No matter how old the violinist Midori is, I’ll always think of her as a child prodigy, the young teenager in the 1980s who played with A-list orchestras around the world. She hasn’t disappeared from public eye between then and now, and the thrill of a child performing beyond her years is gone, but her name and her reputation still garner great admiration and respect. This month, Midori is touring a recital program she devised: works by five living female composers, including the premiere of a brand-new piece. On November 4, 2019, her performance in New York City with the
Read moreOn Sunday night, October 20, 2019 Equal Sound presented a double album CD release concert featuring experimental performer/composer Sarah Belle Reid and Berlin-based thereminist extraordinary Carolina Eyck. The Civic Center Studios in downtown Los Angeles was the venue, and included a potent surround sound system, a balcony and ample room for the hundred or so new music concert goers in attendance. The first set of the evening was by Sarah Belle Reid. According to the program notes, she is a “Canadian performer-composer, specializing in trumpet and electronics, modular synthesis, and alternate forms of graphical notation for composition and improvisation.” Ms.
Read moreOn October 25th, the recording Composers at Westminster (WCC19109) will be released via digital platforms. The program notes are below. “Composers at Westminster” The five composers featured on this recording are full-time members of the composition faculty at Westminster Choir College in Princeton, New Jersey. The programmed selections display a range of musical styles and works for different forces: three of the college’s choirs as well as voice faculty, pianists, and visiting string artists. Stefan Young is not only a composer but an estimable pianist. He performs some of his own piano pieces from a musical diary called Thoughts for
Read moreOn September 6, 2019 People Inside Electronics presented Aperplicity, a concert of performance art and music performed by two Los Angeles-based duos. Aperture Duo with Adrianne Pope, violin and Linnea Powell, viola, joined forces with Autoduplicity, Rachel Beetz, flute and Jennifer Bewerse, cello, to present five pieces, including a world premiere. The spacious Throop Unitarian Church Hall in Pasadena filled up with a fine new music audience on a warm Friday night. Time With People, Op. 1 (2013) by Tim Parkinson began the program with two performers sitting at a table holding a few snacks and cans of soda. This
Read moreDave Smith is an excellent composer and a formidable pianist. In his early days he played in the Scratch Orchestra, and over the course of his career he has worked with the likes of Cardew, White, Skempton, Nyman, Bryars, and Parsons, and was an early champion and performer in the UK of Glass, Reich, and Riley. For the concert of his music celebrating his 70th birthday at Cafe Oto the place was packed. The largest and most recent (2018-2019) work on the program, Hunter of Stories, lasting 70 minutes, was described by Smith in his program notes as being a
Read moreMario Davidovsky (March 4, 1934 – August 23, 2019) Mario Davidovsky, composer, teacher, and winner of a Pulitzer Prize in 1971 for his Synchronisms No. 6 for piano and electronic sounds, passed away peacefully last Friday at his home on Manhattan’s Upper West Side at the age of 85. The cause of death was heart failure. Davidovsky was a pioneering figure in the burgeoning electronic music scene of the 1960s and 70s, and his pathbreaking work in combining live instrumentalists with prerecorded electronic sounds revealed exciting new possibilities in the realms of articulation, timbre, velocity, and expression. It could truly
Read moreAnother theme of this year’s Proms is the 150th Anniversary of the birth of Henry Wood, the founder of the Proms. This celebration includes a survey of works which he introduced to Britain, and their number is legion, ranging from works of British composers, to composers such as Ravel and Sibelius, through works of Schoenberg and Webern. This anniversary was also the occasion for a concert at Holy Sepulchre London (Otherwise known as St. Sepulchre-without-Newgate}. Henry Wood’s father was a tenor in the choir of the church, and Wood himself studied organ at the church and later became assistant organist.
Read moreThe conductor Martyn Brabbins has been and continues to be a champion of new music and of British composers in particular. In celebration of his 60th birthday, the BBC commissioned fourteen composers with whom he has been associated to join in producing a collaborative work, entitled Pictured Within, which is related to the Elgar Enigma Variations, and this project was presented by Brabbins and the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra on their Prom on August 13. The participating composers were Dai Fujikura, David Sawyer, Sally Beamish, Colin Matthews, Iris ter Schiphorst, Brett Dean, Wim Henderickx, Richard Blackford, Harrision Birtwistle, Judith Weir,
Read moreOn Saturday, August 10, 2019 wasteLAnd presented its first Summer Academy for Composition Concert at Art Share in downtown Los Angeles. The work of eight emerging composers was performed at this event with each having participated in an intensive course of study in contemporary music during the previous week. Their pieces were work-shopped with the musicians of the wasteLAnd ensemble and reviewed by the Academy faculty of Michelle Lou, Michael Pisaro, and Brian Griffeath-Loeb. A fine crowd filled the Art Share performance hall on a warm Los Angeles summer evening in the lively downtown Los Angeles Arts District. The first
Read moreOne of the themes of this year’s Proms season is the commemoration of the 50th anniversary of the moon landing. As part of this celebration the BBC commissioned Huw Watkins to write The Moon for the BBC National Orchestra of Wales whose Composer-in-Association he has been since 2016. They presented the first performance The Moon, in their Prom concert on August 8. In this performance, conducted by Tadaaki Otaka, they were joined by the BBC National Chorus of Wales and the Philharmonia Chorus. Watkin’s work, setting texts of Shelley, Larkin, and Whitman, begins with the consideration of the moon as
Read more