For the past week I’ve been in residence at the 2010 2010 Interamerican Festival for the Arts This is doubly significant for me: for one thing, and most obviously, it’s an excellent professional opportunity providing a very fine orchestral performance (and a second performance of an orchestral work at that!). For another, I was born and raised in Puerto Rico. Although I have been active in the U.S. and have lived most of my life there since the age of 16, Puerto Rico is still my home in a very real way and being performed by my hometown band is
Read moreThe catalog for New York City Opera’s 2010-2011 arrived by post yesterday and, as usual, the Met’s poor cousin on perpetual life support has cobbled together a few interesting-looking programs to accompany the usual Donizetti and Strauss crowdpleasers. There is the long-delayed premier of A Quiet Place, Leonard Bernstein’s final stage work, the New York premiere of Seance on a Wet Afternoon, the first opera of Stephen Schwartz who did the Broadway hits Wicked, Godspell and Pippin, and–most intriguing of all–an evening called Monodramas–three one acts by John Zorn, Morton Feldman and Arnold Schoenberg. But, what caught my eye was
Read moreWhat Not With Skyline (photo by Chris Becker) As a recent transplant to Houston, I am just beginning to take in the breadth and variety of the city’s cultural scene, especially its music. Each article will focus on contemporary composition, improvised idioms, and performances that integrate theater, visual arts, and/or dance. Inevitably, my love for rock, folk, blues, jazz, country, zydeco, and all out noise will creep into future writing. The goal is to expand people’s perceptions (including my own) about how and where one can find innovative music. Last Month (August) I visited Kaboom Books for the first time
Read moreBy now, you’ve surely heard about Project 440 at Orpheus/WQXR, and the next round of cuts will take the composers to just a dozen (to be announced September 9th on WQXR). So I thought it would be interesting to talk to the remaining 30 before the cut about this process. Q: “You all have probably been involved in a group lesson or masterclass at some point – some sort of public forum – with a teacher, composer or perhaps an ensemble and conductor. Project 440, however, involves not only a selection committee, but comments on the internet. How do you
Read moreSince 1989, British composer Richard Ayres (born 1965) has lived and worked in the Netherlands. He currently teaches composition at the Royal Conservatoire in Den Haag: an institution where he did his graduate studies with Louis Andriessen. His compositional style reveals a profusion of influences, from Ives and Kagel to Ades and Janacek. Above all one notices his interest in dense counterpoint, frequently deployed in multi-layered structures; as well as a concomitant flair for testing the limits of playability, often with an eye towards cultivating a “melancholically humorous” ambience. One of his favorite mediums is the “noncerto:” a composition for
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