Author: Polly Moller

Polly Moller is a composer, performer, improviser, performance artist, and curator based in Oakland, California, USA. She practices a lot, writes many grant proposals, drinks a lot of mochas, and serves on the Board of Directors of Outsound Presents.
Awards, Choral Music, Commissions, Composers, Contemporary Classical, San Francisco, Women composers

Composers get big nods from Gerbode and Hewlett Foundations

When the 2010 Composer Collaboration Awards call for proposals went out on May 10, 2010, music presenters, ensembles, and composers all over the San Francisco Bay Area called, paged, and emailed one another, then got together to put their dream projects down on paper in time for the deadline. Today the staff and Boards of six organizations, their chosen composers, and their artistic collaborators are popping champagne corks and dancing around their offices.  They’ve received $75,000 each from the Wallace Alexander Gerbode Foundation and the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation, to make six world premieres. Cabrillo Festival of Contemporary Music

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by Polly Moller
Ambient, Conferences, Experimental Music, San Francisco

We return to Now, already in progress

I first heard about the Long Now Foundation a couple years ago from friend and former bandmate Daniel Magazin. I remember visiting their web site and thinking that San Francisco was the perfect place for such an entity.  “The Long Now Foundation hopes to provide counterpoint to today’s “faster/cheaper” mind set and promote “slower/better” thinking,” the web site declares.  “We hope to creatively foster responsibility in the framework of the next 10,000 years.” Such a perspective seems custom-made to partner with the minimalist and conceptual streams of contemporary music.  UK-based artist, musician, and composer Jem Finer thought so too. He

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by Polly Moller
Chamber Music, Composers, Contemporary Classical, Other Minds, San Francisco

Other Minds seeks Composer Fellows

If, like me, you’re a composer and you routinely ask yourself “What am I doing six months from now?  Can I get something on the calendar?”, Other Minds has a suggestion – especially if you have a piece on the shelf for flute, Bb clarinet or bass clarinet, violin, cello or some combo thereof.  Or if you’re eager to write a new one, knowing that the players involved could be the Other Minds or Navitas Ensembles. And if, like me, you’d rather be on stage than squirming out in the audience the whole time, you have the option to perform

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by Polly Moller
Concerts, Contemporary Classical, Events, Festivals, Improv, San Francisco

It’s that time of year again.

The beginning of June has taken on a certain meaning to the San Francisco Bay Area new music community, and every single one of us would erase that meaning if we could.  It’s once again time for the Matthew Sperry Memorial Festival, held every year around this time in memory of one of our own, lost to us in a tragic accident on June 5, 2003. The eighth annual festival happens this week, and the theme is “Homegrown”, since organizers are taking a break from the out-of-town headliners who’ve graced the event each year up till now. First up, on

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by Polly Moller
Choral Music, Commissions, Conductors, Contemporary Classical, Grammy, San Francisco, Women composers

They really didn’t plan it this way…

A year ago at this time, Susan McMane, Artistic Director of the San Francisco Girls Chorus, had no idea what a hot-button issue immigration would be in June 2010.  For her, the works of immigrant composers formed a compelling programmatic mix for her five-time Grammy-winning ensemble’s concert series, which she’d entitled A New Land, A New Song. Now, in the midst of nonstop political debate and a deployment of additional National Guard troops to the border, SFGC will celebrate the contributions of immigrant composers to the choral music oeuvre.  Composers come literally from all over the map, from Russia with

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by Polly Moller
Composers, Concerts, Contemporary Classical, Festivals, Interviews, Music Events, Other Minds, Premieres, San Francisco

Let’s Ask Gyan Riley

The 15th Other Minds Festival kicks off this evening, offering San Francisco a three-day immersion in contemporary music from around the world.  One of the locals headlining this year is Gyan Riley, who’ll premiere his new quartet work commissioned by Other Minds, entitled When Heron Sings Blue. Equally well known as a classical guitar virtuoso and as a composer, Gyan will take on his own guitar part in the quartet on the third festival night, joined by his Gyan Riley Trio bandmates Timb Harris (violin & viola) and Scott Amendola (percussion).   Electric bassist Michael Manring will complete the quartet.

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by Polly Moller
Composers, Concerts, Contemporary Classical, Events, Festivals, Interviews, Other Minds, San Francisco, Violin, Women composers

Let’s Ask Lisa Bielawa

2009 Frederic A. Juilliard/Walter Damrosch Rome Prize winner Lisa Bielawa has returned to her hometown of San Francisco to take part in the 2010 Other Minds festival. Her piece, Kafka Songs, will close the first night of the festival on Thursday, March 4th.  Violinist, vocalist and rock star Carla Kihlstedt, for whom Kafka Songs was written, will perform.  OM 15 takes place at the Jewish Community Center of San Francisco, and tickets can be purchased online here. Despite her whirlwind schedule leading up to the festival, Lisa was able to take time out to answer a few of my questions.

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by Polly Moller
Chamber Music, Composers, Concerts, Contemporary Classical, San Francisco

Unwrapping Small Packages on a Saturday Night

I like to plan ahead.  But does that just mean I’m too old to decide where I’m going at the last minute, like the Generation Y and Z impulsives we hear so much about at arts participation conferences?  You know, the ones who don’t know where they’re going until somebody they’re following tweets their destination on the night of? Mid-life insecurities and fuddy-duddiness aside, I know where I’ll be this coming Saturday evening: in the San Francisco Conservatory of Music’s sweet new Concert Hall, taking in new short works by ten local composers, all presided over grandly by Gyorgy Ligeti’s

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by Polly Moller
Contemporary Classical, Experimental Music, Interviews, San Francisco

Let’s Ask Matt Davignon

Experimental music impresario Matt Davignon is known all over the San Francisco Bay Area for organizing unusual music performances.  In addition to being responsible for such events as the San Francisco Found Objects Festival, he’s a member of the Outsound Presents Board of Directors and the San Francisco Electronic Music Festival Steering Committee.  This Thursday evening, November 19, at 8:00 PM, Matt will present one of his DroneShift concerts at the Luggage Store Gallery, where he curates regularly.  The gallery is located at 1007 Market Street near 6th Street in San Francisco, near Powell Street and Civic Center BART. Admission

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by Polly Moller
Composers, Concerts, Events, Experimental Music, San Francisco

The Noises of Art

Many of us can recall a time, back in the day, when we brought cups of strong coffee to class and heard a professor tell us about the distant early days of “new music”.  Long, long ago, in a galaxy far, far away (Italy), Luigi Russolo created his hand-cranked noise intoners – the intonarumori – and wrote his treatise, The Art of Noises, which would ultimately inspire a marvelous British new-wave band to contribute their song, Moments in Love, to a zillion compilations of makeout music.  But I digress. Here in San Francisco we are fortunate enough to have a

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by Polly Moller