Among your name brand violinists, Anne Sophie-Mutter has been the most ardent champion of modern and new music. There are few, if any, 20th century violin masterworks that she hasn’t played and/or recorded. She rarely does a concert without modern pieces and her appearance with a group of chamber music all-stars at Avery Fisher Hall at 3 pm this Sunday, April 3, is no exception. In addition to the Beethoven String Trio in G Major op 9, No. 1 and Mendelssohn’s Octet for Strings, she will be teaming up with the brilliant young double bassist, Roman Patkoló, for the U.S. premiere
Read moreLee Hoiby, one of the preeminent composers of song and opera in the 20th Century, passed away today at the age of 85. I was lucky enough to host Lee for a two-day residency here at SUNY Fredonia last September, which culminated in a concert of his works by students and faculty with Lee playing piano for every work…including a sing-a-long with the entire audience at the end. To see 20-year-old voice majors lining up after the concert to get his autograph was pretty special, and indicative of how much he meant to so many music lovers around the world.
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Chamber Music, Concerts, Contemporary Classical, Festivals, File Under?, New York, Video, Women composers
Thus far, 2011 seems to be the year of the festival. From Tune Up to Tully Scope and beyond, a wide variety of adventurous outings have been offered in New York. Starting tonight, Symphony Space joins in the fun with their Cutting Edge Concerts New Music Festival. If each festival has had its own identity – Tune Up reveling in the Park Avenue Armory’s generous space and acoustics, Tully Scope celebrating the diversity of its offerings and its newly remodeled digs – the emphasis of Cutting Edge seems, like so many events at Symphony Space, to be outreach and interaction. All
Read moreIf you have the slightest interest in contemporary opera or modern drama, you must see Philip Glass’s Akhnaten, scheduled for one more performance by Long Beach Opera on Sunday, March 27. It is a brilliant update of Wagner’s idea of the Gesamtkunstwerk, in which Glass’s music, staging by Andreas Mitisek, choreography by Nanette Brodie, and video projections by Frieder Weiss all combine into one amazing whole. At the heart of the work is Glass’s monolithic score and libretto. The story itself is a series of tableaux depicting the rise (Act 1) and fall (Act 3) of Akhnaten and his dangerous
Read moreMiss Music Nerd (AKA composer/keyboardist Linda Kernohan) recently had an opportunity to chat with Sir Harrison Birtwistle after hearing his Violin Concerto premiered by Christian Tezlaff and the Boston Symphony Orchestra. In the course of their conversation, Birtwistle discussed the impetus for writing a violin concerto, his difficulties with precompositional schemes (“I get terribly bored…by the time I’ve got 200 yards down the road”), and how he handles getting “stuck” while writing a work. The entire interview (with some interesting links to other Birtwistliana) can be found here. Ms. Hahn, if you’re looking for a new concerto to learn (hint,
Read moreHilary Hahn was supposed to be in Japan this week on a recital tour with her frequent collaborator Valentina Lisitsa but nature had other plans. The catastrophic twin disasters of a 9.0-magnitude earthquake and powerful subsequent tsunami on March 11 took the lives of thousands of Japanese citizens and have left thousands more without homes, electricity, or access to clean water. Hahn’s Japan concerts were understandably canceled so she decided to use the time to organize and play four Japan-relief benefit concerts in the United States this week. “I had been looking forward to performing in Japan: the country is unlike
Read moreIf you’re looking for a place to hang out with some pretty famous composers, polish off your latest music project and hear it played in a historic venue by professional musicians in front of a real audience, make new friends and music world connections, win a composition prize, and maybe even meet the girl or boy of your dreams (or bring them along if you already have), I have a suggestion for you: Pavia. Located a mere 35 clicks from the Milan airport, the ancient university town (pop. 70,000, 20,000 of them students) in northern Italy’s Lombardy region will host
Read moreSpring in Houston is an intensely visual experience as the grass now nourished by rain and sun turns from brown to green. Flowers are blooming in unexpected places while birds of all shades of color return to take up residence in the surrounding trees. Everything looks and smells a little…fresher. Come Spring, Houston’s bird population as well as its amphibians and yes, insects, sing or otherwise rock their antiphonal and conversational repertoire all day and all night. Which leads us to one of the many highlights of what is now the last few months of the artistic season. This Saturday,
Read moreSince I’ve been at the University of Michigan, I’ve frequently pondered the nature of the “American” sound in contemporary music. I recognize the present state of American contemporary music a melting pot of almost every style imaginable, but I wonder further about common threads, the deeper musical and intellectual ideas American composers – my generation in particular – share. I had the opportunity this past Sunday and Monday to experience a sample population – albeit it very small – of talented, ambitious student composers when I attended concerts at my undergraduate alma mater, Rice University, and my current school, the
Read more(And Gods know sanctuary is something many of us might be searching for these days…) This Monday, 21 March, at 8pm in the Weill Recital Hall at Carnegie Hall (57th Street and Seventh Avenue, NYC), the ensemble Lunatics at Large begin a series of four concerts with five premieres, of works involving the collaboration of five composers and five poets. This little bit of numerology is titled “The Sanctuary Project“; Project Director Evi Jundt says: We picked artists whose work we believed would be evocative of the theme ‘Sanctuary.’ First, the poets presented one new poem and some older works to the composers.
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