Passed on by Carson Cooman: The American composer Robert Moevs died Monday evening, December 10, 2007 at age 87. Born in La Crosse, Wisconsin on December 2, 1920, Moevs studied at Harvard University (BA, 1942). He entered the US Air Force and served as a pilot. He resumed his musical studies at the Paris Conservatoire (1947–51) and then at Harvard (MA, 1952); his principal teachers were Walter Piston and Nadia Boulanger. For the next three years he was at the American Academy in Rome as a Rome Prize Fellow. An inspiring teacher, Moevs served on the faculty at Harvard (1955–63)
Read moreOur gaucho amigo Marvin Rosen is the most innovative and knowledgeable music programmer in the universe but who knew that he aspired to become the new music world’s Jerry Lewis? Marvin is hosting a special 24-hour marathon edition of his terrific radio program Classical Discoveries titled “Viva 21st century,” which will air on WPRB out of Princeton, NJ beginning at 6:00 pm on Thursday, December 27 and will conclude at 6:00 pm on Friday, December 28. Sympathizers and fellow travelers who don’t live in the Princeton area can listen to the show online at www.wprb.com The program includes works from only
Read moreI was late getting to the Times today and just noticed that Andrew Imbrie has died. Joshua Kosman’s obituary is here. Robert P. Commanday remembers him here. Imbrie wasn’t nearly as spectacular or well-known a musical figure as Stockhausen but through his prolific and quietly impeccable body of work, his teaching, and his singular, unique voice, he may have been just as influential. You can listen to his magnificent Requiem, written in 1984 after the death of his son, free at Art of the States. I’m listening to it now.
Read moreEmerging from Elliott Carter’s “What Next?” for me paralleled uncannily the experience of the characters onstage, all of whom have just endured “some kind of accident” whose significance and impact, however powerful, remain baffling. Details from the libretto and the set design suggest a multi-car collision has occured, and, amid the wreckage, the victims intermittently soliloquize about their plight and attempt to comfort each other, though all — physically, at least — are unhurt. But an absurd, profound interpersonal disconnect ultimately predominates, and the opera ends with a pair of oddly fastidious road workers who, after they clear the debris,
Read morerecieved at the Canadian Eletroacoustic mail-list: PRESS RELEASE The composer Karlheinz Stockhausen passed away on December 5th 2007 at his home in Kuerten-Kettenberg and will be buried in the Waldfriedhof (forest cemetery) in Kuerten. He composed 362 individually performable works. The works which were composed until 1969 are published by Universal Edition in Vienna, and all works since then are published by the Stockhausen-Verlag. Numerous texts by Stockhausen and about his works have been published by the Stockhausen Foundation for Music. Suzanne Stephens and Kathinka Pasveer, who have performed many of his works and, together with him, have taken care of
Read moreThe great American Musicologist H. Wiley Hitchcock died early on Wednesday morning (December 5, 2007) after a long illness. Hitchcock started his career in musicology studying French and Italian Baroque music, and then transitioned into American music, editing the New Grove Dictionary of American Music and a series of 11 textbooks (writing the volume on American music himself), and publishing extensively on Charles Ives. He served as director of the American Musicological Society from 1990 to 1992, and spent most of his career teaching at Brooklyn College. Frank Oteri interviewed him for NewMusicBox in 2002, and at the end of the interview he
Read moreDon’t miss this piece in last Sunday’s LA Times about recording engineers for classical music. As the author, Constance Meyer, says, popular music engineers and producers are often famous in their own right, but most people can’t name a single classical music engineer or producer. “Yet just as in rock ‘n’ roll or hip-hop, the engineer for such music — who is often, though not always, the producer as well — is the person who makes or breaks an audio performance.” Meyer goes on to profile Max Wilcox, Da-Hong Seetoo, Fred Vogler, and Armin Steiner, and to describe a bit of how
Read moreOur revivified Monday Evening Concerts opened its second season of its new life last night. This was an evening of MEC as we had been hoping for. The program gave us music we wanted: stimulating and sometimes challenging music; some new composers and new music, along with some to link to earlier times; music performed by very talented musicians; music in a hall with good sound; music to make us feel glad we had come. And almost 300 of us came out Zipper Hall at Colburn School to hear and enjoy. The new and most challenging music was in the
Read moreOur regular listen to and look at living, breathing composers and performers that you may not know yet, but I know you should… And can, right here and now, with so much good listening online: 2005 Snapshot: Music at Northwestern University Obviously a picture from a warmer season… Northwestern has a killer location, right on Lake Michigan, just a bit north of downtown Chicago. I’ll be heading that way for a week in late January (tagging along for my wife’s special management class), and in honor of the visit I thought I’d share the site linked above, full of streaming
Read moreDear Jerry, You are cordially invited to a program featuring the music of Pat Muchmore as performed by the erstwhile and talented members of Anti-Social Music. The gala shall be held at the Ukrainian National Home at 2nd Ave between 8th & 9th streets on December the Thirteenth, where the finest beers and vodkas will be available to soothe the savage humours stirred by the oft-acrid tones emanating from the stage. Also available: pierogies and other Ukrainian delicacies–some of which may be forcibly shoved down the gullets of less attentive patrons. A number of works excreted by Muchmore’s fecund mind
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