2025 Tanglewood Festival of Contemporary Music Tanglewood Music Center Orchestra July 28, 2025 LENOX – This year’s Festival of Contemporary Music was curated by composer Gabriela Ortiz. Born in Mexico City, Ortiz is one of the most prominent Latinx figures in twenty-first century classical music. Among other honors, she is composer-in-residence at Carnegie Hall and the Curtis Institute. Revolucióndiamantina, a recording of her music by the Los Angeles Philharmonic, conducted by Gustavo Dudamel, won three GRAMMY Awards in 2025. This year, FCM has spotlighted music from Mexico, as well as that of women composers. After four chamber ensemble
Read moreThe audience greeted John Williams like he was a rock star. Indeed, this composer’s music for blockbuster films like Star Wars, Jaws and Jurassic Park is well known and loved by billions around the world. People, including those in attendance at Tanglewood on Saturday night, July 26, love him for his concert music as well. Williams appeared on stage after the crowd-pleasing premiere performance of his Concerto for Piano and Orchestra with soloist Emanuel Ax and the Boston Symphony Orchestra led by Andris Nelsons. Williams has been a mainstay at the BSO for decades, having been music director of the
Read moreMicrofest Records has released My Dancing Sweetheart, a new album that features music by composers Ben Johnston, Bill Alves and Helmut Oehring. The performers are all first-rate Los Angeles musicians and include Stacey Fraser, vocals, Aron Kallay, keyboards, Shalini Vijavan, violin and Nick Terry, percussion. Subtitled “Just Songs”, My Dancing Sweetheart is an accessible and engaging introduction to the world of Just Intonation and contemporary tonal palettes. Just Intonation is a tuning system that is based on optimizing the frequency ratios between the notes in the scale. Our conventional 12 Tone Equal Temperament tuning, by contrast, assigns specific frequencies to
Read moreCold Blue Music has announced the release of Plain Songs: “Love Comes Quietly”:(after Robert Creeley), a new CD album by composer Peter Garland. As the title explains, Plain Songs consists of seven movements of pipe organ music inspired by the poetry of Robert Creeley. The album artfully blends the simple plainsong traditions of the early church with the later development of the pipe organ. Peter Garland is quoted in the liner notes: “I wanted to write an organ piece that would be intimate and mostly quiet, emphasizing the nature of the organ as a wind instrument capable of long, sustaining
Read moreTerry Riley turns ninety years old today! Happy birthday from us all at Sequenza 21! Today, our friends at Red Hot Org are sharing a raga performance by Terry Riley and Sara Miyamoto. A teaser track, it will serve as the b-side for a July release by Kronos Quartet. Both Riley’s raga and the pieces on the a-side are written as anti-nuclear war messages. Riley is entitled to rest on his laurels, but he is instead remaining an advocate for peace. Thank you for this present, Terry, on your birthday no less!
Read moreThe Metropolitan Opera Orchestra, Yannick Nézet-Séguin, Music Director and Conductor Angel Blue, Soprano Carnegie Hall, April 18, 2025 Published on Sequenza 21 By Christian Carey NEW YORK – Virtually since its inception, the Metropolitan Opera Orchestra, Met Orchestra for short, has given concerts alongside its main role accompanying operas. For over a hundred years, this has allowed the ensemble to stretch itself, performing vocal works, unstaged or semi-staged operas, repertoire staples, and several premieres. Yannick Nézet-Séguin has relished the opportunity to work with the musicians in this capacity. On Wednesday night, the Met Orchestra premiered a suite from
Read moreDalit Warshaw Sirens Carolina Eyck, theremin Boston Modern Orchestra Project, Gil Rose, conductor Dalit Warshaw (b. 1974) is a multi-threat artist. As a composer and pianist, she has created a distinguished career. Her first orchestra piece was commissioned when she was eight years old, and this prodigious distinction has been followed by a body of work that encompasses music for orchestra, chamber ensembles, vocalists, choruses, and Letters of Mademoiselle (2018), a staged song cycle for the talented soprano Nancy Allen Lundy. The theremin has become an important part of her work. Warshaw has performed the instrument in high
Read moreThe Friday evening concert was titled The Holy Liftoff, continuing the theme from the morning. There was a solo viola piece by Leilehua Lanzilotti, the USC Cello Ensemble led by Seth Parker Woods, with music by Sofia Gubaidulina, Julius Eastman and Terry Riley. The ever reliable Steven Schick conducted and the JACK Quartet joined with Clare Chase in the final work. First up was ko‘u inoa by Leilehua Lanzilotti, a composer, violist and interdisciplinary artist based in Hawaii. “ko‘u inoa” means “my name” or “in my name” and is a Hawaiian term freighted with identity, ancestry and community. The piece
Read moreAttending the Ojai Music Festival in person is one of the great musical experiences on the West Coast. The mountains, the town, Libbey Park and great music make Ojai the place to be in early June. One of the festival’s best kept secrets, however, is that the concerts in Libbey Bowl are live-streamed over the internet. Not only that, the sound system is exceptional and the camera work excellent. If you can’t get to the Ojai Festival in person, the next best thing is to watch the streamed video. This is what I did this year and it was a
Read moreUnseen World is a new release by composer Mara Gibson on the Mark Masters record label. The album consists of five works composed between 2020 and 2024 that are inspired by vivid visual art that is both expressive and complex. Various instrumental ensembles are employed including a piano and cello duet, a brass quintet, trumpet duet, woodwind duet and a large chamber orchestra. The meticulous writing present in the scores, the outstanding technique of the musicians and remarkable efforts by the soloists make Unseen World an impressive realization of contemporary musical expression. The first piece on the album is Swansongs
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