This year’s 35 hopeful competitors in the 12th Van Cliburn International Piano Competition have each selected one new work by an American composer to include in their semifinal round program. As part of the competition’s American Composers Invitational, each entrant chose from among five scores without knowing the work’s author. The revealed list of scores… Read more »
Living as we are in a capitalist society, arts organizations are often called upon to justify their funding requests in comparison with the other economic needs of the community they serve. It can get to be a sticky debate when the more esoteric cerebral needs of the public face off against the financial bottom line.… Read more »
Do you know your AAAL Music Members? John Adams Samuel Adler T.J. Anderson Dominick Argento Milton Babbitt Leslie Bassett Robert Beaser Jack Beeson Arthur Berger William Bolcom Henry Brant Bennett L. Carter Elliott Carter Chou Wen-chung Ornette Coleman John Corigliano George Crumb Mario Davidovsky Norman Dello Joio David Del Tredici Carlisle Floyd Lukas Foss Philip… Read more »
Being placed on hold is bad enough, but stress levels only seem to rise when a company uses that opportunity to force you to endure awful music and advertising while you wait. Inspired by this situation, the Siday Music On Hold Program was developed last year as a partnership between the American Music Center and… Read more »
A crash course on turning your PowerBook into your favorite instrument.
An interview with the author of The Artist as Citizen
What makes some “extended techniques” an already-been-done-bag-of-tricks in one composer’s hands and a trove chest in another’s?
A primer on playing old instruments in new ways.
Once you accept that there’s nothing you can’t do, you can ultimately do anything you want.
The newest version-in-progress of the tube and interface Photo courtesy Brenda Hutchinson What do I do? I sing into a 9 1/2 foot tube. Sometimes, it’s acoustic. Other times, I perform with a gestural interface and computer. I started singing into the Long Tube in 1990 while working at The Exploratorium, where I had access… Read more »
I’m a huge fan of Stephen Scott’s work, so I had a million questions to ask him about minute details of how this music is conceived and executed. This talk gets very detailed—sort of an everything you ever wanted to know about the insides of a piano and weren’t afraid to ask approach—and, as such, is a bit of an indulgence. But I think it’s an indulgence worth indulging. Listen to the music and watch the video, and you’ll find yourself asking some of the questions I did.
New rules make this a wild card year for the Pulitzer Prize, so we ask clairvoyants to weigh in.
Eric Glick Rieman Unconventional and extended techniques offer a wider sound palette. As someone who has worked with electronically generated sounds and sampling, traditional ways of playing instruments produce sounds that often seem unsurprising. My question is: why would composers not use unconventional techniques? As a composer, I can’t fail to recognize and acknowledge the… Read more »
Harold Meltzer What I like about unconventional uses of familiar instruments is how the uses can proceed from a reconsideration of the instrument as an object. It’s hard for me to reconsider the piano, because my fingers start wandering on the keyboard along so many prescribed paths. And while I’m familiar with much of the… Read more »
Richard Lainhart My own involvement with conventional instruments played in unconventional ways dates to about 1975, when I recorded Bronze Cloud Disk for multitracked, processed bowed tam-tam at the SUNY Albany Electronic Music Studio, where I was studying composition with Joel Chadabe. While first thinking about this piece, I was looking for a basic sound… Read more »
Arthur Kampela Motoric considerations are at the forefront of compositional speculation. The peculiar maneuvering required to play each instrument implies compositional strategies that will ensure the optimization of the chosen instrument(s). When I composed my harp solo piece Phalanges, I used a series of devices (e.g. paper between strings, tuning fork, constant pedal glissandi, half-pedal… Read more »
Arthur Kampela “The physical extension of my pieces, as they project beyond the mere instrumental mechanics to involve the performer as a whole—his/her body as a donator of sounds—is a fundamental aspect of my understanding of the ambiguities between gesture and sound…” Richard Lainhart “Audiences find these techniques interesting since they tend to produce new… Read more »
ASOL conference set for D.C.; Kenneth Fuchs appointed head of the Department of Music at the University of Connecticut in Storrs; Mostel commissioned by Brass Ensemble of the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra of Amsterdam; Bielawa on site specificity; Music for Peace Project 2005; and MSN Music and Smithsonian Folkways Recordings
Newspaper headlines and culture critics can worry over the state of the arts in America, but Joanne Cossa is an arts administrator undeterred by their lamentations. When she becomes the executive director of the American Music Center on March 14, she will bring not only impressive leadership and fundraising experience to the organization’s helm but… Read more »
John Adam’s On The Transmigration Of Souls Best Classical Contemporary Composition, Best Classical Album, and Best Orchestral Performance Love ’em, hate ’em, or find them largely irrelevant, the 47th Annual GRAMMY® Awards were presented last night. The jazz and classical categories never figure prominently in the televised portion of the little gold statuette distribution, but… Read more »
W. Stuart Pope Photo courtesy ASCAP W. Stuart Pope, president of Boosey & Hawkes, Inc. from 1964 until his retirement in 1984, died January 24, 2005 after a long illness. He was 83. “Stuart’s tenure as a music publisher was distinguished by his very sensitive ear for talent and by his expansive interest in the… Read more »
The overarching title for the 2005 membership conference of Chamber Music America was “Found in the Shuffle.” While that name doesn’t initially seem to be saying much, it proved an extremely apt metaphor for a weekend that wound up being the best conference this organization has held in recent memory. Indeed, despite the shuffle that… Read more »
Classical Radio in D.C. Under Possible Threat; James Jordan Named ACF Philly Chapter Director; Ojai Music Festival Granted $25,000 to support New Work/Emerging Composers; Philharmonic Signs Composers for City’s Centennial
Tonic, that bastion of avant garde and experimental music on New York’s Lower East Side since 1998, appears to be is serious danger of closing up shop. In a plea for help posted on their website, the venue owners state that they “need to raise upwards of $100,000 in the next few weeks.” Apparently, growing… Read more »
