Seeing and hearing Nixon in China staged live by the Chicago Opera Theatre was a revelation.
Be forewarned: I’m among those who know in their heart of hearts that Brain Ferneyhough is a god. Of course I’m also an atheist—who isn’t in New York City these days?—so gods aren’t necessarily infallible deities. I was the only one in the office here who missed Ferneyhough’s Shadowtime at the Lincoln Center Festival, but… Read more »
Why do some of us take composers who teach younger students less seriously than composers who teach at universities?
Just when you thought you knew what new music was supposed to sound like, it suddenly ceased to be new music. Corey Dargel is a difficult one to compartmentalize on the pop-nonpop divide. His songs are further proof that there really shouldn’t be and ultimately aren’t such divides for people doing some of the most… Read more »
The Da Vinci Code gets more play from the music than the plot, the International Music Police launch their own Schoenberg investigation, expected chatter concerning lists and critics. Plus: How did that piano get there?
John Harbison gives his 1980 work for mezzo-soprano and piano, Mottetti di Montale, a makeover on his newest CD with the Collage New Music under music director David Hoose. The work, based on the poetry of Eugenio Montale, is here transformed into a 56-minute piece for chamber ensemble broken up into four books (20 tracks… Read more »
Writing about iPods is totally cliché; but I’m doing it anyway.
Composers from Stephen Sondheim and John Musto to Martin Bresnick and Peter Lieberson are honored at the annual American Academy of Arts and Letters Ceremonial.
Two pillars of the local music scene, Wayne Horvitz and Tom Baker, are cooking up new projects that bring improvisers into the concert hall.
Perhaps no one has dedicated himself to advancing the work of American composers as has John Duffy. And yet somehow he still managed to compose some 300-plus works of his own. (Rumor has it he hasn’t slept since 1974.) But seriously, when the Virginia Arts Festival asked Duffy to head a Composers Institute in 2004,… Read more »
It has occurred to me that our music is probably less a result of our processes than vice versa: We want to meet certain goals in our music, so we’ve accumulated, synthesized, and exercised skills that allow us to accomplish these goals.
Composing for the “big sound” seems to come naturally to me, and experiencing other cultural models has led me to make new and effective flexible large ensembles and to call them orchestras, to compose for them, and to also provide an opportunity for other composers to do so.
Judith Lang Zaimont’s album Pure Colors gives her listeners a chance to understand what synesthesia feels like. Each piece on this compilation has a different quality, showing all the colors on her palate. A stand out is her composition, Virgie Rainey–Two Narratives for Soprano, Mezzo and Piano, which sounds like a cross between an opera… Read more »
If you’re doing several different things at once, are you really paying attention to any of them?
A lack of venues is preventing the city from revitalizing its once-healthy jazz scene.
First, they changed the landscape for recordings of contemporary music with their American Classics series, then they took on the Milken Archive of American Jewish Music as a subseries. Now Naxos has introduced Wind Band Classics. Their first disc, appropriately enough, is a collection of music mostly by Americans, and it is performed by one… Read more »
I’m still as excited as I was before I arrived in Minneapolis 10 days ago for the Composer Institute.
Why is it that we take such care programming a concert by professionals, yet often fail to take the same approach with our students?
A few years ago Italian guitar virtuoso Marco Cappelli decided to chart, for himself, the state of music in downtown Manhattan, asking ten scenesters to compose for his extreme guitar—a six-string acoustic guitar retrofitted with ten sympathetic resonating strings. The collection of pieces, dubbed the Extreme Guitar Project, is as divergent as the group of… Read more »
Exhaustion and its effects have begun to sink in, for all of us involved. The glazed-over look has become all the rage in the wing of Orchestra Hall we’ve taken over.
Gossip and post-modernist fun in a time of economic and social uncertainty.
No word on whether either Milton Cross or Steven Dye wore one of those little plastic wristbands in support of “Pope John Paul for Sainthood” during the recording of this album. Anyone? Anyone? But back to the music. While there are quite a few rooms to wander through while listening to this limited edition disc,… Read more »
Does the amount of time and effort a composer dedicates to composing directly translate into effective music?
Have I lost focus, here in orchestra-orgasmafantasyland? Have I begun to think that now I would actually like to inhabit this world and set up a little patisserie?
