Composers

Composers, Concerts, Contemporary Classical, Experimental Music, Festivals, File Under?, June in Buffalo

June in Buffalo starts Monday

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,

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by Christian Carey
Books, Composers, Contemporary Classical, Exhibitions, Scores

New, Newer, Newest Notations

Last 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

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by Steve Layton
Composers, Concerts, Contemporary Classical, Festivals, Mexico

New Music in Morelia

Morelia (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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by Iván Sparrow
Awards, Composers, Concerts, Contemporary Classical, File Under?

Oliveros Wins Big Uptown

Congratulations to PAULINE OLIVEROS. Columbia University announced today that she is the recipient of the 2009 William Schuman Award: a $50,000 prize which recognizes “the lifetime achievement of an American composer whose works have been widely performed and generally acknowledged to be of lasting significance.” The previous award-winner was John Zorn in 2006. Columbia will celebrate Oliveros with a concert and reception at 8 PM on March 27, 2010 at Miller Theatre.

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by Christian Carey
Composers, Interviews, New Amsterdam, Performers, Podcasts, viola

My Ears Are Open. This week on the podcast: Nadia Sirota

For those of you keeping track, this week’s episode is the second of three highlighting violists. Last week, Elizabeth Weisser; this week, Nadia Sirota. Nadia has some good advice for musicians: it may sound obvious, but that thing that makes you unique is the thing that makes you special. Not only is this good advice for performers but it’s good for composers to remember as well. The more we can embrace our “craziness”, the more comfortable we can be with ourselves. Musicians on the podcast talk a lot about working and collaborating with composers, but Nadia actually has some suggestions

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by James Holt
Composers, Concerts, Contemporary Classical, Electro-Acoustic, Orchestral, Orchestras, San Francisco

SF Symphony serves up Mason Bates world premiere

[Ed. note: Polly Moller is not just busy telling you about concerts like the one below — while she’s out there pushing for the other guy, I want to mention the she herself has what looks like a great gig, with Pamela Z and Jane Rigler, May 17th at the Royce Gallery, 2901 Mariposa Street (between Harrison & Alabama), SF. tickets are $10, and you can see more here. Go, Polly! …OK, on with the show…] Sequenza21 readers are a quirky and unpredictable bunch.  But I’m willing to bet that any of them who show up on Wednesday, May 20,

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by Polly Moller
CDs, Chamber Music, Composers, Contemporary Classical, Other Minds, Recordings

Between the Rocking Cradles

Given the rarity of records and performances of the music of Marc Blitzstein (1905-1964) through the 1970s, my first encounters with him were like everyone else: references in the “populist music of the 30s and 40s” section of 20th-century history books, and as arranger of the American version of Kurt Weill’s Threepenny Opera that we all knew from the old (& wonderful) original-cast recording. Works such as his iconic The Cradle will Rock and Airborne Symphony were still talked about, but quite hard to track down and hear. It wasn’t until the mid-80s that revivals and reassesments began, with good

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by Steve Layton
Chamber Music, Composers, Contemporary Classical, File Under?, Orchestral, Orchestras, Performers

Review — S.E.M. Excitment at Tully

Music by Wolff, Sciarrino, Kotik, Carter, and Ligeti / Orchestra of the S.E.M. Ensemble, Ostravská Banda, FLUX Quartet; Petr Kotik, Conductor /Alice Tully Hall, May 6, 2009 Conductor/composer Petr Kotik has been an impressive advocate for contemporary music in New York for forty years. Residing in the US since 1969, he has been running the S.E.M. ensemble since 1970: performing a wide range of repertoire, commissioning works and cultivating successive generations of young players into seasoned new music performers. S.E.M.’s orchestral unit has been active since ’92; Kotik’s also been running Ostravská Banda, an international chamber orchestra comprised of S.E.M.

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by Christian Carey
Composers, Concerts, Contemporary Classical

Thanks for All the Fish

As stated in Oberlin College’s ‘Oberwiki’: “…to enter you needed to take a sugar pill with a dot on it…and you rolled the dice, cause 1/3 of the dots were LSD…” Yep, that’s our (currently) eldest composition teacher speaking of Oberlin’s glory days when he was but a wee lad out of grad school. Randy Coleman is many things, best summed up as “a real post-modern feminist old-time patriarch from Virginia.” He is most feared for his red pen marks on freshperson’s melody assignments and for the fabled “piece-per-day” routine with private students. His music contains much variety, with each

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by Steve Layton
Composers, Interviews, Performers, Podcasts, viola

My Ears Are Open. This week on the podcast: Elizabeth Weisser

As promised, during the month of May I’ll be talking exclusively with violists, beginning with Elizabeth Weisser of the iO Quartet. I swear it’s a total coincidence that, two weeks in a row, I’ve talked with musicians who had great experiences with Helmut Lachenmann (and I already know there will be one more mention this month). Elizabeth does have lots of other things for us to think about, though, for instance: when a composer brings material to a musician, the musician improvises, and the composer notates the improvisation, then whose music is it? She also asks, “What’s the core of

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by James Holt