductor Brett Dean has won the 2009 Grawemeyer Award for Music Composition for his violin concerto The Lost Art of Letter Writing.
Fred Ho’s mission is to create the music and fight the political battles that others cannot or will not pursue.
Jazz finds a great deal of its past in the present, but contemporary jazz takes us much further than viewers of Ken Burns famed documentary on the genre would suggest. Jazz is a music that’s played by men and women; instrumentalists and singers; leaders and sidemen; soloists, small groups, and big bands. In this session, explore the sounds of a music that has continued to evolve and, in the process, become a global phenomena.
am the Jack Bauer of new music.
Thanksgiving is the one day that virtually everyone in this country becomes engaged with cooking; imagine if there was one day of the year where everyone sang or played musical instruments together.
Anyone else out there have experience building “turnkey” systems for instrumentalists to use?