From composer Paul Laino. [youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VSasEp1-j1Q[/youtube] And don’t forget: the S21 concert submission postmark deadline is one week from today.  Fire me an e-mail; Pierrot or subsets thereof. 

BSO MUSIC DIRECTOR JAMES LEVINE LEAVES TANGLEWOOD TO UNDERGO SURGERY     BSO Music Director James Levine regrets that he will have to withdraw from the balance of the 2008 Tanglewood season. Because of a cyst causing pressure and discomfort, Levine will undergo surgery this week to have a kidney removed. The procedure has been described by Levine’s doctors as curative, with no other treatment necessary and with every expectation for a complete recovery. The anticipated recuperation period is six weeks -leaving ample time to prepare and conduct the season openings of the BSO and the Metropolitan Opera in September.     “It is

I come to praise Michael Nyman.  No, really.  Since the nice people at Naxos began distributing Nyman’s MN Records a couple of months ago, several of his musical adventures have come into my possession and I have to admit that I find them as light as the floating feather in Forrest Gump and as addictive as an open box of Entemann’s chocolate-covered doughnuts.  I play them again and again, knowing I should move on to something meatier–like, say, the amazing new Da Capo recording of Per Norgard chamber works or Lee Hyla’s extraordinary Lives of the Saints.   But it couldn’t

Click to Play For the past couple of years the Kepler Quartet has been on a mission from God to record all ten of Ben Johnston’s string quartets with their intended tunings. The first recording in this series–String Quartets Nos. 2, 3, 4 & 9–was our (or, at least, my) favorite album of the year. Eric Kepler remembered and offered us (with Ben’s blessing) a Fourth of July treat we couldn’t refuse. Enjoy Ben Johnston’s microtonal version of the National Anthem. It was written for the N.Y. Miniaturist Ensemble a couple of years ago, and Eric made this studio quality

Further proof Xenakis was an alien.

Steve Smith, writing this morning in the Center of the Universe Times: During a panel presented recently at the National Performing Arts Convention in Denver, the American Music Center and the American Composers Forum reported preliminary findings from “Taking Note,” a survey of American composers. The study was undertaken to help those organizations better serve their constituencies. According to its findings, the average American composer is a highly educated 45-year-old white male. Update: Judith Zaimont has more from the study on her MusicMaker blog.

Peabody faculty member David Smooke sent this along for your delectation: Summer’s just beginning and Hybrid Groove Project, the genre-bending new music duo from Baltimore, is already heating things up with their number one summer jam, “HGP Anthem.” In the grand tradition of the great hip-hop conflicts like Tupac v. Biggie Smalls, Dr. Dre v. Eazy-E, and 50 Cent v. Kanye West, “HGP Anthem” brings some much needed antagonism to a new music genre more accustomed to passive aggressive behind-the-back battiness than brive-bys and street corner stompings. “By droppin’ this track we’re showing all these new music fakers who the

Benjaim Zander, conductor of the Boston Philharmonic, has become a hot ticket on the corporate leadership circuit. Here’s why:

David V. Foster, whose management firm Opus 3 Artists represents many top performers, conductors and Osvaldo Golijov, has come up with an idea for an annual festival at Carnegie Hall that will recognize leading orchestras for the the “creativity and distinctiveness” of the programs they propose to perform.   Called Spring for Music, the festival is scheduled to begin in May 2011, at Carnegie Hall.   According to the Center of the Universe Times: The Festival of North American Orchestras, as the organizing entity is called, will rent the hall and handle production and marketing, and the orchestras will bear their