Hilary Hahn doesn’t need much introduction; as one of the leading violinists today, many of you have any number of her recordings or have been lucky enough to catch her in concert.
Usually we put our stars up on some pedestal, always with that remove of the stage between us. But Hilary herself has a different [...]

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Continuing a theme: earlier this week I mentioned a gig by composer Matt McBane’s “not-quite-neo-alt-rock-chamber-folk-etc” ensemble Build. The pattern continues this Sunday at The Stone in NYC (corner of 2nd street and Ave. C, $10), when two more “NQNARCFE” groups show us what they’ve got (is this the true wave of classical music’s future? — [...]

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S21 friend Peter Mueller passed along the good news that:
The Library of Congress has completed digitization of another batch of the compositional sketches of Elliott Carter.  These are now available on our web site.  This current release consists of the following material:
Pocahontas (18*)
Symphony No.1 (224)
Piano Sonata (20*)
Minotaur (108)
Emblems (192)
Woodwind Quintet (141)
Eight Etudes and a Fantasy [...]

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The timing gods may be with me…I’ll just happen to be in NYC for the day today and just might be able to make it down from LaGuardia to 153 Bleeker Street to see Signal performing Steve Reich’s Double Sextet and his original Sextet under the watchful eye of Brad Lubman. Tickets are $30 if [...]

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Fresh on the heels of their excellent BoaC Marathon appearance, composer Matt McBane’s alt-avant chamber-whatever group Build is doing a collaborative concert with another twisted sister, Former-Aussie songstress Greta Gertler. It’s all going down Tuesday, June 23, 2009, 7:00pm at Joe’s Pub (425 Lafayette Street, NYC); tickets are $15.
In addition to performing separately, Greta and [...]

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A friend recently asked me to come up with a list of music. He wanted a ’starter’ kit to introduce friends and family to contemporary classical. The constraints are as follows: he wants to fill a 1 GB MP3 player to give as a gift.
Actually, the 1 gig threshold is a challenging one for [...]

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The San Francisco Bay Area  has a unique way of celebrating the first day of summer.  Our most popular new music event, the Garden of Memory, comes around every summer solstice, and reliably attracts more than 1,000 visitors while creating a parking nightmare for miles in every direction.  In 2007 I was forced, like many [...]

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The 2009 Opera Vista Festival and competition just finished up down here in Houston. Line Tørnhøj of Aarhus, Denmark was voted by the audience as the winner with her opera Anorexia Sacra. Second place went to Camilo Santostefano of Buenos Aries, Argentina, and his opera El Fin de Narciso. Tørnhøj received a check for $1,500 [...]

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The Ojai Music Festival came to a triumphal ending last night with a raucous, committed, glowing performance of Louis Andriessen’s “Worker’s Union” (1976). The performance of the Andriessen began four and a half hours after the start of the Sunday evening concert. The six musicians of eighth blackbird came on stage and played [...]

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Wednesday night was the debut of the Orchestra of the League of Composers/ISCM — an improbable eighty-five years after the organization’s founding. As Jerry pointed out earlier, the NY Times included strangely sweeping and sadly misinformed coverage leading up to the concert. However, this did little to dissuade an enthusiastic audience from attending the performance. [...]

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