It was not a great year for movies, in my humble opinion. But like they say in the most obnoxious Bud commercials yet: here we go. The Top Ten Movies I Saw in 2011 The Trip – Two prominent English comics eat and impersonate their way through the Lake District in a film that is barely a film at all but manages to be both hysterically funny and oddly touching. Submarine – Young Oliver gets laid. A coming of age film that will make you forget that you ever saw one of those before. Memo to Woody Allen: This is
Read moreToday marks a week since Tom Manoff and Brian McWhorter attended an infamous performance of the Osvaldo Golijov’s Sidereus by the Eugene Symphony Orchestra in Eugene, Oregon. The duo’s story – that they recognized substantial sections of another piece, Michael Ward-Bergeman’s Barbeich, in Mr. Golijov’s work – has, by now, practically become legend in music circles. Nearly every outlet covering Classical Music in the country, from The New Yorker to various individuals’ twitter feeds, have focused heavily on the ethics of Mr. Golijov’s musical borrowing. To me, the question of whether what Mr. Golijov did is right or wrong doesn’t
Read more[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5oOj1EKSS6M[/youtube] This has got to be a first. Luis Andrei Cobo is offering his services to compose a grand opera to the highest Ebay bidder. For $150,000 you can buy a grand opera over 2 hours in length. Cobo estimates that he’ll need 2 years of full-time work to complete the project, so $75K/year will enable him to maintain the lifestyle to which he has become accustomed as a software programmer. Don’t have $150K? That’s OK, he’s open to other offers. For as little as $32,000 he will write a half-hour long chamber opera for 3 to 5 singers. The
Read moreSeems like it’s been a while since we had some Golijov bashing (and defending) on our site. What do you think about this story about a Eugene Symphony premiere, with its disturbing allegations of extended theft of another composer’s work? The reporter doesn’t mention that Golijov’s m.o. these days is to collaborate with pop/folk musicians, making the question of authorship in works such as Ayre particularly murky. Nevertheless, if nearly 50% of the work is music by another composer, shouldn’t that composer get a conspicuous co-credit on the composition? Golijov does credit his collaborators, but you usually have to dig down
Read moreOn Sunday, February 19, Pulitzer Prize-winning composer David Lang brought his music to Samuelson Chapel for the 10th Annual New Music Concert at California Lutheran University. The concert was well-attended and performed by the students, faculty and friends of the CLU music department. David Lang participated in a Q&A session with department chairman Wyant Morton and offered a number of observations on his life as a composer and how it had changed – mostly for the better – by winning the Pulitzer. His easy conversational style and helpful remarks about his music connected well with the audience. The concert opened
Read moreSome of the arts organizations in New York are venerable establishments. Others may be relative newcomers, but take little time to install themselves as intrinsic parts of the music scene. It has only been here since the early aughts, but many of New York’s performers and concertgoers would have a hard time envisioning musical life here without the countless collaborations and imaginative programs brought to fruition at the modest-sized, yet mightily influential, Austrian Cultural Forum. ACF begins its tenth season with a celebration: a concert this Friday at Bohemian Hall: a more commodious space. At Bohemian Hall, they have an enlightened take on
Read moreVicky Chow performing with Ekmeles at the Avant Festival about a year ago; 2/12/11 (Photo courtesy of Avant Media) Celebrating John Cage at 100 Avant Music Festival The Wild Project, NYC February 11th, 2012 The Wild Project (a tiny venue that is kind of like The Stone with bleachers) is where the Avant Music Festival is going on from now (it started on Fri, Feb 10) until Saturday the 18th. This is the third annual festival, and on this particular night, I witnessed a program that I never dreamed I would have been able to sit through when I was
Read moreChamber Music America has announced the following spring grant opportunities. · New Jazz Works: Commissioning and Ensemble Development offers support for the creation and performance of new chamber works by U.S. jazz ensembles. This program also funds activities that extend the life of the work and encourages the development of career-related business skills. Deadline: March 9, 2012 · Classical Commissioning provides support to U.S. ensembles and presenters for commissions of new chamber works. Grants are made for commissioning fees, copying costs and ensemble rehearsal honoraria. Compositions must be written for small ensembles (2 to 10 musicians) performing one to a
Read moreWe in the West like to think that music is a series of narrative events about me. How did I, the composer or performer, feel today? Was I happy or sad? It’s more or less high drama all the time and the romantic tradition is, of course, all about the individual. In the East things are different. Or are they? These ideas came to mind when I caught the the Silk Road Ensemble Iranian kamancheh (spike fiddle) virtuoso Kayhan Kalhor and his drummer Behrouz Jamali, on tombak, performing a demanding 88 minute intermission-less program of Persian classical music, which the
Read moreHe looked like a movie star, perfectly handsome and so elegant in every way. As a kid growing up in Cleveland with parents in the orchestra there under the great George Szell, I heard Rudolf Firkušný play almost every season. I remember several Mozart and Beethoven concerti, Dvořák, Janáček and Martinů, always played with great beauty of sound and unimpeachable conviction and style. Rudolf Firkušný was a remarkable artist. Superb touch and sense of rhythm, and such a beautiful line was always evident in his playing. I remember as a child splashing with him in the pool in Aspen,
Read more