Ah, ’tis a small world…years ago during my film music studies at USC I remember chatting several times with a flutist who had made the finals for a position with the LA Phil – while she was still an undergrad. Fast forward 15 years and it turns out Elizabeth Rowe is not only playing principal flute with the Boston Symphony Orchestra, she’s giving the American premiere of Elliott Carter‘s Flute Concerto this next week on Feb. 4, 5 and 9 (see  www.bso.org for times and ticket prices). Here’s what Elliott had to say about the work: For many years flutists

It’s not often that Sequenza 21 gets scooped by the likes of Rachel Maddow – but that’s a good thing for composer Melissa Dunphy and the group of 30 musicians that are all performing Dunphy’s The Gonzales Contata with text directly taken from former Attorney General Alberto Gonzales’ testimony before Congress. Written in a neo-Baroque style, Dunphy has inverted the genders of the primary characters in the story, with Gonzales and Sen. Specter, Leahy and Hatch sung by females and Sen. Diane Feinstein sung by a tenor. The work is being performed this weekend in Philiadelpha at the Rotunda (4014

Summertime in the Steel City brings forth some pretty damn good concerts from the Pittsburgh New Music Ensemble, one of the best new music ensembles in the country, every year and this year isn’t any different. This summer PNME will be performing over twenty new works, including two commissioned world premieres by Houston’s Pierre Jalbert and Chicago’s Stacy Garrop, over the next four weekends under the direction of their executive artistic director, Kevin Noe. They had their first concert last night, but you can still catch them this evening at the City Theatre (1300 Bingham St.) for an 8pm concert,

The timing gods may be with me…I’ll just happen to be in NYC for the day today and just might be able to make it down from LaGuardia to 153 Bleeker Street to see Signal performing Steve Reich’s Double Sextet and his original Sextet under the watchful eye of Brad Lubman. Tickets are $30 if you haven’t purchased them yet and there are shows tonight at 7:30pm & 10pm…if you happen to see a slightly disoriented guy with a cane (from a goofball injury last week) at the later show, that’ll probably be me.

Good gravy, how could I have forgotten to post this…Armando Bayolo’s Great Noise Ensemble will be performing their Kennedy Center debut TONIGHT with the Congressional Chorus at 7:30 pm in the Terrace Theatre at the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts. Works featured include the world premiere of Daniel Felsenfeld’s “The First Time I Saw Snow”, and Armando Bayolo’s concerto for violin and orchestra, Musica Concertante, with violinist Jameson Cooper. Sorry for the tardy posting, but if you’ve got time tonight, check ’em out!

Necessity being the mother that it is, it’s always intriguing to find folks within the new music community who see a need and break out the grindstone. Here’s two examples of online entrepreneurs who have created their own niche markets: [youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=quQnNpt6kDE[/youtube] The brainchild of pianists Hugh Sung and SoYoung Lee, the AirTurn wireless page turner removes one of the major difficulties in piano performance – dealing with page turns (Galen mentioned this back in December). They offer a universal wireless device and several choices in pedals as well as a music scanning software that allows for digital annotations on the

If you happen to be in the Lake Erie neighborhood tomorrow night, the Cleveland Orchestra will be showcasing several new works by American and British composers under the baton of Oliver Knussen. The concert will include a world premiere of Wanderlust by Cornell doctoral student Sean Shepherd, a US premiere of Helios Choros III by Augusta Read Thomas and performances of works by Julian Anderson, Luke Bedford and Knussen himself (his Requiem: Songs for Sue featuring the talents of soprano Elizabeth Keusch). The concert will begin at 8pm in Severence Hall, 11001 Euclid Avenue in Cleveland, with tickets being available

Amazingly enough, there’s still some people who have never been to New York City…and until yesterday, I could count myself as a member of that group. This weekend, however, I finally got an opportunity to leave my post in Western NY and fly down to NYC, ostensibly to attend a NYSSMA Composition Committee meeting, but also to finally see what all the noise about the music scene was about. Lucky for me, this was a good weekend for concerts – I was able to catch two top-notch ones in the span of less than 24 hours. I’ve been reading a