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Articles
Colin Holter

Think It Over

I’ve finished the first draft of a piece, and my plan is to put it away for a little while, then come back to it with fresh ears. But how little a while should I wait?

Articles
Charles Flowers

How Wagner Birthed a Musical Ungulate

During Parsifal, in a coup de théâtre, virtually the entire libretto of Our Giraffe snapped into my head.

Articles
Frank J. Oteri

The Discouraging Things We Say to Others and Ourselves

Far worse than the discouraging comments from teachers and potential performers, and something even more harmful than the inevitable slam from a critic, is our own internalization of that negativity—allowing it to curtail and, in some cases, even extinguish our own creative endeavors.

Articles
Yotam Haber

You Don't Own Her

How do you recover a relationship with music you feel once
“belonged” to someone else?

Articles
Trevor Hunter

An Interview with Barrymore Laurence Scherer

The author of A History of American Classical Music explains how he was able to encapsulate such a wide-ranging history in under 230 pages by concentrating on just sparking readers’ intellectual curiosity.

Articles
NewMusicBox Staff

New Music News Wire

Fifteen composers receive $165K in American Academy Of Arts and Letters Awards, 2008 Generation Next Young Composer’s Competition winners are announced, James E. Schaeffer is named new CEO of the Center for Contemporary Opera, and composer Leonard Rosenman dies at the age of 83.

Articles
Molly Sheridan

The Friday Informer: Love and War

How do we give the people what they want when what they want makes us think of Cher?

Articles
Randy Nordschow

Project Rerun

Just because something is not a premiere doesn’t mean that the new music community will not show up.

Articles
Barrymore Laurence Scherer

From A History of American Classical Music

Excerpts from Chapter Two, “From Founding Through Revolution.”

Articles
Colin Holter

Light Up Minneapolis

The Spark Festival of Electronic Music and Arts that took place here in Minneapolis this past week was a rousing success, chock full of fantastic content and almost devoid of major technical snags.

Articles
Yotam Haber

Let's Have a Fair

Art fairs are the cool destination in the contemporary art world. Why isn’t this happening in the new music world? Is our club still too exclusive?

Articles
Frank J. Oteri

Music is the Wine That Fills the Cup of Silence

I know the whole “audience noise at concerts” issue has been raised time and time again by journalists far and wide (and I’m really not trying to earn membership in the curmudgeon club here), but the coughing at a concert I attended on Sunday afternoon in Washington, D.C., transcended anything I’d ever experienced. It was almost a musical composition on its own, albeit one that greatly distracted from the ones people in attendance had come to hear.

Articles
Mark N. Grant

Tone-deaf vs. Musicophilic Intellectuals

There has always been a divide among intellectuals between those who have a taste for music and those who don’t.

Interviews
Frank J. Oteri

Alvin Singleton: Intuitions and Reminders

Alvin Singleton’s voracious appetite for all kinds of music is a starting place for understanding his own musical creations.

Articles
NewMusicBox Staff

New Music News Wire

Robert Ashley, Joan LaBarbara, Edgar Meyer, Ned Rorem, and Joan Tower will receive the American Music Center’s Letter of Distinction, Steve Reich will receive the AMC’s Founders Award, and Derek Bermel will be given the AMC’s Trailblazer Award at the American Music Center’s annual meeting on May 5, 2008. Thirteen compositions, including works by American composers—Huck Hodge and Jenny Olivia Johnson—have been selected for performance during the Gaudeamus Music Week, taking place from September 1 to 7, 2008 in Amsterdam. Composer, performer, educator, and electronic music authority Allen Strange passed away on February 20, 2008 near his home in Bainbridge Island in Washington state.

Articles
Molly Sheridan

The Friday Informer: If It's Tuesday, This Must Be Iran

You might have heard that the New York Phil was playing a few concerts this week.

Articles
Carl Stone

Memorex

After some years of being quite out of vogue, “tape” concerts seem to be coming back.

Articles
Colin Holter

The Unanswerable Question

Why would a quartet learn and present my piece when they could be
learning and presenting the Grosse Fuge?

Articles
Alyssa Timin

Picturing Music: The Return of Graphic Notation

Notations 21, an upcoming book and website explores the history of graphic notation in the 40 years since the publication of the legendary John Cage/Alison Knowles anthology.

Articles
Yotam Haber

A Little Sunshine Does a Composer Good

Hearing my music performed reminds me that I am a musician—a seemingly obvious idea, but one that seems to slip to the wayside when I do necessary, yet not very musical chores for days or weeks on end.

Articles
Frank J. Oteri

Americans in Pyongyang

Though I’m still very disappointed that the New York Philharmonic didn’t use this historic opportunity to premiere a new work by a living American composer, or a living composer from North Korea, or even a non-premiere by someone who is still alive, seeing their concert in Pyongyang, North Korea, as the top story on CNN has made me completely gaga.

Articles
Mark N. Grant

Minstrel Shows: Disgrace or America's Progenitive Entertainment Form?

The minstrel show was the great-grand-daddy of modern American show business: the variety aspect of vaudeville, the dance steps of tap, and even the setup and punchlines lines of stand-up comedy, all grew directly out of this cultural rape of a people.

Articles
Molly Sheridan

The Friday Informer: Never Yell "Fire!"

Sometimes we all need a hero, but in our field that’s usually just another night at the opera.

Articles
Randy Nordschow

Unicorny

Sometimes there is a fine line between stupidity and brilliance. Most of the music and art that I admire touch both ends of the spectrum simultaneously, and the more weighted towards both extremes the work gets, the more exciting its visceral impact becomes.

Funders

NewMusicBox receives major support from the Francis Goelet Charitable Lead Trusts.

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NewMusicBox is funded in part by public funds from the New York State Council on the Arts with the support of the Office of the Governor and the New York State Legislature, the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs in partnership with the City Council, and the National Endowment for the Arts; and with support from The Aaron Copland Fund for Music Inc., Alice M. Ditson Fund of Colombia University, and The Amphion Foundation, Inc. Support for New Music USA and its many programs and activities is provided by foundations, corporations, government agencies, and hundreds of individual contributors.

NewMusicBox receives major support from the Francis Goelet Charitable Lead Trusts. NewMusicBox is funded in part by public funds from the New York State Council on the Arts with the support of the Office of the Governor and the New York State Legislature, the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs in partnership with the City Council, and the National Endowment for the Arts; and with support from The Aaron Copland Fund for Music Inc., Alice M. Ditson Fund of Colombia University, and The Amphion Foundation, Inc. Support for New Music USA and its many programs and activities is provided by foundations, corporations, government agencies, and hundreds of individual contributors.