Best of 2021: Varèse, Ligeti, Lutosławski, Baldini on Centaur Varèse, Ligeti, Lutosławski, Baldini Munich Radio Orchestra; UC Davis Symphony Orchestra Miranda Cuckson, violin; Maximilian Haft, violin Christian Baldini, conductor Centaur Records CD/DL Conductor and composer Christian Baldini is making a name for himself on the West Coast, where he directs the UC Davis Orchestra and is a frequent guest conductor of the San Francisco Symphony, as well as abroad with a number of orchestras and opera companies. This Centaur CD features live performances of three pivotal European modernist works, as well as a piece by Baldini that negotiates similar
Read moreIt’s a brave new world. Large gatherings are prohibited in many cities to help prevent the spread of COVID-19, and so nearly all concerts have been postponed or cancelled. Still, performers and presenters prevail, providing live-streamed concerts, even without a physical audience in attendance. Several resources have popped up to help music-starved ears find concerts online. Here is a list of classical concerts offered live on the internet, worldwide. The list is updated regularly. Performers, presenters and others may submit events via a Google form. (Full disclosure: I created this database). Live Music Project, a concert resource based in Seattle
Read moreDan Lippel – like so many in the creative world – wears many hats. Lippel is a classical guitarist who specializes in new music, he founded and runs a successful and prolific record label (as one of team of three), and writes music, though he is reluctant to call himself a composer. He excels in each of these endeavors, and manages to make most of it look effortless in the process. Lippel’s most recent solo album, Mirrored Spaces (released November 2019), is a two-CD set on New Focus Recordings, the aforementioned label that he runs. The repertoire is premiere recordings
Read moreNo matter how old the violinist Midori is, I’ll always think of her as a child prodigy, the young teenager in the 1980s who played with A-list orchestras around the world. She hasn’t disappeared from public eye between then and now, and the thrill of a child performing beyond her years is gone, but her name and her reputation still garner great admiration and respect. This month, Midori is touring a recital program she devised: works by five living female composers, including the premiere of a brand-new piece. On November 4, 2019, her performance in New York City with the
Read moreThe Music of Sheila Silver: A Celebration Merkin Concert Hall February 8, 2018 By Christian Carey Published on Sequenza 21 NEW YORK – Composer Sheila Silver has taught at Stony Brook University since 1979. On February 8th at Merkin Concert Hall, an all-Silver program celebrated her tenure at the university. In addition to colleagues and students past and present, the hall was filled with area musicians – including multiple generations of composers – who were most enthusiastic in their reception of Silver and the estimable renditions of her work. Even when composing instrumental music, Silver often bases
Read moreElliott Sharp may sometimes be characterized as a cellular composer, but he is by no means a cellular thinker. Rather, he seems to conceive of things in large swaths of creation, only then removing skins and reconnecting veins until each organism revives by means of unexpected blood flow. The Boreal collects four somewhat recent examples, of which the 2008 title composition, performed here by the JACK Quartet, employs awesome extended techniques, including bows strung with springs and ball-bearing chains, in addition to standard hair. But through this recording it’s not so much the craft as the art that shines. Like
Read moreCross-posted from my home site, The Big City, here are my lists for top new music recordings of the year, in a few different categories: Best 2014 Albums of New Classical Music: Dan Becker, Fade. Not just a set of excellent compositions, but a rarity in classical music, a set that is thought-out and made to work as an album. Becker’s music shares some of the hints of pop sensibility with that of Michael Torke, but has a tougher, more abstract edge. Terrific chamber pieces, played b y the Common Sense and New Millenium Ensembles, are interspersed with Diskclavier realizations of
Read moreNick Brooke: Border Towns To experience Border Towns is to undo the idea of both. The border is metaphorically ubiquitous—as powerful as it is arbitrary. Towns are more immediate—tactile and moving to the pulse of indeterminate social interaction. Together the words form not an oxymoron but a median. Such is the spirit that moves composer Nick Brooke in this quasi-opera of Americana and stardust. The music’s formula is diaristic, appropriating snippets from songbooks familiar and not so familiar, gunpowder from the popular canon loaded into a rather different cannon and shot across the past century until fleetingly recognizable. Brooke’s intertextual
Read moreWhen art promises to be revelatory, it may become something to fear. Such is the case of String Paths, the first conspectus of music by Dobrinka Tabakova. Fear, in this sense, is close to awe, for before hearing a single note one knows its details will seep into places to which few others have traveled. Fear, because the trust and intimacy required of such an act is what the composer’s life is all about: she fills staves with glyphs so that anyone with an open heart might encounter their fleeting interpretations and become part of their accretion. Indeed, many factors
Read more