What are you doing? 

@alma   Wassup, Tweeps! G. conducting 2nd 2nite. Goes on 4ever. Stuck at home w/ Evl Sis. Boorrring.   about1 hour ago from web

@AlexZ Did u show him my score yet? Did he like it? How much did he like it? Loved it, I bet. about 59 minutes ago from TweetDeck

@gropius Tx, God, u’re there, A. We r in bg trble. Must speak 2 u urg. G. has been talking about us 2 nut case Freud. It’ll be all ovr Vienna. about 59 minutes ago from TweetBerry

@alma OMG. I thought u were the only one G. didn’t know abt already. about 58 minutes ago from web

@ AlexZ Which part didn’t he like? I can re-write it. Always happy 2 do a re-write. about 57 minutes hour ago from TweetDeck

@gropius Crazy bastard said I had an edifice complex. Thinks he’s Woody Allen. about 55 minutes ago from TweetBerry

@ AlexZ I’ll bet it was the 2nd movmnt. Was it the 2nd movmnt? about 55 minutes hour ago from TweetDeck

@alma WTF? Gustav said what about an edifice? about 54 minutes hour ago from web

@gropius No, no, tweetkin. Freud said it. Thinks he’s a comedian. Use 2 work the Salzkammerguts in the summers before he stumbled in2 the psychobabble racket. about 52 minutes hour ago from TweetBerry

@werfel Does he know about me? about 50 minutes hour ago from web

@klimt Thought u were going 2 get the sister fired. Did you tell him she steals like I suggested? about 49 minutes ago from TweetDeck

@ AlexZ Maybe that little coda at the 2 minute mark? I knew that was weak. I was planning 2 re-write that part this evening. Going 2 start on it now. about 48 minutes hour ago from TweetDeck

@alma B cool @gropius. G. sleeps most of the time when he’s not conducting or working on his 6th Poor man, so tired I have 2 keep reminding him 2 put the Scherzo before the Andante. Maybe he won’t hear anything and I can bribe Evl Sis not 2 rat. about 45 minutes hour ago from web

@alma Aside 2 @werfel It’s ok, tweetheart. I havn’t met u yet. (And don’t tell @gropius) about 44 minutes hour ago from web

@klimt Put some of ur jewels in her purse and confront her in front of G. when she goes out. about 43 minutes ago from TweetDeck

@gropius Might work. If he asks about me, tell him I’ve been away in Weimar most of the time starting a new school…the Bauhaus or something like that. about 42 minutes ago from TweetBerry

@AlexZ I knew it. He hated it, didn’t he? You can tell me. I can take it. about 40 minutes ago from TweetDeck

@klimt BTW, Adele  has a cold. Can you pose for me on Thursday? You can leave your clothes on this time. LOL. about 43 minutes ago from TweetDeck

@alma Oops. Evl Sis is coming up the stairs. Gotta scurry. Tweeting out. about 40 minutes ago from web

@ AlexZ Wait. Can I drop off my new sonata 2morrow morning? about 40 minutes ago from TweetDeck

Okay, let’s put it another way.  How important is a top-of-the-line musical education to success as a composer?

Can a composer who went to, say, Houston Baptist University, Western Michigan University, and the University of Iowa be as good as your typical Sequenza21 Eli?

I ask the question because I was listening to WNYC2 (the best source of contemporary music on the Internet, if you don’t know already–playing Tehillim right now) and I heard a terrific piece called Edges by a composer named Luke Dahn, whom I’d never heard of before.  Awfully damned good piece.  So I googled him and discovered that his resume matches my hypothetical resume above.  Before you start with the “elitist” shit storm, let me say that I went to Marshall and West Virginia University and I’m sure that all of the places Dahn went have excellent music departments. But, they ain’t Julliard.

There’s a nice sample of his work here.

And so it came to pass that our Gaucho Amigo Marvin Rosen was abidin’ over his flock in a starry meadow high in the Cuspadores when an angel appeared unto him and said:  “Marvin, remember last year when you did that fabulous 24-hour music marathon on WPRB in Princeton — available around the world via the miracle of the Internet?  Man, that was cool.  You ought to do it again.”  And lo, Marvin agreed and the time and date were set.

I’ll wait while you get a pencil.

The second Marvin Rosen Post-Christmas Classical Discoveries The Hits Keep Coming Musical Marathon begins at 6:00 am Friday, December 26 and continues through (you guessed it) 6:00 am Saturday the 27th.  Marvin will play lots of our kind of music and some surprise guests will be dropping by [like in September of 2007, when this photo of S21 ringmeister Jerry Bowles, NewMusicBox honcho Frank J. Oteri and Marvin hiswunnerful self was taken — ed.].

If I had written this up earlier, you might have been able to submit your own work for possible airplay (assuming it is clear for broadcast, meaning no MP3).  But, I forgot.  Sorry.

But, you can still make recommendations for things for Marvin to play.  My suggestion is that Marvin put on John Cage’s As Slow as Possible and go home and take a nap.  What would you like to hear?

Gilbert Kaplan is a Wall Street billionaire who has devoted much of his idle rich time over the past 30 years to studying and conducting Mahler’s great Second Symphony.  It has become his passion, one might even say his “Rosebud” if one were unkind (as we most certainly are not).  He has led some of the world’s best symphony orchestras through its rigorous paces more than 100 times at last count and while the Resurrection itself seems to have suffered no permanent damage, the reaction to Mr. Kaplan’s conducting has been decidedly mixed.  Not bad enough to be really awful in an interesting way (like, say, William Friedkin’s remake of Wages of Fear) or good enough to rise above mediocre.  Kaplan’s money usually assures a polite acceptance.

But, no mas — not in this age of the tell-all blogger.  David Finlayson of the New York Philharmonic had the courage to say what others have merely thought.   And, today’s Center of the Universe Times picks up the thread in this piece by Daniel J. Wakin.

As a topic of further discussion, can anyone think of other “amateurs” who have made a difference — good or bad — to serious music.  

We are tardy in adding our voice to the vast chorus of congratulations that have greeted Elliott Carter’s attainment of centenarian status.  Getting old is not in itself an achievement, but what makes Mr. Carter’s milestone all the more remarkable is that he remains so amazingly productive and healthy in mind and body.  He has produced more music in the last decade than most composers do in a lifetime and his work has become deeper, richer and more complex (some would say unlistenable) with the passage of time.   We can’t top Willard Scott but we do want to do a respectful shout-out to our man, Elli.  

Our friends at NPR have a terrific article with some sound samples. 

There an excellent conversation with Carter, Daniel Barenboim, James Levine and Charlie Rose here.

The Library of Congress Music Division has an extensive collection of digitized holograph music manuscripts by Carter. 

Stephen Soderberg’s tribute is here.

And, of course, Carter now has his own MySpace page.

Hot off the…ur presses.  Australian Brett Dean has won the 2009 Grawemeyer Award for Music Composition for his violin concerto The Lost Art of Letter Writing (2006; if you have RealPlayer installed you can hear a couple minutes of it here, as well as a podcast interview with Dean himself). The Grawemeyer Award, granted annually by the University of Louisville, is the world’s most prestigious composition prize—worth $200,000—and  Dean is the first composer from Oz to win the award. Dean’s The Lost Art of Letter Writing was selected from a field of 145 entries worldwide, and the Grawemeyer’s prize announcement describes the concerto as “a wonderful solo vehicle that also contains terrific writing for orchestra.”

“The writing of music is a solitary process, and one spends a lot of time immersed in one’s own internal sound world,” says Dean.  “A prize is an acknowledgement that one’s work is not only being heard, but appreciated in the big, wide world outside of one’s own studio. But I can think of no prize which represents a more significant acknowledgement of this kind than the Grawemeyer Award. To read the names of the award’s previous winners, and to know that my own work will stand alongside the work of these legendary musicians that I admire so greatly, is a humbling and moving experience.”

We’re not the kind of folks to say “we told you so” but our founding publisher Duane Harper Grant spotted Dean as a comer way back in 2000 and did an interview with him for Sequenza21.  Here’s what we wrote at the time in the introduction:  “Unless you follow the Berlin Philharmonic or the Australian classical music scene or have stumbled into the late night underground experimental music scene in Berlin or onto one of his very hard to find recordings, you may never heard of Brett Dean (b. 1961).  But, you will.  You will.”  The interview is here.  (more…)

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a1ThSi1wbqU[/youtube]

Our buddy Frank J. Oteri’s seldom seen bluegrass band, The String Messengers, will be pickin’ and grinnin’ tonight at the Cornelia Street Cafe, commencing at 8 pm.  The whole clan’ll be there: Frank J. York, Mandola Joe, their younger brothers Ratzo, Jeff, and Jon, as well as Uncle Murphy.

Opening up for the Messengers will be Frank’s new trio Tonally Perplexed which will introduce you to keys you never knew existed featuring Ratzo on bass and effects, Jeff on prepared guitar and Frank on the 205-tone-per-octave tonal plexus.

Admission is $10 plus a one-drink minimum but the bar is well-stocked (great taps, great wines, wide variety of spirits) and the food is also fabulous. Cornelia Street Cafe is located on 29 Cornelia Street (a tiny street that juts out of the southwest corner of West 4th Street and Avenue of the Americas, a.k.a. 6th Avenue and deadends on Bleecker Street). It is in close proximity to the A,B,C,D,E,F,V West 4th Street subway station as well as the Christopher Street 1 train station. 

Here’s a look at the boys in action during a previous visit to the Big City:

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TzK0739QQqQ[/youtube]

On December 9, 11, 12 and 13, the Brooklyn Academy of Music (BAM) will present Lightning at our feet, The Ridge Theater and Michael Gordon’s multimedia song cycle inspired by Emily Dickinson. Co-commissioned by Cynthia Woods Mitchell Center for the Arts at the University of Houston and BAM for the 2008 Next Wave Festival, this work reunites Michael Gordon and The Ridge Theater, the creative team behind the critically-acclaimed Decasia (2001): Bill Morrison (films), Laurie Olinder (projections) and Bob McGrath (stage direction). Lightning at our feet straddles arts genres, giving Dickinson’s poetry mobility in music while encompassing her words in a world of visual imagery. 

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ItD4M5qcpYY[/youtube]