Category: Ledes

Peter Goodman photo by Stephen M. Goodman

Amadeus Press has announced the release of Peter W. Goodmans new book, Morton Gould: American Salute. This is the first complete biography of the multi-talented composer. In an interview, Goodman confessed that at the time he started working on this biography, he wasnt all that fond of Goulds music. He had even written a negative review of Burchfield Gallery, which he had heard performed at Goulds seventieth birthday concert.

Upon some urging from his wife, however, Goodman approached the composer about the idea of a biography at the 1993 Van Cliburn Competition, for which Gould had written the required contemporary piece. He started actually interviewing Gould around the time the composer received the Kennedy Center Honors in 1994. Throughout the book, Goodman also draws on interviews he did with a long list of fellow musicians, family, and friends, as well as letters, programs, and other documents. However, Goodman claims that Goulds audio diary, which he started at the age of seventy, was what gave him a “real psychological picture” of the composer.

Goulds long career is interesting partly because it mirrors many of the changes that took place in the American musical community in the twentieth century. Unlike many of his colleagues, Gould never relied on a university position for income, instead functioning as a major player in the commercial arena. He wore many hats: as a young man in the 1920s, he was part of a piano duet that played the vaudeville circuit, by that time in a period of sad decline.

He worked as a pianist at Radio City Music Hall and was employed as composer, pianist, and conductor during the early days of radio. He started out as a “fill-in” pianist at NBC, playing anytime the station needed music to fill dead air time. He was then hired by WOR to conduct their orchestra in a sustaining program once a week. “Some of his most famous music was written for the confines of radio,” Goodman notes, pieces like the American Symphonettes 1 and 2, and the American Concertette for Piano, which Jerome Robbins later turned into Interplay. In the 1940s, Gould finally got a commercial sponsor, Cresta Blanca Winery, and the Cresta Blanca Hour was aired first by WOR and then by CBS. Many of the guests on the show sang or played Goulds own arrangements. The show ended in 1946 when Gould “walked out” of CBS, afraid that the network was going to “dump him” for Kostelanetz, recently returned from the Army.

Gould worked for the movies, appearing as himself in the B-film Delightfully Dangerous; and he wrote the music for many Broadway shows, such as Billion Dollar Baby and Arms and the Girl. He also wrote for dance, collaborating with the great choreographer Agnes De Mille on Fall River Legend. Late in his career, Gould became a spokesperson for composers of both commercial and non-commercial music, functioning as President of ASCAP from 1986 until 1994.

Of course, Gould composed concert music throughout his career. Many of his compositions have entered the standard symphonic repertoire, and more than one hundred of his recordings were bestsellers in their day. Goulds reputation among “serious” classical musicians has fluctuated, however, a fact that plagued the composer for much of his life. To begin with, there was his “unconventional training.” “Morton was proud of the fact that he didnt have a European education, and he was also very insecure about it,” Goodman relates. He also made money writing music for a popular audience, an activity that Goodman claims he tried to “not do too well” so as not to jeopardize his career as a classical composer.

Particularly painful for Gould, Goodman recounts, was his “banishment” from the New York Philharmonic in the late 1950s. “In the 1940s,” Goodman explained, “orchestras were looking for American composers. Gould was a ‘pure American composer, and he also had a fairly well-known name.” When Dimitri Mitropoulous took over at the Philharmonic in 1949, he commissioned a “string of pieces” from Gould, programming at least a piece a season. “The pieces were not well-received, in general,” explains Goodman; he thinks this was because Gould made public his disdain for the “highbrow scene” populated by many composers and critics. Later, Mitropoulos habit of programming Goulds music was used “as a club” by the musical press to clear the way for Bernstein. When Mitropoulos finally left, “Morton disappeared.” Why? According to Goodman, because Bernstein couldnt “brook a rival.” “They hoed the same row, and Bernstein was a much better fighter.” This “exile” extended even into the Mehta years: Goulds name was conspicuously missing from the 1982 essay “Contemporary Music and the New York Philharmonic” included in the program booklet for the Philharmonics ten thousandth concert.

Later in life, however, Gould received some proper recognition from the classical music community; in 1994, he was named Musical America‘s Composer of the Year, and received the Kennedy Center honors; and in 1995 he finally won the Pulitzer Prize, for his Stringmusi
c. Goodman worries, however, that unless Goulds music undergoes a major revival in the near future, he will be all but lost to subsequent generations of musicians. He tells the story of a young composer whose work Goodman heard at a concert at SUNY New Paltz a few years ago. The composers piece, which had just won an award, shared the program with Goulds Foster Gallery. This was the first piece of Goulds that the young man had ever heard, and he admitted to Goodman that he was “knocked out by the orchestration.” Goodman hopes that recordings, such as those about to be released on the Albany label, will allow not only composers, but also conductors, to hear Goulds work. This music, Goodman stresses, is in need of a “powerful champion.”

Goodman has written a book that reads like a novel; his journalistic style is a tremendously helpful in bringing to life not only an important figure from the American musical past, but also an entire era. It is unfortunate that Goulds two failed marriages contribute to the pull of the drama; but many of Goulds letters to his wives are steamy enough to merit inclusion in an entirely different genre of literature. In addition, through his substantial research, Goodman has provided the reader with a wonderful opportunity for “virtual people-watching:” the book abounds with anecdotes concerning everyone from George Gershwin to George Balanchine. This is not to say that Goodman neglects the purely musical side of Goulds life. Goodman provides detailed descriptions of many of Goulds compositions, mostly in “program-notes” style, but not so general as to bore the trained musician.

Mark Kilstofte photo by Joanna E. Morrissey

The Board of Commissioners of the South Carolina Arts Commission (SCAC) has awarded Artist Fellowships to four resident, professional artists. Each fellow receives $7,500 in recognition of superior artistic merit. The out-of-state review panels also selected alternates, who do not receive awards, but are considered notable in the competitive selection process.

Two of the four Fellowships were awarded to musicians: one to a composer, and one to a performer. Mark Kilstofte is associate professor of music composition and theory at Furman University in Greenville, South Carolina. He is the recipient of numerous awards, including the ASCAP Foundation Rudolf Nissim Award, the Aaron Copland Award, the Ives Scholarship from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, and the Schuman Fellowship from the MacDowell Colony. Kilstofte’s compositions have been performed by ensembles such as the Oakland East Bay Symphony, the Louisville Orchestra, and the San Francisco Choral Artists.

Kilstofte is going to use the grant to allow him to take some time off from teaching at Furman and work on two projects. The first of these is a piece for chorus and orchestra that Kilstofte is writing to commemorate the tenth anniversary of the Greater Anderson (South Carolina) Musical Arts Consortium (GAMAC). The piece, which uses texts from Chapter 55 of Isaiah, will be performed in April 2001. Kilstofte chose the text because he felt that it dealt with “everything coming in its time,” an idea that the Consortium is confronting as it makes plans for a new arts center.

Kilstofte’s other project is a symphony, his first. The composer calls the four-movement work “a mid-life symphony,” although he is careful to assert that the piece is not programmatic, strictly speaking. In the first movement, Kilstofte explained, he has attempted to write the “reverse of an expanding variation,” a formal device that he has used in much of his recent work. In Recurring Dreams, for instance, each variation expands in real time, while the tempo gets faster and faster. In the first movement of the symphony, every section instead “contracts and compresses.” He has been working on “depicting a descending spiral in a structural way,” inspired both by a colleague’s work with pitch spirals and by Dante’s Inferno and the Orpheus myth. Kilstofte describes the second movement, which will emerge from the first movement without pause, as a “botched rescue mission.” The tempo will be a “blazing” 172 to the quarter, with hocket-like imitation at the tritone. The third movement will be a lament, and the fourth movement is still a “puzzle” waiting to be solved.

Kilstofte characterizes his work as “trying to find the middle road” between his “far-out” training at the University of Michigan, and the needs of his audience in Greenville, where he has lived for eight years. “Sometimes people are still struggling with Stravinsky, and that has put me kind of outside of the box in the musical community here,” he admits. At the same time, he feels he has benefited from the challenge of trying, to write music “that people will understand, and will draw them into wanting to understand better,” without “blatantly pandering.” For Kilstofte, the South Carolina Arts Commission Fellowship is not only “an important resource” that will assist him in his work, but also a meaningful “form of recognition.”

Welz Kauffman photo by Dan Rast

The Ravinia Festival has named Welz Kauffman its new president and CEO, succeeding Zarin Mehta, who leaves at the end of the current season after ten years to become executive director of the New York Philharmonic. Kauffman starts in his new post Oct. 1.

Kauffman served as General Manager of the St. Paul Chamber Orchestra from 1994 to 1995, when he was named Artistic Administrator of the New York Philharmonic. Kauffman he left the Philharmonic late last spring to become director of artistic planning for the Los Angeles Philharmonic, a post he has held for only seven weeks.

In his statement about the Kauffman appointment, Ravinia board chairman David Weinberg commented that Kauffman was “regarded as one of the most innovative, intelligent, knowledgeable, hardest-working managers in the world of music,” and said he was expecting “imaginative programming and artistic risk-taking” from his new CEO.

In an interview at the beginning of September, Kauffman expressed enthusiasm for the possibilities for varied programming at Ravinia, but admitted that due to the swift and recent nature of the appointment, he had not yet had time to make any specific plans. Kauffman has some ideas about audience development, however, which he calls “the single biggest question facing all of us.” Kauffman considers “introducing young people to classical music [as] a big part of [his] mission.” He thinks that the sheer beauty of the grounds will initially attract young audiences to Ravinia. “If you have a venue, a place to go, to sit on the lawn, to have some social time, that is a great way to bring people in,” Kauffman commented.

In his post at the New York Philharmonic, Kauffman acted as an advocate for twentieth-century repertoire, planning Copland, Gershwin, and Weill “mini-festivals.” These festivals encompassed a wide array of activities, including full orchestra concerts, cabaret evenings, new music and chamber performances, seminars and symposia. Kauffman feels that these events helped to encourage a more general interest in new music by “giving people a context, a personal connection.” One aspect of the Copland Festival he cited as particularly effective was the use of technology: audience members were greeted by a video of Copland and Bernstein as they entered the hall, and they were also given access to individual listening stations in the lobby. Kauffman claims that this “added such a terrific element” that Philharmonic staff “had to scoot people out the door” at the end of the show so the stagehands could go home to bed!

While at the Philharmonic, Kauffman also started the “American Classics” initiative that surveyed 40 years (1930s-’70s) of classic American music, and oversaw the entire production of the Philharmonic’s performance and recording of Stephen Sondheim’s Sweeney Todd.

As Director of Artistic Planning at the Los Angeles Philharmonic, Kauffman supervised all of the orchestra’s programming, including its 12-week summer festival at the Hollywood Bowl. Like Ravinia, that festival features wide-ranging musical presentations of jazz and world music in addition to visiting classical artists.

Prior to his posts in St. Paul, New York and Los Angeles, Kauffman, a native Californian, was artistic administrator for the Atlanta Symphony, and general manager of the Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra. He attended Occidental College, where he studied music and political science.

Bang On A Can photo by Peter Serling

And the gold medal goes to… the Bang On A Can All-Stars and the Australian Chamber Orchestra for bringing new American music to the Sydney Olympic Festival on September 12^th and 13^th. The two ensembles collaborated on three works that will receive Australian premieres on the 12^th: Hard Times, by British composer Steve Martland; Game Over, by the young Australian Brett Dean; and Haircut, jointly composed by Bang On A Can’s artistic directors, Michael Gordon, David Lang, and Julia Wolfe. All three pieces were jointly commissioned by the ensembles, and were given world premieres last April at the University of Iowa.

The concert will open with George Crumb’s Black Angels, arranged for electric string ensemble by ACO artistic director Richard Tognetti. The All-Stars will continue the program with Tan Dun’s Concerto for Six and Elena Kats-Chernin’s ProMotion. Kats-Chernin has lived in Australia since 1957. The concert will conclude with the three collaborative works. ABC Classics will tape the program for later broadcast.

The impetus for the collaboration came from the ACO’s wish to create something international and unique for 2000. A combination of admiration for Bang On A Can’s recent discs and the fact that the group’s pianist Lisa Moore is Australian, led to a meeting in New York at the end of the Orchestra’s US tour in 1998.

Julia Wolfe admits that the group’s habit of playing amplified instruments impressed her from the start. The collaborative project went forward, receiving generous grants from Wally Chappell at the University of Iowa‘s Hancher Auditorium, where the ACO has an on-going performing presence, and Leo Schofield at the Olympics Arts Festival.

The Olympic Festival provides Bang On A Can and the ACO with the opportunity to “move new music outside the normal arenas,” according to Wolfe. She calls this opportunity “thrilling,” not only because it is international in scope, but also because the Olympics are not necessarily connected with the arts. The audience will hopefully be a mix of die-hard music-lovers, and Olympics visitors who would otherwise never step into the concert hall. Wolfe made a delightful observation that will hopefully be shared by many at the Festival: athletics and music are really first cousins. Doing gymnastics and playing the cello are both athletic activities, and yet both require a great deal of artistry, according to Wolfe.

The two groups made decisions together about which composers to commission. Steve Martland has a long history with Bang On A Can. Hard Times is a virtuosic work. The title refers to the “hard times” suffered by much of modern society; in his program notes, for example, Martland refers to “the fact that a tiny number of Americans own more money than the entire Indian subcontinent.” Wolfe calls the piece “beautiful,” and claims that despite Martland’s British citizenship, the “exuberance” of the work and its “bright, folk sound” come across as distinctly American.

Brett Dean describes his Game Over, for 7 instrumental soloists, chamber orchestra, sampler and multi-track sound design, as “a live tone poem of unrealizable desires for a flailing generation.” The piece includes scraps of confessions from game show contestants and sounds of audience hysteria worked into the musical texture. There are also “striking” solos for electric guitar and electric violin. Wolfe calls the piece a mixture of “romanticism and noise.”

Haircut marks the second collaboration between Gordon, Lang, and Wolfe. Their first collaboration was the “comic book opera” Carbon Copy Building, premiered in September 1999. For Carbon Copy Building, the three composers took different sections and wrote them separately. For Haircut, they employed a different approach: one person started the piece, then gave it to the next person, who took things out and added others, and so on. Wolfe calls the result a “true blend.” The piece is “very rhythmic,” and keeps the performers “constantly moving.”

A Colombian-born American currently working in Amsterdam, an Indiana native teaching in New York, and a Chinese-born American college senior are the finalists in The Philadelphia Orchestra‘s Centennial Composition Competition. Chosen from among 330 applications are Sinfonia by Kevin Beavers of West Virginia, Totem by Keith Fitch of Indiana and New York City, and Three Pieces for Orchestra by Huang Ruo of Ohio.

Kevin Beavers photo by Lorin Burgess

The three works will be performed by Music Director Wolfgang Sawallisch and the Orchestra during the first half of a special concert on October 5, 2000. At intermission, audience members and Orchestra musicians will vote for the winner. The winning work will be announced at the end of the concert and will receive further performances at subscription concerts in Philadelphia on October 6 and 7, and at Carnegie Hall on October 10. The winning composer will be awarded a cash prize of $10,000; the two other finalists will each receive $2,500.

Keith Fitch photo by Deborah Lopez

The competition was run in administrative partnership with Minneapolis-based American Composers Forum (ACF). Applications were sent directly to the Forum, which sorted and assessed the huge number of submitted scores, with the help of the expertise of composers Aaron Jay Kernis and Libby Larsen. A short list of finalist recommendations was sent to the Orchestra, and Maestro Sawallisch selected the three pieces to be performed.

Huang Ruo photo by Nuiko Wadden

The selection of the prize-winning work by audience vote is supposed to help the orchestra meet one of their long-term goals, which is to identify and support new works that will have appeal across the musical spectrum. “With new music, one of the biggest issues is how to get the audience to better connect to it,” explained the Orchestra’s artistic administrator, Simon Woods. Asking for the audience to vote, he feels, is a “way to get [them] to engage with the music, even [if it is only] to the degree that [they] dislike [one piece] less than the other.” Woods also claims that the competition “makes a big philosophical statement: that it’s not just the experts who matter, [that anyone] who listens can make esthetic judgments.”

Don Braden photo by Joseph E. Rybczyk

Chamber Music America has announced the first recipients funded through New Works: Creation and Presentation, a new grant program supporting composer/performer-led ensembles in the creation of music in the jazz idiom. The grantees were selected from a pool of eighty applicants by an independent panel of jazz composers, who screened audio work samples without knowing the performers’ identities.

Working closely with a task force comprised of leading jazz artists including Geri Allen, Ben Allison, Paquito D’Rivera, Marty Ehrlich, Matt Glaser, James Newton, Eric Reed, Sam Rivers, and Maxine Roach, CMA has designed this grant program to address the unique funding needs of jazz composers and recognize the artistic process of jazz ensembles. Through this program, CMA hopes to stimulate the development of a significant body of music honoring tradition, original voices, and new directions in jazz.

Task force member Matt Glaser commented that he and his colleagues wanted to “make it as painless as possible to get money to creative musicians to do their work.” Glaser, who is a professor at Berklee, as well as a member of the CMA Board, is excited by the organization’s recent efforts to broaden its membership to include “all kinds of great music, whether it is notated or not.” He calls CMA is the “appropriate organization” to “solidify in public consciousness…the many commonalities between classical music and jazz.” He describes the differences between musical styles as exaggerations created by “guys in suits.”

The grant program marks the beginning of the pilot year of the Doris Duke Jazz Ensembles Project, made possible with funding support from the Doris Duke Charitable Foundation. The Project itself will eventually introduce, in addition to the grant program, professional development and consultation services, jazz-related talks at CMA conferences, and the expansion of CMA benefit programs to include jazz musicians.

Stewart noted that jazz artists such as Oliver Lake and Dave Douglas have been funded by CMA in the past, but that many jazz musicians have up until now felt that “there wasn’t a program for them.” This program is unusual because it is specific to artists who composer in the jazz idiom. Most grant programs are not jazz-specific, commented Lisa Stewart, who directs the Jazz Program at CMA. For this reason, many jazz artists refrain from applying for grants entirely, she thinks; according to Stewart, the application process would require that they “reinvent themselves.”

Michael Formanek photo by Sandra Eisner

Two aspects of the application process are designed to “reflect the lives” of jazz musicians, according to Stewart. The first is that CMA does not require applicants to submit a score. Composers whose work is highly improvisatory thus remain on equal footing with those who write everything down. The second is that CMA recognizes the difficulty of keeping a jazz ensemble together. Stewart explained: “The [directors of] the program want to make sure that there is continuity of membership, [but they are] flexible enough that if other members have to carry out the project, that is acceptable, as long as there is a core [group of musicians] who stay with the project throughout.”

$170,000 in awards, ranging from $10,000 to $13,140 will be presented to the 12 winning artists and ensembles. The terms of the grant dictate that recipients create a “piece of substantial length” that “demonstrates their artistic ability,” according to Stewart. The piece must be written for the composer’s existing ensemble, and this ensemble must perform the piece twice before December 31, 2001. Grant recipients will provide CMA with an archival recording that will be used “for tracking purposes only,” and they will be given the option of submitting a score of the work that will be housed at the Library of Congress.

Funds for community-based projects will also be available to the grant recipients.

In order to request this money, up to $3000, recipients must apply along with an organizational partner. Stewart will provide assistance to the recipients, both in defining the projects, and in finding partners. The idea of the project, according to Stewart, is to reach “audiences who lack resources to normally access music of this quality.” She also commented that many jazz musicians engage in community-based projects regularly without getting paid, and that this additional grant money is a way of recognizing that such work “has tremendous value.”

Six pianist/composers received awards. David Berkman’s 1998 recording Handmade was named one of the top releases of the year by The New York Times, Jazz Times, and Jazziz. Xavier Davis composes for the large ensemble The New Jazz Composers Octet. Andrew Hill has led bands for nearly four decades. This year he was awarded a fellowship from the Civitella Raneri Foundation in Italy. Frank Kimbrough is a founding member and composer-in-residence of the New York City-based Jazz Composers Coll
ective, and leader of the ensemble Noumena. He teaches at New York University. Phil Markowitz has been performing for thirty years, and has received grants from the National Endowment for the Arts and the New York Foundation for the Arts. His new composition will be a five-part suite based on the paintings of masters of the Abstract Expressionist movement. Marcus Roberts, a classically-trained pianist, was the first jazz musicians to have all three of his first recordings reach number one on the Billboard traditional jazz chart. He will compose a suite entitled Music-New Orleans Style for his trio.

Awards were also given to four saxophonists. Michael Blake, who is also a composer-in-residence with the Jazz Composers Collective, will write a new work for the group Free Association. Jane Ira Bloom is a former NASA artist who was honored this year by having an asteroid named in her honor by the International Astronomical Union. She will write a new suite inspired by Jackson Pollock for her ensemble The Jane Ira Bloom Quartet. Larry Ochs will write a new extended work for his group The Rova Saxophone Quartet. The Quartet has released more than two dozen recordings of original music, and produces a concert series in the San Francisco Bay Area.

Saxophonist Don Braden, who is the former musical supervisor for Cosby, teaches regularly at William Paterson University, and frequently directs jazz education camps. In an interview, Braden commented on how excited he was that CMA is “focusing on [jazz musicians] who are trying to be serious.” Braden views grant programs like this as the possible salvation of jazz; his view of the current economic prospects for jazz musicians is bleak. “There is huge competition for the time of any consumer, ” Braden explained. “With the increasing amount of technology [available], it makes people’s lives easier, but [it also means that] people don’t go out as much. Couple that with difficulties in retail that are impacting us negatively, all of this reduces our opportunities to pursue normal ways of doing business.” Braden admitted that the internet is opening up some new opportunities for jazz musicians, but stressed that “the other great thing happening now is the funding of jazz music…by big sources like the Doris Duke Foundation.”

Braden is using the grant money to create a composition for his Octet based on the writings of children in the Litchfield, CT-based program “Poetry Live!” He anticipates writing a seven- to ten-part suite based on the poems. This music will in turn be used for a dance performance based on the poetry, choreographed by Earl Mosely and danced by the school children and professional dancers. Braden will be writing this piece for his Octet. Braden is currently exploring the use of live music for the Poetry Live! Concert in May; his Octet will also perform the new work at the Litchfield Jazz Festival in August.

Braden will also apply for community grant money to do a separate concert in the near future. Braden anticipates using this money for a performance or two of the new work at a free concert designed “to expose people to music.” His partner in this project will be Litchfield Performing Arts, the organization behind Poetry Live!

The other two award recipients were Bassist/Composer Michael Formanek and Guitarist/Composer Rob Levit. Levit was recently awarded the Julius Hemphill Composition Award for Composition by the Jazz Composers Alliance, an Individual Artist Award for Composition by the Maryland State Arts Council, and an ASCAP special recognition for original music.

Formanek has performed professionally for nearly twenty-five years. He will write a new work for his bass/saxophone group, The Tim Berne/Michael Formanek Duo. Formanek is glad that the grant will “afford [him] the time to spend some time writing substantial music for the Duo.” Berne commented that much of their repertoire consists of adaptations of numbers they play with other, larger ensembles. He is looking forward to writing a piece uniquely suited to the “starkness of the [Duo’s] instrumentation.” Formanek is planning two one-hour sets of music. The new pieces will “encompass a lot of different areas, from very heavily notated music to more improvised music.” Throughout the two sets, Berne and Formanek will focus on switching instruments: Berne from alto to baritone sax, and Formanek from a bass tuned in fourths to one tuned in fifths. Formanek is looking forward to the chance to take some of the small, interesting musical ideas he and Berne have discovered in the course of their work and “blow them up, way out of proportion.” Formanek has plans to perform the two pieces in the early part of next year.

“I am not a grant-applier,” Formanek admitted. “This is the first [grant] I have applied for on a national level that made sense, that made do the work [necessary] to apply.” Like Braden, Formanek is aware of the financial pinch that comes with “playing jazz that is not quite so commercial.” He also has his own hesitations about the value of the Internet, explaining that the huge “flood of recorded music” available to people has pushed music “not geared to the soundbyte generation” even further from commercial viability. He believes that partly for this reason, “grant processes like this are absolutely necessary,” especially for jazz composers, in order to “give [them] the time necessary to think it through.”

Kamran Ince Photo courtesy European-American

Present Music and the Milwaukee Art Museum recently announced the commission of a new work by composer Kamran Ince that will be premiered in May of 2001 at the much-anticipated opening of the Museum’s building expansion. The new structure was designed by internationally-renowned Spanish architect Santiago Calatrava. It will provide space for changing exhibitions, and will also house the Quadracci Pavilion, which will be used for meetings, concerts, and lectures.

The commission was the idea of John Shannon and Jan Serr, long-time supporters of both Present Music and the Milwaukee Art Museum. Shannon and Serr approached Present Music and Milwaukee Art Museum when plans were finalized for the Calatrava expansion. Having been admirers of Turkish-American composer Kamran Ince, they approached Present Music’s Artistic Director Kevin Stalheim with their commissioning idea and a $12,000 gift to make the commission possible.

Milwaukee musical audiences are familiar with Kamran Ince’s music, since Present Music has performed his music annually since 1992. Ince’s work, Fest, received its world premiere performance by the Milwaukee Symphony Orchestra with Present Music as the guest ensemble in 1998. He has also performed as a pianist with Present Music, and he organized and participated in their 1994 tour of Turkey. Present Music has recorded his work for the Argo and Albany labels.

Ince is “very pleased” about the commission. He is no stranger to the Art Museum, which he calls “one of the best places in the country to hear new music.” The Vogel/Helfaer gallery has been the site for Present Music performances that have included world premieres of his works Night Passage, Arches and Split.

The commissioned work will be 15 minutes in length, and will be written in two contrasting sections. The work will be performed in its entirety for the invitation-only opening ceremony. The opening fanfare will then be performed separately throughout the summer. The first complete public performance of the piece will take place in September 2001 at the opening concert of Present Music’s 20th-anniversary season. This concert will also take place at the new Quadracci Pavilion.

Though the work is only in the planning stages, Ince hopes to incorporate some of the imagery of Calatrava’s design into the piece. The new building will have “wings” that will be opened up in the winter in order to let in more sunlight. Ince finds these wings musically inspiring. The fact that the building can unfold its wings makes it “animal-like,” he pointed out; at the same time, with its wings extended, it resembles a stately ship. He hopes to incorporate both the “freeness of flight” and the “grandeur of the ship” into his new composition.

Ince was born in 1960 in Montana to American and Turkish parents. His early musical training was in Turkey, at the Ankara and Izmir conservatories. Later he attended the Oberlin Conservatory and Eastman School of Music. His work has been performed by many prominent American orchestras, including the Chicago Symphony and the American Composers Orchestra. He is currently a member of the music faculty at the University of Memphis.

A sponsor is still being sought by Present Music to underwrite not only the two performances at the Museum, but also the added rehearsal time necessary to prepare this important new work. The ensemble hopes to make a live recording of the work at the Museum opening in May that will be released later in the summer, with proceeds benefiting both the Museum and Present Music.

Present Music was founded in 1982 in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. They play a wide range of modern chamber music, almost all of it by living composers. Composers who have worked in residence or have been commissioned by Present Music include John Adams, John Harbison, Michael Torke, Roberto Sierra, Bright Sheng, David Lang, and Lois V Vierk. They have toured extensively throughout the United States and have participated in several major international music festivals.

Though Present Music’s playful and innovative programs routinely draw 300 to 800 people, Managing Director Daniel Petry hopes that they will be able to “break through” to a “wider awareness” in the near future. National recognition will help to attract donors, which in turn will enable the ensemble to plan touring and commissioning projects. Plans include six commissions in 2001 and 2002, one for each concert of their 20^th-anniversary season.

Lou Harrison Photo by Dennis Keeley

Composer Lou Harrison was awarded the Edward MacDowell Medal in Peterborough, New Hampshire, on Sunday, August 20. Virgil Thomson, himself a recipient of the Medal in 1977, once said, “It was Mozart‘s boast that he could master any musical style within a week and by the end of that time compose in it adeptly enough to deceive experts. Lou Harrison has something of that virtuosity himself… and he mixes things with infallible imagination…” An innovator of composition and performance transcending cultural boundaries, Harrison is the twelfth composer to receive the award.

Composer Chester Biscardi was chairman of this year’s selection committee, which also included music historian Vivian Perlis and composers Meredith Monk, Alvin Singleton, and Ellen Taaffe Zwilich. “In choosing Lou Harrison,” Mr. Biscardi notes, “the search committee recognizes his gentle and generous spirit, as well as the very personal and multi-faceted way in which he is and will continue to be a major presence in American and world music.”

Participating in the ceremony was chairman of the board Robert MacNeil, president of the board Carter Wiseman, and executive director Cheryl Young. Conductor Dennis Russell Davies delivered the presentation speech. Following the ceremony, artists in residence opened their studios to the public and allowed visitors to tour the Colony grounds, meet the artists, and view their work. This traditional open house is held only once a year.

In a musical career that has spanned more than fifty years, Lou Harrison has consistently been in the vanguard of American composers. He played a large role in the introduction of the Indonesian gamelan to United States audiences and, with William Colvig, constructed two large gamelans now in use at San Jose State University and Mills College. Harrison has explored dance, Asian music, alternate tuning systems, and universal languages as means of facilitating musical expression.

Recent performances of Harrison’s work included a June 1995 presentation of his Buddhist liturgical work “La Koro Sutro” in celebration of the 50th anniversary of the United Nations. That same year, his joyful “Parade for MTT” opened the San Francisco Symphony season, celebrating the inauguration of director Michael Tilson Thomas. On June 15, 2000, Harrison was saluted by the San Francisco Symphony at the American Mavericks festival.

As an artist, Lou Harrison exemplifies the innovation and interdisciplinary work that has become part of the MacDowell Colony’s legacy. Unable to find the sound he imagined within Western orchestra, he looked elsewhere for inspiration–other cultures (China, Korea, Indonesia, Mexico), other sound sources (flower pots, brake drums, oxygen tanks), and other disciplines (dance, drama, literature). And if he still couldn’t find it, he made it. His insatiable curiosity has defined his career: each artistic challenge provides the opportunity for in-depth study, and he delights in combining disparate styles into untried syntheses.

The MacDowell Colony in Peterborough, New Hampshire was founded in 1907 to provide a place where creative artists could find freedom to concentrate on their work. This remains its guiding purpose today. Writers, composers, visual artists, photographers, printmakers, filmmakers, and architects come to the Colony each year from all parts of the United States and abroad. They take advantage of uninterrupted time and seclusion in which to work and they enjoy the experience of living in a community of gifted artists.

New Music Connoisseur

As part of their Gala 2000 concert, New Music Connoisseur will be honoring four advocates of new music. The concert and awards ceremony, which will be held on September 18^th at New York University, will dedicated to the memory of Otto Luening, to mark the one hundredth anniversary of his birth. Joel Sachs and Cheryl Seltzer will receive the Year 2000 New Music Champion Award, in recognition of their inspiration to several generations of musicians. Leighton Kerner, longtime writer for the Village Voice, will be honored with a special Honorary Music Critics Award. New Music Connoisseur will also present its first Young Music Critics Apprenticeship Program Award to the 27-year-old writer and pianist Laurie Hudicek.

Jack Beeson will host the event, which will include a short talk by Mark Grant, author of Maestros of the Pen, as well as several musical performances. Three pieces will receive premieres: Gene Pritsker’s Beneath the Wheel, for two guitars; Joseph Pehrson’s Tuba Miracle, for solo tuba, and Allan Jaffe’s Doves and Crocodiles for soprano and guitar. Two of the award recipients will perform: Cheryl Seltzer will perform Franghiz Ali-Zadeh‘s Watercolors, with soprano Melanie Mitrano and flutist Margaret Lancaster. In addition, Laurie Hudicek will present music by Martino and Cowell. Otto Luening will be represented by his Three Nocturnes for flute and electronics, performed by Margaret Lancaster.

The New Music Champion Award was first presented two years ago to Francis Thorne. Barry Cohen emphasized that the award is supposed to “honor people for the intangibles.” He went on to say that NMC is not specifically honoring Continuum, Sachs’ and Seltzer’s new music ensemble that is celebrating its thirty-fifth anniversary this season. Rather, Cohen explained that with this award, NMC is recognizing Sachs and Seltzer for their contributions to the lives of young people. Both recipients are teachers: Sachs at The Juilliard School, where he directs the New Juilliard Ensemble, and Seltzer at the Lucy Moses School.

According to Cohen, the other two awards are designed to “celebrate the musical press.” The Honorary Music Critics Award recipient, Leighton Kerner, is known for his interest in new music. Cohen called Kerner an “old-fashioned classic critic,” someone who goes to concerts with a score in hand. The recipient of the YMCAP award, Laurie Hudicek, answered a call for submissions from NMC with a paper on Cage that she had written while a student at the University of Maryland. Hudicek is now the newsletter’s “Beltway Correspondent.”

The New Music Connoisseur is a quarterly newsletter focusing on the work of the composers of our time, with additional coverage of rare and neglected classical music from all national and ethnic sources. The publication is in its eighth year, and it features reviews of live concerts, as well as broadcast and recorded media. The magazine recently added a column entitled “At Your Service,” which features descriptions of different organizations devoted to composers. Portions of the newsletter are available online, but print copies of the newsletter are available by subscription only. A special edition of the newsletter will be available at the September concert and awards ceremony.