Women composers

Chamber Music, Concert review, Concerts, Contemporary Classical, Festivals, Percussion, Women composers

2025 Festival of Contemporary Music at Tanglewood

2025 Festival of Contemporary Music at Tanglewood – July 24 – July 28, 2025 Every summer since 1964, the Tanglewood Music Center presents its Festival of Contemporary Music. According to Tanglewood’s materials: The Festival of Contemporary Music (FCM) is one of the world’s premier showcases for works from the current musical landscape and landmark pieces from the new music vanguard of the 20th century. FCM affords Tanglewood Music Center Fellows the opportunity to explore unfamiliar repertoire and experience the value of direct collaboration with living composers. Over the four FCM concerts (of the total of six) I heard carefully honed performances

Read more
by Gail Wein
Canada, Cello, Chamber Music, Classical Music, Composers, Composers Now, Concert review, Conductors, Contemporary Classical, New York, Orchestral, Premieres, viola, Violin, Women composers

Momenta Festival IX: Ives at 150 and a Quartet at 20

On Thursday evening in New York, Momenta Quartet’s October festival – now nine years running – closed with an assorted program, enthusiastically curated by violist/composer Stephanie Griffin. Griffin is the last founding member still actively performing with the group. Noting that this festival has ever featured the opportunity for each member to have curatorial carte blanche on one night only, Griffin nodded to the overall 2024 theme – Charles Ives at 150 – while admitting that “this is not a thematic program, but rather a joyous collection of pieces that I saw fit to celebrate the genius of Charles Ives

Read more
by Adam Sherkin
Cello, Classical Music, Concert review, Contemporary Classical, Piano, Violin, Women composers

The Knights at Carnegie Hall: It’s a Family Affair

It’s always a family affair with The Knights. The orchestra was founded in 2007 by the brothers Eric and Colin Jacobsen, who share artistic director duties as well as musical positions (Eric is conductor; Colin is concertmaster). Another family connection on the May 16, 2024 program at Carnegie’s Zankel Hall was that of the soloist, the pianist Jeffrey Kahane, for whom his son Gabriel Kahane wrote a concerto. Heirloom, a work which explores music through the lens of several generations of Kahane’s family, received its New York premiere at this concert. Its conventional three-movemennt construct and post-Shostakovich style fit right

Read more
by Gail Wein
Classical Music, Commissions, Composers, Concerts, Contemporary Classical, Events, Lincoln Center, Music Events, New York, Orchestral, Women composers

NY Philharmonic – Unpacking the Spring 2024 Season for New Music Lovers

A few months ago, I wrote an article that distilled the New York Philharmonic Fall 2023 season into enticing programs for contemporary music lovers. “When you see New York Philharmonic’s glossy brochures and online ads, you might be hard pressed to spot the new music offerings that are in nearly every program. For instance, “Trifonov Plays Schumann” hides the fact that there is a work for strings by the Lithuanian composer Raminta Šerkšnytė, a composition which Gidon Kremer referred to as ‘the calling card of Baltic music.’” Here is my annotation of Philharmonic concerts in Spring 2024 for the tiny

Read more
by Gail Wein
Chamber Music, Commissions, Concert review, Concerts, Contemporary Classical, Lincoln Center, Strings, Women composers

An Ayre Apparent: Emerson String Quartet / Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center

Sarah Kirkland Snider’s Drink the Wild Ayre for String Quartet is the last work commissioned by the venerable Emerson String Quartet. The group – who plans to disband after 47 years of recitals and recordings – gave the New York premiere at one of their last concerts in New York City. It was a tidy closing of a loop. Early in Snider’s compositional career, two decades ago, performances by the Emerson String Quartet inspired her to write her own first quartet. The ten minute work led the second half of the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center program at Alice

Read more
by Gail Wein
CDs, Chamber Music, Contemporary Classical, Podcasts, Women composers

Podcast: Voices of the Pearl

This podcast examines Voices of the Pearl, a particularly interesting project that combines the rediscovery of ancient religious texts, the setting of these texts by women into chamber music by contemporary composers and the historical role of women in sacred music. Our guests are Dr. Anne Harley, Artistic Director of the Voices of the Pearl project and Dr. Stacey Fraser, soprano. The podcast will explore the music of their third and latest CD album. With Jim Goodin.

Read more
by Paul Muller
Concert review, Contemporary Classical, Los Angeles, Women composers

wasteLAnd Opens Season Six in Los Angeles

Season six of the wasteLAnd new music concert series began on Friday, October 5, 2018 at Art Share LA in downtown Los Angeles. Katherine Young is the featured composer this season and her work was front and center in a program consisting of three of her pieces, including a world premiere. Ms. Young stated in the liner notes that “…each of these pieces to different degrees and in different ways blur out of linear ‘musical’ forms and into sonic meditations through the use of drone, saturating textures, and/or spatialization.” The ample Art Share space was filled to capacity with an

Read more
by Paul Muller
Concert review, Contemporary Classical, Experimental Music, Los Angeles, Women composers

The Ground Beneath Her Feet at the wulf

On October 11, 2017 downtown Los Angeles was the venue for a new collaborative performance by Rachel Yezbick, Carole Kim and Eric Heep. Coaxial Arts, the new home of the wulf experimental music concert series,  welcomed in a mid-week audience that arranged itself on the floor and along the brick walls in quiet expectation of an unconventional program. The performance space was darkened as the program opened with Eric Heep’s Bubble playing through the speakers. The sounds were realized from digitally generated oscillations that were processed by computer using a bubble sort algorithm. The result was a series low buzzing sounds

Read more
by Paul Muller
Classical Music, Composers, Concert review, Concerts, Conferences, Contemporary Classical, Downtown, Electro-Acoustic, Events, Experimental Music, Festivals, Lectures, Media, Music Events, New York, Percussion, Performers, Sound Art, Strange, Twentieth Century Composer, Women composers

The New York City Electroacoustic Music Festival (NYCEMF) takes Manhattan

Most New Yorkers are walking about, minding their own business, completely oblivious to the international sonic earthquake vibrating through their midst all week: The New York City Electroacoustic Music Festival (NYCEMF). The first wave of the festival (seven concerts) took place as part of the New York Philharmonic’s Biennial at National Sawdust in Brooklyn last week. Yet the lion’s share of the festival is happening right now: 28 more concerts during June 13-19, at Abrons Arts Center on Grand St., for a total of 35 concerts. Yes you read that correctly: 35 concerts of electroacoustic music, including some 350 works,

Read more
by Joshua Banks Mailman
Concert review, Contemporary Classical, Los Angeles, Women composers

Music of Pauline Oliveros in Los Angeles

On Tuesday, September 9, 2014 the Southland Ensemble presented a concert of the music of Pauline Oliveros at Human Resources in the arts-friendly Chinatown district of downtown Los Angeles. The performance space, with its wide open floor and lively acoustics was the perfect place given that the works of Ms. Oliveros typically include a theatrical component. The seating, arranged logically around the perimeter, was completely filled by those attending. The concert opened with Sonic Rorschach (1971) and for this groups of electric fans were arrayed in the corners to provide white noise, as called for in the composers notes for

Read more
by Paul Muller