Interviews

Chamber Music, Composers, Concerts, Contemporary Classical, Electro-Acoustic, Festivals, Improv, Interviews, Premieres, San Francisco, Saxophone

Let’s Ask Andrew Raffo Dewar

Here’s the first in a series of interviews with composers who are premiering new works at the 10th Annual Outsound New Music Summit in San Francisco on Friday, July 22nd.  The Friday night concert, entitled The Art of Composition, starts at 8 pm at the Community Music Center, 544 Capp Street, San Francisco. Tickets are available online from Brown Paper Tickets, and you can also buy them at the door.  Listeners who don’t want to wait that long can get up close and personal with the composers, and learn about their creative process, at a free Monday night panel discussion at

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by Polly Moller
Composers, Concerts, Contemporary Classical, Festivals, File Under?, Interviews, Performers, Philadelphia, Piano

Marilyn Nonken talks about Feldman Festival

Pianist Marilyn Nonken is performing Triadic Memories on June 4 in Philadelphia as part of “American Sublime,” a festival devoted to the works of Morton Feldman. Marilyn was kind enough to tell us a bit about working on Feldman’s music, as well as some of her other upcoming projects.   -What were your early encounters with Feldman’s music like?   I can’t remember my first live Feldman experience as a listener. One of the first works I remember hearing was FOR SAMUEL BECKETT. My first experience playing Feldman was with Ensemble 21, when we performed VIOLIN VIOLA CELLO PIANO, which was

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by Christian Carey
Composers, Concerts, Contemporary Classical, File Under?, Interviews

Talea plays Neuwirth Tonight!

As I mentioned yesterday, Talea Ensemble will be giving a concert of works by Olga Neuwirth in New York City on Tuesday at 8 PM (Details/tickets here). The group’s percussionist, Alex Lipowski, was kind enough to talk with me about Talea’s activities of late and tomorrow’s show. – This has been a busy season for Talea Ensemble. Do you feel that the group’s reach and activities are expanding of late? The 2010-‘11 season has been an amazing collection of projects for Talea and we are so grateful for each of them.  One of our goals is to reach as wide

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by Christian Carey
Boston, Composers, Contemporary Classical, Interviews

An interview with Sir Harrison Birtwistle

Miss Music Nerd (AKA composer/keyboardist Linda Kernohan) recently had an opportunity to chat with Sir Harrison Birtwistle after hearing his Violin Concerto premiered by Christian Tezlaff and the Boston Symphony Orchestra.  In the course of their conversation, Birtwistle discussed the impetus for writing a violin concerto, his difficulties with precompositional schemes (“I get terribly bored…by the time I’ve got 200 yards down the road”), and how he handles getting “stuck” while writing a work. The entire interview (with some interesting links to other Birtwistliana) can be found here. Ms. Hahn, if you’re looking for a new concerto to learn (hint,

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by Christian Hertzog
Canada, Chamber Music, Classical Music, Composers, Contemporary Classical, Film Music, Interviews, Orchestras, Portland, Twentieth Century Composer

Interview with composer Tom Myron

The job requirements of a working composer are elusive, perhaps especially for composition students enrolled in University degree programs that fail to provide graduates with the interpersonal and business skills necessary for survival outside the walls of academia. One student composer told me recently: “We are all being trained to teach.”Woody Allen famously said: “Those who can’t do, teach. Those who can’t teach, teach gym.” But those who compose and don’t teach do find ways to sustain themselves and their passion for music through a variety of collaborative and creative means, some perhaps less “traditional” than others. With this in

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by Chris Becker
Chamber Music, Choral Music, Composers, Concerts, Contemporary Classical, Electro-Acoustic, Experimental Music, File Under?, Interviews, New York

Jeff Gavett talks about Ekmeles

On Tuesday 1/11, newish New York vocal ensemble Ekmeles presents a program of music by Martin Iddon, Alvin Lucier, and David Lang at The Tank. I caught up with Ekmeles’ director, baritone Jeff Gavett to learn more about the event. Carey: Why did you form the group Ekmeles? Gavett: “While New York is home to many exceptional instrumental groups dedicated to contemporary music, there is a relative paucity of new vocal music. Ekmeles was created to fill the gap, and bring adventurous new music for solo voices to audiences that otherwise have little or no chance to hear it.” “Our

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by Christian Carey
Brooklyn, CDs, Chamber Music, Concerts, Contemporary Classical, File Under?, Interviews

Pieces of Eight: AME at Galapagos on Monday

The American Modern Ensemble performs Pieces of Eight, a program of sextets at Galapagos in Brooklyn on Monday, December 13, 2010. Among the eight under-40 composers featured on the concert is Sequenza 21’s own Contributing Editor Armando Bayolo. I recently caught up with AME’s Artistic Director Robert Paterson and asked him for some details about the show. Here’s what he had to say. “Pieces of Eight consists of works by composers from all over the United States, including Xi Wang from Texas, Armando Bayolo from Washington, DC and David Ludwig from Philadelphia. I chose these particular works because they are wonderfully

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by Christian Carey
Chamber Music, Contemporary Classical, File Under?, Interviews, New York, Video, viola, Violin

Strata gets Metaclassical

Strata – a trio consisting of pianist Audrey Andrist, clarinetist Nathan Williams, and  violinist/violist James Stern – has just started a new commissioning project. Abetted by a grant from the Rauch Foundation, their Metaclassical Music Project seeks to bridge the gap between new music and the non-specialist audience through educational outreach and the commissioning of new works that seek to communicate with a range of listeners. Phase one of Strata’s “demystification” of contemporary fare involves presenting a new piece by Stephen Paulus on a concert this weekend at Merkin Hall (details below). Paulus is certainly a composer who fits their mission statement: an artist

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by Christian Carey
Commissions, Composers, Contemporary Classical, Events, File Under?, Interviews, New York

Introducing Meet the Composer Studio

Meet the Composer’s latest venture, MTC Studio, will be unveiled on Monday at an event at the 92nd Street Y (Tribeca). It features members of the International Contemporary Ensemble and the first class of MTC Studio composers – Kati Agócs, Marcos Balter, Yu-Hui Chang, Glenn Kotche (of the band Wilco), Dohee Lee and Ken Ueno – in an evening of conversations and music making. Yesterday, I caught up with Ken Ueno (University of California-Berkeley) and asked him about MTC Studio and some of his other recent exploits. In addition to his activities with Meet the Composer, Ueno is getting a portrait concert

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by Christian Carey
Blogs, Books, File Under?, Interviews

Conversations about the inner life of creativity

Innerviews: Music Without Borders (Extraordinary Conversations with Extraordinary Musicians) by Anil Prasad Abstract Logix Books; 315 pages, Published 2010 Anil Prasad has covered music on the internet longer than practically anyone. He started the website Innerviews in 1994, well before blogging, social media, and a host of other technological changes. The web has changed remarkably over the past sixteen years, but Innerviews has remained a consistent and engaging part of the internet’s musical life. Prasad regularly publishes interviews with musicians from a plethora of genres: jazz, fusion, funk, prog, world music, electronica, etc. Innerviews the book collects some of his

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by Christian Carey