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

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

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

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

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

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

[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

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