Some years back I stumbled across The Open Space website, a creation of Perspectives of New Music stalwart Benjamin Boretz. PoNM was one of those forbidding obstacles every composition student of the 60s, 70s and 80s had to traverse and come to terms with; a journal more like a fair-sized paperback book, seemingly filled with discussions of Babbitt, Boulez, Webern, Carter, terrifyingly dense theories of pitch-class, set theory & etc. — many of us felt like we budding composers were suddenly expected to be quantum physicists rather than simply artists… Yet tucked into many issues might also be some nugget
Read moreBit of a streak for American composers: this time last year we were congratulating Huck Hodge for winning the Netherland’s Gaudeamus Composition Prize. Now it’s Ted Hearne‘s turn, for his Katrina Ballads. From the press release: This prize is € 4,550 and is meant for writing a new composition to be performed in the Gaudeamus Music Week 2010. The Gaudeamus Prize and the honorable mention were awarded by jury members Huba de Graaff (Netherlands), Anne La Berge (Netherlands), and Akira Nishimura (Japan). For this year’s International Gaudeamus Music Week, which was open to composers under 31, the Gaudeamus Foundation received
Read moreLabor Day 2009 and while John Clare has an airshift, he also has an interview. Chris Thile is relaxing in New York and making coffee, ready to talk shop. Thile jokes, waxes poetic and has a thoughtful answer for the questions. You see, Chris is about to add to the small repertoire of mandolin & orchestra concertos, with his own Ad astra per alas porci. The world premiere performances are September 17, 19, and 20, 2009 with The Colorado Symphony & Jeffrey Kahane. In the second part of our interview Chris talks about how the piece came about and if
Read moreIt doesn’t seem all that long ago that I heard the world premiere of Blind Leaving the Blind. (Read about it here: S21 Review.) It was quite a night @ Zankel, St. Patrick’s Day 2007. Chris Thile has since recorded the work with the Punch Brothers, and made a duo album with Edgar Meyer. Now Thile is about to embark on another journey – a mandolin concerto, Ad astra per alas porci. This week he plays with The Colorado Symphony (September 17, 19, and 20, 2009; with Jeffrey Kahane), then six more chances to hear it, with the Oregon Symphony
Read moreAzica Records’ recording of the San Francisco Symphony playing Jerod ‘Impichchaachaaha’ Tate’s Tracing Mississippi, a four movement concerto for flute and orchestra, and Iholba’ for solo flute, orchestra, and chorus, (reviewed here by Jay Batzner) has been nominated for a NAMMY Award (Native American Music Award). This is the 11th year for the Awards which will be announced on October 3 in Niagara Falls. Here’s an interesting interview with Tate from YouTube:
Read moreWhen I finally struck out for the Kansas City airport on Sunday afternoon, Kyle Gann was about 45 minutes into a very chilled-out performance of his heroic four-and-a-half-hour transcription of Dennis Johnson‘s November–a piece which inspired La Monte Young’s The Well Tuned Piano and was the first minimalist piece to employ a diatonic scale, repetition, and to stretch for multiple hours. November probably would have been lost to history had Kyle not undertaken the work of rescuing it. Sarah Cahill was going to take over from him at some point that afternoon, and the final notes of that performance were
Read moreCan an absolute beginner, someone who has never played the piano before or read a note of music, learn to play Debussy’s masterpiece “Clair de lune” completely from scratch? Our amigo Hugh Sung thinks so and he’s posting daily 5-9 minute video lessons and responding to feedback from participants via YouTube’s comment and video response features, as well as the Adult Beginners discussion forum at PianoWorld.com. Details about the project here.
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Composers, Concerts, Contemporary Classical, Electro-Acoustic, Film Music, Opera, Premieres, San Francisco
San Francisco-based composer, conductor, writer, educator, and filmmaker Jack Curtis Dubowsky is a very busy man. This Wednesday night, September 9th at 7:30 p.m., he’ll take the stage along with the Jack Curtis Dubowsky Ensemble in San Francisco’s Meridian Gallery, located at 535 Powell Street, convenient to Powell Street BART. Next month, he has a new opera premiering. But fortunately, he wasn’t too busy to talk to me. S21: How does it feel to be leading off the Meridian Gallery’s 11th season of Composers in Performance? JCD: It’s an honor to be selected to be a part of the Meridian
Read moreWell, that is if the time happens to be this Tuesday September 08 from 7:00pm EDT, ’till 7:00pm EDT Wednesday September 09, and you pin your ear to Princeton’s WPRB (103.3FM). I’m just reminding you of what Elodie Lauten has already so nicely plugged a little while back on her own blog: that it’s once again time for radio host Marvin Rosen to serve up his annual Classical Discoveries Marathon. And by “all new”, I don’t mean just the stock & standard 20th-century stuff; this year’s adventure is titled “Viva 21st Century – American Edition” — music by almost 100
Read moreTonight’s performance by Charlemagne Palestine was, in short, one of the most extraordinary musical experiences of my life. Palestine has developed a technique for playing the organ which involves the use of wooden shims to hold down keys so he can build up drones with many notes and still have his hands free to improvise melodies over top of it. He starts with an open fifth and builds over the course of a couple hours to a dense roar that uses most of the available power of the instrument. It was mesmerizing. In truth, I wasn’t expecting to like it
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