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While we wait to see if “Dubya” manages to unite Donkey and Elephant, we will have to content ourselves with music in which there is some kind of tentative “coalition” between styles. Two discs jumped out at me as superlative examples of such blending: Mark Kuss’s chamber music, on Gasparo, and Martin Bresnick’s two-volume Opere Della Musica Povere, on CRI. The title of Kuss’s “American Tryptich,” for string quartet and tape, recalls Schuman’s “New England Tryptich,” but the comparison ends there: this is the cynical, commercialized America of Generation X. Martin Bresnick’s approach is far less in-your-face. Instead, he weaves together minimalism, neo-romanticism, serialism, references to early American hymn tunes and Baroque practices in twelve interrelated pieces. Also interesting is the electronic music of Larry Kucharz, which represents, in his own words, a marriage between “austere minimalism” and “consonant harmonies and gestures from the Western Choral Classical Music Tradition.” Nine of his pieces can be found on a new self-produced disc entitled ComputerChoral Green Prints.

The use of multiple musics within the context of a single work is nothing new, of course, but I was nonetheless surprised to find an Alaskan Inuit melody in the Quartet for Strings in One Movement of Amy Beach. Native American music can also be heard in the techno-influenced “variations” of Phil James. Bright Sheng is well-known for his combination of Chinese and Western sensibilities, and three of his orchestral pieces can be heard on a new recording by the Shanghai Symphony. The Abstract and the Ethnic is a disc of Leonardo Balada’s music, both some blunt-edged avant-garde pieces from the 1960s and then some more explicitly Spanish works dating from later that are more melodic. Three cultures meet in the music of Pran, a group comprised of two American musicians who play Indian ragas on European and Australian instruments (trombone and didjeridu).

Roughly contemporary with the Amy Beach quartet is William Grant Still’s “Afro-American Symphony” with its alternately rich and playful representation of African-American blues and jazz. Gary Eskow’s piano and chamber music reveals diverse influences: not only jazz, but also rock, Latin music and the refined Romanticism of a composer like Rorem.

Six albums that I listened to this month struck me as polystylistic in terms of their overall conception. Jenny Lin’s Chinoiserie, for instance, is a fascinating collection of pieces from the past hundred years that are all influenced in some way by the Far East, real and imaginary. Water Colors is a different sort of “east meets west” project, featuring seven pieces for koto written by composers from the Pacific Northwest. Jed Distler’s group Composers Collaborative has put out a compilation of some of the best and brightest moments of their Solo Flights festival, including a hilarious piece David Del Tredici wrote for Distler himself. American Mosaic features the works of ten composers who have written pieces for flute and harp, stretching from an arrangement of “To a Wild Rose” to two new pieces by composers born in the 1970s.

Three discs represent the work of “polystylistic artists” – amazing musicians who cross the (real/imaginary) fence between genres with ease. My personal favorite (but then I’m going through a “martini phase”) is the Intergalactic Contemporary Ensemble’s disc called I Dig, recorded live at the Fineline in Minneapolis. This is an example of a group of “serious” contemporary music players jumping gleefully onto a different stylistic bandwagon, reviving with great flair such neglected 1950s exotica as Moises Vivanco’s “Malambo No.1.” Willis Delony is a pianist who keeps one foot in the jazz world, and one foot in the classical world, as he demonstrates on his new CD of largely “written-out” jazz. Haskell Small is another pianist whose work crosses genres: his writing for the instrument harks back to the American Romantic tradition of Barber, certainly, but also like Barber, there are distinct hints of jazz in the music, as well.

I had some fun grouping discs that, taken together, form a polystylistic commentary on a single idea. (Warning: try this at home.) Take, for example, the idea of American musical traditions. You could listen to Stefania De Kenessey’s Shades of Light/Shades of Dark, music solidly grounded in tonality – think Horatio Parker. Then, you could listen to Chas Smith’s Nikko Wolverine, which includes four pieces written for Smith’s own instruments – think Harry Partch. To finish, you could listen to David Basse’s Strike When the Iron is Hot, a collection of mainstream-style jazz tunes written by the likes of Duke Ellington, Stanley Turrentine, Mike Melvoin, and even Billy Joel.

Stefania DeKenessey isn’t the only composer whose work manifests European influence, of course. There are George Antheil’s fourth and fifth symphonies, which eerily “echo” contemporary works of Shostakovitch and Prokoviev, though he was unfamiliar with them at the time. Lowell Liebermann’s second symphony, on the other hand, is a combination of the sweet choral style of Brahms and orchestral writing lush enough to suggest Hollywood.

Brian Schober’s music is Baroque in conception, though his language is decidedly modern. His “Te Deum” is scored for the sonically wild combination of mixed chorus and prepared piano. Schober is also an organist, and his “Toccatas and Fantasias” are worth hearing just for the fine playing. Steven Stucky’s lyrical double concerto is scored for another Bach-like combination: violin, oboe, and chamber orchestra. And David Maslanka’s alto saxophone concerto is cast in five movements, the third of which quotes the Crucifixus from the Catholic Mass: could this be a reference to the chiastic form that Bach occasionally employed for its religious symbolism?

Science is the meeting-point for the music of Jim Fox and Anne LeBaron. Jim Fox’s “The Copy of the Drawing” is an extended meditative work that features an excerpt from Sarah Simons’ letters to the Mt. Wilson Observatory. LeBaron’s “Telluris Theoria Sacra” is named after the cosmological work written by Thomas Burnet in 1681. LeBaron’s chamber work portrays the course of the earth from “chaos” to “holocaust and implosion.” The piece itself is polystylistic, with references to the 17th-century passacaglia, the Italian devotional lauda, the waltz, and to jazz.

A sense of place binds together the music of David Bindman and Samuel Jones. Jones’s Suite “Roundings” is a programmatic work based on New Deal murals throughout Texas. Bindman’s “Pier Sketch,” written for his Brooklyn Sax Quartet, depicts the Hudson Ri
ver waterfront, a place, in his words that “suggests the struggle between raw natural beauty [and] the fleeting yet awesome ability of humans to construct an alternate reality.”

Finally, you might trying listening to the music of Michael Byron and Tony Malaby in order to compare their different uses of rhythmic energy. Byron’s minimalist “Entrances,” for three pianos (one pianist), makes use of the percussive qualities of the piano to create a seething rhythmic texture. Tony Malaby and his sidemen also use rhythm as a binding element in their work, as a driving force that holds together some dramatically-varied free jazz improvisations.

Jenny Undercofler

James Legg Photo courtesy Michael Torke

Composer James Legg died suddenly on November 20, 2000.

Mr. Legg began his training in music composition at the Juilliard School of Music while still a teenager and went on to receive a Bachelor of Music degree from the Eastman School of Music and an M.A. from Duke University where he worked with Robert Ward.

Among the many awards he received were: the Charles Ives Scholarship from the American Academy and Institute of Arts and Letters, a Fulbright Hayes grant for study in Italy with Hans Werner Henze, a National Institute for Music Theater grant for an internship with Thea Musgrave and the Virginia Opera Association, a grant from Meet the Composer, and three awards from BMI, among others.

Legg has been a composition fellow at Tanglewood‘s Berkshire Music Center, the Aspen Music Festival, the Banff Centre for the Arts, the Bellagio Center (run by the Rockefeller Foundation), the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts, the Atlantic Center for the Arts, and at Edward Albee‘s artist colony, The William Flanagan Memorial Center.

He was commissioned by Joseph Papp of the New York Shakespeare Festival, the Houston Grand Opera, and the New York Youth Symphony which premiered his “Manhattan Overtures” in Carnegie Hall.

He wrote six one-act operas for the stage, one of which was commissioned by the Houston Grand Opera and is based on a play by Bertolt Brecht. At the time of his death, he was also working on his first full-length opera, based on Arthur Miller‘s play All My Sons.

In addition, Legg worked as a musical assistant on the Broadway shows The Phantom of the Opera, City of Angels, Will Roger’s Follies, Jelly’s Last Jam, Five Guys Named Moe, Kiss of the Spiderwoman, Jekyll and Hyde, The Life and Rent, among others.

Mr. Legg composed scores for several feature films, including Dirty Laundry, starring Tess Harper and Jay Thomas, and A Texas Funeral starring Martin Sheen. Legg also composed the scores for almost a dozen independent films, and was assistant composer on several studio films such as The Butcher’s Wife, Defending Your Life and Mr. Wonderful.

A memorial service for James Legg will be held on February 12, 2001 at Lincoln Center‘s Mitzi E. Newhouse Theater.

Please click here for Michael Torke’s tribute to James Legg.

Cantata Singers Photo by David Tucker

The National Foundation for Jewish Culture has awarded a Susan Rose Recording Fund grant to the Boston-based Cantata Singers and Ensemble for their recent recording of John Harbison‘s Four Psalms. The Susan Rose Recording Fund for Contemporary Jewish Music is a new grants program of the National Foundation for Jewish Culture that seeks to make available original works by contemporary composers exploring the Jewish experience. Established in 1999 to address the difficulty faced by many composers and performers in having commissioned works performed beyond the premiere performance, the Susan Rose Fund provides a subsidy for the recording of new works in order to facilitate their circulation among performers and to provide greater access to the public.

In its initial year, one grant of $10,000 was awarded to Alla Borzova to record, with tenor Paul Sperry and the New York Virtuosi Chamber Symphony, her song cycle Mother Said, based on Hal Sirowitz‘s collection of poetry of the same name. Due to the success of the initial year of the grant, the fund increased its award to $20,000.

Proposals were evaluated by an artistic advisory panel chaired by Omus Hirshbein, Executive Vice President of the New York Chamber Symphony. Hirshbein considers the grant “exceedingly valuable,” and devoted eight or nine hours winnowing down the applications before the panel first met. “It was a tiring experience, but I feel richer for it,” Hirshbein stated. “The whole issue of what is Jewish music, and what is not, and how they overlap, I find fascinating,” he went on. “As chair of the panel, I wrestle with questions about the mission of the National Foundation for Jewish Culture in going forward with such a program. Is it for Jews only? Is it for anyone who writes music that is connected with Jewish history?”

“The reward of receiving a grant like this is not limited to the sum of money itself, but also the affirmation that it offers,” explained the Cantata Singer’s Music Director, David Hoose. The grant serves as a “formal affirmation of both the strength of the piece and the strength of the performing forces,” something that becomes particularly important as they negotiate with a record company. “Recording is a scary proposition for any company,” Hoose admitted. “It involves risk-taking, and it is in a certain sense charity. So where they put their money and effort is something that they have to consider very carefully.”

Harbison’s association with the Cantata Singers dates back twenty years, when he served briefly as music director. Hoose’s personal association with Harbison dates back to his days as a horn player, when he played under Harbison as a conductor. It was in his wind quintet that Hoose got to know Harbison’s well-known work for that instrumentation, performing it “forty or fifty times.” Since then, Hoose has conducted many of Harbison’s works, including the violin and piano concertos, Emerson and Diotima. The Cantata Singers commissioned Harbison in 1986 for Flight into Egypt and later recorded it on New World Records under Hoose’s direction. Flight won Harbison the 1987 Pulitzer Prize. Hoose has also conducted a number of area premieres of Harbison’s music, including the Boston premiere of Four Psalms in November 2000.

“I have always found his music extraordinarily compelling,” Hoose commented. “The music is powerful — it doesn’t fade after a few hearings.” Hoose considers Four Psalms to be Harbison’s greatest work to date. “It contains some very radical ideas, both in his juxtaposition of the texts, and in his approach to the performing forces. He takes a step in a [new] direction that was motivated by the real challenge of addressing issues of modern and ancient Israel.”

Four Psalms was commissioned by the Israeli Consulate of Chicago to celebrate the fiftieth anniversary of the founding of the State of Israel; the work was premiered by the Chicago Symphony Orchestra in 1999. In Four Psalms, Harbison applies fragments of conversations and “journalistic” commentary by Israelis and Americans (in Hebrew and English) about daily life and current conditions in Israel to traditional Psalm texts.

“It is remarkable how skillful John is at writing in such a way that singers and instrumentalists alike believe that he was born to write for them. That’s a unique kind of position – nobody says that about Bach!” Before the Cantata Singers and Ensemble had even performed the piece, Harbison himself identified the possibility that they might be eligible for the Susan Rose grant. The grant helped to substantially cut the cost of making the recording.

“We chose a piece that we thought would have a future,” Hirshbein concluded. “We rewarded the idea of a Jewish text being set, so that it would receive a wider dissemination. It was the most skilled piece of work, and I think the piece is going to have legs.”

Many musicians and hard-core music lovers will swear to you that they never ever listen to music “in the background” while they work. Only some of them are lying. For me, music in the background generally has the same tantalizing effect as the smell of food coming from the kitchen — I just have to stop what I am doing and check it out. Then again, I am one of those people who derive perverse pleasure from devoting analytical attention to music specifically composed to be played in the background — outwitting the Muzak people, I like to think. Seriously, however, with the way all of our lives keep getting busier, most of us will probably admit that some of our most intense listening experiences may be not at home, sitting in front of the stereo, but at the dinner table, or in the car, when we are forced to sit still…

Given the season, if you are stuck in the car traveling or shopping, it might be a good idea to bring along the new CD of Ned Rorem songs, recently recorded by Suzanne Graham and Malcolm Martineau. The songs are all short — none longer than a couple of minutes — and each one packs an emotional punch. If your trip is a little longer, instead of listening to the Mendelssohn Op. 49 one more time, you could listen to one of the Arthur Foote piano trios. You could re-acquaint yourself with Copland’s masterful opera The Tender Land, released by Sony as part of a 3-volume set celebrating the composer’s centennial. If you like Copland, you would also certainly enjoy listening to the composer himself, rehearsing the chamber version of Appalachian Spring at a rehearsal in 1973.

There are also a few CDs I would recommend saving for the morning commute; perhaps listening to one of these recordings will save you that fourth or fifth cup of coffee. Peter Schickele’s String Quartet No. 5 is an energetic piece that demonstrates the composer’s strong love for diverse kinds of music, including fiddling and jazz. Three of Morton Gould’s orchestral works have been recorded by the National Symphony of the Ukraine for Naxos, including the Foster Gallery of 1949. And included as part of the Sony Copland commemorative is Oscar Levant’s enthusiastic performance of three movements from Billy the Kid, in an arrangement by Lukas Foss.

If you aren’t in traffic, however, try putting Ezra Laderman’s Duo for Violin and Violincello on your car stereo. Laderman’s music is full of intriguing changes of affect, from grand to playful to melancholy. Herbert Bielawa’s organ music is a fascinating mix of the old and the new: the Monophonies, for instance, are single-line pieces cast in medieval and renaissance forms, but written in a modernist melodic style. His Pipe Organ Adventures, on the other hand, are full of playful jazz touches. Jazz and modernism also meet in Bob Nieske’s CD called Simplicity, recorded by his group, the Bob Nieske 3, and the Lydian String quartet. According to Nieske, the combination of trumpet and strings was inspired by Charles Ives’ On the Pond and The Unanswered Question.

For staring out the window during an early winter sunset, I would recommend the stunning choral music of Morton Feldman, released on a disc that also contains some overtly political pieces by Stefan Wolpe. Then there is Clint Mansell’s score to the movie Requiem for a Dream, a melancholy mixture of rock and minimalism, featuring the Kronos Quartet. Also for quartet is Augusta Read Thomas’ passionate Fugitive Star. However, the ultimate “brooding” disc this month is Silencio, recorded by Gidon Kremer’s group Kremerata Baltica. This disc includes Philip Glass’ Company, along with pieces by Martynov and Pärt.

When you sit down for a nice bowl of hot winter stew, you might try listening to film composer’s Elmer Bernstein’s Guitar Concerto, written for and performed by Christopher Parkening, or John Biggs’ lushly-scored Cello Concerto. I wouldn’t advise pouring a martini, however, without a copy of Monika Brand’s new CD, Love. These are really catchy, sophisticated songs, all original material from the pen of the singer herself. And speaking of shakers, there is a particularly suave arrangement of Cole Porter’s “In the Still of the Night” for strings and shaker on Tom Wopat’s In the Still of the Night.

When it gets right down to it, though, there is some music that is destined to stop whatever it is that you happen to be doing — pieces like Terry Riley’s In C, featured in a rousing new performance by the Ictus Ensemble. If you love words, I would advise setting aside an evening for Stephen Sondheim’s first musical, Saturday Night, which has finally been released in its fully-orchestrated version — the lyrics are witty, and full of references to 1920s Brooklyn. You might also enjoy Jon Deak’s The Passion of Scrooge, a wonderfully inventive treatment of the Dickens classic. Most of the characters are played by the baritone, but the instruments in the ensemble also contribute musical “commentary” that is specified in the libretto.

Electronics also have a way of capturing my attention, even when they are used in a neo-Romantic context, as in Jerry Gerber’s Symphony No.3, for MIDI orchestra. The American Composer’s Forum Sonic Circuits VIII is a compilation of a wild variety of electronic pieces; two of them share the strange distinction of including Coke bottles in their “instrumentation.” Another CD of electronic music, Transmigration Music, includes a piece by Mark Trayle that at times sounds intriguingly “wet,” being based on sounds drawn from the “animal, mineral, and vegetable kingdoms.” There is another piece on the same disc that evolves in real-time according to the interaction of a computer with the brainwaves of one of the performers! A fourth electronic disc this month is a CD issue of a 1970s German radio broadcast: a live performance of John Cage’s Mureau and David Tudor’s Rainforest II. The recording features a combination of pre-recorded electronics and Tudor’s on-the-spot “processing” of Cage’s rendition of the writings of Henry David Thoreau.

There are also some works for acoustic instruments that might as well be for electronics, the use of the instruments is so sonically interesting. John Cage’s microtonal work Two^{4< /sup>} was written for acoustic instruments, but you would never know it. The violin plays within a microtonal system of 84 notes to the octave, and in one of the two interpretations on the disc, is accompanied by the traditional Japanese sho. Aaron Bachelder’s Nomos was written for violinist Sarah Johnson and an ensemble of percussionists with developmental disabilities. Mark Engebretson’s The Bear was written for an appropriately “growly” combination of four baritone saxophones (but only two players). Roger Reynolds’ music for strings is ear-catching for its brilliant, icy display.

Lastly, I really think that regardless of Gary Lucas’ association with NewMusicBox, his solo guitar cover of the Ride of the Valkyries will make the most apathetic music lover sit up and take notice. His reason for including this on a disc of music with Jewish associations: “to defeat thine enemy, sing his song!” Another NewMusicBox In The First Person alumnus, Don Byron, has devoted almost an entire CD to covers of everything from Stevie Wonder’s Creepin’ to Puccini’s Nessun Dorma. And given the season, I would recommend the new Christmas Album simply because every piece on it is American (including a piece by Charles Ives’ 10-year-old daughter!), but also because there is one piece on it that is simply stunning: Carlisle Floyd’s Long, Long Ago.

The Presser Archive

After 51 years in Bryn Mawr, the Theodore Presser Company will move its entire operations to nearby King of Prussia in January. The present facility houses historical archives of the Oliver Ditson Company and The John Church Company, as well as Presser and newer companies including Merion, Mercury, and Elkan-Vogel. In preparing to move to the new, smaller facility, the company has decided that to offer a large portion of these archives to one or more libraries.

“Theodore Presser Company is essential to the development of the music publishing business in America, and much of the material that we have on our premises reflects the history of this company and its interaction with other companies, from the infancy to the present day of the American music publishing business, ” commented President Tom Broido in a telephone interview. Presser was founded in 1883, but its subsidiary Oliver Ditson dates back to 1783, making it the oldest music publisher in the United States.

The offered materials are mainly publications and supporting information of Presser, Ditson, and Church, from the late 19th century through the 1960s. This includes metal and wood printing plates from the 1930s and 40s, financial records, and correspondence between the company and musicians. In addition, there are piles of out-of-print sheet music, much of it solo music for piano and voice. “That was the heart of what Presser published at that time,” Broido pointed out.

However, there is no existing inventory or catalog of the materials being offered. “We don’t necessarily know every little thing in every box, that’s one reason we want some one to catalog it,” Broido commented. “As a reward, they will get the lion’s share of it.” Broido feels strongly that the materials in the archive will be much more useful when housed in a library. He explained that Presser does not have the facilities to serve as a “destination” for viewing such a collection. Once the archive is properly stored, “if somebody wanted a copy of an out-of-print title, we could refer them to that library.” Also, if the inventory turns up an item of “historical value,” Broido wants to make sure that researchers have proper access to it.

Since the company made it known that this archival material is available, they have received inquires from approximately twenty institutions, most of them libraries. Broido wants to make a decision about who will house the collection “soon,” but stated that no official deadline had been set.

In an interview about their archives from the last century, the question came up about whether or not the company is currently accumulating similar material that will form an archive for the next century. Broido mused that “it might be nice to see a letter from Rochberg or Persichetti a hundred years from now,” but added that “saving a lot of paper has become a luxury in business.” They save letters from composers that make direct reference to publications, and discard thank-you notes and letters containing news of premieres. At the same time, the whole notion of archiving has changed with the advent of technology. They do save emails, but Broido feels that these are of “very little historical interest.” Broido is also ambivalent about the value of manuscripts produced using Finale, Sibelius, or similar computer notation software. In Broido’s opinion, “every copy that comes out has equal value, except the attributed value of the composer signing.”

Joanna Lee, photo credit Kitty Katz

Joanna Lee, lecturer in the Music Department at the University of Hong Kong, has launched a series of nine weekly broadcasts over RTHK (Radio Television Hong Kong) called American Pitches. The programs will serves as “a showcase of music that is uniquely American.” Lee explained that she wants to “throw ideas and connections about current musical culture at my listeners, like a pitcher at baseball, that quintessentially American game.” Lee will focus on the “many paths of American music in the last century,” emphasizing the works of “concert hall” composers who have “crossed over” to write music that uses jazz and rock.

The first broadcast, on November 3rd, featured the music of John Adams. Lee selected an excerpt from Nixon in China that she felt would be particularly relevant to her listeners. “I want to discuss musical style in my radio shows,” Lee explained. “Hence, whatever frames of reference I can provide my Hong Kong radio listeners are useful.” With that in mind, she chose the opening of the storm scene of the “revolutionary opera” within the opera, called The Red Detachment of Women because it reminded her of the opening of Das Rheingold.

The second broadcast was devoted to the music of David Del Tredici. In Dr. Lee’s opinion, “Del Tredici’s works based on Alice in Wonderland, which won him a Pulitzer Prize in 1980, tend to overshadow the composer’s much broader output before and after the Alice series.” Though Lee included the “Acrostic Song” from his Final Alice, she also aired two lesser-known vocal works: Syzygy, a setting of Joyce’s poems Ecce Puer and Night Piece; and three songs from Gay Life.

The third broadcast, on November 17, celebrated the centennial of Copland‘s birth. Lee chose the Benny Goodman recording of the Clarinet Concerto to represent the composer; the Short Symphony and an excerpt from its transcription for sextet; and the last movement of the Piano Quartet. Again, Lee wanted to “avoid all of the popular hits.”

On November 24, Lee devoted an hour to Steve Reich: both his music, and “remixes” of his music by other composers from Nonesuch’s CD Reich Remixed. The fifth broadcast, on December 1, will feature two American musicals based on a pre-existing drama or novel: Cole Porter‘s Kiss Me Kate and Leonard Bernstein‘s Candide. On December 8, Lee will look at the music of Stravinsky, Weill, and other American immigrants. She will look at works influenced by what she calls “American circumstances” that changed the composers’ output. For instance, she will play excerpts from Weill’s Knickerbocker Holiday and Lady in the Dark, both written for Broadway. Stravinsky will be represented by his Ebony Concerto and his Elegy for JFK. She will end the program with Osvaldo Golijov‘s Last Round for two string quartets and double bass.

Lee will devote the last three programs to “jazz repertoire” and “the newest concert music that has entranced audiences in America.” The seventh show will focus on the work of younger composers. The music of many of these young men has yet to be heard in Hong Kong. Composers include Paul Moravec, Daron Hagen, Steven Burke, David Lang and Michael Gordon. Because the eighth show will be broadcast on December 22, it will feature some unusual arrangements of Christmas carols and American holiday music. The last show is called “gems,” and it will feature short “character pieces.”

The shows can be heard internationally on Radio Hong Kong’s website. The link http://www.rthk.org.hk/rthk/radio4/american/ will give you the ability to listen to the most recent broadcast, using RealPlayer. To access archived broadcasts, follow the format http://www.rthk.org.hk/rthk/radio4/american/20001103.html, substituting the appropriate date in the ‘2000mmdd’ part of the link. The current series of nine are broadcast in Cantonese, but an entire English series of the same programs will be broadcast in a few months, according to Lee.

Joanna Lee’s familiarity with American music comes from her fifteen years of work in New York City. Lee received her PhD in musicology from Columbia University, and held administrative posts at the Kurt We
ill Foundation and the Orpheus Chamber Orchestra between 1994 and August of 2000. Lee describes herself as “closely associated with many of America’s living composers,” people like David Del Tredici, Paul Moravec, Daron Hagen, and Steven Burke.

Lee’s association with RTHK dates back to the early 1980s, when she worked for them in her “first-ever summer job.” “I have known Dr. Richard Tsang, the head of Radio 4 (the classical station) for more than 20 years,” Lee explained. “When I knew I was returning to Hong Kong to teach, I e-mailed Richard and offered to provide some special programs on radio. I came up with the idea of covering American music of the twentieth century in early September, and by early October, I was already in recording in the studio.”

Lee hopes to follow American Pitches with another series about new music, possibly opening up the scope to include other countries, as well. In the next series, she also hopes to include conversations with the composers of the music she is showcasing.

The Goldie Award

The San Francisco Bay Guardian, the Bay Area‘s largest alternative newsweekly, has honored Pauline Oliveros with a Lifetime Achievement Award, as part of their 12th annual “Goldies” awards program. Each year, the Bay Guardian arts editorial staff selects multiple “Outstanding Local Discovery Award” winners for the “challenge and inspiration provided by their contributions to life in the Bay Area.” Each year since 1992, the staff has additionally selected one Bay Area artist to receive the Lifetime Achievement Award.

A tribute to Oliveros in the Goldie Awards program book calls her the “godmother of experimental music in the Bay Area,” beginning with her work at the San Francisco Tape Music Center in the 1960s. The article briefly describes her theory of Deep Listening, which led to the formation of the Deep Listening Band and the Deep Listening Foundation. The recording of her Six for New Time by alternative rockers Sonic Youth is cited as further evidence of her “incredible lifetime influence in music.”

The awards ceremony was held on November 9 at Slim’s in San Francisco, hosted by Bay Guardian arts columnist Summer Burke. Other musicians who received 2000 Outstanding Local Discovery Awards included the groups The Aislers Set, Anticon, Rasoul, Tarentel, and Zion-I, and musicians Kit Clayton, Phillip Greenlief, Jenna Mammina and Simone White.

Herbert Brün Photo credit Yehuda Yannay

Herbert Brün, a pioneer in applying computers and electronics to the composition of music, died on November 6 in Urbana, Illinois. He was recognized within and beyond the field of music as an eloquent and original thinker, a contributor of ideas relating to composition and systems theory, language, thought, performance, and everyday life. He was 82 and lived in Urbana.

Mr. Brün was Professor Emeritus of Music Composition at the University of Illinois School of Music. He formally retired in 1988 but continued to conduct a seminar in experimental composition until his death.

Erik Lund, Chairman of the Composition Department at the University of Illinois, described Brün as “a profoundly innovative individual. “Brün’s contributions to acoustic, electroacoustic, and computer music were pioneering in every respect,” Lund explained “Professor Brün was a devoted teacher and mentor, teaching until just days before his death. His presence at the University of Illinois in particular will be greatly missed.”

Scott Wyatt, Director of the Experimental Music Studios at the University, called Brün a “teacher and philosopher in the most provocative sense. His writings and teachings regarding composition, the function of art in society, the awareness and construction of language, syntax and differentiation gave many of us intellectual challenges that shall remain relevant to current and future generations. His contributions, creations and provocations were many – and he shall be missed.”

Both Wyatt and Susan Parenti, a close associate of Brün’s, describe the composer’s preoccupation with the concept of intention. “His definition of a composer was that someone is a composer when they attempt to make something happen which would not happen without them and their attempt,” Parenti explained. “This definition freed it from the idea that you had to be a composer in acoustics. You didn’t have to be a composer in music, even; you could be working in many media, but still be one of his composition students.”

Brün saw performers as people who “selected from alternatives as a way of demonstrating their intentions.” Brün considered himself a performer not only because of his experience as a pianist, but also because, under this broad definition, he felt that as a teacher he was performing, as well.

In the late 1970s, Brün started a “performance lab” at the University of Illinois because he was concerned that students were not dealing with performance issues in their private lessons. “A performer would play something,” Parenti described, “and the listener would give instructions on a different way to play the piece.” Some of the “composer/performers” involved in the performance lab formed the Performance Workshop Ensemble in 1978. Jeff Glassman, a member of the current Ensemble, explains that the group progressed from “primarily music” to more mixed-media work as the years progressed.

Another of Brün’s focuses was the use of language to accurately convey intention. In his 1970 book For Anticommunication, Brün defined “communicative language” as “an accumulated language based on obsolete and present paradigms” that “cannot speak for those of us who think and dream in another paradigm.” In other words, according to Parenti, “the language you inherit from the current culture shapes your intention to the current available thinking.” Brün described the arts as a “measuring meta-language about the language that is found wanting.” Parenti remembers that in composition lessons, Brün paid a great deal of attention to “the language that you used to describe an initial idea. He saw the composition process as parallel to the describing process. He wouldn’t let you get away with language that you didn’t intend.”

She describes the School for Designing a Society, which Brün co-founded with Parenti and Mark Enslin in 1993, as an outgrowth of some work they have been doing in the Performance Workshop Ensemble under Brün’s guidance. “We have been using composition in relation to accessibility — we learned how to write skits, lectures that would turn into performances. We aren’t making things simple, but rather we are trying to make people sympathetic to the complexity of composition.” At the School, which was named after a course taught by his wife, Marianne Kortner-Brün, the instructors and their students have taken the notion of a “social” approach to performing/composing and applied it to a higher level. “The School is based on the premise that just like one can compose a music piece, you can also ‘compose’ the social structure you’re in,” Parenti explained. The School has been full-time since 1997, and has 25 to 30 students of high school age and older. Brün taught at the School for two hours a day until three weeks before his death.

Parenti teaches at the School for Designing a Society, performs and composes as part of the Performance Workshop Ensemble, and works with Patch Adams to reform our current healthcare system. She also recently published a book of plays, The Politics of the ‘Political’ and Other Plays. She credits Brün with giving her the motivation for working in multiple “languages.” “In lessons, he would jump from language to language. He was very interested in cybernetics, in creating an interdisciplinary language. He gave you a vocabulary.”

Herbert Brün was born in Berlin in 1918. He left Germany for Palestine in 1936 and studied piano composition in Tel Aviv and at the Jerusalem Conservatory of Music. Further studies included a scholarship at Tanglewood and at Columbia University (1948-50). Brün’s composition teachers included Eli Friedmann, Frank Pelleg, Wolf Rosenberg, and Stefan Wolpe.

Brün wrote modern music for acoustic instruments, small and large chamber ensembles and orchestra. But he also became a central figure in melding electronics and computer technology with music, and his teaching and writings in English and German influenced that development.

From 1955 to 1961, Brün conducted research concerning electro-acoustics and electronic sound production and their possibilities in musical composition at studios in Paris, Cologne, and Munich. In addition, during this period he also worked as a composer and conductor of music for the theater, radio, and television. He also gave lectures that were broadcast on Bavarian Radio in Munich (where he met his wife, Marianne Kortner), and led summer courses in Darmstadt.

After a lecture-tour through the United States in 1962, Lejaren A. Hiller offered Brün a professorship at Urbana, primarily to do research on the significance of computer systems for composition. While continuing to write pieces for traditional instruments, he used computers to generate sound, which he integrated into his compositions. He collaborated with Heinz von Foerster on interdisciplinary courses in heuristics and cybernetics at the Biological Computer Laboratory (1968-1974). He wrote widely on the function of computers in music and on the place of music in society and politics.

Throughout the 1970s and 80s, Brün was invited repeatedly to be composer-in-residence at universities and festivals in the U.S. and Europe. In 1970, he was one of two participants from the United States, invited by UNESCO to their symposium Music and Technology. He served a co-host of the 1975 International Computer Music Conference (ICMC) at the University of Illinois, and his computer-generated graphics were featured in the Computer Music Journal, Vol. 5, No. 2, summer, 1981. He delivered the keynote address at the 1985 ICMC in Vancouver.

Brün’s awards include the Norbert Wiener Medal, an award from the American Society for Cybernetics, and first prize from the International Society of Bassists. In January, 1999, Brün was awarded an honorary doctorate by the Department of Classical Philology and Art of the Johan Wolfgang Goethe University of Frankfurt am Main in Germany. One week before his death, The Society for Electro-Acoustic Music in the United States (SEAMUS) voted unanimously to present Brün with their Award for Lifetime Achievement. It will be presented at the National Conference at Louisiana State University in March, 2001.

In addition to his wife, Professor Brün is survived by two sons, Michael and Stefan, both of Urbana, and a sister, Erika Brün of Haifa, Israel.

Jeanne Lee Photo courtesy Naima Hazleton

Jeanne Lee, one of the great jazz singers and composers in the avant-garde tradition, an author, and a teacher of singing, died on October 25, 2000, in Tijuana, Mexico. She was 61.The cause was cancer, said her daughter Naima Hazelton.

Born in New York City in 1939, Lee graduated from Bard College in 1961. At Bard, she met Ran Blake, a pianist, and the two of them began to work as a duo. After winning the Apollo Theater’s Amateur Night in 1962, they recorded an album for RCA Victor, The Newest Sound Around, and went on their first European tour. In Europe, Ran Blake remembers, “she created such a sensation – they called her the heir of Billie Holiday.”

The album included jazz standards and Thelonious Monk tunes, but Ms. Lee and Mr. Blake subtracted swing, but added intellectual coolness, abstruse piano harmonies and vocal influences from Billie Holiday and Dinah Washington. This landmark album was re-issued on RCA France in 1978, by Bluebird CD (USA) in 1988, by BMG France in 1994 and in 1997 by BMG Belgium as part of BMG’s Collection Jazz! Series. In 1989 she and Mr. Blake recorded a duet album in the same style called You Stepped Out of a Cloud an OWL/EMI.

“In all the years I knew her, she was one of the great human beings,” Blake commented in a telephone interview. “She had a wonderful warmth with people, and she was an extremely good listener – almost like a muse. She was no Polyanna, but she willed it upon her friends to look for optimistic solutions. She always talked about the dreams she had, and they gradually began to form what she did in her music.”

In the 1960s, Ms. Lee developed a new, inventive vocal style, approaching words as sounds and using her teeth, lips and tongue to wring drama out of each syllable. She wrote: “As an improvising singer, there was always the option to scat, thus imitating the jazz instrumental sounds. There were also jazz lyricists who set words to instrumental solos. Neither of these options allowed space for the natural rhythms and sonorities or the emotional content of words…”

Jazz singer/composer Sheila Jordan first met Jeanne Lee in the 1970s, when they collaborated on a workshop for Cobi Narita. They then made a recording together with the Italian jazz bassist Marcello Melis called Free to Dance. “Jeanne Lee was an original sound,” she reminisced. “I always felt that when she sang, she was always smiling, she sang with a smile, her sound was a smile…” Jordan collaborated most recently with Lee on the 1994 Jane Bunnett CD The Water is Wide. “To sing with Jeanne was a beautiful spiritual trip for me. I loved to sing with Jeanne because I never felt any kind of competition, I always felt a kind of closeness, a ‘oneness’, it was like we became one sound,” Jordan mused. “She had a wonderful sense of lyrics and sound, and she was inspiring to sing with. I think she brought out the best in everyone.”

Jeanne Lee recorded over 40 albums and performed with some of the leading contemporary composers and improvisers of the later 20th century, both avant-garde musicians like Marion Brown, Carla Bley, Archie Shepp, Cecil Taylor, Peter Kowald and Reggie Workman and more mainstream player-composers such as Bobby McFerrin and Chick Corea. She was active as a composer, combining vocal jazz with music and dance, working often with the choreographer Mickey Davidson.

Ms. Lee married sound-poet David Hazelton in 1964, but returned to Europe in 1967, where she began a long association with vibraphonist and composer Gunter Hampel recording with on his Birth label on number occasions over the next two decades (The 9th July, Spirits, Journey To The Song Within, Fresh Heat). One of these, recorded in 1972, was an entirely improvised session with Anthony Braxton, Anthony Braxton at Town Hall.

In the mid-1960s, Lee composed music for the “sound-poetry” of Dick Higgins and Alison Knowles, among others, first at the Open Theater in Berkeley, California, as part of a multi-disciplinary company of artists, then in concert at Town Hall in New York. Lee was invited by John Cage to be one of four vocal soloists in his bicentennial work Renga and Apartment Building 1776, which she performed with several major American and European orchestras.

Working with Cage on Renga was a seminal experience for Lee. “I had attended opera, Broadway musicals and revues since childhood,” Lee wrote, “but I had never experienced the juxtaposition of freedom and organization, or diversity within unity, that Cage achieved in this composition. Since I had long been interested in combining improvised and composed music, poetry and dance into a unified whole, I was inspired by this experience to begin composing extended works.” With the assistance of a NEA grant in 1976, Lee adapted the 13^th-century Persian poet Farid Ud-din Attar‘s Conference of the Birds into Prayer for Our Time, a two act, ten scene “jazz oratorio” with dance. She also collaborated with Diedre Murray and Pauline Oliveros on Flashes, written for dancer Blondell Cummings in 1993.

In the 1980s and 90s, Jeanne Lee made a number of important recordings, two of which she produced: Conspiracy, Travellin’ in Soul-Time, Ambrosia Mama, You Stepped Out of a Cloud, and Natural Affinities. The 1994 Lee/Waldron Duo album After Hours, released on Owl/EMI, received the Diapason D’Or among other awards. That same year, she recorded Nuba, which was co-composed with drummer Andrew Cyrille and saxophonist Jimmy Lyons. One track from this album, titled “Nuba One,” was included in soundtrack to the 1999 Jim Jarmusch film Ghost Dog: the Way of the Samurai. Lee’s performance of “Don’t Worry Now, Worry Later” was included in the Smithsonian collection The Jazz Singers 1919-1994, which was nominated for a 1997 Grammy.

Lee’s main focuses during the last ten years of her life were the Jeanne Lee Ensemble, featuring poetry, music and dance, and the Jeanne Lee/Mal Waldron Duo. The Ensemble has performed in festivals Europe, appearing at the 1997 Banlieue Bleues Festival in Paris. This past summer, Lee toured with the Orchestre National de Jazz and was the subject of a TV special focusing on a day in her life.

In 1998, Lee was named one of the “Hundred Most Influential in Jazz” by Jazziz magazine. She was included in the award-winning documentary film Femmes Du Jazz and the Women in Jazz documentary shown on A&E in the 1980s.

Lee earned a Masters Degree in Education from New York University in 1972, with the assistance of a Martin Luther King Fellowship for Urban Studies. Lee developed an integrated arts and education curriculum, and wrote the textbook Jam!: The Story of Jazz Music for students in grades 4 to 7. During the last five years of her life, she taught music and movement in the jazz departments at the Royal Conservatories in The Hague, Netherlands, and Antwerp, Belgium.

Two memorial services for Ms. Lee were held in New York in November, and services are planned in Belgium and France in coming months. In addition to Ms. Hazelton, Ms. Lee is survived by two children, Ruomi Lee-Hampel and Cavana Lee-Hampel, and a grandson.

In early September, Ned Corman, Director of The Commission Project, announced an impressive line-up of composers and musicians who will engage in long-term residencies at a wide variety of schools in 12 American cities this fall. The Commission Project is a non-profit arts education organization that brings professional composers and musicians into classrooms to write music for student ensembles and mentor young musicians as performers, improvisers and composers.

In 2000-2001, The Commission Project will carry out a wide range of programs in over 40 schools, almost double last year’s number, engaging over 3,000 students in collaborative projects with professional composers and musicians. At least 42 new titles for student bands, choruses, orchestras, and jazz ensembles will result. Prominent guest artists will give additional workshops and solo with student ensembles. Partnerships are built with sponsoring schools and colleges over the long-term, each for a minimum of 3 years. Many of the artists involved with The Commission Project give their time and services pro bono, or for a nominal fee.

“Increasingly in public education, standardized testing has become the norm, and this makes me fearful,” Corman commented in a phone interview. While the time spent preparing for these tests tends to be factually driven, the residencies generated by The Commission Project help to “bring highly creative people in contact with students as much as possible.” While the “visible and audible byproduct” of the residencies is often “music that is performed,” Corman emphasized that “what you can’t put your hands on” is the fact that the students come away with “a better idea of what the creative process is all about.”

The list of this year’s participants includes well-known composers David Liptak, Tania León and Paquito D’Rivera, each of whom will begin a one to three year commitment to mentor the music students at a particular school, creating at least one new work for them that will in turn be performed by each student ensemble and a guest artist. The guest artists, who conduct workshops and clinics for the students in addition to performing, include renowned instrumentalists Larry Combs and The Ying Quartet.

“A typical residency has the composer in the school twenty times over the course of the year,” Corman explained. He encourages the composers to “use all their tricks: bring in recordings, play [their instruments] with the kids, talk to the teacher about [the class’] strengths and weaknesses.” Then he recommends that they “disappear for a while” and at some future point “show up with 16 measures, play it and talk about how it came to pass.” By witnessing the compositional process as the work evolves, Corman believes, the students will gain a sense that “all creativity is a balance of inspiration and perspiration.”

Twenty-two schools from the Rochester area will benefit from TCP programs, affecting at least 1500 students. Many of these projects are composer residencies. Eastman School of Music faculty composer David Liptak will compose a work for the Rochester Philharmonic Youth Orchestra and give workshops on his creative process. Jazz composer and pianist Michael Holober will write a piece for the Rush Henrietta High School jazz ensemble, featuring himself and saxophonist Dave Demsey as soloists. Howard Rowe will write for bands at Pittsford Middle School and chamber groups at Brookside Elementary in Greece, NY.

The Commission Project will also sponsor four community-wide events in Rochester during the 2000-2001 season. The first Commission Project Retrospective Concert will be held in Greece in February 2001. The concert will consist entirely of music commissioned by The Commission Project, performed by various school ensembles and professional soloists. One of the highlights of the program will be a new piece commissioned by TCP from University of Maryland faculty member Mike Crotty for the Prism Brass Quintet and saxophonist Chris Vadala.

As part of the Swingin’ Jazz Festival, created and produced by The Commission Project, over a dozen prominent jazz musicians will come to Rochester in June, 2001, to give free community-based workshops for kids and perform concerts. At each site, children will get to play for and with these musicians, and they will also receive free tickets to the evening concert. Additionally, through the support of the Mr. Holland’s Opus Foundation, participating schools receive new instruments.

In December, trombonist and composer Richard Fote will direct the third installment of the Trombone Circus, a daylong festival and workshop. The event attracts trombonists of all ages and levels from throughout the region. Highlights of this year’s festival will be the performance of a new piece commissioned from Bob McChesney for the Fairport High School Jazz Ensemble, and two new titles by Fote written for all participants to play en masse.

The fourth community-wide project, now entering its third year, is the Ying Quartet Project. In a partnership with the Eastman School, the Ying Quartet will present a series of lecture-demonstrations on the creative process. They are planning to commission a piece for the Quartet and Jay Stetzer, the storyteller. Over 200 students from orchestras and theory classes will participate and attend the Quartet’s public premiere of the new work.

At least 500 students from the greater New York City area will be involved in this year’s program. Paquito D’Rivera will write a piece to play with the All-City High School Jazz Ensemble. Composer Judith Lane is composing an opera for the Children’s Opera Company of Ossining.

The opera is named after the book The Secret Cave that Lane first read when she was 9 years old. (The book is currently published as Twenty and Ten.) The book tells the story of twenty French schoolchildren who hid ten Jewish children from the Nazis. Currently in Europe for a five-week stay, Lane intends to make a visit to Dieulefit at the end of her trip in order to verify some of the facts. “It takes place at a school called Beauvallon, which is now a school for emotionally disturbed students,” Lane explained. “We do know that the school hid people during the war, but we don’t know specifically if they were Jewish children.”

Judith Lane Photo credit Dennis Purse

Lane describes her opera as “music theater, but different, with unusual harmonies.” She has finished the actual composition of the opera, and has begun work on the orchestration. Lane has been named co-director of the opera. She will function as composer-in-residence with the Company, educating them about the holocaust and leading them through preparatory exercises. She emphasized, however, that she has not written this piece to be performed exclusively by children. “I would like to see it performed at some point with adults in the adult roles, and children in the children’s roles,” she confessed. “Ideally, you want the height and vocal differences between a Nazi soldier and a child; when it’s performed all with children you are going to miss a little bit of that.”

The Children’s Opera Company of Ossining will give The Secret Cave its premiere on April 4, 2001. The Company, which was founded ten years ago, consists of children from area schools between the ages of 8 and 10. They meet once a week for much of the year, increasing the amount of rehearsal time as performances draw near. Lane enjoys working with the children because they are always willing to except a challenge. “I don’t write down for children,” Lane stated. “Children will sing anything, if you just don’t tell them it’s difficult. These kids are amazing.”

Lane’s connection with the Children’s Opera Company did not begin with this project. Lane wrote another opera The Mill Girl that was given its premiere by the Company in 1998. Having already made the decision to collaborate again on The Secret Cave, Lane was determined to find funding. Corman sees the grant as a significant step for TCP, as it marks their first involvement with opera.

Tania León is writing piece based on Latin American texts for the virtuoso percussionist Andres Patrick Forero and professional vocal soloists to perform with the senior chorus at Herricks High School in New Hyde Park. Adam Silverman will write a new work for the Tottenville High School on Staten Island.

The Commission Project is also sponsoring projects in eight schools located outside New York State. Greg Yasinitsky, on the composition faculty of Washington State University, will be in residence at the Clarkston (WA) High School to composer a new work for the Concert Band and give a series of 20 workshops on composition. Corman praised Yasinitsky not only as a “good composer, ” but also as someone adept at “writing something to suit the situation.”

At Deer Path Middle School, a school of about 250 students in suburban Chicago, composer Antonio Garcia will give workshops and write for the 8th grade concert band. Corman thinks this may be the “most outstanding residency” on the calendar this year. “Tony is extremely good at doing these sorts of things,” he explained, “and the program at that middle school is full of vitality.” Garcia started his residency at Deer Path at the end of September with a “kick-off concert” for the 8th grade band, featuring himself and pianist Dan Cray. He has visited the school every Friday since then, working with the 8th grade concert and jazz bands and giving private lessons to three students.

Tony Garcia Photo credit José L. García II

Garcia will take a hiatus from the regular visits during December and January, partly in order to complete the new work he is writing for the students. He will return in February to help the students prepare the piece for concerts on March 12 and 13, 2001. The jazz and concert bands have also been working on some of Garcia’s previously-written works; of these, “Shaping Thought” and “Jaguar Blues” were both written on previous TCP commissions.

Garcia is currently working on a piece for the students that will make use of Latin jazz rhythms. “There is not a lot of music for that in the concert band realm, especially for kids,” he commented. He particularly wants to make use of what he calls the band’s “large and talented percussion section.” The student body at Deer Path is largely white, and Garcia hopes to use the piece as a way to “share Latin culture and discuss how it affects the way they play the music.”

He also wants the piece to act as a “vehicle to interact with the community, administration, and support staff,” by providing opportunities in the piece for guests soloists to improvise. Potential soloists include not only Garcia himself, but also two of Deer Park’s assistant principals who are trained musicians.

In addition, Garcia will take some of the ideas generated by his private composition students and arrange them for smaller groups within the concert bands. “This way, they will get to hear their ideas read, and poss
ibly performed in concert by their peers.”

Garcia initially became aware of Ned Corman’s Penfield Commission Project as a graduate student at Eastman in the early 1980s. His first official involvement with The Commission Project came later, however, when he started a three-year residency with Evanston Township High School near Chicago in 1996. As part of a “whole variety of things” that Garcia accomplished at Evanston, he wrote four pieces for their jazz band; one of these pieces was premiered in collaboration with Angel Melendez 911 Mambo Orchestra at the Midwest Clinic in 1997. After that, Corman asked Garcia to write pieces for the jazz bands at Limestone Junior High School in Illinois and Jefferson Middle School in Missouri. In addition, TCP supported the visit of Max Roach and his student Zim Ngqawana to work with students at Northwestern University in May 1997.

Garcia feels that the kind of outreach supported by The Commission Project is “all about giving back to the next generation.” “It is the most important part of my life as an educator,” Garcia commented,” and one of the most exciting parts of my life as a musician.” Garcia “does a lot of outreach on [his] own,” but he claims “Ned offers the opportunity to develop long-term relationships with schools and their programs. With his support I can develop elbow-to-elbow relationships with the kids that last months, even years. They come away knowing what it is like to interact with a living composer, and they have a chance to ask questions and share lessons.” He related that some of students who were involved in his TCP projects have graduated and gone on to college at Northwestern, where he teaches. “Whether they go to Northwestern or not, they have a resource in me,” Garcia emphasized.

In addition to his position as Associate Professor of Performance and Integrated Arts at Northwestern, Garcia is the Editor of The International Association of Jazz Educators‘ Jazz Educators Journal and is a past President of the Illinois IAJE chapter. Garcia is Co-Editor and Contributing Author of Teaching Jazz: A Course of Study. He serves on the Illinois Coalition for Music Education coordinating committee, has worked with the Illinois and Chicago Public Schools to develop standards for multi-cultural music education, and is currently engaged in a curricular grant from the Council for Basic Education. Garcia thinks that jazz is excellent for exposing children not only to African-American and Latin music, but also the music of women and Jewish-Americans. “You can provide them with that kind of variety using other kinds of music, but you have to dig deeper,” he explained.

The Commission Project is also inaugurating a relationship with the New England Conservatory in Boston. NEC’s Jazz Ensemble will mentor the Jazz Ensemble at Foxborough High School in coaching and side-by-side rehearsals.

Corman oversees the formation of the residencies. “The process is mysterious,” he confessed, “I look for people who are interested. It has to do with how energetic a collaborating teacher is, because it requires organizational effort. It is easier [for the teachers] to go in and do their regular stuff.” Typically, Corman tries to meet with the composer and the teacher before the project starts, and then he “turns them loose.”

The result of this personal approach, according to Corman, is that the residencies are all different. “They don’t pass through a cookie-cutter.” For instance, when Augusta Read Thomas spent time at the Harley School in Rochester, she determined that a better use of her time would be to work with three talented composition students, rather than writing a piece herself. The result was “three fine tunes,” written by the students themselves.

Ned Corman founded The Commission Project in 1994 as a national extension of the local Penfield Music Commission Project that he founded in 1984. “At the time I started to teach in Penfield in 1968, the Ford Foundation was still putting money into Composers in the Schools. I really enjoyed watching the composers work with the kids. Then the money dried up.” In 1980, following the departure of a superintendent who did not support the arts, Corman and fellow teacher John Turner were appointed co-chairs of the music program. Jim Doser joined the faculty in 1984, and the three men came up with the idea of reviving the kind of residency the Ford Foundation had sponsored more than a decade before.

The Penfield Music Commission Project commissioned 117 titles, most of them for student ensembles in Penfield. When Corman retired from teaching in 1994, he set about expanding the program. The first TCP residency paired Eastman graduate students with the Fairport High School Jazz Ensemble. “Fairport seemed like a good place to do it, initially, because they had an outstanding jazz program.” Corman had never worked outside the district, and he was pleased to be working with Bill Tiberio, the capable director of the Fairport program. (Tiberio is now on the TCP Board.) “We put composers in residence there for two years, but we have supported the program less since then,” Corman explained, because the Fairport schools started their own program, Fairport Commissions. Several districts, in fact, have started their own commissioning programs, following the initial “push” from Corman.

The Commission Project is growing. Ted Wiprud currently looks after the Project’s “satellite” office in New York. The Board recently held its first long-range planning meeting, according to Corman, and resolved to hire a full-time administrator. “If we can raise enough money that that happens,” Corman explained, “we will have more time to find teachers and composers who have a sense for what we are doing.” Corman currently receives no salary for his services.

In late October, The Commission Project received three major grants totaling $65,000. These grants were awarded by The Dorothy and Jonathan Rintels Charitable Foundation; the New York State Council on the Arts; and New York State, with the help of Senator James Alesi. The Commission Project also receives support from the Arthur M. Blank Family Foundation and Morgan Stanley Dean Witter.