Author: Jerry Bowles

Chamber Music, Classical Music, Composers, Contemporary Classical, Festivals

Man of the Week–Lawrence Dillon

It’s a monster week for our gaucho amigo Lawrence Dillon whose music will be showcased at the Music Now Fest 2007, February 21, 22 and 23 at Eastern Michigan University.  This is EMU’s 15th biennial new music festival and it gets underway on Wednesday at 8 pm with a concert of pieces by EMU composers Whitney Prince and Anthony Iannaccone as well as works by Steve Reich, Alberto Ginastera and others. Faculty artists include David Pierce, Willard Zirk, Garik Pedersen, John Dorsey, Kimberly Cole-Luevano, Kristy Meretta, Julie Stone, Kathryn Goodson and guest Cary Kocher.

On Thursday, there will a composer convocation and welcome at 11 AM at Pease Auditorium where Mister Dillon will speak about “Furies and Muses: Composing in the 21st Century.”  (My money’s on the Furies.) The lecture will be followed by open student ensemble rehearsals with Dillon and the EMU Symphony Orchestra and University Choir.  Open rehearsals with the Wind Symphony and Symphonic Band are scheduled for Friday.

On Thursday night at 8 pm, there will be a faculty recital of the chamber music of Lawrence Dillon, including the aforementioned Furies and Muses, Dunigan Variations, Big Brothers and Facade. Winning composition(s) in the New Chamber Works for Horn competition will be premiered by sponsor Willard Zirk.

On Friday, there is a Meet the composer gig in the afternoon followed by the Festival finale a 8 pm–a concert by EMU’s major performing ensembles who will play Dillon’s Blown Away and Amadeus ex machina. Other works include Ogoun Badagris by Christopher Rouse; Spiel by Ernst Toch, Symphonic Band; and a piece by Anthony Iannaccone.

Presumably, on Saturday, Lawrence will go home and take a nap.

by Jerry Bowles
Contemporary Classical

Reading the Saturday Paper

Gordon Wright, a conductor who championed obscure composers and made music across the chilly climes of Alaska as founder of the Arctic Chamber Orchestra, was found dead on Wednesday on the porch of his cabin in Indian, Alaska. He was 72. [more]

In the autumn of her life, decades after she had last performed in public, the British pianist Joyce Hatto was rediscovered by a small group of musicians and critics who contended that her recordings of Chopin, Rachmaninoff, Liszt and others ranked alongside those of the 20th century’s most exceptional virtuosos…But now Ms. Hatto’s reputation for excellence and originality has been shaken by a charge of plagiarism. Gramophone, the London music monthly, has presented evidence that several of the recordings issued under her name were in fact copied from recordings of the same music by other pianists. [more]

“The Fly” is about to become an opera.  [more]

by Jerry Bowles
Contemporary Classical

An Interview With Golijov

On Sunday, Argentinean composer Osvaldo Golijov won two 2007 Grammy awards—Best Opera Recording and Best Contemporary Classical Composition—for his opera, Ainadamar (Fountain Of Tears) starring soprano Dawn Upshaw and the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra with conductor Robert Spano. In August of last year, WGBH  Classics in the Morning host Cathy Fuller sat down with Golijov at his home in Brookline, MA and discussed this award winning opera, his first. This exclusive, in-depth interview—complete with excerpts from the moving opera—can be heard online at wgbh.org/osvaldo.

Ainadamer tells the story of dramatist Federico García Lorca and his muse, Catalan stage actress Margarita Xirgu (in a twist, Lorca is played by a woman) and incorporates Arab, Jewish, and flamenco elements.

Classics in the Morning with Cathy Fuller airs weekdays, 9am-12noon on 89.7 FM in New England and streams live worldwide at wgbh.org/classical.

by Jerry Bowles
Contemporary Classical

Guilty Pleasures

We’re having an ice storm in the Center of the Universe this morning.  Good day to be old and vested although it’s not really the thrill you think it’s going to be.  Especially the old part.

The last time Master Salvage and I took a meeting in the S21 Starbucks HQ the subject of guilty pleasures came up.  You know what I mean, Steve and Eydie, Karen Carpenter, Alvin and the Chipmunks.  But, applied to non-pop music.  David confessed that there were parts of certain Michael Nyman pieces that sound pretty darn good.  I owned up to an affection for Hovhaness.  Now, it’s your turn.  What’s your guilty pleasure.

I sure hope nobody says Philip Glass.  I’m listening right now to a new recording of Music with Changing Parts (Orange Mountain)  by the brilliant English group Icebreaker.  No need to be embarassed about liking this one; it’s as good as it gets.

by Jerry Bowles
Awards, Classical Music, Contemporary Classical, Grammy

And the Winners (We Care About) Are

  • Classical Vocal Performance: “Rilke Songs,” Lorraine Hunt Lieberson (Peter Serkin), track from Lieberson: Rilke Songs, The Six Realms, Horn Concerto.
  • Classical Contemporary Composition: “Golijov: Ainadamar: Fountain of Tears,” Osvaldo Golijov (Robert Spano).
  • Opera Recording: “Golijov: Ainadamar: Fountain of Tears,” Robert Spano, conductor, Kelley O’Connor and Dawn Upshaw; Valerie Gross and Sid McLauchlan, producers (Women of the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra Chorus, Atlanta Symphony Orchestra).
  • Producer of the Year, Classical: Elaine Martone.
  • Classical Album: “Mahler: Symphony No. 7,” Michael Tilson Thomas, conductor, Andreas Neubronner, producer (San Francisco Symphony).
    Classical Crossover Album: “Simple Gifts,” Bryn Terfel (London Voices; London Symphony Orchestra).
  • Engineered Album, Classical: “Elgar: Enigma Variations; Britten: the Young Person’s Guide to the Orchestra, Four Sea Interludes,” Michael Bishop, engineer (Paavo Jarvi and Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra).
    Orchestral Performance: “Mahler: Symphony No. 7,” Michael Tilson Thomas, conductor (San Francisco Symphony).
  • Choral Performance: “Part: Da Pacem,” Paul Hillier, conductor (Estonian Philharmonic Chamber Choir).
  • Instrumental Soloist(s) Performance(with Orchestra): “Messiaen: Oiseaux Exotiques (Exotic Birds),” John McLaughlin Williams, conductor; Angelin Chang (Cleveland Chamber Symphony).
  • Instrumental Soloist Performance(without Orchestra): “Chopin: Nocturnes,” Maurizio Pollini.
  • Chamber Music Performance: “Intimate Voices,” Emerson String Quartet
  • Small Ensemble Performance: “Padilla: Sun of Justice,” Peter Rutenberg, conductor (Los Angeles Chamber Singers’ Cappella).
by Jerry Bowles
Contemporary Classical

Gian Carlo Menotti, 95

Gian Carlo Menotti died today at a hospital in Monaco. He was 95.  In the days before television became a total waste of time, NBC commissioned him to write the first opera specifically for the new medium.  For many years, Amahl and the Night Visitors was played every year at Christmas and it introduced millions of people, including me, to the idea of opera.  I haven’t heard it for years and thus have no adult opinion of whether it is good or not but it was a very good thing for NBC and Menotti to have done. 

by Jerry Bowles
Contemporary Classical, Piano

Hugh Sung’s Magical Mystery Tour

Our favorite techno-geek pianist Hugh Sung has come up with a really neat new way to integrate live music with dynamic imagery, animations, and synchronized video clips, all of which can be controlled by the performing musician directly a simple foot-switch.  Think Arditti Quartet meets the Joshua Light Show.  (Perhaps too old a reference for most of you.)  Hugh calls his system the Visual Recital which seems as good a name as any.

You can catch Hugh’s next Visual Recital live on Saturday night at the Darlington Arts Center, 977 Shavertown Road, Boothwyn, PA
(610-358-3632) or if you can’t make it you can watch this sample clip from “Vernacular Dance No. 1” by S21 blogger Charles B. Griffin: 

[youtube]vW4ud9k9-x8[/youtube]

by Jerry Bowles
Composers, Contemporary Classical

Philip Glass at 70–Undervalued or Not?

Philip Glass turns 70 today and it seems to me he is doing so without much of the hoopla that surrounded Steve Reich’s attainment of that milestone a few months back.  No mention of the event in today’s New York Times and Google News turns up only a brief note about a birthday concert in Nashville.  Underwhelming reaction for a man who is America’s best-known living composer and one whose music is so widely available in so many forms–CDs, films, concerts and so on.

Part of the problem, it seems to me, is that Glass had written so much music that critics assume that it must be uneven in quality and, of course, that is certainly true.  But, like the work of Martinu, (another busy little beaver) Glass’ seconds are better than most composers’ first. 

Whatever it is, Glass is generally undervalued by the critics and music directors and that’s a shame because he has (according to some critics whose work I respect) been doing some of his best composing in years lately.  When his new opera Waiting for the Barberians opened in Austin last weekend, the reviews were considerably better than they have been for a long time:  “Some of [Glass’s] most agile, vivid music,” wrote Steve Smith for The New York Times, “setting scenes with a genuinely impressive emotional specificity.” Mark Swed said in The Los Angeles Times that “Barbarians is a sad, shocking and painfully pensive story … Glass’s music, commercially successful, long ago lost its ability to shock. But he can still write melancholic, wistfully pensive music — and better than ever.”  

Another new Glass opera, Appomattox, will debut next October at the San Francisco Opera.

So, here’s today’s Cafferty File question:  Is Philip Glass overrated, underrated, or fairly valued?  I want an up or down answer from everybody. 

by Jerry Bowles
Uncategorized

Lean Tuesday

While we’re all sitting around waiting for the big event (Can you guess what day tomorrow is, boys and girls?), let’s talk about movies.  I’ve only seen two of the Academy Award nominees–Letters From Iwo Jima, which is almost great and has some haunting, low-key music by Clint Eastwood’s son, Kyle and the alleged comedy Little Miss Sunshine, which is the single most depressing movie I have ever seen and that includes To Live, The Ballad of Narayama and the one about the Guatamalan kids crawling through the sewer across the Mexican border and being bitten by rats and one of them dies. 

For some reason, Barbaro’s death touched me deeply.  I wrote something about it here.

by Jerry Bowles