Annie Gosfield creates surreal music that frequently uses technology to channel older, sometimes broken, or forgotten things.
In recapping the year that was 2006, most took another moment to remember the life and career of Lorraine Hunt Lieberson. It’s almost too bittersweet to have this recording of Peter Lieberson’s music which he built on five of Neruda’s love sonnets as a gift for the woman he loved. Even if you come to… Read more »
I’m convinced that new music would be easier to explain to younger students if introductory textbooks made a genuine effort to periodize it just as the preceding centuries’ music has been.
Staging the U.S. premiere of Philip Glass’s new opera about pointless torture and a lost war on terror in Austin, Texas, might seem like a left hook aimed at the jaw of Bush Country, except that there’s little disagreement with its message in this cosmopolitan university town.
A couple of months ago, my wife and I were celebrating an anniversary with a meal at Petrossian’s, an extremely fancy Russian restaurant normally way out of our price range. So we were definitely not in our usual element. Well, not quite. Our waiter turned out to be an emerging composer. I just can’t escape… Read more »
Before you start thinking I’ve really gone off the deep end and have turned into some sort of crank synaesthesiologist, read me out.
Sirius String Quartet How do you make an awesome drone? Start with the ingredients: Tube, mouth, bow, string. Turns out this very recipe shares its name with the title track of Nick Didkovsky’s latest CD. Here’s how to put everything together: Take a sting quartet and amplify the sound of each individual instrument. Send the… Read more »
What must we do to really make inroads into how new music is learned and appreciated beyond the concert hall?
There is a lot I could say about Applebaum’s The Blue Cloak, but no matter why you want to hear this piece, you’ll definitely want to hear the mouseketier, “an original electroacoustic sound-sculpture, a musical Frankenstein made of junk, hardware, and found objects—threaded rods, nails, springs, doorstops, Astroturf, steel wheels, bronze braising rod, ratchets, etc.—that… Read more »
The future looks bright (or at least things are universally dark) everywhere I turn.
The nominees for the 79th Annual Academy Awards were announced on January 23. The composers nominated for “Achievement in music written for motion pictures” recognition (a.k.a. Best Original Score) include two American perpetual also-rans, two first-time nominees, and a repeat appearance by the category’s 2005 winner.
Manuel Zurria, flutes I’ve been a rabid fan of Philip Glass’s early austere minimalist pieces from the late ’60s and early ’70s since I was in high school, but while pieces like Music in Similar Motion almost never left my turntable (much to the chagrin of the rest of my family), others were just names… Read more »
Gabriela Lena Frank is Benificiary of 2007 Joyce Award, EC Schirmer and LLF Sign Publishing Agreement, and Michael Gordon’s Decasia to be streamed to cellphones.
Schwantner has been selected as the composer for the second cycle of the nation’s largest commissioning consortium of orchestras.
The Royal Swedish Academy of Music in Stockholm has awarded Steve Reich and Sonny Rollins the 2007 Polar Music Prize; each will receive one million Swedish Crowns which is equivalent to approximately USD $140.000 or EUR 108.000.
Cuarteto Latinoamericano; members of the Carnegie Mellon Philharmonic; Juan Pablo Izquierdo, conductor George Crumb’s amplified, hardcore classic Black Angels is already tough as nails. However, in hopes of giving it a new edge, or maybe just jumping on the Metallica bandwagon, conductor Juan Pablo Izquierdo convinced the composer to allow him take a stab at… Read more »
Is it my job to write music that moves at your pace or mine?
Ben Johnston talks about the aesthetic dilemmas of contemporary music and his own pioneering work in extended intonation, as well as personal encounters with John Cage, Harry Partch, Milton Babbitt, and others—topics which all figure prominently in his newly published collection of writings, Maximum Clarity.
According to an essay by Ben Johnston originally published in 1970, the world of “serious music” stubbornly bases itself on a sterile presumption.
Victoria Hansen, soprano; The Bowed Piano Ensemble People already familiar with the mysterious and surreal New Albion recordings of Stephen Scott’s music know that his Colorado College-based Bowed Piano Ensemble is something of a misnomer. What began as a group of Scott’s students venturing inside a grand piano with lollipop stick-sized violin bows has morphed… Read more »
If there is a larger relationship that music and food both share on an immediate, visceral level, finding out might tell us something about why certain people gravitate toward particular musical styles.
Approaching improvised music from a decidedly classical vantage point, Jeffrey Agrell (horn) and Evan Mazunik (piano) seamlessly weave together semi-notated passages and stretches of improvisation into pieces that fuse the musicians’ grasp on chord scales and species counterpoint. The album’s title track, Repercussions, displays the elision between genres, keeping things on the buoyant side and… Read more »
Our schools are sorely neglecting students in how they prepare them for life after the classroom; composers, in particular, come out socially challenged, often unable to effectively promote their music or to even speak about it.
If you thought the “Mozart Anniversary Year” that seemed it would never end had finally, well, ended and that you were out of the woods, I say “Ha!” And so, apparently—with a wink and nod—does Uri Caine. And he’s not shy about it. Starting with the deified one’s greatest hits, Caine and his ensemble play… Read more »
