It’s my pleasure to pass on a terrific piece, written for S21, by Daniel Levitin.  In addition to teaching at McGill University and being a real mensch, Levitin is the best-selling author of “This is Your Brain on Music,” which I personally recommend to all.  Below,  he gives us a look at his new book “The World in Six Songs:  How the Musical Brain Created Human Nature.”   — David Salvage .      .      .      .      .      . It is unlikely that either language or music were invented by a single innovator or at a single place and time; rather, they were shaped by a large number

Thanks very much to everyone who submitted scores. All of us were very impressed by the overall quality of the submissions. The selected compositions in alphabetical order by composer are: Samuel Andreyev Passages Rusty Banks Taxonomy Galen Brown And Carthage Must Be Destroyed Alex Kotch Reduce, Ruse, Recycle Rodney Lister “The Mockingbird” from Songs from “The Bat Poet” Jeremy Podgursky Nonsense or Sorcery?#%*! David Salvage Violin Routine Samuel Vriezen 2 Suites The concerts will take place December 1st at Waltz Café, Astoria, NY, and at the Good Shepherd Church, New York, NY on December 5th. Doing the honors is the Lost

Harris passed away this week.  He and I were in the PhD Composition program at CUNY, admitted the same year–though he decided to go to CalArts first.  I scarcely knew him or his music.  But I remember walking to the subway with him sometime in the spring of 2004.  He was explaining to me how much he liked his fold-up bike.  If I recall correctly, Harris said he had two.

From composer Paul Laino. [youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VSasEp1-j1Q[/youtube] And don’t forget: the S21 concert submission postmark deadline is one week from today.  Fire me an e-mail; Pierrot or subsets thereof. 

Further proof Xenakis was an alien.

Track three of Lullaby for my Favorite Insomniac, the latest album from the Ahn Trio, is a piano trio arrangement of “My Funny Valentine;” track sixteen is also “My Funny Valentine,” but this time with electronica beats and Korean rap thrown in. Track eleven is “This is not America” by David Bowie, Pat Metheny, and Jürgen Dahmen; so is track fifteen, but Superdrive calls it “This is America Mix.” There’s also some Susie Suh, Astor Piazzolla, Michael Nyman, and three new pieces by Kenji Bunch. The album is casual, eclectic, and cool–but don’t call it “crossover:” according to the group’s

I move that the role of Al Gore be essayed by the entire La Scala Opera Chorus!  Wait . . . no:  Anna Netrebko–who wouldn’t drive a Prius for her? . . . No–I got it now: a dancer on stage who doesn’t sing! (ala Death in Venice) . . . hmm, but maybe that’s how “Global Warming” should be portrayed.   Heck, I don’t know.  But there better be a horse in this damn thing, ‘else I’m not going!

I always walk around with a guilty conscience. My inbox gets loaded all the time with press releases and so forth, and I’m a bit stingy about passing on the goods. Let’s give this another try by way of redemption. SoCal’s S21 readers might want to check out RedBox, an experimental music series held the third Thursday of every month at the Steve Allen Theater in Hollywood. A bunch of groups with achingly hip names are performing this summer. Tickets are only $10. Here’s a composition competition in Finland. Dust off your small orchestra piece and see if you can

Think you’re too cool for Facebook? Not any more you’re not. S21 has put the freeze on the Internet’s leading social networking site.  Get over there and join the Sequenza21 Facebook Group!   Members will get a taste of the awesome powers at hand to those on the inside of S21.  Oh yeah!  AWEsome powers. C’mon.  You know you wanna. (AWESOME!) All right, back to interval cycles and Kurtag.  Sigh.

Sequenza21 is pleased to scoop the rest of the world wide web and announce the most exciting news of the day in the world of new music. On December 4 and 5, the Lost Dog Ensemble, in residence with the Astoria Music Society, will be playing a concert of . . . works by Sequenza21 composers!! The December 4 concert will be in Astoria at the very hip Waltz-Astoria Café, and the following night we’ll be at the Good Shepherd Presbyterian Church on Manhattan’s Upper West Side (right by Lincoln Center –– an institution that will certainly be feeling a