Music by Nicolas Flagello National Radio Symphony Orchestra of Ukraine John McLaughlin Williams, conductor Elmar Oliviera, violin Susan Gonzalez, soprano Artek 0036-2 Nicolas Flagello (1928-1994) was born in New York City, earned a Bachelor’s and Master’s degree from the Manhattan School of Music and, upon graduation, taught there until 1977. Flagello’s music is romantic and firmly built on 19th century models with lush orchestrations and long melodic phrases. The Symphonic Aria from 1951 is moving, but sometimes too rich. Mirra (1955) concludes with an exciting “Dance” that allows the orchestra to show a lot of meat. Many of the works
Read moreJohn Schneider and his group “Partch” gave their annual REDCAT concert of Partch’s music last night. The program included Partch’s film of U.S. Highball: A Musical Account of a Transcontinental Hobo Trip (1958, film completed in 1968). The program began with the eight hitchhiker inscriptions of Barstow (1941/1943/1968); this interesting site provide clips of different performances of the first inscription. The second half of the program included rousing performances of Ring Around the Moon (1950) and Castor & Pollux (1952), both involving the seven instrumentalists in the group. The audience jumped up and called their approval at the end. There were
Read moreOur regular (well, semi-regular, at least until our dust has settled in Houston) 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, since they’re nice enough to offer so much good listening online: Amos Elkana (b. 1967 — US / Israel) Born in Boston and a product of Berklee, the New England Conservatory and Bard, Amos now makes his home in Tel Aviv. He was one of the brave few “serious” composers that took the online plunge early; I first bumped into
Read moreNot quite sure what to make of this, but the Royal Opera House at Covent Garden in London has bought Opus Arte, a leading for-profit maker and producer of performance DVDs. The economics of high music culture have changed and more and more music groups of all sizes are moving toward control of production and distribution of their artistic “products,” as traditional avenues like record labels go belly up. Where is our friend Pliable on this one? Here’s an update on David Salvage’s piece at the Harvard Club on June 11. Starting time is 7pm, not 7:30 as we reported here yesterday. The requirement to dress “spiffy”
Read moreAttention Boston (and NY) shoppers! The world-premiere run of David Salvage’s String Quartet No. 2 is at hand. The Arcturus Chamber Ensemble will do the honors, starting this Friday, June 1, at 8pm, at Adams House JCR, Harvard University. They’ll do it again on Saturday night at 7:30 at the First Religious Society, Carlisle and, just to be on the safe side, one more time on Monday, June 11 at 7:30pm, at the Harvard Club, here in the Center of the Universe. There will be other works on all the programs, probably by dead white guys. The concerts are free and open to the public although the Harvard Club
Read more“But he, Siddhartha, where did he belong? Whose life would he share? Whose language would he speak?” These words of Hermann Hesse depict Siddhartha Gautama (Buddha) at a pivotal point in his quest to find purpose in the world. He will soon find it, seeing one where he once saw many, finding that the seemingly unrelated are related. Later in the same book, Siddhartha, is a chapter called “By the River,” which inspired the title of Indian-American composer Asha Srinivasan’s newest work, By the River of Savathi, that will be premiered on June 2nd and 3rd, in New York City,
Read moreWith news that Apple is suing the manufacturers of the iGasm it occurred to me last night that this perhaps was a possible new venue for contemporary music. I brought up the subject with a few friends over beers and the debate began, ‘What piece of avant garde music would be the ideal iGasm driver?’ Steve Reich? Philip Glass? Xenakis? Ferneyhough? The winner at the table seemed to be the genre of noize punk. Driving 200 BMP noise. But who knows? Maybe your music could be a hit at this latest of new music venues extended! What piece of music
Read moreComposers, painters, writers, the whole motley lot–have always depended upon the kindness of strangers. Timely financial interventions of the Lorenzo de’ Medici here, the Nadezda von Meck there, the Paul Sacher over there have greased the skids for the makers of many of the world’s great masterpieces. Alas, those sort of patrons aren’t that plentiful nowadays and so a new “community” model of patronage has sprung up in which arts organizations pool their resources to commission new works. I call it the “Biegel” method after S21 blogger and pianist Jeffrey Biegel. I suspect he wasn’t the first to do it but
Read moreAccording to the American Symphony Orchestra League, which has been coordinating an advocacy campaign on the subject, the Interior Appropriations Subcommittee in the House of Representatives passed yesterday a $35 Million increase in the budget for the National Endowment for the Arts. According to ASOL, “This increase is significantly higher than the modest $4 million increase proposed by the President and represents a much more substantial restoration of NEA funds than has been proposed by the House committee since the NEA sustained a 40% budget cut more than a decade ago.” I don’t see any confirmation of this on the committe’s website
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