Festivals

CDs, Chamber Music, Classical Music, Composers, Contemporary Classical, Festivals, File Under?, Los Angeles, New York, Orchestras

Tonight at BAM: US Premiere of work by Enrico Chapela at Brooklyn’s Nuevo Latino Festival

Saturday night at 8 pm, the Brooklyn Philharmonic, under the direction of Michael Christie, gives the US premiere of Enrico Chapela’s Noctámbulos, a piece for rock trio and orchestra. Chapela will also participate in a panel discussion on Latin American Identity in Music at 4:30 (details below). Chapela is a composer on the rise; Boosey and Hawkes added him to their roster in 2008 and he’s recently received several high profile commissions. I spoke with him on Thursday about the BAM event and his other activities. Born in Mexico, he started out his musical career as a rock guitarist, playing

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by Christian Carey
Bang on a Can, CDs, Composers, Concerts, Festivals, Music Events, New York

Riding the Next Wave: Michael Gordon

This week the Next Wave Festival 2008 is raging at BAM, and there are several chances next week to hear Lightning at our feet, the latest from Ridge Theater and Michael Gordon at the Harvey Theater. (Dec 9, 11-13) Gordon and I spoke on the phone about the new work that premiered in Houston. Listen to our conversation here – Lightning Interview with Gordon and Clare. Here’s an added bonus, Gordon has a new EP coming out Tuesday, a fascinating “Purgatorio: Popera” on Canteloupe. We talked about it, as well as being married to a composer (Julia Wolfe) and everyone’s

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by John Clare
Awards, Click Picks, Competitions, Composers, Contemporary Classical, Festivals

Dang, Beat Me to It.

He’s been on my list for a while now, to make famous (ha ha) as an S21 “click pick”. But before I get the chance to feature him, Huck Hodge goes and wins this year’s Gaudeamus Prize: At the final concert of the International Gaudeamus Music Week 2008, which took place in Amsterdam from 1 to 7 September, the Gaudeamus Prize was awarded to the American composer Huck Hodge (1977). The Gaudeamus Prize, an award of 4,550 Euros, is intended as a commission for a new work to be performed at the next edition of the International Gaudeamus Music Week.

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by Steve Layton
Click Picks, Composers, Concerts, Contemporary Classical, Festivals, Online

An Other Mind is a Terrible Thing to Waste

Lazy, hazy summer days… Not much really happening, unless you hoof it to some festival or other… Or, for the price of simply wearing out your finger clicking, you could spend the better part of the next couple weeks feasting on the treasure trove that is the Other Minds website. Founded in 1993 by Jim Newman and Charles Amirkhanian, the Other Minds Festival has become a San Francisco Bay-area institution, supporting the exposure for and exchange between a vast array of new-music and musicians important these last twenty-plus years, on or off the beaten path. The festival doesn’t simply rely on the concert-hall, but

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by Steve Layton
Broadcast, Concerts, Contemporary Classical, Festivals

More from the Proms–first performances of Berkeley, MacRae, and Hillborg

The Prom Concert on August 10, given by the BBC Symphony, conducted by Edward Gardner, included two first performances, both of them commissioned by the BBC for this season of the Proms.  These were among the 13 first performances and 7 UK first performances on the Proms this season. Michael Berkeley’s Slow Dawn is a revision and reorchestration of a work written three years ago for wind band, which had been commissioned by the British conductor and horn player Tim Reynish as a memorial piece for his son William.   Berkeley intended it as a depiction of dawn in Wales where

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by Rodney Lister
Electro-Acoustic, Experimental Music, Festivals

Just Because It’s June in Buffalo

For the past couple of hundred years, David Felder has been running June in Buffalo, the venerable annual music festival that traces its history back to Morton Feldman. Having recently suffered through ‘Savages,’ a small but brutally great film about old people with Laura Linney and Philip Seymour Hoffman set in Buffalo, I have to think that the festival is only justifiable reason to ever set foot there. This year’s festival is set for June 2-7 and this is one of those year’s when the festival departs from its usual format and explores an overarching theme. This is “Music and

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by Jerry Bowles
Contemporary Classical, Festivals

Secret Ingredient Suggestions

This year’s Iron Composer Omaha competition is open nationally to people between the ages of 18-26. First prize is $500 and loads of bragging rights. Because we were focusing ARTSaha! 2007 on Futurism, we settled on the main motif of The Jetsons theme song as the secret ingredient. The five finalists had five hours to write a piece for woodwind quintet based on that four-note cell. The secret ingredient could be anything from a narrative outline, to a poem, a chord sequence, or even a found object. Our chairman last year was Hal France, longtime conductor of Opera Omaha. If

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by Jodru
Composers, Concerts, Contemporary Classical, Festivals, Music Events, New York

ICO (formerly VIM:TRIBECA) Concert Series Disaster

Last year, many of us saw a posting regarding the VIM:Tribeca concert series. The organizers, Judd Greenstein and Kimball Gallagher, wanted to put on concert series of mostly new works; the composers were responsible for providing performers. The concerts were to be put on in the Gallerie Icosahedron (I’m deliberately not linking to them, for reasons that will be apparent soon!). The first indication of trouble to us should have been the delays, imposed by the gallery, regarding scheduling and, we found out later, the renting of a piano. The first public sign of trouble was the sudden announcement that

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by Anthony Cornicello
Composers, Concerts, Contemporary Classical, Festivals, Music Events

What’s Happening This Season?

The season is underway in New York and, as usual, there are a number of promising looking performances coming up.  Here are a few things to look for: Margaret Garner, Richard Danielpour’s operatic collaboration with Toni Morrison, is in mid-run at City Opera and, judging from the ads, there are plenty of seats to be had.  I can’t quite stir myself enough to drag up there and sit through an evening of misery about a runaway slave who murders her daughter rather than have her captured.  Doesn’t stop me from having an opinion, though.  Morrison is too sanctimonious and self-important by half and

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by Jerry Bowles
Classical Music, Contemporary Classical, Festivals

August in New York

                                I don’t ski.  Asthma.  And fear.  Mostly fear. I used to party a bit though and because many of my companions were ski buffs, I have socialized, but not skied, at some of the best places in the world.  I have not skied Kitsbuehl and Chamonix and Lillehammer, for example.  I have not skied Aspen and Telluride and Jackson Hole.   Especially, I have not skied Verbier, the favorite hangout of some rowdy Norwegians of my acquaintance.  We have been thrown out of the Feed Club, Verbier’s most lively nightspot, not once, but twice over the years, not a record I’m sure but respectable

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by Jerry Bowles