Xin Wang & Alvin Crawford in the 2008 world premiere of Sanctuary Song, presented by Tapestry & Theatre Direct in association with Luminato. Turns out the Hartford Opera Theater folks are not the only group that creates short operas through a collaborative process. In fact, they may have “borrowed” the idea from a Toronto-based organization called Tapestry New Opera, which has been holding an annual Composer-Librettist Laboratory (known affectionately as the LibLab) every year since 1995. LibLab is also the model for the English National Opera Studio’s All In Opera, as well
Read moreWhat to enjoy on those flights to festivals, composing on the beach or just to unwind this summer reading? Dick Strawser has been busy writing the sequel to “The Schoenberg Code” over on Thoughts on a Train – another pun filled parody called “The Lost Chord.” Fans of Dan Brown beware, Strawser outdoes the fiction writer and adds unbelievably hilarious names to a modern composition based thriller. (You might also enjoy his “Stravinsky’s Tavern” as well!)
Read more[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YdkGaNQVOFs&feature=related[/youtube] I was checking out video performances of Christopher Rouse compositions, when I came across the lively exchange excerpted below from the comments section of the above performance of Ogoun Badagris. I love reading this kind of discussion about new music. Strip away all the jargon and citations, add some internet acronyms and sarcasm, and a lot of the back-and-forth on musical aesthetic issues in scholarly journals boils down to pretty much what these gentlemen are discussing below: • TheKingBolden 5 months ago What a useless piece. I’m sure the composer thinks he’s conveying something deep and spiritual, lol. •
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CDs, Concerts, Contemporary Classical, Downtown, Festivals, Lincoln Center, Music Events, New York, Performers
In this space just a year ago we told you about Asphalt Orchestra‘s Lincoln Center Out of Doors hit-the-streets, in-you-face debut last summer. Well, what a year they’ve had! In August they performed during lunchtime at Philadelphiaʼs 30th Street Amtrak Station; it’s a testament to the band’s transcendence of genre that The Philadelphia Inquirer named that show one of the 10 Best Classical Performances of 2009, even though it took place in a train station and featured almost no classical music! In late 2009 the band was selected to play the official opening of Lincoln Centerʼs newest space, the David
Read moreOutside the Eldorado Ballroom, Houston, TX (Photo by Chris Becker) “ …(Houston is) one of the epicenters of noise bands and experimental music. Nobody even knows that, you know? ” Dan Workman of Houston’s Sugarhill Studios. Here’s an excerpt of a recording I made of a Houston thunderstorm using a Zoom H4 recorder positioned just behind the front screen door to our house. You might want to turn down the volume about half way through if you listen to this headphones: Houston rain and thunder Part One New York City – the city where I lived for twelve years before
Read moreMontana native Christopher Stark has won American Composers Orchestra’s 2010 Underwood Commission, earning him a $15,000 purse for a work to be premiered by ACO in a future season. Chosen from seven finalists during ACO’s 19th annual Underwood New Music Readings on May 21 and 22, Stark won the top prize with his work Ignatian Exercises. Born in 1980, Christopher Stark spent his formative years in rural western Montana. His music is deeply rooted in the American West, always seeking to capture the expansive energy of Montana’s quintessential American landscape. In addition to ACO, he has worked with ensembles such
Read moreNaxos Records’ founder and CEO Klaus Heymann meets me in a café, downstairs in the midtown hotel where he’s staying in Manhattan. Heymann is on a trip to the US in which he’s doing press meetings and presentations in New York, followed by meetings with the Naxos America team at their base of operations in Franklin, Tennessee. Then he’s off to the West Coast for still more meetings. Finally, he gets to go back to his home in Hong Kong. When I remark about the seemingly whirlwind nature of the trip, Heymann says, “International travel is expensive these days. It’s
Read moreWhy do some extraordinarily talented people never show up on the radar? Eric Lyon is one such unsung genius. I understand he’s been impressing folks in Brooklyn the past few years, and he wowed them at the Bonk Festival of Music in Tampa for over a decade (not to say that knocking them dead at the Bonk Festival is going to boost anyone’s career). But unless you go to ICMC or SEAMUS or have had the good fortune to live somewhere that Eric regularly presented his music, you probably don’t know about him. Whatever the reason, it is a cosmic
Read moreI found one of my favorite reviews from the 1990’s (Roger Reynolds’s Dreaming and Harvey Sollberger’s Passages), and posted it here. There was a minor controversy surrounding Roger Reynolds’s commission from the San Diego Symphony (his first from the Symphony after living in San Diego for over 2 decades). Dreaming had been on the schedule for performance the season before, but the premiere was cancelled. Theories about the cancellation, many involving Symphony Board intrigue, bounced around the UC San Diego Music Dept. Several months later I interviewed Igor Gruppman, the concertmaster for the SDS. He related that the musicians have
Read moreNothing to do with music, but, hey. Who can add to the list? 1. 4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days (2007) Romania – Directed by Cristian Mungiu – Young woman helps friend get abortion in 1980s Romania and discovers the truth of the old saying that no good deed goes unpunished. Not a single wrong note in this tale of friendship abused. 2. Pan’s Labyrinth (2007) Spain – Directed by Guillermo del Toro – Imaginative young girl retreats into a fantasy world in order to deal with the horrors of the Spanish Civil War and a brutal facist stepfather.
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