Another composer interview from our favorite “reporter-at-large-when-she-isn’t-being-a-famed-virtuoso”, Hilary Hahn as part of her “In 27 Pieces: The Hilary Hahn Encores” series. This time it’s a chat with Indian composer/violinist Kala Ramnath, about her encore piece that Hilary will perform in a concert this coming January: [youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E5lLLF-6d-8[/youtube]>
Read moreBy now, I imagine most everyone in Sequenza21’s audience has learned that Elliott Carter passed away yesterday at the age of 103. Basically every news outlet covering music has already run a retrospective on Carter (except for Sequenza21, ironically). I don’t exactly intend to add to the din of the New York Times‘, Alex Ross‘, or NPR‘s or whomever-your-music-writer-of-choice’s reflections on Carter, but, as a community of composers and thoughtful listeners, whose tastes either align with Carter’s work or the music that was influenced by or reacted against him, we can honor his fresh memory by sharing our experiences with
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Chamber Music, Classical Music, Commissions, Composers, Concerts, Contemporary Classical, Flute, Piano
The critically-acclaimed Palisades Virtuosi presents a very special 10th Anniversary Concert – the first concert of their 2012-2013 season on Friday, November 9 – 8:00 PM at the Unitarian Society of Ridgewood, 113 Cottage Place in Ridgewood, New Jersey. The evening will also include a pre-concert composer and performer talk at 7:15. Flutist Margaret Swinchoski, clarinetist Donald Mokrynski and pianist Ron Levy began their series of concerts in Ridgewood, New Jersey in 2003, when there were relatively few works composed for their instrumentation. So, their “Mission to Commission” was born. 10 seasons later, there are an additional 60 works of concert
Read moreAt an early point in Yaron Zilberman’s new film A Late Quartet, Peter Mitchell (Christopher Walken) the cellist and father figure of a world renowned string quartet, explains Beethoven’s Opus 131 to his students: “It has seven movements and they’re all connected. For us, it means playing without pause; no resting, no tuning. Our instruments must, in time, go out of tune–each in its own quite different way. Was he trying to point some cohesion, some unity, between random acts of life? What are we supposed to do? Stop? Or struggle to continuously adjust to each other until the end?”
Read more…and the results were not good… One of the brightest small labels for new music in the last 4-5 years has been NYC’s New Amsterdam Records. Founded by Judd Greenstein, Sarah Kirkland Snider, and William Brittelle, its catalog is full of some of the best young, fresh composers working today, performed by a bevy of equally fresh & talented players. This label has quickly risen to the forefront in capturing and disseminating the newer American scene. All of that hard work has unfortunately just gotten a lot harder; Their offices are in the Redhook area of New York City, and weren’t dealt kindly with by Hurricane Sandy.
Read moreI thought I would let everyone here at Sequenza 21 know about Bunita Marcus’ 60th birthday celebration tomorrow at 3:00pm at Roulette in Brooklyn. This will also be the US premiere release of the recording cooperative Testklang’s debut CD/DVD/Art object, all based on the music of Bunita Marcus. Anyone interested in the S.E.M. Ensemble’s “Beyond Cage” festival should definitely check this show out. Marcus’ music dedicated to both John Cage and Morton Feldman will be performed. On this program, Testklang’s pianist Marc Tritschler will perform works from the CD/DVD as well as the ever-popular “Julia,” based on John Lennon’s song
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Composers, Concert review, Conductors, Contemporary Classical, Criticism, Festivals, Orchestral, Twentieth Century Composer
Just before intermission of the opening concert of the Beyond Cage Festival on October 22, I pulled out my iPhone to see if the Giants were beating the Cardinals for the National League Pennant, and was disoriented to see that it was 9:49pm. It seemed like there must have been a massive network malfunction, because the extraordinary performance of Atlas Ecpliticalis with Winter Music that I and the rest of the audience had fervently applauded could not possibly have gone on for an hour and forty-five minutes. The duration had felt assuredly like a leisurely performance of an early Romantic
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Classical Music, Concerts, Music Events, Orchestral, Orchestras, Philadelphia, Philadelphia Orchestra
Last Thursday evening, just before the lights dimmed at the Kimmel Center’s Verizon Hall, the audience purred in anticipation of the evening’s forthcoming concert. Tonight was to be a momentous occasion – the official inaugural concert with Yannick Nézet-Séguin being installed as Music Director. I expected a concert full of classical music royalty highlighting the event as one of the most important in the Philadelphia Orchestra’s history. What was delivered was an all-around humble performance delivered by, as Mayor Michael Nutter of Philadelphia introduced them, the “greatest orchestra in the world” – the Philadelphia Orchestra.
Read more“You are entitled to your own opinion, but you are not entitled to your own facts.” – Sen. Daniel Patrick Moynihan For the past several election cycles, a cottage industry of fact-checkers emerges from their pumpkin patches each fall to assess the credibility of candidates’ claims. One of most-quoted of these, FactCheck.org, is affiliated with my alma mater. These groups’ findings are not only cited by the media but are also used by partisans of both Presidential candidates. And while neither the press nor the candidates are free to plagiarize the articles produced by fact-checkers, the facts themselves are fair
Read moreThe Dutch composer/performer/poet Samuel Vriezen and I go waaay back on the web, to a time when musicians found each other and some musical conversation on the old Usenet newsgroups. In the dozen-plus years since that time, I’ve watched Samuel be pretty darn active on all kinds of fronts: producing concerts, composing a wonderful body of music, writing and translating poetry… He’s even been invited over this way to the U.S. a few times for presentations of his work. Samuel’s own musical inclinations have evolved since his time in university, but for a long while now what really interests him
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