The 2009 Opera Vista Festival and competition just finished up down here in Houston. Line Tørnhøj of Aarhus, Denmark was voted by the audience as the winner with her opera Anorexia Sacra. Second place went to Camilo Santostefano of Buenos Aries, Argentina, and his opera El Fin de Narciso. Tørnhøj received a check for $1,500 and will have her opera fully staged at the 2010 Opera Vista Festival, while Santostefano received $1,000. The festival also also featured performances of the two winning operas from the 2007 Vista Competition: Edalat Square by R. Timothy Brady and Soldier Songs by David T.
Read moreI’m late getting to this but one of our regulars called my attention to an article in last Sunday’s New York Times about the League of Composers titled Modernists Commission Their Future that struck said regular as misleading. To wit, the article says, in reference to new music organizations that commission new works from composers: Aside from ensembles like Signal and Alarm Will Sound, which started springing up around specific projects, the American Composers Orchestra was practically the only option in town. Correct me I’m wrong here, but I don’t believe Signal has commissioned anything so far and Alarm May
Read more[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3YD6uu7dJ7I[/youtube] Mauricio Kagel‘s 1984 “Der Eid des Hippokrates” (“The Hippocratic Oath”), for piano 3-hands. Kagel wrote: This aphoristic composition was inspired by the publication in January 1984, in a medical magazine, of an article on my latest work. Whiling away the time in hospital waiting rooms, I began to think about the generous Hippocratic oath. I could not say if it was because I was wondering about the influence this Greek practitioner had — but there I was, writing a piece for two left hands, while also calling on the right hand [….] One hand keeps on providing a muted
Read moreNew New Paths in Music presents An Hispanic Festival Elebash Recital Hall Graduate Center – CUNY New York On Friday June 5th, New Paths in Music presented a concert of composers from Mexico, Argentina, and Spain: two of each. While the program centered around national identities, it contained music in disparate styles and for varying forces. DAVID ALAN MILLER, conductor of the Albany Symphony, led the New Paths Ensemble, a chamber orchestra of crackerjack contemporary players from the New York area. ENRICO CHAPELA’S “Irrational Music” was a perfect curtain-raiser. The piece is based on Chapela’s explorations of irrational numbers; but
Read more[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xb50kHf7Tw0[/youtube] Carles Santos has been a force on the Spanish “downtown” scene (taking musicians like Santos, Llorenç Barber and Maria de Alvear in opposition to the “uptown” likes of Cristobal Halffter, Joan Guinjoan and Tomás Marco) since the early 1970s. This “downtown” movement had a huge impact on Spanish musicians in the 80s, and still carries through to today. Starting as a formidable young pianist who’d breeze through the Second Viennese school, Santos turned his attention to a combination of minimalism and theatrical spectacle (often with himself as protagonist). But aside from his fanfare composed to open the 1992 Barcelona
Read moreMonday last week I headed over to San Antonio to hear a house concert hosted by composer and San Antonio Symphony bassist Doug Balliett. The program included two new pieces by P. Kellach Waddle, “Louange a l’Eternite de Jesus” from Messiaen‘s Quartet for the End of Time, and selections from Balliett’s arrangements and reinventions of Schumann‘s Dichterliebe for ensemble and tape. Balliett also contributed three new songs and arrangements of two by Mendelssohn, sung by Ken-David Masur. It was hot. The audience, which ranged from symphony players to kids and families, made do with hand-fans but, now that I think
Read moreIt’s sometimes said that composers are either German or French, and American vanguard one Frederic Rzewski, with his much vaunted admiration for Beethoven, is clearly on the German side. But how could he not be when some of his composition teachers like Dallapiccola and Babbitt forsook a flowing lyric line for a jagged dramatic one, whose aim is not to seduce the ear, but to wow with intellectual rigor? But that doesn’t mean that Rzewski’s work is insincere, or lacks power — it has that in spades — but that it tends to be aimed at the mind and not
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Composers, Concerts, Contemporary Classical, Experimental Music, Festivals, File Under?, June in Buffalo
Two of the happiest experiences I’ve had as a composer were back to back summers (’98 and ’99) at JUNE IN BUFFALO. Held at SUNY Buffalo in upstate New York, the weeklong festival is a chance for ‘emerging’ composers to hear their music performed by top notch musicians and to have it critiqued by master composers. By the end of the festival, they’re likely to have gotten a good tape of their piece, met performers and new music ‘movers and shakers,’ listened to nigh a hundred hours of contemporary fare, gathered tons of ideas for new works of their own,
Read moreLast year I mentioned seeing an exhibition here in Houston, “Every Sound You Can Imagine“; a compilation of all kinds of newer musical manuscripts and scores. Then just yesterday I was reading of a show at the Akademie der Künste in Berlin, “Notation, calculation and form in the arts“. All, of course, continuing the tradition of John Cage’s and Alison Knowles’ seminal 1969 book Notations (available complete online right now as a PDF download). Which seems all the more reason to mention the long-awaited Notations sequel just released: Notations 21, brought together by Theresa Sauer. Besides the book, the Notations
Read moreMorelia (in the State of Michoacan, Mexico) will be hosting its Fifth Contemporary Music Festival from June 1-6. Although relatively young, the festival has gathered prestige and generated enthusiasm in the course of a few years, thanks in part to a list of distinguished composers and performers. Just a few names: Helmut Lachenmann, International Contemporary Ensemble, Robert Platz, Nicholas Isherwood, Carlos Sánchez Gutierrez, Cuarteto Latinoamericano, Manuel Rocha, Dynamis Ensemble. This year Morelia will be listening to some world-renowned composers and performers such as Philippe Manoury (France), Jack Body (New Zealand), S21-well-known Wilfrido Terrazas (Mexico), Orlando Jacinto García (Cuba), Eddie Mora (Costa
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