Composers, painters, writers, the whole motley lot–have always depended upon the kindness of strangers. Timely financial interventions of the Lorenzo de’ Medici here, the Nadezda von Meck there, the Paul Sacher over there have greased the skids for the makers of many of the world’s great masterpieces. Alas, those sort of patrons aren’t that plentiful nowadays and so a new “community” model of patronage has sprung up in which arts organizations pool their resources to commission new works. I call it the “Biegel” method after S21 blogger and pianist Jeffrey Biegel. I suspect he wasn’t the first to do it but
Read moreScott Spiegelberg of Musical Perceptions is a very brave man who obviously doesn’t have enough abuse going on in his life. (By the way, we should have been number four, not number five. Scott’s methodology in adding two numbers is whacked–he should have averaged the two numbers for Opera Chic, not added them together.) And, hey, Teachout doesn’t write that much about music so let’s throw him out of mix, too. So, let’s see; that makes us number 3. Not that we’re competitive or anything.
Read moreOkay, sports fans, here’s something you’ll like. Today, beginning at 6 pm PST and running through midnight (That would be 9 pm to 3 am {thanks, Andrea for straightening me out} here in the Center of the Universe), KFJC radio in Los Altos Hills, CA is doing a 6-hour special focusing on Berio’s Sequenzas. Cujo, a dj on KFJC and Sequenza21 peruser, has lined up some stellar color commentary for this one. In addition to a live performance on flute, you’ll hear from from David Osmond-Smith, author of the only existing English Berio book (with more to come), Janet Halfyard, editor of the
Read moreThe Composers Concordance is having a concert tomorrow night at 8PM at the Greenwich House Music School Renee Weiler Concert Hall, 46 Barrow Street which will star our very own Jeff Harrington. Okay, there are some other composers on the program, too, but none as adventuresome or all-round lovable as our favorite geek-composer. Paul Hoffmann will perform the New York premiere of Jeff’s brilliant Big Easy mashup, Blue Strider. You’ll find the full schedule for the program here.
Read moreMarco Antonio Mazzini is a Peruvian clarinetist with an Italian name who lives in Belgium and plays with a Czech orchestra called the Ostravska Banda which–as fate would have it–is joining the Orchestra of the S.E.M. Ensemble for a good-looking program (Brown, Wolpe, Stockhausen, Xenakis) of modern music at Zankel Hall Monday night. There will be a preview performance Sunday night at the Willow Place Auditorium in Brooklyn Heights. Marco would be up for organizing a Sequenza21 concert in Ghent sometime if we have some Euro-interest.
Read moreOur West Coast colleagues at Other Minds marked what would have been Lou Harrison’s 90th birthday on Monday by relaunching radiOM.org, their amazing, free treasure trove of streaming audio and video programs that span the history of new music. The still expanding Other Minds Archive contains 4,500 hours of recorded materials, which includes 3,500 hours of audiotape recordings from the KPFA Radio Music Department collection; highlights from past Other Minds Music Festivals; materials from the private archive of composer George Antheil; selected programs from the Cabrillo Music Festival, and other rare and unusual recordings of classical music, jazz, and experimental forms. This unparalleled collection of
Read moreWe’ve gotten a lot (actually, three) requests for a “media kit” from potential advertisers recently. We don’t actually have such a thing because we don’t actively look for advertising (the Lincoln Center folks and a couple of record companies sometimes contact me when they want to promote something and I charge them a few bucks–if I remember to send an invoice). Sequenza21 is my hobby, my love and–thanks to all you nice folks who create an enormous amount of entertaining content in your comments, posts and forums–it is a remarkably inexpensive and low maintenance undertaking. It occurs to me, though, that if we were a little
Read moreHere’s something to put in your calendar. Our friends at the Metropolis Ensemble, led by Artistic Director Andrew Cyr, have a fabulous program called “There and Back Again” lined up for May 24 at the Angel Orensanz Foundation Center for the Arts, highlighted by the U.S. Premiere of Avner Dorman’s Mandolin Concerto. Mandolin virtuoso Avi Avital (for whom the work was written) and the Metropolis Ensemble Strings will do the honors. “The concerto’s main conflicts are between sound and silence and between motion and stasis,’ Dorman says. “One of the things that inspired me to deal with these opposites is the Mandolin’s most basic technique – the
Read moreThe Harvard Crimson reports on the return of a notable alumnus who has done pretty well in this composing business and had this to say about his old teacher Leon Kirchner: [Kirchner] himself felt that no matter what he did he’d never be as good as Shubert and passed that onto the students. It became a form of self-flagellation, kills the creative spirit, and was incipient in his teaching. Sound familiar to anyone?
Read moreFor reasons I no longer remember, I had always thought of Carl Nielsen as a stodgy composer whose works were a little severe and chilly–the musical equivalent of one of Bergman’s more depressing films. Winter Light in grainy, black and white sound. I started to rethink (or I should say, to relisten to) Nielsen a couple of years ago when Alex Ross mentioned in one of our discussions here that he considered Uncle Carl to be one of the most “underrated” modern composers. Last year’s DaCapo release of the opera Maskarade convinced me that I had gotten Nielsen all wrong. He’s really an enormously fun
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