Category: Headlines

San Francisco: Literally Spellbinding—Ropes Included

Posted on May 3, 2005 by - Field Reports, Headlines

Roddy Schrock
Roddy Schrock
Photo by Hideki Kubota

On a recent Saturday night, a modest audience gathered in a small living room of an intimate wooden home seven blocks north of UC Berkeley. The lights dim, a young violinist stands under a landing, the audience seated in a semi-circle facing her. She is wearing clothes that seem like a lite version of designs by Helmut Lang, with added metal loops sewn into the sleeves and shoulders of a jacket made of sturdy synthetic materials. A massive page from a score lies on the floor in front of her, the notation looks like a child’s crayon drawing. Andre Vida, also appearing highly costumed in a fashionably deconstructed jacket and hat, walks in and begins unraveling bundles of rope, tying and looping it around her body, and finally tossing one end to a woman perched on the landing above, the other end to a bearded eccentric-looking man sitting cross legged on the window of the library on the second floor. The girl with the violin begins playing but is unable to complete a full gesture, the ropes suddenly tugging at her arms as she tries to perform. The character sitting on the window sill seems to tease her, yanking the ropes quickly, while the silent woman on the landing pulls them slowly and deliberately in the opposite direction causing the violinist to be unable to make her instrument sound. At one point the ropes are yanked so suddenly as to make her throw her bow across the room. Eventually she is forced to attempt empty gestures at her violin, her hands pulled away such that she cannot reach the strings. The ritual continues, more violinists join, more ropes are connected to their bodies and pulled taut. It is confusing and messy but certainly intriguing. Finally they start to play in unison while walking to the library upstairs. The window is closed with a bang, the door slams, one cannot see them as they have ducked outside of the view provided by the library window, all that is seen is the conductor’s hands while loud violin tones are heard through the wall. Soon, by the light of a single desk lamp, one can make out the shadows of performers walking in circles, sawing away at their instruments, the sound heard by the audience is muffled violin noise. Suddenly without warning the lights are cut, the screeching violins stop. Silence. Then applause.

This is Vidatone, a group of performers from Los Angeles led by composer Andre Vida. Conceptually their approach succeeds brilliantly, building on ideas of liberation through restraint, calling to mind the work of Brian Ferneyhough. And while Ferneyhough’s art is generated from intense conflict between innate human limitation and formal compositional constraint, Vidatone is suggestive of visceral and quite literal constraint not from within oneself, but from others to whom one is tied, with less-than-subtle references to the visual aesthetic of bondage. In this preoccupation with physicality, the group also seems to be influenced by the work of Sylvano Bussotti, one who never shied away from exploring the intimate relation between the body and musical performance.

But the problem with musicians doing theater is that often the theater suffers. Viewed as theater Vidatone takes a surprisingly mild approach considering the issues they are exploring. Listened to as music, their sound is unique in its vague disinterest in its own musicality, but the disinterest comes across as affectation, one cannot escape the sense that ultimately they want to make, well, good music, whatever that might mean. The strongest points in the performance happened when they forgot about music, when the giant score was used as metaphor, the violin only a prop, and the sounds produced only suggestive of music rather than being overtly musical. At other moments they veered dangerously close to earnest musicality causing the whole conceit to collapse into a pile of composerly self-seriousness. Their strength lies in the unique theatrical experience they were able to conjure, but ultimately they are rather timid in style, not quite able to break free from the slipknots of respectable musicianship. Yet one is struck by the sense that they have caught onto something exciting, and I for one am looking forward to see where it takes them next.

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Roddy Schrock is a sound artist who digitally mines everyday sound for the profound and canvasses the glitzy, rough edges of pop for its articulate immediacy. He has lived and worked in Tokyo, The Hague, New York, and San Francisco, with performances in the Czech Republic, Holland, Japan, and North America. He is also an educator, currently teaching at De Anza College (California) and will be giving a summer workshop on Supercollider software at STEIM (Netherlands).

New York: Inside the Hurly-Burly

Posted on May 3, 2005 by - Field Reports, Headlines

There’s always a moment at some point in the American Music Center’s Annual Awards Meeting and Awards Ceremony when it feels great to be a part of the American new music community. Sometimes there are several. I want to share a few of mine…

From the beginning of the afternoon’s official festivities—a mini-concert by Manhattan Brass ranging from Ives to Marsalis that kept me on the edge of my seat the whole time—to the haze of faces of some of the most important composers of our time amidst the faces in the crowd—Ingram Marshall, Aaron Kernis, Alvin Singleton, Joan La Barbara, Michael Daugherty—it was a wonderful day for American music at the American Airlines Theatre, a post-modern glass palace in the hurly-burly that is Times Square.

It’s a pity that 93-year old Gian Carlo Menotti could not be with us, but it was so wonderful to be in the same room with 82-year-old Lukas Foss, who seemed physically moved by the standing ovation he received from the audience, and to have an opportunity to talk to him about his music. (I can’t wait to hear the CRI LP I just tracked down of his featuring his mobile-form String Quartet No. 3!) Too bad the late greats Count Basie and Charles Ives, together probably for the first time, weren’t there to share in the fun. But one of the trustees of Basie’s estate, Ronald Garnett, was on hand to speak on behalf of the Count, and his reflections on how no one bestowed such official recognition on this musical giant in his lifetime really hit home as did his description of the royalties that have continued to pile up since Basie’s death. An even more poignant moment, though, was when Ives’s grandson, whose only memory of America’s most treasured rugged individualist was of a cantankerous old man who chased him around the yard in his childhood, confessed never realizing how important Ives was in his lifetime.

It was incredible to see so many of the members of the Minnesota Commissioning Club all lined up to receive the AMC’s Trailblazer Award. It’s so rare to see the people behind the scenes whose generosity helps to create so much of this music. Speaking on behalf of the group was Linda Hoeschler, who formerly ran the American Composers Forum. Ahmad Jamal was on the road touring, but we were told how much he appreciated the honor by his manager, Laura Hess-Hay, who also happens to be his ex-wife! And while Laurie Anderson was also out of town, luckily Charles Amirkhanian happened to be in town—his music will be featured at Merkin Thursday night as part of the Interpretations series—so he was able to join us to receive his award.

Yes, I know, I work at the American Music Center and maybe this is tooting our own horn a bit (brass puns too hard to resist). But our annual get-together has always been decidedly not about organizational self-promotion. Rather, it is a coming together of all kinds of composers, performers, and people from other organizations with an interest in new music. Perhaps yesterday’s festivities were a little bit more about us than usual, but with good reason. After all, this was our first real opportunity to publicly introduce Joanne Cossa, our new Executive Director, to the Center’s membership at large. It was also an opportunity to recognize the achievements of two of the Center’s most important leaders in recent years: our previous Executive Director Richard Kessler, who redefined what the Center was and could be; and ASCAP’s Vice President of Concert Music, Fran Richard, whose many selfless contributions on behalf of American composers included serving on the American Music Center’s Board of Directors during its most trying time. It seemed like the audience could not stop cheering before or after she was on the podium to receive her Letter of Distinction. (This summer, Ms. Richard rejoins the Board once again.)

Snapshots from the Annual Awards Meeting and Awards Ceremony
All photos by Jeffrey Herman

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And the winner is…The American Music Center’s Annual Awards recipients pause for a quick group shot.
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Composer, conductor, pianist, and educator Lukas Foss accept his Letter of Distinction

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Frances Richard acknowledges the thunderous applause offered by the crowd in appreciation of her service to American music.

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Charles Ives’s grandson, Charles Tyler, accepts on his behalf.		name
Linda Hoeschler accepts the Trailblazer award on behalf of the Minnesota Commissioning Club, an organization that has commissioned 13 new works.
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Basie Estate Trustee Ronald L. Garnett accepts William “Count” Basie’s Founders Award

Cleveland: Industry CPR Continues at “Future of Classical Music” Panel

Posted on April 26, 2005 by - Field Reports, Headlines

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Zachary M. Lewis
Photo by Nowell York

Silent-audience syndrome definitely was not a problem during a boisterous mid-April panel discussion at Cleveland State University focused on “The Future of Classical Music.” Little if any of what was said would have struck critics or music professionals as new, but a group of committed listeners unwilling either to accept the status quo or to paint classical music as a sinking ship were in attendance and more than usually vocal. Provocative, reasoned questions abounded in a show of surprisingly strong interest in the issue. It was clear many had been waiting for an opportunity to get their questions answered and air pent-up concerns.

In fact, the audience seemed determined to get as much as possible out of the four panelists: Gary Hanson, executive director of the Cleveland Orchestra; Lynne Hoffman-Engel, vice president of sales at the Cleveland-based Telarc Records; Jeffrey Siegel, the concert pianist widely known in Cleveland and elsewhere for his “Keyboard Conversations”; and Greg Sandow, the teacher, composer, critic, blogger, and orchestra consultant.

Eric Ziolek, a local composer and the chair of CSU’s music department, moderated the discussion, intervening occasionally and remarking that “this is the first generation to whom classical music means nothing” and “we have to find a way to sell this music to them and make it engaging.”

Many in attendance said that they observe classical music growing ever quieter in a commercial world bombarded by sounds and images. Siegel apparently hit a nerve with the crowd and evoked a round of applause by noting:

The overall quantity of music we consume is greater now than ever. The problem is we’re not listening to what we hear. It’s no longer a privilege to listen to the Eroica. We’ve been conditioned to tune out in order to retain our sanity. It’s actually difficult to go somewhere and tune in, but we have to look to the music to make people want to do that.

Sandow, meanwhile, urged performers and presenters to get louder and more intense if they want to reach the artistic but “ironic” and “pessimistic” smart set who view classical music as irrelevant. “Until we in the classical world reflect more of the contemporary world, we’re in danger of losing our audience,” he said.

The one truly urgent alarm sounded was in response to the state of music education in public schools today. Everyone agreed: it’s deplorable. Generally speaking, though, the tone was anti-alarmist.

“I think the ‘graying audience’ concept is a red herring to some degree,” Hanson said, debunking the notion of the “good old days” when orchestra halls were packed with young people. “Classical music has always been something that, once you come to it, you stay with it the rest of your life.

“There’s no problem with the music,” he said later. “The masterpieces will always remain masterpieces. At issue is whether they’ll remain so in the lives of as many people.”

And there are encouraging signs, the panel agreed. Sandow, for instance, happily pronounced contemporary music as a whole to be in “fabulous shape.”

Telarc’s classical sales are slipping in Europe but increasing chain-wide at Border’s Books & Music in America, Hoffman-Engel said. “Believe it or not, I actually feel that baby-boomers are ready to hear classical music. Now it’s just a matter of us finding ways to help them listen.”

Hoffman-Engel also praised Cleveland’s Contemporary Youth Orchestra and Jonathan Sheffer’s Red {an orchestra} for “at least trying to be adventurous” by presenting world premieres by Phil Kline, John King, and others, and for partnering with Ethel, the amplified string quartet.

For his part, Hanson claimed the Cleveland Orchestra’s reputation is taking a firmer hold in new markets like Asia while ticket sales at home are decreasing.

One attendee asked the panelists what they would do, were money not an obstacle. New answers to the question surfaced throughout the two-hour evening. Hanson said the Cleveland Orchestra would perform more contemporary music, produce more recordings, market more aggressively outside its core audience, and consider employing tasteful visual elements such as video screens or hand-held computers for program notes.

Siegel held on confidently to a purist viewpoint. Not only should classical musicians not be expected to talk to audiences, he said in response to an audience member’s question, they shouldn’t have to operate video equipment or learn to play hip-hop, either. “I don’t know if we need visual gimmicks or non-classical things. The repertoire speaks very well for itself, particularly if it’s presented in such a way that it brings people into the listening experience.”

Sandow called for action in the evening’s strongest terms. It was he, though, who sent the audience home smiling by congratulating them for asking the best questions he’d ever heard during a panel on this topic.

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Zachary Lewis is a freelance arts journalist in Cleveland, Ohio. He covers music primarily but also dance, art, and theater. He writes regularly for the Plain Dealer, Cleveland Scene, Angle, Dance Magazine, and Time Out Chicago. Lewis studied piano performance at the Cleveland Institute of Music and holds degrees in English and Journalism from Ohio University and Case Western Reserve University, where he will conduct a Presidential Fellowship in arts criticism in the fall of 2006.

Seattle: Music Never Trapped Between a Mountain and an Ocean

Posted on April 26, 2005 by - Field Reports, Headlines

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Amy D. Rubin

Greetings from Seattle! Washington composers are fortunate to have a group, the Washington Composers Forum, which disseminates information and presents events. Forum President Christopher Shainin says this about our new music scene: “Like other cities, Seattle offers a range of new music, from the quasi-improvised and electronic, to scores for orchestral, rock, jazz, and concert band instruments. But here composers and performers are as influenced by living on the Pacific Rim as by the recent influx of Eastern Europeans. Because it is a mid-sized city, these influences and ways of working are often crowded on the same stages. The cultural space is further pressed between the ocean and mountains. The resulting music is condensed, tangled, and always in revision.”

Recently, I heard an evening of new and digital music presented by the University of Washington’s Center for Digital and Experimental Music at Meany Hall. New York virtuoso violinist Mari Kimura was the focal point of the event. She shared the space with video, prerecorded audio, visually projected text, and her playing was frequently transformed by real-time computer manipulation. Richard Karpen’s Sotto/Sopra was on the program and he writes: “The computer processing of the live input of the violin creates a canvas of sound that ranges from the intimate to the orchestral, from one layer of notes to dense, overlapping, contrapuntal, harmonic, and noise based textures. The performer now has many arms, hands, fingers…” I pictured the many-armed Indian deity Shiva with multiple violins. Quite different was The Old Rose Reader by Frances White, a multi media work combining text projected on a screen, a recorded narration track in French, and live violin playing haunting, plaintiff melodic lines which skirt the landscape of microtonality. The text, a combination of mythological references and fairy tale-like images, combined with the other elements to create a nouveau ode to a rose—a moody tone poem of sorts.

The juxtaposition of such a large venue as Meany Hall with the intimate audience size undercut the presentation somewhat for me, which made Lyn Goeringer’s presentation a few nights later on “Listening To Spaces” especially meaningful. Her talk was held at Jack Straw, a kind of grass roots, hands on place of possibility for many composers and creative artists in the Seattle community. The institution supports numerous recording projects every year in addition to housing a regular “Composer Spotlight” series where grant recipients present performance/talks of their current work.

Goeringer’s work addresses the fluid relationship between people and sound in installation environments. Central to this is the inclusion of a theremin she has developed which becomes a sampler of sorts, and then extends its capabilities through midi. Goeringer likes to be able to produce sound which is intensely quiet and has learned and grown from past aggravations to be proactive as a composer. In her installation Growth she uses frequencies of sound that are not present in either the human voice or cell phones, so that no matter who is talking or whose phone is ringing—no problem—her work will be heard! She creates pieces which strike me as a series of Cageian inquiries addressing larger questions about form, sound, space, and the listener.

We watched a video of her recent installation which once again featured the sampling theremin processing the sounds of those who entered and moved in the space. Some danced, some jumped, some twirled; one woman began to lick the antenna of the theremin, wondering what the sonic outcome would be. The answer? A disappointment. No change in sound, and the taste—no, not as good as ice cream.

On the jazz side of the Seattle scene, Dawn Clement, a jazz pianist and composer in her early twenties has a large presence. She played to a full house at Tula’s, a smoke free, warm, and respectful environment in Belltown, which even has a nice piano. The music fit the space and the audience was an attentive group of fans eager to hear where her next solo would go. Clement already has her own compositional voice. She premiered her own Deeply Seated which grooves on an eleven-beat-long chromatic vamp, with interspersions of 5/4 thrown in. Sometimes she travels almost roughshod over the rhythm section with spontaneous riffs grouped in 5s and 7s, and like riding the surf, she enjoys the tension of the waves she’s made and then pulls back content to once again float along with the other musicians. Her playing incorporates Bach-like contrapuntal lines, tango, ballads, and bebop licks in a way that defies predictability.

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Amy Rubin, pianist and composer, has written and performed music for the concert stage, jazz ensemble, film, television, and theater in the U.S. and abroad. Following a Fulbright in Ghana, she directed the music program at Fairleigh Dickinson University in New Jersey, was a visiting professor at Cornish College, and now collaborates with the Seattle Chamber Players and the Seattle Symphony. Her ability to embrace all musical styles has brought her many awards including the Washington State Artist Trust Fellowship, the King County Special Projects Award, the 2005 Jack Straw Artist Support Award, and resulted in numerous recordings of her work.

Not a Vacation In Rome: Charles Norman Mason and Susan Botti head for the American Academy

Posted on April 18, 2005 by - Headlines, Ledes

Previous Composers in Residence at the American Academy in Rome

Stephen Albert
Kathryn Alexander
Samuel Barber
Leslie Bassett
David Snow Bates
Robert Beaser
Jack Beeson
Larry Thomas Bell
Derek Bermel
Chester Biscardi
Martin Bresnick
Todd Brief
Steven Burke
Edmund Campion
Elliott Carter
Shih-Hui Chen
Morris Moshe Cote
l Sebastian Currier
Nathan Currier
William Douglas Denny
Tamar Diesendruck
John C. Eaton
Dennis Eberhard
George Edwards
Michelle Ekizian
George Herbert Elwell
Jack Fortner
Lukas Foss
Wincent S. Frohne
Jay A. Gach
Vittorio Giannini
Alexei Haieff
Howard Hanson
Higo H. Harada
Stephen Hartke
John Heineman
James Heinke
Walter Helfer
William Hellermann
Michael Hersch
Stanley Hollingsworth
Lee Hyla
Andrew Imbrie
Kamran Ince
Herbert Reynolds Inch
Stephen Jaffe
Pierre Jalbert
Werner Janssen
Hunter Johnson
Jeffrey Jones
Ulysses Kay
Kent Kennan
Aaron Jay Kernis
Barbara Kolb
Arthur Krieger
Arthus Kreutz
Gail T. Kubik
Ezra Laderman
Bun-Ching Lam
David Lang
Billy Jim Layton
Thomas Oboe Lee
John Anthony Lennon
Arthur Levering
Marvin D. Levy
Scott Lindroth
Normand Lockwood
Salvatore Martirano
Harold Meltzer
James Mobberley
Robert Moevs
Paul Moravec
Charles Naginski
William Neil
Paul Nelson
Eugene O’Brien
Daniel Perlongo
P.Q. Phan
Gerald H. Plain
Kevin M. Puts
David Rakowski
Andrew Rindfliesch
George Rochberg
Steve Rouse
Loren Rush
Robert Levine Sanders
Roger Sessions
Harold Shapero
Allen R. Shearer
Shiela Silver
William O. Smith
Leo Sowerby
Rand Steiger
Alexander Land Steinert
Tison Street
Christopher Theofanidis
Randall Thompson
Nicholas Thorne
John H. Thow
Richard Trythall
Wintter Watts
Henry Weinberg
Louis Weingarden
Charles Whittenberg
Frank Wigglesworth
Richard M. Willis, Jr.
G.B. Wilson, Jr.
Mark Wingate
Walter K. Winslow
Philip Winsor
Frederich Woltmann
Yehudi Wyner
Carolyn Yarnell

“Just having the time to compose is good enough, but being able to do it in Rome is great,” exclaims Birmingham, Alabama-based composer Charles Norman Mason, one of the two composers among a group of artists and scholars from all over the United States chosen for an 11-month residency at the American Academy in Rome next year. The residency provides room and board, a stipend, and a studio in which to live and work on music, presumably uninterrupted. It’s a rare gift in these days of the multi-tasking composer.

“Right now I get three hours a day, on Monday, Wednesday, and Friday,” confesses Mason, who also devotes a great deal of his time to his students at Birmingham-Southern College where he teaches composition and theory. “This semester’s hard; in the past I had at least two hours every day. In Rome, I imagine working eight hours a day, five days a week.”

For Susan Botti, the other composer who will be heading to Rome this fall, time is less of an issue even though she is also an assistant professor of composition at the University of Michigan School of Music in Ann Arbor. “The most challenging aspect of being a composer is time management, and I’m very organized in my process. But I don’t keep track like that. Sometimes it is so continuous with me. Rome is not going to be much different.”

For both composers, however, the experience of being in Rome promises to be transformative on a variety of levels, both artistic and personal. “Just being among the ruins and seeing art work that took centuries to make will somehow have an effect on how I look at my music,” muses Mason. “I imagine that living in our throw-away society in America has had an influence on me. This will be a springboard to help me move on.”

For Botti, the connection is even more basic. “I’m of 100 percent Italian heritage, but I’ve been to Rome only very briefly and the times I’ve been there have had a deep resonance for me. I think the sense of ‘being present’ that the Italian temperament expresses is something that is integral to my music.”

Both composers plan to use their time in Rome to continue and complete projects that are already in the works. “Everything I’m planning on writing is vocal,” says Botti who is also an accomplished soprano, although not all of what she will be working on will be for her own singing voice. “I’ve been writing really big pieces for the past two years, so I’m really looking forward to writing chamber works.”

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Susan Botti

Listen to an excerpt from Susan Botti’s Jabberwocky
Performed by Susan Botti (soprano) and Paul Guerguerian (percussion)
From Susan Botti’s CD: Listen, It’s Snowing {CRI 802}

Mason also has several chamber works on the back burner. Only one involves electricity, though, despite his having previously created many electronic music compositions. But don’t assume this is due to any lack of state-of-the-art technology during his Roman sojourn. “I used to use C-Sound, but now I use a program called Reactor on my laptop.” Instead, Mason will work on a piece for the piano, saxophone, and clarinet trio Thelamas from Belgium, another for the Four Horizons Quartet, and a duet for electric violin and electric cello—written for cellist Craig Hultgren, who is based back home in Birmingham (“I’m trying to get him to go over to Rome”)—plus possibly “a string quartet, my first since graduate school. But they have so much literature, so I don’t like to write anything that doesn’t have a guaranteed performance.” Perhaps the most ambitious project Mason will embark on will be a concerto for four guitars and chamber orchestra, written for the Denmark-based Corona Guitar Kvartet, a group that has previously performed the composer’s guitar quartet Filibuster.

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Charles Norman Mason

Listen to Charles Norman Mason
Listen to an excerpt from Charles Norman Mason’s Filibuster
Performed by the Corona Guitar Kvartet
Recording provided by the composer

Perhaps what makes this year’s duo of composers different from all of the composers chosen to go to Rome in previous years is that both are married to composers as well and both of their spouses (as well as children) will be joining them in Rome, in essence resulting in four composers in residence at the Academy next year. “They call them Fellow-travelers,” says Botti whose husband, Latin jazz composer/drummer/producer Roland Vazquez is equally excited about being in Europe next year. “The timing is great for Roland. We’ve already made some contacts in Europe, and there will be opportunities to both of us to perform while we’re there.”

“Originally my biggest fear was that I’d have to be away from my family,” admits Mason who is overjoyed that his wife, Dorothy Hindman, who also teaches composition at Birmingham-Southern, will be making the trans-Atlantic journey with him and will also benefit from the additional time to compose, even though the children are coming along too. “We’re going to hire a nanny and are hoping she’ll get at least three hours a day to herself.”

For Botti, composing will just be one of many activities that will occupy her time. “I’m also looking forward to researching, spending swaths of time listening and delving.” And of course, performing. “I asked, ‘Will it OK for me to practice in there?’ And they said ‘You can tapdance on the ceiling if you want.'”

News In Brief 4/14/05

Posted on April 14, 2005 by - Headlines, Ledes

Spring has sprung, and the good news in the composing field is pouring in.

Steve Reich may not have gotten the nod from the Pulitzer committee this year, but he’ll be popping over to New Hampshire this August so The MacDowell Colony can present him with its Edward MacDowell Medal during their annual Medal Day celebration. He will be the 46th recipient of the honor, awarded “to an individual who has made an outstanding contribution to the arts.”

“He never plays it safe,” says composer Francis Thorne, who served as the Medal Selection Committee chairman. “His music carries a personality that takes its hat off to nobody.” Composer David Lang, another member of the committee, agrees: “Steve Reich is one of the towering giants of American music. His sound, which combines rigorous structures with propulsive rhythms and seductive instrumental color, is instantly recognizable, and has been influential to composers in America and all over the world.” Other members of this year’s committee included Chen Yi, distinguished professor in music composition at the University of Missouri’s Conservatory of Music; and composer Robert Beaser.

Reich joins an impressive list of past recipients, including Aaron Copland, Elliott Carter, Samuel Barber, William Schuman, and Lou Harrison.

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Subito Music Publishing has announced the appointment of Tom Broido as Vice-President of Business Development. He will take the reins of the customer sales and marketing division of Subito Distribution.

Long a figure in the publishing industry, Broido became Executive Vice President of Theodore Presser Company in 1993 and served as its President from 1995 to 2005. In addition, he was active in the Music Publishers’ Association of the United States, serving as President as well as Chairperson of its Research and Development Committee.

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Princeton composer David T. Little (b. 1978) has won the 2004-2005 Harvey Gaul Composition Competition held by the Pittsburgh New Music Ensemble. Little will receive a $6,000 cash award and a commission for a new work to be premiered by the PNME during its 2006 season.

A two-time BMI Student Composer Award Winner, in recent years Little has also picked up the 2004 Jacob Druckman Award for Orchestral Composition from the Aspen Music Festival, the Charles Ives Scholarship from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, and served as the 2001 ASCAP Leonard Bernstein Fellow in Composition at the Tanglewood Music Center. An active performer, improviser and collaborator, Little is currently pursuing a PhD at Princeton University. His primary teachers have included William Bolcom, Michael Daugherty, and Osvaldo Golijov.

Three composers also received Honorable Mentions: Shih-Hui Chen, James D. Norman and Hyekyung Lee. This year the competition attracted a record number of submissions (over 200), perhaps a result of changes to the competition that included doubling the amount of the first prize cash award.

Steven Stucky Wins Pulitzer Prize

Posted on April 7, 2005 by - Headlines, Ledes

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Steven Stucky

LISTEN to an excerpt of
Second Concerto for Orchestra
Commissioned for the inaugural season of Walt Disney Concert Hall and premiered by the Los Angeles Philharmonic under the direction of Music Director Esa-Pekka Salonen.

Steven Stucky has been recognized with a Pulitzer Prize for his Second Concerto for Orchestra. The work was premiered by the Los Angeles Philharmonic in March 2004 under the baton of Esa-Pekka Salonen.

The salutation is for “distinguished musical composition of significant dimension by an American that has had its first performance in the United States during the year.” The award is accompanied by a $10,000 cash prize.

Born in 1949, Stucky has long been associated with the Los Angeles Philharmonic, where he currently serves as Consulting Composer for New Music. He also sits on the faculty of Cornell University. He is published by Theodore Presser. As a conductor, Stucky appears frequently with the Los Angeles Philharmonic New Music Group and with Ensemble X, a contemporary music group he founded in 1997.

Pulitzer Winners from the Last Decade

2005: Second Concerto for Orchestra Steven Stucky
2004: Tempest Fantasy Paul Moravec
2003: On the Transmigration of Souls John Adams
2002: Ice Field Henry Brant
2001: Symphony No. 2 for String Orchestra John Corigliano
2000: Life is a Dream, opera in three acts: Act II, Concert Version Lewis Spratlan
1999: Concerto for Flute, Strings, and Percussion Melinda Wagner
1998: String Quartet No. 2, Musica Instrumentalis Aaron Jay Kernis
1997: Blood on the Fields (Oratorio) Wynton Marsalis
1996: Lilacs for soprano and orchestra George Walker
1995: Stringmusic Morton Gould

Also nominated as finalists in this category were: Dialogues by Elliott Carter (Boosey & Hawkes), premiered June 7, 2004, by the Chicago Contemporary Music Ensemble in Chicago, and You Are (Variations) by Steve Reich (Boosey & Hawkes), premiered October 23, 2004, by the Los Angeles Master Chorale at the Walt Disney Concert Hall in Los Angeles.

The complete roster of 89th annual Pulitzer Prizes in Journalism, Letters, Drama and Music, awarded on the recommendation of the Pulitzer Prize Board, was announced this afternoon by Columbia University.

The nominating jurors in the music category were previous Pulitzer recipients Gunther Schuller and Christopher Rouse, as well as composer and pianist Muhal Richard Abrams, critic Mark Swed, and music director David Zinman.

The presentation of the awards will be made at a luncheon on May 23, 2005 at Columbia University.

Stucky: Finding Meaning in the Prize

Posted on April 7, 2005 by - Headlines, Ledes

Steven Stucky

Steven Stucky

LISTEN to an excerpt of
Second Concerto for Orchestra
Commissioned for the inaugural season of Walt Disney Concert Hall and premiered by the Los Angeles Philharmonic under the direction of Music Director Esa-Pekka Salonen.

At some time, most of us have cast a jaundiced eye on the Pulitzer Prize in music, muttering in one April or another (if only to ourselves) that the jury must have been crazy, that it’s all “politics” anyway (meaning, I guess, that human beings are involved), and that, anyway, you can’t compare works of art as if they were heifers at the county fair. So what to think if, suddenly, you win?

Like all reviews, if you didn’t believe the bad ones then you can’t believe the good ones either. Still, I can’t pretend that I’m not pleased that this year my number came up. It’s not that I think that objectively my piece was the “best” one, of course, but a committee of respected peers found the piece worth discussing in the company of some of the other terrific pieces American composers gave us over the past year. That’s enough to encourage a composer to think he hasn’t been wasting his time, and to inspire him to keep trying to do his best. And it’s hard to be cynical about seeing your name inked in on the junior end of a list that contains your boyhood heroes (Aaron Copland! Charles Ives!).

I never expected to be singled out this year, not after various controversies surrounding the music prize in recent years, and not so soon after the criteria were broadened to reach beyond what we used to call “classical” music (a move that I seconded in principle, even while wondering how it might work in practice). Like many others, I thought that Pulitzer juries would feel compelled over the next few years to test the new boundaries. (And perhaps they will.)

You can’t really be prepared for the avalanche of attention that descends the minute the prizes are announced. There is a nice irony, though, in the fact that—since the Pulitzers are really about journalism and thus obsessively covered by journalists—the glare of the media machine alights once every spring on exotica like contemporary music and contemporary poetry. It may be a sort of accident that we composers get swept into the limelight once a year along with the journalists, but it sure can’t hurt the cause we all believe in.

2005 Guggenheim Fellowships Announced

Posted on April 7, 2005 by - Headlines, Ledes

Results of the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation’s eighty-first annual United States and Canadian competition were announced today. The 2005 Fellowship winners include 186 artists, scholars, and scientists selected from over 3,000 applicants for awards totaling $7,112,000.

Decisions are based on recommendations from hundreds of expert advisors and are approved by the Foundation’s Board of Trustees, which includes seven members who are themselves past Fellows of the Foundation—Joel Conarroe, Joyce Carol Oates, Richard A. Rifkind, Charles A. Ryskamp, Wendy Wasserstein, Ellen Taaffe Zwilich, and Edward Hirsch.

The composers receiving fellowships in 2005 are:

  • Susan Botti, Composer, Ann Arbor, Michigan; Assistant Professor of Music Composition, University of Michigan: Music composition.
  • Marilyn Crispell, Composer and Musician, Woodstock, New York: Music composition.
  • Brian Current, Composer, Toronto, Ontario, Canada: Music composition.
  • Dave Douglas, Composer and Musician, Croton-on-Hudson, New York: Music composition.
  • Don Freund, Composer, Bloomington, Indiana; Professor of Music Composition, Indiana University: Music composition.
  • Yotam Haber, Composer, New York City; Information Services Coordinator, American Music Center, New York City: Music composition.
  • Jake Heggie, Composer, San Francisco; President, Bent Pen Music, San Francisco: Music composition.
  • Louis Rosen, Composer, Brooklyn, New York; Distinguished Lecturer in Music Theory, History, and Appreciation Studies, 92nd Street YM-YWHA School of Music, New York City: Music composition.
  • Andrew Waggoner, Composer and Musician, New York City; Composer-in-Residence and Associate Professor, Setnor School of Music, Syracuse University: Music composition.
  • Mark Wingate, Composer, Tallahassee, Florida; Assistant Professor of Composition and Director of Electroacoustic Music, Florida State University: Music composition.

Since 1925, according to Hirsch, the Foundation has granted almost $240 million in Fellowships to over 15,500 individuals.

Five New Works Slated for Van Cliburn Comp. Semifinals

Posted on March 29, 2005 by - Headlines, Ledes

This year’s 35 hopeful competitors in the 12th Van Cliburn International Piano Competition have each selected one new work by an American composer to include in their semifinal round program. As part of the competition’s American Composers Invitational, each entrant chose from among five scores without knowing the work’s author. The revealed list of scores includes work by:

  • Sebastian Currier, New York, NY: Scarlatti Cadences and Brainstorm, completed 1997
  • Jennifer Higdon, Philadelphia, PA: Secret and Glass Gardens, composed 2000
  • Daniel Kellogg, New Haven, CT: Scarlet Thread, 2004
  • Jan Krzywicki, Philadelphia, PA: Nocturnals, 2001
  • Ruth Schonthal, Scarsdale, NY: Sonata quasi un’improvvisazione, 1964
Composers who have written for the competition in the past include:

  • Samuel Barber
  • Leonard Bernstein
  • William Bolcom
  • Aaron Copland
  • John Corigliano
  • Norman Dello Joio
  • Morton Gould
  • Lee Hoiby
  • William Schuman
  • Willard Straight

Each composer who has a work played by one of the twelve advancing semifinalists will receive a cash prize of $2500, and the composer of the piece that is performed by the largest number of semifinalists will receive the Grand Prize of $5000.

This year’s jury for the American Composers Invitational consisted of Lowell Liebermann (winner of the Foundation’s first American Composers Invitational), composer Robert Maggio, and Michael Boriskin, artistic director of Copland House. Under the guidance of Pulitzer Prize-winning composer John Corigliano, and assisted by pianist Stephen Gosling, the jury reviewed twenty-nine scores, all with composers names withheld.