Category: Ledes

Lee Erwin, a theater organist who composed scores for more than 70 silent films and whose performances helped create a revival of interest in silent films during the 1970s, died on September 21^st at his home in Greenwich Village. He was 92.

Mr. Erwin was an energetic musician who maintained a fairly busy performing schedule into his 90th year, but after a fall while touring was forced to retire. During his long career he composed for everything from comedies by Buster Keaton and Charlie Chaplin to epics by D.W.Griffith to classics like Lon Chaney‘s 1923 version of The Hunchback of Notre Dame and Fred Niblo‘s 1925 Ben Hur.

He performed many times in silent film series presented by the Cathedral of St. John the Divine and maintained a regular circuit of jobs that took him to theaters in Atlanta, St. Louis, Oakland, Akron, Wichita, Boston, and Miami. He also appeared in Woody Allen’s Radio Days as a roller rink organist.

Accompanying silent films was one of several musical careers that Mr. Erwin pursued. He was born in July 1908 in Huntsville, Alabama. By the time Mr. Erwin graduated from the Cincinnati Conservatory of Music, he was an experienced theater organist, having started his career as a high school student in Huntsville.

In 1930, Mr. Erwin went to Paris to study with the French organist André Marchal. He also took composition classes with Nadia Boulanger, and spent his Sunday mornings first hearing Marchal perform an early Mass, and then taking the subway across Paris to hear Olivier Messaien play at Trinity Church.

Mr. Erwin returned to Cincinnati in 1932, and the next year began a long radio career as a staff organist at a Cincinnati radio station, WLW, where he became famous for playing the music for “Moon River.”

After 11 years at WLW, he moved to New York to join the staff of CBS radio and television, where he worked as an organist and arranger until 1966. Among his jobs at CBS was to appear as “Moneybags Erwin” on the Arthur Godfrey Show. By the mid-1960’s, when radio and television divested themselves of their staff orchestras and musicians, Mr. Erwin found his way back to the movie house. In 1967 the American Theater Organ Society commissioned Mr. Erwin to compose a score for Queen Kelly, the 1929 Erich von Stroheim silent film starring Gloria Swanson.

After Queen Kelley, dozens of requests for scores came his way. Among the films for which he composed were The Eagle, with Rudolph Valentino; My Best Girl, with Mary Pickford; Irene, with Colleen Moore; and the entire collection of Buster Keaton films. In the 1970s Mr. Erwin made several recordings for Angel Records, and some of his soundtracks were recorded by the BBC for both theatrical and home video releases. Erwin was also the chief organist for Carnegie Hall Cinema in New York.

David Messineo, a New York-area organist and teacher, remembered relying on Erwin when he started at Radio City Music Hall in 1979. “He was my lifeline,” Messineo recalled. “The first show I did was the Christmas show, and he helped me do the arrangements. He was just fabulous.” Messineo, who was studying classical organ at Juilliard at the time, began visiting Erwin at Carnegie Hall Cinemas to get regular help with his new job. Eventually, Erwin decided to teach the young organist how to accompany silent films.

Messineo described Erwin’s method of accompaniment as extremely unusual: he consciously avoided playing familiar tunes, unless it was dictated explicitly by the movie. A run-of-the-mill silent movie accompanist would accompany a smoking scene with “Smoke Gets In Your Eyes,” for example; Erwin would play an excerpt from Gounod’s Faust when it appeared as part of Phantom of the Opera, but otherwise relied on original music.

Instead, Erwin wrote out a theme for each character, and wove these themes into an improvised score. Messineo explained that in order to improvise “you have to memorize [the themes], because you have to play [them] in all different keys.” Erwin had a knack for writing “original melodies and harmonies,” according to Messineo. “He was the Leo Sowerby</a > of the theater organ.”

Messineo learned to improvise from Erwin, partly simply from watching and listening to him. He would attend Erwin’s performances “wherever he play[ed] silents in New York City.” Erwin provided valuable feedback to Messineo, in his early work, telling him when his improvisations became too repetitive or remained too long in one key, for instance. “He would help me get out of one hole [in an improvisation],” Messineo laughed, “and into a new hole.” He also helped him write themes, something Erwin felt that he needed to master in order to “keep his audience awake.”

Messineo feels that the talent for writing movie scores has vanished from the organ world, becoming instead solely the province of Hollywood composers. He still accompanies some silent movies, however, especially around Halloween, when he plays “all of the horror flicks” such as Phantom and The Hunchback of Notre Dame. Messineo is the Principal University Organist at Princeton, teaches at Montclair State University, plays for the Oheb Shalom Congregation in South Orange, New Jersey, and concertizes regularly.

John Corigliano photo credit Christian Steiner

Music of John Corigliano will provide the main focus for the Royal Northern College of Music‘s American Reflections Festival, which will run from November 30^th until December 16th. Under the artistic direction of the College’s Director of Contemporary Music, Clark Rundell, the series of sixteen concerts will feature 14 works (including 6 UK premières) by the award-winning Corigliano, music to mark the centenary of Aaron Copland’s birth, five performances of Stephen Sondheim‘s Into the Woods, and several concerts exploring music by other influential American composers. Support for the festival is being provided by the U.S. Embassy.

John Corigliano will be attending the festival and taking part in two pre-concert discussions. The suites from The Ghosts of Versailles and The Red Violin will receive their UK premieres during this festival in a concert given by the BBC Philharmonic conducted by Marin Alsop. The concert will feature Yuri Torchinksy as the violin soloist and Barry Douglas as piano soloist in Corigliano’s Piano Concerto.

Clark Rundell, the RNCM’s Director of Contemporary Music, explained in an email that the College wanted to celebrate Copland’s centenary “not simply with a festival of Copland’s music, but with music by the many composers who felt his influence.” Rundell wanted to explore “the considerable ground in between” the “uptown” modernists and the “downtown” minimalists and post-minimalists. “We were given a considerable boost when John Corigliano agreed to come,” Rundell commented. “Despite his exceptionally high (and well-deserved) profile in the U.S., his music is little-known here.” Rundell called the festival “the most substantial Corigliano event every staged outside the U.S.”

The Corigliano concerts also include a performance by the RNCM Symphony Orchestra conducted by Nicholas Kok of the composer’s First Symphony, and the UK premiere of Troubadours, for chamber orchestra and guitar, performed by the RNCM Chamber Orchestra conducted by Baldur Brönnimann with Australian guitarist Craig Ogden. There will also be a “Corigliano Chamber Concert” and a “Corigliano Song Cycles” concert.

In addition to a comprehensive program book, the RNCM is publishing a collection of essays on Corigliano by Mark Adamo. The College also plans to publish a book of conservations between Corigliano and American scholars, as well as transcripts of the two two-hour pre-concert talks that he will give as part of the festival in December.

“Nothing could please me more than that a major U. K. institution like the Royal Northern College of Music should do me the honor of devoting so much of their creative time and energy to my work,” Mr. Corigliano commented in an email. “It’s in festivals like these that new thought begins to takes root–how terrific to be a part of one!” Corigliano is enjoying an autumn full of accolades: in November alone, in addition to the RNCM festival, he will be honored twice in New York. The Center for Contemporary Opera is giving a “gala benefit” in his honor on November 2^nd, and the Bronx Arts Ensemble is featuring his music in a “Celebrate Corigliano” concert on November 5^th.

In between the Corigliano concerts, RNCM will launch their first full-scale production of a contemporary musical, Stephen Sondheim’s Into the Woods. The musical will be performed 5 times under the direction of RNCM Director of Opera Studies Stefan Janski, and conducted by Clark Rundell. The festival will also include “American Songbook” and “American Keyboard” concerts and a masterclass and performance by former Oscar Peterson drummer Ed Thigpen. The RNCM Percussion Ensemble will perform Varèse’s Ionisation and Reich‘s Vermont Counterpoint and his Sextet. Ensemble Eleven, conducted by André de Ridder, will perform the last the concert, which will include works by Bang On A Can artistic directors Michael Gordon and Julia Wolfe.

Karel Husa photo credit Alexander Dippold

Czech-born composer and conductor Karel Husa recently donated his archive to Ithaca College in Ithaca, New York. The Archive now exceeds in scope and volume the Husa documents in the Library of Congress. The Husa Archive at IC contains materials from his entire career. As a champion of new music, Husa’s correspondence contains many letters to composers such as Bernstein, Carter, Copland, Foss, Ginastera, Penderecki, and Poulenc on matters pertaining to the interpretation of their works. In addition, there are 62 letters from Nadia Boulanger, dating from his student years in the 1950s until just before her death in 1979.

The most important component of the Archive is Husa’s own work. The Archive includes the manuscripts of Music for Prague, Apotheosis of this Earth, the Concerto for Violin and Orchestra, and Les Couleurs Fauves, among others. The Archive also contains lists, prepared by Husa, of errata in currently-published scores. This is the College’s first Archive of “specialized, primary source documents by a master composer,” says Curator and Music History Professor Mark Radice.

The 100-cubic-foot collection is important, according to Radice, for three reasons. First, “it is international,” Radice explained. “His career began in Central Europe, continued in Western Europe, and has taken, for now, into the United States.” Second, the contents of the Archive document the past fifty years in considerable detail. Third, the Archive is diverse, reflecting his varied activities as composer and conductor. “Those characteristics,” according to Radice, “make this collection a unique opportunity for scholars to see music history unfolding in the second half of the 20^th century.”

The Archive will be the property not of the College Library, but of the School of Music. The Karel Husa Gallery in the new James J. Whalen Center for Music is designed for the display of important documents and scores. Portions of the Archive will be installed in the Gallery’s floor-to-ceiling glass cases. Radice is planning to reproduce many items of the collection, either on microfilm or on paper. This way, if someone is interested in studying a manuscript, for instance, they will contact Radice and he will set them up first with a reproduction of the score. Then, if necessary, he will provide them with supervised access to the original.

Husa served as Professor of Composition at Ithaca College from 1967 until 1986. His influence is still felt through the Karel Husa Visiting Professor of Composition Series. The Series provides for a different composer each year to come to the College, work with students, supervise performances of his or her works, and give lectures. The diversity of Visiting Professors, in Radice’s opinion, reflects Husa’s own openness to a diversity of styles. Past Professors have included Jacob Druckman, Shulamit Ran, John Harbison, John Corigliano, and William Bolcom. This year’s Karel Husa Visiting Professor of Composition is Michael Daugherty.

Karel Husa was born in Prague in 1921. After completing studies at the Prague Conservatory and, later, the Academy of Music, he went to Paris where he received diplomas from the Paris National Conservatory and the Ecole normale de musique. Among his teachers were Arthur Honegger, Nadia Boulanger, Jaroslav Ridky, and conductor André Cluytens.

In 1954, Husa was appointed to the faculty of Cornell University where he was Kappa Alpha Professor until his retirement in 1992. Among numerous honors, Husa has received a fellowship from the Guggenheim Foundation; awards from the American Academy and Institute of Arts and Letters, UNESCO, and the National Endowment for the Arts; Koussevitzky Foundation commissions; the Czech Academy for the Arts and Sciences Prize; and the Lili Boulanger award.

Husa’s String Quartet No. 3 received the 1969 Pulitzer Prize, and his Cello Concerto the 1993 Grawemeyer Award. Music for Prague 1968 — with over 7000 performances worldwide — has become part of the modern repertory. On 13 February 1990, Husa realized a long-time dream when he conducted the orchestral version of Music for Prague 1968 in Prague. He was invited back to conduct the work again in1993, with the Prague Philharmonia, to commemorate the 25^th anniversary of the Russian invasion.

Some of Husa’s more recent works include a Violin Concerto (1993), commissioned for the 150th Anniversary of the New York Philharmonic and premiered by concertmaster Glenn Dicterow; the String Quartet No. 4 (1991), commissioned for the consortium of Colorado, Alard, and Blair Quartets by the National Endowment for the Arts. Most recently, Husa’s Les Couleurs Fauves was premiered in November 1996 by the Northwestern University Wind Ensemble.

Karel Husa has conducted many major orchestras including those in Paris, London, Prague, Zurich, Hong Kong, Singapore, New York, Boston, and Washington. Among numerous recordings — including his own works — he made the first European disc of Bartók’s Miraculous Mandarin with the Centi Soli Orchestra in Paris. Every year, Husa visits the campuses of some 20 universities to guest conduct and lecture on his music.

The 2000-2001 Visiting Composers’ Series at the University of Texas will bring an impressive roster of composers to the school’s Austin campus for four-day residencies, during which School of Music students, faculty, and guest artists will perform their music. The composers will present public forums on their music, master classes for UT student composers, and attend rehearsals and concerts of their works by the New Music Ensemble, UT Wind Ensemble, UT Symphony Orchestra, UT Jazz Orchestra, and UT Choruses.

Since its inception in 1995, the Visiting Composers’ Series has attracted national attention for being one of few programs that bring together diverse performance groups on a monthly basis to perform major works of today’s leading composers. “Most people bring composers in for one performance, a lecture — we hit them over the head with performances,” commented series director Dan Welcher. “[When] Corigliano [visited], every school ensemble played a piece.”

These concerts have introduced to Texas audiences such works as Joseph Schwantner‘s Concerto for Percussion and Orchestra and John Corigliano‘s A Dylan Thomas Trilogy for soloists, double chorus, and large orchestra. Other composers who have participated in the series include John Harbison, Jonathan Jones, Thea Musgrave, Joan Tower, and William Craft.

Welcher feels that the Visiting Composer Series plays an important role in bringing new music to Austin. “Several new music groups have sprung up and died [in recent years],” he explained. “There is a lot of community support, people come to it who don’t come to other events on campus.”

All concerts are free and open to the public. Funding for the series comes from the Meyerson Endowed Professorship. The money from this Professorship covers the visiting composers’ fees, travel and accommodation expenses.

German publisher Schott Musik International has signed a deal to put its entire catalog online. The 230-year-old firm has joined hands with the online sheet music retailer Net4Music.

It is not Schott’s first flirtation with new technology. The company produces several innovative products for electronic media, including its MasterPlayAlong series of professional practice CD-ROMs that enable soloists to play, edit, and print music; and CD-PluScore, and audio CD that can be played on any normal CD player and includes CD-ROM material to accompany the score on screen.

However, it is the extensive music catalog for which the company is best known. It includes the works of such contemporary classical composers as Stravinsky, Orff, Rodrigo, Ligeti, Henze, Penderecki, Takemitsu, and others. Schott also has one of the world’s most comprehensive catalogs of instrumental-education materials, choral works, and orchestral scores.

Net4Music C.E.O. Francois Duliège thinks that the Schott licensing agreement is important for two reasons: Schott has one of the largest European classical catalogs; and Schott has a reputation in Europe as a “high-quality” publisher. They fact that one of the oldest publishers has acknowledged what the internet can do, he explained, has made Net4Music “a source of admiration.” Approximately two thousand of Schott’s titles are already available online, and about four thousand will follow.

Net4Music currently sells sheet music and MIDI files for download from their website. When Net4Music formed 18 months ago, they acquired the Lyon-based company Informusique and their website, called Partitor. At that point, Partitor was both a mail order and a download site. Net4Music moved the download component of Partitor over to a new Net4Music site, and kept Partitor up solely for mail orders. The digital site has become the primary focus of the company’s attention, with Partitor in “sleep mode,” according to Duliège.

Neither Net4Music nor Partitor is carrying much in the way of recent American music. A few pieces by John Adams were available for purchase on Partitor, but there was nothing by Crumb, Kernis, or Danielpour. There are some features of the Net4Music site that bode well for the introduction of more adventurous music, however.

For instance, composers can send their own music, in either paper or digital format, to “Net4Publication” for posting on the site. The composer gets to decide where he or she wants the music distributed, and how much he or she wants to charge. After Net4Music takes a cut, the composer receives forty percent of sales. He or she must pay seven dollars to have InterDeposit create a unique “Inter-Deposit Digital Number” (IDDN) for the work that is then registered with the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO). This number is then “watermarked” into the file, and will appear on all the music that is downloaded. This way, if the music is ever stolen, it can be proven by the absence of this number. Net4Music has also invested in encryption software that prevents users from illegally downloading copyrighted material.

“Net4Publication is good for composers because it gives them easy access to worldwide distribution of their works,” Duliège commented. “It is an easy and cost-effective way to secure their music and get a return for it, to organize their own publishing without the having to go through a publisher.” He pointed out that while the process of securing a copyright in the U.S. generally takes six to eight weeks, with Net4Music, the assigning of the “iddn” number takes only twenty-four hours. At this time, roughly six hundred new pieces have been posted using Net4Publication.

The site also has an educational bent, evident in the musical quizzes and games, the international directory of music teachers, and the large number of student-level titles available for download. The educational focus extends even to the articles that Net4Music solicits for their “Editorial” section. According to Duliège, they don’t want the site “to be just retail,” but rather a forum where musicians can “look at news articles and learn.” They try to get musicians to write articles on topics relevant to them, and help by adding a MIDI component to the article, if possible, and by translating the piece into five languages. In mid-October there was an article on Internet legal issues, and an introduction to modes.

Net4Music’s recent merger with Coda Music Technology will likely have implications for all musicians, composers included. Net4Music recently added a new, stripped-down version of the music notation software Finale to their site, available for free download. This new version, called Notepad, will make basic professional-looking composition possible for anyone with Internet access. Even more innovative is the second wave of Finale implementation. Starting in December, users will be able to purchase a piece of sheet music and use Finale to transpose or rearrange the selection to meet his or her needs. A piano piece could be instantly arranged for flute and violin, for instance, and moved from F-sharp major to D-major, for easier reading.

Another Coda program will debut on the site in January. This will be an online adaptation of “SmartMusic Studio,” a “virtual accompanist.” Users will be able to download the accompaniments to their pieces, and the computer will play along with them. Users will be able to monitor t
he degree to which the computer responds to their playing by adjusting the level of “sensitivity.”

Photo by Marion Gold

The Copland House is inaugurating a new series called The Composer’s Hour. The series is presented for Copland Society members and is hosted by Artistic Director Michael Boriskin.

Each program features an prominent composer speaking about creativity and writing music, introducing one of his or her major works, and discussing its origins and content. Boriskin feels that the lecture-concerts “will take viewers on a first-hand, guided tour of the creative process, and open a window into the composer’s mind.” After a live performance of the music by members of its resident ensemble, Music From The Copland House, and guest artists, the composer, the performers, and the audience engage in a discussion, following which the work is played again.

“The Composer’s Hour will fill an important role in our work at The Copland House, where we try to enhance listeners’ awareness and appreciation of America’s rich musical heritage.” Boriskin explained in an email. “For so many people around the world, Copland has come to personify the American composer.” Boriskin thinks that for this reason, Copland’s home makes an ideal place for “composers and music lovers [to come] closer together.”

Francis Thorne “test drove” the first Composer’s Hour in March with an exploration of his new piano work, Rhapsodic Variations No. 7, written for Mr. Boriskin. The series will restart in February 2001, and will be taped for web cast on NewMusicBox. Featured composers will include Ned Rorem, George Perle, Aaron Jay Kernis, Richard Danielpour, Lukas Foss among others.

Kevin Beavers Photo by Lorin Burgess

At the intermission of the October 5th Philadelphia Orchestra concert, after hearing three recent compositions by young American men, audience members completed ballots to help choose the winning work in the Orchestra’s Centennial Composition Competition. The winning piece, Sinfonia by Kevin Beavers, was performed again in Philadelphia on October 6 and 7 and was given its New York debut on October 10, as part of the Orchestra’s first appearance at Carnegie Hall during the 2000-01 season.

The three pieces performed on October 5th under Music Director Wolfgang Sawallisch‘s direction were: Totem by Keith Fitch (written in 1993), Three Pieces for Orchestra by Huang Ruo (two sections were written 1998, with the final section added early this year), and Sinfonia (1997) by Kevin Beavers.

Philip Blackburn, Program Director of the American Composer’s Forum, attended the October 5^th concert. “It was a remarkable occasion,” he commented in an interview. “The Academy of Music [made for] a wonderful setting for the three young composers who had come so far.” Blackburn reviewed the three hundred tapes that were submitted to the Forum for pre-selection by a panel that included Aaron Jay Kernis and Libby Larsen. “I really appreciated what it took to get to this place,” he added. Blackburn described the atmosphere in the dress rehearsal as “supportive,” noting that Sawallisch was “extremely well-prepared.”

According to Blackburn, approximately eighty people turned up for the pre-concert discussion with the composers. “People were eager to ask questions,” Blackburn explained. “[The composers] came across as very personable.”

The October 5th concert was the first Orchestra subscription concert, and judging by the number of ballots received, there were around sixteen hundred people in the audience. Blackburn noted that the audience gave the new works “rapt attention.” He feels that this was partly because, in addition to checking a box for their favorite piece, they were also asked to give comments. “[Asking the audience to] actually give constructive feedback [got them] thoroughly engaged,” Blackburn remarked. He witnessed audience members discussing the pieces at intermission, which he sees as further evidence of their involvement, and by extension, the competition’s success.

Eligible voters included all attending audience members and the Orchestra musicians onstage. The results of the competition were “amazingly close,” Blackburn reports, with only 180 votes difference between the first- and third-place winners. He claims that when Simon Woods entered the ballot-counting room near the end of the second half, he was amazed to see that the stacks of ballots for each candidate were the same size.

Competition winner Kevin Beavers described the reaction to both Philadelphia concerts as “overwhelmingly positive.” Beavers observed with pleasure that Sawallisch was highlighting different aspects of the score than he had at the previous performances, and that he had developed a closer rapport with the players. On the question of whether the 76-year old German actually managed to “swing” in the last movement, he responded with an overwhelmingly positive “he was doing it, man!”

In addition to the performances in Philadelphia and New York, Mr. Beavers received a $10,000 cash prize for writing the winning work. The other two finalists received $2,500 each. All three were recognized by Philadelphia Orchestra Chairman Peter A. Benoliel during a brief presentation onstage at the conclusion of the October 5^th concert.

Blackburn feels that the Competition was successful in “making living composers more visible” and in bringing some new music out of the “new music ghetto,” both of which are goals of the American Composer’s Forum. The collaboration between the Orchestra and the Forum was the brainchild of Artistic Administrator Simon Woods, who attended Cambridge with Blackburn and now serves on the Forum Board. Blackburn headed the administration of the competition, and also worked with Woods on refining the Orchestra’s selection criteria.

There are plans for the Orchestra to collaborate on a similar competition in 2003, this time including a live Web cast and online voting. Blackburn is pleased with the partnership, and hopes that other ensembles will consider using their organization to administer similar events in the future.

In July, 2000, the Chief Executive Officers of five leading copyright organizations agreed to a new partnership called FastTrack. Together, these five organizations represent approximately 38 percent of the global collections for musical works, or more than $1.6 billion USD annually.

In September, the FastTrack Board of Directors, meeting in Santiago prior to the opening of the CISAC (International Confederation of Societies of Authors and Composers) 2000 World Congress, elected SIAE (Italy) Special Commissioner Professor Mauro Masi as its first Chairman, and approved the creation of a headquarters office in Paris. The Board also approved the organizations’ statutes, budget and development timetable, and set January 1, 2001 as the date on which the new entity would formally be established.

The Board also elected BMI (US) President & CEO Frances W. Preston as Vice Chairman. Board members are the chief executives of the five founding societies. In addition to Masi and Preston they are: GEMA (Germany) President and General Manager Prof. Dr. Reinhold Kreile, SACEM (France) President Jean Loup Tournier, and SGAE (Spain) Chief Executive Officer Eduardo Bautista.

The Board has hired experienced music copyright executive Chris van Houten to direct the new headquarters. Van Houten brings to FastTrack a widely regarded expertise in business process redesign. Most recently, he was acting COO of BUMA/STEMRA, the Dutch mechanical and performing rights organization. He served for six years as Managing Director of EMI Music Publishing‘s Benelux operation, and prior to that, as an executive with the Dutch record company Dureco. Both at EMI and Dureco, he designed and introduced new copyright and royalty systems.

Robbin Ahrold, Vice President of Corporate Relations at BMI, feels that classical and jazz composers stand to benefit greatly from FastTrack’s initiatives, partly because so much of their music is performed in Europe. “Classical and jazz composers are perhaps the best example of creators whose works are used in a globalized music business,” Ahrold commented in an interview. “FastTrack is developing tools that will specifically add a higher level of service, greater accuracy at lower cost for works that are used in the international music market.”

The FastTrack development timetable calls for the deployment of three “core projects” within the next two years. These initiatives will address international documentation and distribution, online services for members and customers, and the development of a globally integrated Electronic Copyright Management System. The timeline for the completion of all three projects is sometime between April 2002 and October 2003.

FastTrack’s plan for an improved documentation and distribution should be implemented in the next 6 to 9 months. The hope is that by connecting the databases of the five member societies, efficiency and accuracy will improve, translating into more time and money for composers in all five countries. “BMI will be able to bring the cost of their operations down by trapping the tremendous efficiencies of the Internet,” Ahrold remarked. He explained that the improved documentation and distribution system will allow BMI to cut down on the time previously spent “exchanging paper, with all the key-punching and error-checking that goes into paper documents.”

Take the case of John Williams, for instance. John Williams of Star Wars fame is one of BMI’s most active composers. “John, however, has a name that is not the most unique in the world,” Ahrold laughed. There is any number of composers named “John Williams” whose music gets played in Europe. The new system will be able to differentiate automatically between the “real” John Williams and the others, eliminating the manual checking that is currently necessary.

The second “core project,” online services for members and customers, has already been addressed by BMI. In April 2000, they introduced a service whereby members can register their works directly online. The FastTrack initiative will mean that when composers enter their information into the BMI system, it will automatically be entered into the systems of the four other member organizations. “You can see the obvious advantages in accuracy,” Ahrold commented. “No one knows the information about the piece better than the composer himself.” He also noted the other immediate advantage of such a system was speed. “[The composer registers a piece] on Tuesday afternoon, and it’s in the databases on Wednesday.”

The third project, the development of a global Electronic Copyright Management System, is “largely aimed at the identification of works performed in the electronic media,” according to Ahrold. This includes music played on the internet, cable, digital, and satellite TV and radio. The five societies are looking for a common method to “watermark” or “fingerprint” musical works. Ahrold hopes that this system, once established, will become a “de facto standard” for the industry.

“Taking the internet as an example, what you see is a tremendous expansion in the number of works that can be performed,” Ahrold explained. “There are hundreds of radio stations streaming out their signals [over the internet], hundreds more delivering by satellite radio.” With the increase in the number of performances, the old system of reporting can no longer keep up. Up to now, according to Ahrold, BMI has relied on written correspondence with listeners and programmers to keep track of many performances. Now, the FastTrack organizations are creating a program that, through the detection of these digital “watermarks,” will automatically detect the performances of registered works.

Each of the projects, the partners emphasize, relies on the Internet to connect existing computing resources among the five societies. Likewise, task forces for the development and implementation of the projects will be drawn from the societies’ existing staff.

FastTrack is committed to integrating the tools developed as part of the Common Information System (CIS) project managed by CISAC. Ahrold characterizes BMI as one of the “consistent leaders” in the project since its inception in 1994. Executives of the five FastTrack organizations first started working together in 1999 to develop a “ProtoNet” tool for CISAC that would allow member societies to “look into each other’s databases without exchanging paper, emails, or calling.” Ahrold claims that “in the process of developing ProtoNet, we got into the kind of technical discoveries about each other’s systems” that led to the realization that they were capable of achieving much more far-reaching objectives. Once the ProtoNet project was finished at the end of 1999, staff members from all five organizations were formed into task forces that have been working on all three “core projects” ever since.

Ahrold explained: “the nature of CISAC is that it must embrace all of its societies, and the tools that it develops must be usable by the majority of its societies.” The name ‘FastTrack’ alludes to the capabilities of these five societies, with their “state of the art computer systems,” to take some of the goals of CIS and move more quickly than is possible for CISAC as a whole. According to Ahrold, once the five FastTrack societies have a “core set of digital tools up and running,” they will welcome others into the group.

Photo by Melinda Wilson

The American Society of Composer, Authors and Publishers (ASCAP) has introduced the Junior ASCAP Members or J.A.M. Created to support and nurture the talents of high school music students, ASCAP J.A.M. hopes to educate them, as well, on the value of music and the importance of intellectual property rights.

Phil Crosland, ASCAP’s Vice President of Marketing, explained the motivation for the creation of J.A.M. “We are watching a generation grow up with a total disregard for the ownership of music, a growing disregard for copyright and for intellectual property, [and instead sporting an attitude] that everything on the Internet should be free.” Crosland feels that the debate over Napster and similar tools tend focus only on the artists, leaving “the creators of music, those who put pen or pencil to paper…totally left out of [the] conversation.” ASCAP wants to use jam to “create a platform to share the [idea] that the value of music is only going to be perpetuated if there is fair compensation for those who create it.”

ASCAP has partnered with MENC to launch the program, initially opening it up to MENC’s Tri-M Music Honor Society members. The Tri-M Music Honor Society is an international music honor society for secondary school students (middle/junior high and high school) that motivates and recognizes musical achievement. Tri-M has about 15,000 members nationwide.

“[The program] supports both organizations and both missions,” stated Michael Blakeslee, the Executive Director for Programs at MENC. “Both ASCAP and MENC are concerned with uses of copyright, [and] the legal and moral issues [surrounding] intellectual property.” Blakeslee is pleased that MENC will be able to reach kids with the ASCAP’s information on intellectual property.

As a component of the partnership, ASCAP and MENC will be creating several new programs to bring composers and music students together, such as student composer competitions, commissioning programs, master classes and more. Such projects may take the form of master classes at the MENC National Convention, and efforts by MENC to make the ASCAP Foundation/Morton Gould Young Composer Award more accessible to students not yet in college. Blakeslee hopes to use such projects to “make kids feel like they are part of the professional community,” with the hope that they will assume the responsibilities that being part of that community entails. MENC is also working with ASCAP to design specific activities for Tri-M chapters. Currently, each Tri-M chapter creates its own curriculum, generally a mixture of music- and non-music related community service projects.

Hollywood composer James Newton Howard has agreed to be the J.A.M. Program’s Honorary Chairman. Howard recently received ASCAP’s Henry Mancini Award for lifetime achievement and has over 65 films to his credit including The Sixth Sense, Dinosaur, Runaway Bride, and Snow Falling on Cedars. Howard officially launched the program by presenting students in a Tri-M chapter in Los Angeles with their J.A.M. Member Cards. Howard and the students performed for each other and he led a question-and-answer session with them about what it is like to be a professional composer.

Through a new website, www.ascap.com/jam, J.A.M. members may read articles on music and music business topics such as songwriting, publishing, and copyrights. The J.A.M. site also features interviews with successful songwriters and composers. “We want to make the site entertaining [and provide] insider information in a way that is relevant to teenagers,” Crosland commented. The ASCAP J.A.M. site will soon feature with Alf Clausen, who writes music for The Simpsons.

J.A.M. members also get discounts on membership and merchandise at TSR Wireless, the Museum of Television and Radio in New York, 360merch, Inc., J&R Music World/Computer World, Movie Club, and Blockbuster Videos.

Crosland wants to reach kids because he sees them as the “music influentials” who will “grow up to be ASCAP members or users of ASCAP.” For the coming year, the program will be limited to Tri-M members. Blakeslee hopes that if students want to become ASCAP J.A.M. members attend a school where there is no Tri-M chapter, their teachers will use this as a motivation to start one. However, he stressed that they “don’t want to limit anything,” and that after this initial year “there are no particular restrictions [in place].”

Photo by Melissa Richard

Beginning on November 22, 2000, the New York State Council on the Arts, in partnership with the American Music Center, will begin Webcasting concerts on NewMusicBox. The concerts will be broadcast from a variety of locations throughout New York. Each concert will be featured on NewMusicBox for one month, and will subsequently be archived on the site.

The first concert will be a Copland Centennial celebration, performed on November 15 at the Copland House in Peekskill by its resident ensemble, Music from the Copland House. The Webcast will likely include, in addition to the concert itself, a tour of the house. Program notes for the concert and biographies of the performers will be provided online, as well as links to relevant websites.

The next broadcast will be a taped performance of the Village Vanguard Jazz Orchestra in December. On January 26, 2001, NewMusicBox will feature the first “live-as-it-happens” broadcast, from Columbia University’s Miller Theatre, of a concert by Composers Concordance featuring works of Ornette Coleman and Sebastian Currier. In March, NewMusicBox will broadcast a concert of SCI composers at Syracuse Unversity and a concert by the Musica Nova ensemble at the Eastman School of Music in Rochester. Another broadcast from Eastman will take place in May. Rounding out the season will be Webcasts from the Copland House of the three Composer’s Hour lecture-performances scheduled for the spring.

James Jordan, NYSCA’s Music Program Director, is equally pleased to be collaborating with the AMC on the Webcasts. “This project will expose groups from throughout the state to a larger audience, allowing their music to be heard, providing them with more job opportunities. That kind of exposure is invaluable to the groups that we support.” Jordan is pleased with the cutting-edge nature of the project. “New technology is here to stay, it’s the wave of the future and we want to give it the kind of impetus the State Council could offer. It is important to us to be able to support this kind of initiative.”

Richard Kessler, Executive Director of the American Music Center, is excited to be partnering once again with the New York State Council on the Arts, this time “to Webcast concerts of new American music all across the Internet.” Kessler believes that “making concerts available on the Web, to a larger audience than ever before possible, will help to support and promote the work of composers and performers of new American music in new and important ways.”