Apparently 85 percent of music majors end up working “in the field,” although fewer than five percent are full-time professional performers.
NPAC feels like the most gigantic family reunion ever; the folks you see regularly are all in attendance, but so are the distant cousins you’ve heard all those stories about over the years, not to mention relatives you didn’t even know about.
Four caucus meetings are taking place during NPAC (two down, two to go); these are the conference participants’ opportunities to voice our thoughts on the “challenges and opportunities” facing the arts in America today.
I just arrived at NPAC, a Major Arts Event about which you’ll be able to read many impressions from many observers on NewMusicBox this week.
As I sit typing this in the middle of the exhibit hall for the National Performing Arts Convention, folks around me are madly setting up their wares for what promises to be a very heavily-trafficked area over the next four days.
If you can’t find your favorite performing artist or arts presenter this week, check to see if they have packed their bags and headed for Denver. Don’t worry, they’ll return to you at the end of the week—hopefully armed with some new ideas and new connections formed during the National Performing Arts Convention 2008. We’ll do our best to keep you up to date with daily reports posted here on NewMusicBox, so check back often.
Roger Zare wins ACO Underwood Commission. Subito Music Publishing signs Daniel Bernard Roumain. Boosey & Hawkes signs Sebastian Currier. Stephen Paulus to be honored as Distinguished Composer by the American Guild of Organists. First Nations Composers Initiative Round III grant recipients announced. Fourteen composers receive NYFA Fellowships. Paul Revere Awards announced at annual Music Publishers Association meeting. Over 3,500 participants are registered to attend the National Performing Arts Convention.
I know that I’ve built lasting, extraordinary friendships, and created ties to a magical city that will remain with me for a lifetime.
It’s hard to be passionate about Elgar’s Pomp and Circumstance.
One opera director said that he would not be able to fund the work because his board told him that “John Brown was not a very nice man.” As if Boris Godunov, Macbeth and many other operatic subjects were “nice men”!
The last thing you ever want to do is encourage any sort of negative feeling toward what you’re presenting no matter who your audience is.
Even if the music flows ineluctably from measure to measure, from phrase to phrase, and from section to section, is there ever a moment of “too much”?
June in Buffalo is one of the most important music festivals in the country dedicated entirely to contemporary music. Find out how the festival fosters young, free-thinking composers, not disciples.
Boosey & Hawkes launches an emerging composer program with signings of Oscar Bettison, Anna Clyne, and Du Yun. The American Composers Orchestra launches a national orchestral composition discovery network.
There are so many wild possibilities created by turning the voice into an instrument, rather than merely the arbiter of a text. But none of the pieces by us composers here at Essentially Choral do this.
How can a composer synthesize music and text, without creating perceptual distractions?
It really disappoints me when I see people playing and hear what might (but for a few accidental mic-bumps) be a recording of the same.
The distinction between beauty and truth seems like yet another Berlin Wall.
Swiss architect Peter Zumthor, who has described music as the supreme art form, is primarily concerned with how buildings can move someone.
Stephen Hartke receives inaugural Ives Opera Award. Santa Fe Chamber Music Festival announces five composers in residence. Art of the States launches an educational podcast series. The 2008 International Alliance for Women in Music Awards are announced. Recent NEA activities honor opera and support new works for orchestra as well as solo organ. The 2008 Polar Prize is awarded to Renée Fleming and Pink Floyd.
I have to work hard if I want to produce decent pieces. More power to you if you don’t, but I do.
Are the last 20 years still too close in our collective memory to be able to reduce them to something that anyone could easily identify?
Nine young American composers—Jacob Bancks, Nicholas Oberg Deyoe, David Fulmer, Gilbert Galindo, Trevor M. Gureckis, Justin Hoke, Shawn Jaeger, Yeeren I. Low, and Eric Nathan—were presented with 2008 BMI Student Composer Awards. In addition, a special “Outstanding Musical Citizen Award” was presented to Minnesota Orchestra Artistic Planning Associate Beth Cowart and composer Aaron Jay Kernis for their work as co-directors of the Minnesota Orchestra Composer Institute.
This week I analyze seven national anthems to see if I could
discover any tips or hints for those of you who have been commissioned
to compose an anthem for a new country.
