Here’s an obituary written by Carson Cooman. American composer Daniel Pinkham passed away on the morning of December 18, 2006 in Natick, Massachusetts, USA after a brief illness. Pinkham, one of America’s most active and well-known composers of music for the church, was born in Lynn, Massachusetts, USA on June 5, 1923.  He studied at Harvard University and Tanglewood with Walter Piston, Aaron Copland, Samuel Barber, Arthur Honneger, and Nadia Boulanger.  As an organist and harpsichord he studied with Wanda Landowska and E. Power Biggs. For over forty years, Pinkham was music director at Boston’s historic King’s Chapel, where he

Stanley moved suddenly, sitting up as though to break a spell.  He sat rigid on the edge of the bed, clenching his teeth as though to discipline the activity of his mind, which he could hardly stir during the day when he tried to work.  How could Bach have accomplished all that he did?  and Palestrina?  the Gabrielis? and what of the organ concerti of Corelli?  Those were the men whose work he admired beyond all else in this life, for they had touched the origins of design with recognition.  And how?  with music written for the Church.  Not written

Steve Layton writes:  “Our hip weekly in Seattle, The Stranger, has a yearly “Strangercrombie” Xmas-auction of unusual gifts. One of the music-related gifts up for grabs is this”: Alex Ross’s iPod New Yorker music critic Alex Ross set music nerds’ hearts aflutter last year on his national iPod Tour, lecturing on 20th-century composers from Ligeti to Bjork to Messiaen and playing samples from his iPod. Now here’s your chance to possess an Alex Ross-programmed iPod of your very own. The venerable Ross has programmed two playlists into this very iPod Nano (silver) in his own New York apartment with his

My friends, this is heaven.  (Thank Kevin Leong.)

A sold-out REDCAT held a brilliant concert to celebrate the re-birth of our Monday Evening Concerts and to honor the late Dorrance Stalvey, the man who directed the concerts for almost 35 years.  The series had hit a rough patch when Stalvey became director (and curator of music at LACMA).  He brought creativity in programming and in performance to the series.  To recognize Stalvey’s contributions to our community and our music, Alan Rich provided a lovely tribute to the man in the concert’s written program, and the centerpiece of the concert was the performance of Stalvey’s last completed composition, “Stream”

Sometime, not too long ago, I seem to remember a discussion of the definition of spectral music running in the comment section. The latest issue of Skeptical Inquirer magazine includes an interview with composer Joshua Fineberg, who gives it a go: We are creatures that are tremendously sensitive to timbre because the vowels of language depend on timbral perception, as does our auditory scene analysis. The fact that we are relatively less good at identifying things like pitches and intervals is part of why for a long time they were interesting.

[youtube]ONP6HtxPN1Y[/youtube] OgreOgress artist Debora Petrina.  Hat tip to Glenn Freeman. 

Tuesday night Thomas Ades was the guest pianist, filling Leonard Stein’s slot, in the Piano Spheres concert at Zipper Hall of the Colburn School.  This brought out the largest audience I’ve seen in a Piano Spheres concert, even larger than the audience for Gloria Cheng’s series opener.  The buzz about Ades has been good, to understate the reactions.  Perhaps our important piano series is beginning to get the audience it deserves. The program to let us hear Ades, the pianist, was not showy or flashy.  It wasn’t new:  the whole second half of the program is on his EMI recording. 

In an indulgent little piece in today’s NY Sun, Fred Kirshnit reorders the historical construct of the Big Five as Pittsburgh, Cincinnati, LA, Chicago, Boston. His thoughs on the NY Phil:  Not even the best orchestra on the plaza.   Limiting our discussion to the modern era, the local Phil has been deficient for a long time. A pedestrian string sound, a tendency to lose intonation as a piece drags along, an inconsistent trumpet section, and a sometimes frightful set of French horns are just background for an ensemble that often seems to have little investment in its own performances.