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Laura and Leni Schwendinger, composer and lighting designer respectively, are featured this season on the American Composers Orchestra’s Playing it UNSafe program (3/4 at Zankel Hall in NYC).

Here they are in a video discussing the project.

Errollyn Wallen

Following up on Alex Ross’ post about the New York Philharmonic’s 2011-’12 season, which mentioned the lack of representation of American composers on the Contact! series and women composers throughout the schedule, we asked Sequenza 21 readers to share their lists of American women composers that the Philharmonic should consider programming.

Angelica Negron

Here’s my own take. I’ve compiled three chamber orchestra programs for the Contact! concerts and one for the regular subscription series: all consisting entirely of living women composers. One features American music and the other programs have a more diverse array of nationalities. I hasten to add that this just scratched the surface: one could do many, many more of these!

Amy Williams

Program 1

Jennifer Higdon – Soliloquy

Sarah Kirkland Snider – newly commissioned work

Hannah Lash – A Matter of Truth

Amy Williams – Sala Luminosa

Helen Grime

Program 2

Angélica Negrón – Fulano

Errolyn Wallen – Concerto Grosso

Du Yun – Impeccable Quake

Helen Grime – Clarinet Concerto

Program 3

Alexandra Gardner – Tamarack

Unsuk Chin – Akrostichon-wortspiel

Tansy Davies – Residuum (After Dowland)

Vivian Fung – newly commissioned work

Lera Auerbach

Subscription Series Program

Augusta Read Thomas – Ceremonial

Lera Auerbach – Concerto No. 2 for Violin and Orchestra

Kaija Saariaho – Orion

Yesterday, Alex Ross wrote a short essay on The Rest is Noise about next season’s offerings at the New York Philharmonic. After discussing several highlights, including Stockhausen’s Gruppen at the Park Avenue Armory, the NYPO’s first presentation of a piece by Philip Glass (!), and a new work by John Corigliano, he pointed out some curious omissions.

Ross wrote,”The Contact! series will elicit new works from Alexandre Lunsqui, Yann Robin, and Michael Jarrell. The series has no American music this year, nor is there any music by women in the entire season.”

Like Ross, I’m very excited by some of the other programs the NY Phil has in store for audiences, but I can’t help but wish that both Contact! and the season in general were more diverse.

Let’s help them out: a list of American women composers that should appear on Contact! and subscription concerts at the NY Phil.

Lady Lazarus – “Sick Child” Video (Stereogum Premiere) from stereogum on Vimeo.

Happy New Year’s Eve!

It’s hard to believe that it’s time to leave 2010 behind.

Here’s hoping that 2011 brings us peace, joy, and much more music!

Haroula Rose’s self-released debut, These Open Roads, is out early next year.

Congratulations to Laurie Anderson on her Grammy nomination for the song “Flow” (Best Pop Instrumental Performance). It’s the last track on Homeland, her latest Nonesuch release.

The label’s been kind enough to offer “Flow” for stream or download via Soundcloud.

Laurie Anderson – “Flow” by Nonesuch Records

Reservoir
Isabelle O’Connell
Diatribe Records CD

Born in Ireland and now based in New York, pianist Isabelle O’Connell has been an energetic advocate for living composers on both sides of the Atlantic. She also plays some mean Messiaen.

Her new CD Reservoir features works from the past two and a half decades by nine Irish composers. The results are not merely a dogmatic presentation of a particular national “school of composition.” On the contrary, O’Connell’s clearly quite willing to program a stylistically eclectic recital. And the Emerald Isle has a richly wide-ranging and imaginative group of composers from which to choose. But here, among their influences, many of the pieces evince a strong strain of minimalism.

The title track by Donnacha Dennehy, is a standout; its inexorable ostinati piling up into a cascades of brilliantly colored walls of sound. BIG, by Ian Wilson, also favors muscular swaths of repetition; but these are counterweighted with contrasting sections that echo the deft colorings of a Debussy Prelude. Jane O’Leary’s Forgotten Worlds explores a more ambient kind of minimalism, with a healthy dose of Far Eastern inflections.

Speaking of preludes, another of the disc’s highlights is the first of John Buckley’s Three Preludes. The Cloths of Heaven (inspired by the famous Yeats poem), inhabits a beautifully crafted Francophilic palette from later in the 20th century, recalling one of O’Connell’s favorites: the aforementioned Oliver Messiaen.

Meanwhile, Jennifer Walshe’s becher is built around snippet-length quotations (not sympathetic gestures) by everyone under the sun: Beethoven, the Doors, Bach, Debussy, etc. It’s a fun idea for a classically inspired mashup. With Along the Flaggy Shore by Philip Martin, O’Connell closes out the disc with an almost equally digressive, but far more demanding piece. It calls upon her to play crashing dissonant clusters, rapid-fire repeated notes and arpeggios, and contrasting passages of pensive delicacy.

Throughout this varied program, O’Connell plays with impressive power, clarity, and commitment.

Isabelle O'Connell

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O’Connell will be performing Donnacha’s Reservoir again at her next NY solo show on Nov. 4th at the Music at First series in Brooklyn.

The rest of the program will be music by American composers: John Luther Adams, Bunita Marcus, and James Mobberley.