New Music reBlog

« July 2005 | Main | September 2005 »

August 25, 2005

Temporary Hiatus for New Music Reblog

The reblogging is on hold until I get back from a couple weeks vacation. Enjoy what's left of the summer!

Jeff

Posted by jeff at 02:35 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Say no to extending copyright in recordings

Originally from The Rambler, ReBlogged by jeff on Aug 25, 2005 at 02:32 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Landmarks (7)

Originally from Renewable Music, ReBlogged by jeff on Aug 25, 2005 at 02:31 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

The real 'Piano Man'

"Here then…are some of the harsh facts behind the words ‘severe mental illness’ and ‘serious nervous breakdown’ which the press has been using about me so often lately. Not that I am complaining about the press! – I was thrilled by the sympathetic and wide spread media interest that came my way both before and after my return to the….concert stage."

These words were written by the real ‘Piano Man’ John Ogdon in 1981.

Ogdon (right) was thrust into the limelight in 1962 when he was joint winner, with his friend Vladimir Ashkenazy, of the Moscow Tchaikovsky Competition. He wowed the Moscow audiences with his performances of Rachmaninov, Balakirev and Scriabin, as well as the Tchaikovsky 1st Piano Concerto which became his signature piece.

Although Ogdon is mainly remembered today for his stunning interpretations of the Russian romantic repertoire he was also a ceaseless performer of modern music. He studied in Manchester at the same time as Peter Maxwell Davies, who wrote his Opus 1 Sonata for Trumpet for Ogdon and Elgar Howarth, and his Opus 2 Five Pieces for Piano for him in 1956. Ogdon became part of what is now known as the ‘Manchester School’ together with Harrison Birtwistle and Alexander Goehr.

John Ogdon’s appetite for new music was insatiable. He gave the first performance in 50 years of Kaikhosru Sorabji’s (1892-1988) four hour epic, Opus Clavicembalisticum, and then offered to repeat the piece as an encore! He went on to record the Sorabji...

Originally from On An Overgrown Path, ReBlogged by jeff on Aug 25, 2005 at 02:30 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Philadelphia: Preview--David Lang's No Pain

Part of Abington Art Center's installation of The Lost Meeting, a collaborative project between J. Morgan Puett, spurse (a nebulous collective), Philadelphia-based curator Julie Courtney, and Bang on a Can's David Lang.

Originally from NewMusicBox, ReBlogged by jeff on Aug 25, 2005 at 02:29 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Arias, Interludes And Inventions (1992). Robert Moran

Current ***** tracks:

• Paint the Silence. South.
• Adagio Ma Non Troppo. String Quartet No. 4. Alan Hovhaness. Shanghai Quartet.
• Spem In Alium. Thomas Tallis. Kronos Quartet.
• Andante Moderato. Symphony No. 2. Charles Ives.
• Largo Ostinato. Henry Cowell.
• Dirty Love. Frank Zappa.
• Bee Vamp. Eric Dolphy.
• M'bifé (Balafon). Amadou & Mariam.
• Artistiya. Amadou & Mariam.
• (5). Arias, Interludes And Inventions. Robert Moran. Jayne West, Piano Circus Band.
• Don't Let Me Disappoint You. Corey Dargel.
• You Got Me All Wrong. Dios Malos.
• (2). Arias, Interludes And Inventions. Robert Moran. Jayne West, Piano Circus Band.
• Breadcrumb Trail. Slint.
• Mother of the Man. Naive and Sentimental Music. John Adams.
• Prepared. Mission of Burma.
• Sam Lazaro Bros. Jurg Frey. Edwin Alexander Buchholz (accordion).
• Planet Caravan. The Anomoanon.

Observations:

1. My current musical life is a dialectic battle between semi-popular music and semi-contemporary classical music. Lately, if it weren't for Robert Moran, I would say pop was winning.
2. Love/hate that Slint reissue CD.
3. Again, Corey Dargel's music sounds fresh and novel without being "avant-gardey." From the Sequenza21 listening room (where I need to listen to the other composers; I also have an interesting backlog of listening suggestions I've received).
4. I'm always surprised I don't listen more to the music of Alan Hovhaness.
5. I know next to nothing about South, Dios Malos, Mission of Burma, Jurg Frey, or The Anomoanon, but there they are...

Originally posted by Robert Gable from aworks :: "new" american classical music, ReBlogged by jeff on Aug 25, 2005 at 02:28 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Bley and Stockhausen on Radio 3

BBC Radio 3 is featuring performances and new works by Carla Bley and Markus Stockhausen.

Originally posted by Mike from Avant Music News, ReBlogged by jeff on Aug 25, 2005 at 02:27 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Interpretations 9/15/05

Originally from NetNewMusic Contemporary Music News, ReBlogged by jeff on Aug 25, 2005 at 02:24 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

August 24, 2005

Voices in the Wilderness?

Since 1945 or so, vocal music was largely eschewed in academic compositional circles, as was much of lyric and tonal music in general. Yet despite the trend, much has been written, and survived as the pendulum invariably swings. Vocal music is becoming...

Originally posted by Cary Boyce from Sequenza21/Composers Forum, ReBlogged by jeff on Aug 24, 2005 at 07:16 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Pliable Wednesday

Happy Birthday to our virtual friend and sometime contributor Pliable whose blog--On an Overgrown Path--is celebrating its first birthday today. Overgrown Path is one of the very best contemporary music blogs on the web and an inspiration to us all.

Originally posted by Jerry Bowles from Sequenza21, ReBlogged by jeff on Aug 24, 2005 at 02:24 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Bard Copland

To quote Chester Kallman's proposed last words, "I've never done this before." That is being here in England for the month but going to Annandale-on-Hudson for the weekend, to the Bard Festival, Copland and His World, where I was doing a talk. Even though...

Originally posted by Rodney Lister from Sequenza21, ReBlogged by jeff on Aug 24, 2005 at 02:23 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Speaking and Understanding the Language of Other Universes

The task of learning a new work involves not only committing notes to fingers in order to execute them with fluency, but conveying those notes in a way that is so natural and idiomatic that the listener will hear not the language but the meaning of the music.

Originally from NewMusicBox, ReBlogged by jeff on Aug 24, 2005 at 02:21 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Warner to launch Magnatune-like online label

CNET writes today about Warner Bros announcing that they are launching an online-only label, which will release songs in 3 song chunks, and surprisingly, musicians will keep the copyright to the master recording.

The wording of the rights retained seems tightly worded: "artists signed to the e-label will retain copyright and ownership of their master recordings" -- I'm not sure if this means that the artist won't keep the rights to the publishing (ie, the song writing), but as labels frequently don't get publishing rights, I'm assuming this is a "less evil" agreement.

My hunch is that Warner is trying to offer a carrot to the super-stars who recently have been recording songs and selling them directly from their web sites, or doing direct deals with iTunes.

I'm not sure where the "3 songs at a time" concept came from, it seems odd to me.

And my favorite line from the article, is when the Warner CEO says "We like government levies when they benefit us" -- finally, some honesty!

No word on how well musicians will be paid, DRM, or other important issues, but we'll be watching this one...

Originally posted by John Buckman from buckman's magnatune blog, ReBlogged by jeff on Aug 24, 2005 at 02:20 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Akhnaten (1984). Philip Glass /vacation mix/

Note to self: for the next vacation with considerable rental car time, take more CDs. I like Philip Glass, Black Sabbath, and Tori Amos as much as the next bloke, but sheesh.

Chuck Klosterman, in preparing for his road trip to research his book Killing  Yourself to Live, takes on the subject of what CDs to pack:

I think about my CDs a lot. I find it oddly reassuring to look at them when I'm intoxicated. Right now, my eyes are scanning their alphabetized titles, and I'm wondering how many will make the cut for my drive across America. This decision will dictate everything. Space will be limited, so I can only select those albums that will be undeniably essential.

I elect to bring 600.

In other news while I was gone, Gapers Block reports of an upcoming listening party for a new Philip Glass remix CD. Amazon has clips. I'm normally game for this kind of thing but a dance from Akhnaten sounds weak.

gable: aworks glass consciousness revolution era glass: del.icio.us wikipedia google news yahoo audio singingfish

Originally posted by Robert Gable from aworks :: "new" american classical music, ReBlogged by jeff on Aug 24, 2005 at 02:20 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Warner Launches E-Label

Given the economics of distributing music, it was just a matter of time…Warner has launched an e-label, for which artists record a few songs at a time. They are available only online, and no CDs are pressed.

Originally posted by Mike from Avant Music News, ReBlogged by jeff on Aug 24, 2005 at 02:20 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

UK Microfest, Fall 2005

Not sure if the Spring Microfest ever took place but the UK MicroFest 1 is current scheduled for October.

Autumn, 2005 Microtonal Projects Ltd are promoting a 2 day microtonal event at riverhouse, an arts centre in Walton-on-Thames, Surrey on 14-15 October 2005. Performers include: duo contour (trumpet and percussion); William Raaijman (saxophone); Rare Bird (recorders); Elisabeth Smalt [...]

Originally posted by Mike from Avant Music News, ReBlogged by jeff on Aug 24, 2005 at 02:20 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Experimentelle Musik, fließende Sounds und Klangtapeten - Interview mit Marcus Obst [dronaement]

Hinter dronaement steckt Marcus Obst aus der Nähe von Chemnitz. Mit mehr als 16 Veröffentlichungen (CD, EP, 7”, 12”, Tape gehört Marcus seit Mitte der 90er Jahre zu einer Community von MusikerInnen, die sich der Drone-Musik und Environmental-Musik widmen.

"dronaement is clearly one of the most talented drone-based music projects around ...

Originally from automatictext, ReBlogged by jeff on Aug 24, 2005 at 02:19 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Luc Ferrari -- 5 Feb 1929 - 22 August 2005 R.I.P.

Another sad passing. Our dear friend, Luc Ferrari. See also this.

Originally from All I Know, ReBlogged by jeff on Aug 24, 2005 at 02:19 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

UP!

No, not Shania Twain's album. I mean, the entire score of textbook: music of descending landscapes in hyperspace (piece for IPS) is finally up on the music site. There's a good sized audio excerpt...

Originally from david's waste of bandwidth..., ReBlogged by jeff on Aug 24, 2005 at 02:18 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

podcasting directory

gave up trying to get my music podcast listed on iTunes. It's been several weeks, and it just isn't there (although three medcasts, which I submitted at the same time, are up there---go figure). Adam Curry is taking podcasting to the next level with his PodSafe...

Originally from david's waste of bandwidth..., ReBlogged by jeff on Aug 24, 2005 at 02:18 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

August 23, 2005

Tuesday Will Be Our Good News Day

Maria de Alvear is one of the most intriguing figures in contemporary music. A Spanish composer/artist/sculptor of German descent, de Alvear lives in Germany where she has built a small empire around her own work and that of a handful of others. David Toub...

Originally posted by Jerry Bowles from Sequenza21, ReBlogged by jeff on Aug 23, 2005 at 03:10 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Music file sharing to be offered legally

A new model of legal file sharing, but with a catch…you have to subscribe to a particular ISP. Historically speaking this should not be surprising. The end-consumer cost of online content continues to decline much faster than the cost of network access.

Originally posted by Mike from Avant Music News, ReBlogged by jeff on Aug 23, 2005 at 03:09 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

WikiNews Story on Fascist Rave Bust

Dance party broken up by police in Utah, USA...

Originally posted by jeff from beepSNORT, ReBlogged by jeff on Aug 23, 2005 at 03:08 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Links for the week

Originally from The Rambler, ReBlogged by jeff on Aug 23, 2005 at 02:14 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

carnival of music

Roll up, roll up, ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls, to the 12th amazing, stupendous Carnival of Music spectacular! Many thanks to John, in whose traveling circus I am but a performing chimpanzee.

New this week:

Alex Ross is back from summer break, and in the mood to single-handedly resurrect the operas of Franz Schreker.

What would have been Bill Evans' 76th birthday is commemorated with all due solemnity by Terry Teachout and Doug Ramsey.

Mwanji ferrets out more jazz bloggers hiding in the 'sphere.

Greg Sandow wonders: why shouldn't orchestras drop everything to play that hot new Steven Stucky piece? Good question.

Kyle Gann reckons Copland's Billy The Kid is better than the Piano Variations, and who am I to argue?

On An Overgrown Path notes that, contrary to received wisdom, Marin Alsop is not the only female conductor. Who knew?

Ramblin' Tim Says No To Extending Copyright In Recordings. What is he, some kinda communist?

Peripatetic pianist Jeremy Denk analyses Mozart's sublime Quintet for piano and wind K452. Don't let the Schenker put you off, this is good stuff.

Jessica Duchen has a bit of a 'mare in Salzburg, but there are lots of lovely Proms to make up for it.

There is a dauntingly thorough discussion of free improvisation solo instrumental albums at Bagatellen.

As part of their summer opera spectacular, the chaps at ionarts have the Edinburgh Festival production of Britten's Curlew River in critical perspective.

Oh, and some band called Radiohead are now blogging.

That's all for now folks - if you know of anything else that should be here, email me and I'll add it to the list...

UPDATE: I neglected to say that next week, your host is the supremely cultured Bookish Gardener. One of the best things about this carnival lark is finding beautiful blogs like this one.

Originally posted by Robert Witts from Musicircus, ReBlogged by jeff on Aug 23, 2005 at 02:12 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Yahoo Music to offer listen-to-entire-track-before-buying, but only in Japan

Yahoo Japan announced today that because of pressure from iTunes Japan, they're starting a new online music service where buyers can listen to entire tracks before buying them.

The service will only have 100,000 songs, so they must have struck some special deal with some labels to allow them to do that.

When people ask me why Magnatune "is important" I tell them that it's because eventually the whole online music space will adopt much of what Magnatune does, just as the software industry changed its practice because of shareware & small publishers over the past 20 years.

The reason: no DRM, listen-before-buying, full-quality-downloads, and selling a no-evil product are all competitive advantages, and in an efficient market (which we're slowly getting) these competitive advantages win out.

So... Yahoo Japan will have "try before you buy" ... I'll be that if the feature does well in Japan, they'll introduce it at the USA version of Yahoo Music.

Originally posted by John Buckman from buckman's magnatune blog, ReBlogged by jeff on Aug 23, 2005 at 02:11 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

WikiNews Story on Fascist Rave Bust

Dance party broken up by police in Utah, USA

Originally posted by jeff from beepSNORT, ReBlogged by jeff on Aug 23, 2005 at 02:11 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Music and Fascism in Utah

Watch this video. Save it and spread it around. This is the U.S. military attacking ravers in Utah. Police Raid Outdoor Music Event. These are not police. Seems like a warm-up for Bush's visit and the ensuing anti-war protests? First...

Originally posted by jeff from beepSNORT, ReBlogged by jeff on Aug 23, 2005 at 02:09 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

August 22, 2005

Music and Fascism in Utah

Watch this video. Save it and spread it around. This is the U.S. military attacking ravers in Utah. Police Raid Outdoor Music Event. These are not police. Seems like a warm-up for Bush's visit and the ensuing anti-war protests? First hand account on Daily Kos.

Originally posted by jeff from beepSNORT, ReBlogged by jeff on Aug 22, 2005 at 06:59 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

New Opera Demands New Singers

Interesting development at Sequenza 21. It turns out I'm not the only opera composer who feels hampered by the ubiquity of bel canto singing. Composers in general, the discussion suggests, at least those my age and younger, like their texts enunciated...

Originally from PostClassic, ReBlogged by jeff on Aug 22, 2005 at 06:58 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

POP GOES ELITISM

Originally from uTopianTurtleTop, ReBlogged by jeff on Aug 22, 2005 at 02:14 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Early Autumn

The dog days are winding down and there are hints of early autumn in the air. That means the new season is almost upon on. I'm especially looking forward to Tobias Picker's An American Tragedy, which premieres on December 2, and to the Ovaldo Golijov festival...

Originally posted by Jerry Bowles from Sequenza21, ReBlogged by jeff on Aug 22, 2005 at 02:12 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Robert Moog (5/23/1934 - 8/21/2005) RIP

Sad to report, but Bob Moog, synthesizer pioneer, passed away today. He had been fighting a brain tumor for many months.

For more information, there is a website.

Originally from All I Know, ReBlogged by jeff on Aug 22, 2005 at 11:50 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Musicians against nuclear weapons

In these days of globalisation and music-like-water it is a delight to write about leading soloists and musicians, including members of the Berlin Philharmonic, working together for a really important cause.

International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War (IPPNW) is a non-partisan international grouping of medical organisations dedicated to the abolition of nuclear weapons. They work with the long-term victims of nuclear explosions and accidents from Hiroshima to Chernobyl. Their work has been recognised with the 1984 UNESCO Peace Prize, and 1985 Nobel Peace Prize.

For the last 21 years IPPNW-Concerts has been working from its Berlin office with top musicians world-wide to raise funds for their work. As well as being a fantastic cause there is some music well worth exploring available on IPPNW-Concerts' own CD label, and in co-productions with Swedish label BIS. These are all live recordings of concerts promoted by IPPNW over the years.

There are forty-nine CDs in the catalogue with composers ranging from Monteverdi to Elliot Carter. The nuggets worth mining include Furtwängler's Te Deum coupled with Brahms and Hindemith (CD40). Wort und Musik - 60 Jahre nach Hiroshima couples the aria from Bach’s Goldberg Variations, Shostakovich's String Quartet...

Originally from On An Overgrown Path, ReBlogged by jeff on Aug 22, 2005 at 11:47 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Bob Moog

Just learned that Bob Moog is seriously ill and bed-ridden with a brain tumor. A web site has been created for well-wishers.

Robert Moog is one of the original developers of analog music synthesizers in the 1960's. This kind of news is very saddening. We send our best wishes and thoughts for a speedy recovery.

Update: Sadly, Bob Moog passed away yesterday, August 21, 2005. Our thoughts go to his family and friends around the world.

Originally from All I Know, ReBlogged by jeff on Aug 22, 2005 at 11:45 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Tacet, attaca Oral Sensations

Originally from Musical Perceptions, ReBlogged by jeff on Aug 22, 2005 at 12:05 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Against the Tide as Usual

This is from one of the program notes I wrote for the current Bard festival, "Aaron Copland and his World":

Some of the musical intelligentsia decried Copland's return to tonality, but one of the remarkable things about Billy the Kid is how well it integrates his technical achievements of the 1920s. Bitonality is rampant: Scene 2, "Street in a Frontier Town," plays off the...

Originally from PostClassic, ReBlogged by jeff on Aug 22, 2005 at 12:04 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Harris, Harrassed, in the Hudson

After 36 years, I finally heard Roy Harris's Third Symphony live last night, conducted by Leon Botstein at Bard's Copland and His World festival. I had discovered the piece when I was 13, and it blew me away. The smooth sweep of the piece's organic form is masterful (or maybe just lucky, because Harris had trouble ever achieving it again), and the middle, "Pastoral" section had a deep impact on me: time stops as the orchestra floats...

Originally from PostClassic, ReBlogged by jeff on Aug 22, 2005 at 12:04 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

coro at the proms

Berio's Coro is one of those works that makes sense in the vastness of the Albert Hall. Scored for 40 solo singers and 40 instrumentalists, arrayed in pairs on stage according to the composer's plan, it is a deeply powerful and human work. Berio sets protest poetry by Neruda alongside folk songs from around the world, made strange and magnificent.

Late night proms have a curiously intimate atmosphere - a few people listening intently in that cavernous space. The marvellous Diego Masson conducted a bolstered London Sinfonietta and Sinfonietta voices, who rose to the occasion. Fantastic stuff, and it makes me want to hear more of Berio's music. The more I hear, the less 'avant-garde' it sounds; it's warm, passionate and engaging.

UPDATE: Ben Hogwood has posted a well-turned review at musicOMH.

Originally posted by Robert Witts from Musicircus, ReBlogged by jeff on Aug 22, 2005 at 12:03 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

New Soundmark Project by kommbat: Cologne via balcony

The current Soundmark Project by kommbat deals with sounds(capes) of Cologne's city. Each night he pushes the record button to get a one minute recording of his neighbourhood. The recordings are used as digitized memories.

Originally from automatictext, ReBlogged by jeff on Aug 22, 2005 at 12:03 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

August 21, 2005

The Voices In Your Head

Fifty years ago, one could safely assume that composers who wrote for voice were imagining the classically trained version heard in opera houses and song recitals.

That assumption is no longer safe. While many composers continue to write for classically...

Originally posted by Lawrence Dillon from Sequenza21/Composers Forum, ReBlogged by jeff on Aug 21, 2005 at 05:47 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Composers in the Kitchen

Originally from Renewable Music, ReBlogged by jeff on Aug 21, 2005 at 05:47 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Concert of New Music by The NYME

The New York Miniaturist Ensemble invites you to an exhilarating evening of new music by contemporary composers. The concert is dedicated to music of brevity and purity of essence and will solely feature works containing 100 notes or fewer. So, what constitutes a note? Please visit www.nyme.org for more information on The NYME and their distinctive approach to concertizing.

The concert will be at eight o'clock, August 31st at Chez Bushwick in Brooklyn, NY. Please visit www.nyme.org for directions and further details.

Originally from NetNewMusic Contemporary Music News, ReBlogged by jeff on Aug 21, 2005 at 05:46 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

LongArms Records

LongArms Records is a Russian imprint, founded by Sergey Kuryokhin, and their releases include noise, new music, jazz, and more.

Originally posted by Mike from Avant Music News, ReBlogged by jeff on Aug 21, 2005 at 02:11 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

August 20, 2005

Local kid does well

Originally from Renewable Music, ReBlogged by jeff on Aug 20, 2005 at 01:10 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Mills College Concerts

Oakland’s Mills College has a very promsing schedule of upcoming concerts:

Concert Series Darius Milhaud Concert MILHAUD AND SCHOENBERG Darius Milhaud: String Quartet No. 3 op. 32 (1916) with soprano Sonata for Viola and Piano Arnold Schoenberg: String Quartet #2 (with soprano) Ives Quartet (Robin Sharp and Susan Freier, violins; Scott Woolweaver, viola; Stephen Harrison, cello)Anna Carol Dudley, soprano Delores Stevens, piano Friday, September [...]

Originally posted by Mike from Avant Music News, ReBlogged by jeff on Aug 20, 2005 at 01:08 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Hey, guys

Radiohead is/are blogging. Via Thomas.

Originally posted by Alex Ross from Alex Ross: The Rest Is Noise, ReBlogged by jeff on Aug 20, 2005 at 01:07 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

August 19, 2005

Mills Concert Series Announced

The Fall season concerts at Mills College (Oakland, CA) have been announced. And it's quite an amazing list.

Terry Riley, Pauline Oliveros, Stuart Dempster, Shoenberg, Milhaud, Frith, Cowell; Italian double bass virtuoso/composer Stefano Scodanibbio playing Berio and Scelsi; cellist Frances-Marie Uitti with Fred Frith, guitar and Chris Brown, piano, and Mills students playing more Scelsi (it is his 100th anniversary after all); and much more!

Originally from All I Know, ReBlogged by jeff on Aug 19, 2005 at 08:11 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

A-be, A-be, A-be...That's Bach, Folks

The nice folks at Boosey currently weighing in at 300 True Tones and 450 polyphonic tones, whatever that means. I like the name, which echos LooneyTunes, and is oddly reminscent of long ago nights spent with drunken associates serenading unappreciative...

Originally posted by Jerry Bowles from Sequenza21, ReBlogged by jeff on Aug 19, 2005 at 06:02 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Current listening

Originally from The Rambler, ReBlogged by jeff on Aug 19, 2005 at 02:09 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

New music in Germany, nowadays

Originally from Renewable Music, ReBlogged by jeff on Aug 19, 2005 at 02:08 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

More composers online

Originally from Renewable Music, ReBlogged by jeff on Aug 19, 2005 at 02:08 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

The bookless Mrs Beckham

Popular culture and aspirations are as closely linked as Rolls and Royce.... [snip]

...Another great new role model is the composer Sir Peter Maxwell Davies. He has worked extensively with schoolchildren at his own St Magnus Festival in the rural Orkney Islands (picture below), and has been successful in making learning about music and the arts ‘cool’. Max, as he is known, is also not afraid to speak his mind, and has been a vociferous critic of the low levels of central funding for music education. And he doesn’t stop there, He is also an entrepreneur - which goes down well with The Apprentice watchers. Max recently started his own record company, called MaxOpus, because he didn’t think the major companies were giving his music the support it deserves.

But grass roots role models only have limited scope for driving change. Popular culture is rigidly controlled by the mass media, including record companies, TV and radio stations, book publishers and the tabloid press. The big opportunity comes when popular culture is separated from the mass media. And this is already starting to happen, driven by an exponentially increasing rate of technology change.

In the old model the big players controlled popular culture because they also controlled the high entry cost media through which it was communicated. This meant Victoria Beckham’s image was defined by mass media players including her record company, Virgin Music, and her book publisher, Penguin Putnam...

Originally from On An Overgrown Path, ReBlogged by jeff on Aug 19, 2005 at 02:07 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

New On ECM

ECM always has a lot to offer, and their latest include reissues from Julian Priester, Dave Holland / Barre Phillips, and Steve Kuhn.

Originally posted by Mike from Avant Music News, ReBlogged by jeff on Aug 19, 2005 at 02:04 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Ostrava Days New Music Festival

This year’s Ostrava Days New Music Festival includes performances from many modern composers.

Originally posted by Mike from Avant Music News, ReBlogged by jeff on Aug 19, 2005 at 02:03 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Steve Reich Receives The Edward MacDowell Medal

Hidden away in the woods near Peterborough, NH, the MacDowell Colony spends most of the year providing artists of many stripes with a place to work completely uninterrupted for a few precious weeks. Meals are provided, with breakfast and dinner in a...

Originally posted by Galen H. Brown from Sequenza21, ReBlogged by jeff on Aug 19, 2005 at 11:42 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

San Francisco Electronic Music Festival

This year’s SFEMF is taking place tonight and running for 4 nights:

The sixth annual San Francisco Electronic Music Festival will take place Thursday, August 18th to Sunday, August 21st, 2005 at SomArts Cultural Center located at 934 Brannan Street, San Francisco, CA 94103. This year’s visiting composers are renowned trombonist/improviser and electronic music composer George [...]

Originally posted by Mike from Avant Music News, ReBlogged by jeff on Aug 19, 2005 at 11:41 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Recording

Earlier this week, Robert Black recorded my solo bass piece Static Walking. I wrote it for Robert back in 1997, and he's been playing it on and off ever since. So has Steve Gilwelski, who has also toured with the piece. We recorded the piece for Albany...

Originally posted by Anthony Cornicello from Anthony Cornicello, ReBlogged by jeff on Aug 19, 2005 at 11:41 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

What about Schreker?

Two leftover scraps from my piece on the luminously strange operas of Franz Schreker. 1) Not one of Schreker's operas has ever been performed in the United States, according to scholar Christopher Hailey. It would be a fine thing if an adventurous opera company — Santa Fe? St. Louis? — took them up. 2) I wanted to write a brief description of Schreker's famous "shimmering" effects, but couldn't shoe-horn it into the piece. In the opening page of the Gezeichneten Prelude, the harmony oscillates between D major and B-flat minor, and what's really interesting is that this alternation takes place in separate layers, at different rates of speed. In the first layer, piano and harps spell out the chords in swirling arpeggios. In the second layer, celesta and second violins sound them in even more rapid succession. The first violins, meanwhile, snake around in sinuous patterns, while bass clarinet, violas, and cellos present Carlotta's yearning, ambiguous theme. It's one of the most bewitching soundscapes ever devised — an interior Magic Fire.

Photo from the Schreker Foundation. The "What About Schreker?" story was told to me by David Denby. This recording is a good introduction, though not ideal. CDs and a DVD of the Salzburg Gezeichneten may be forthcoming.

Originally posted by Alex Ross from Alex Ross: The Rest Is Noise, ReBlogged by jeff on Aug 19, 2005 at 11:40 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

An Old Fashioned Version of Mashups

Another thought from Vilnius... Yesterday at the rehearsal of MACHUNAS instead of being dragged off for a coffee or snack in between acts, I stuck around as musicians wandered in and out and practiced by themselves or in small subgroups. What I heard bl

Originally posted by Frank J. Oteri from Sequenza21/Composers Forum, ReBlogged by jeff on Aug 19, 2005 at 11:37 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

August 18, 2005

Music-In-Print Series Publisher Directory

Originally from The Rambler, ReBlogged by jeff on Aug 18, 2005 at 07:11 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

All We Really Need To Know Is On the Internet

What can we, the new music community, do to stop the general Wal-Mart-ing and Clear Channel-ing of American culture?

Originally from NewMusicBox, ReBlogged by jeff on Aug 18, 2005 at 07:09 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

The History of Avantgarde Music

A rather detailed History of Avantgarde Music is worth a look or two.

Originally posted by Mike from Avant Music News, ReBlogged by jeff on Aug 18, 2005 at 07:09 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Soundtracks

San Diego writer and composer Thomas Larson has sent along a link to his fine essay on Roy Harris' Third Symphony, which appears in a recent issue of the San Diego Reader, alongside various personal accounts of musical passions and discoveries. It's nice to see classical music heavily represented in this anthology; usually, such a piece would include pop and nothing but. Funny final sentence from Mary Grimm: "William Byrd feeds my soul while I feed my kids pancakes."

Originally posted by Alex Ross from Alex Ross: The Rest Is Noise, ReBlogged by jeff on Aug 18, 2005 at 07:09 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Riding the electric highway... up to an overgrown path...

Originally from wordsandmusic, ReBlogged by jeff on Aug 18, 2005 at 02:06 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Riding the electric highway...up to an overgrown path

Great news for new music. Yesterday on an overgrown path was read by more people than on any day since it started twelve months ago. And what attracted that record number of readers at a time when many are taking a well deserved holiday? - two posts about contemporary composers Odaline de la Martinez and Antony Pitts.

Monday's post on Musicians and terrorism also helped boost readers as it was picked up by a major UK political blog, and good audio clips and some great graphics lifted the two stories yesterday. But Odaline de Martinez and Antony Pitts are hardly household names. And the bottom line is that those two new music posts attracted more readers than Leonard Bernstein, Jacques Loussier, or those BBC Beethoven MP3 files. That's great news for all of us who are rooting for new music.

When I set this blog up I wanted to create a network of overgrown paths that readers could follow. Paths that would lead to new discoveries, as well as rediscovering old treasures. So I was really touched yesterday to read a wonderful piece called Riding the electric highway...up to an overgrown path on the blog Wordsand music describing the writer's first visit here.....

Within twenty minutes or so of clicking on on overgrown path, I had surfed off to several other sites, bookmarked a few pages (to add to the absurdly expanding list which I keep promising to organise but never do) and started to listen to some disparate stuff - everything from Conlon Noncarrow to Schoenberg to Henry Billings! I love the internet! I have long periods where I just take it for granted - then on a random cruise bump into new treasure.

Go and read Wordsandmusic. Not because it says nice things about my blog. But because its author, and musician, Freewheeling writes uncommonly well, and has something worth saying. And it is great that all those overgrown paths are leading somewhere.

If you enjoyed this post take an overgrown path to Brain Food - 1

Originally from On An Overgrown Path, ReBlogged by jeff on Aug 18, 2005 at 02:04 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Assai

Prokofiev performs the Gavotte from his Classical Symphony, and the second movement of his Sonata No. 4 in C minor.

Originally from ANABlog, ReBlogged by jeff on Aug 18, 2005 at 02:02 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Trio for Horn, Violin and Piano Final Available

Score is being proofed and a draft should be up shortly. Here's the final MP3 realization: Trio for Horn, Violin and Piano...

Originally posted by jeff from The Music of Jeff Harrington, ReBlogged by jeff on Aug 18, 2005 at 12:08 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

August 17, 2005

Weill About Kurt's Second

Nineteeen thirty-three was a busy year for Kurt Weill (1900-50). That’s the year he realized that although he was a successful composer of popular opera in Germany his fame was not going to be enough to protect him from the coming Nazi zeitgeist...

Originally posted by Jerry Bowles from Sequenza21, ReBlogged by jeff on Aug 17, 2005 at 02:43 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Good idea

Linked on ArtsJournal today is a fabulous “critic’s notebook” by New York Times music critic Allan Kozinn, about the way orchestras program new music. Or, rather, about one way that they don’t program it.

Allan had heard a piece at Tanglewood...

Originally from Sandow, ReBlogged by jeff on Aug 17, 2005 at 02:42 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Cure for Marin Alsop fatigue

Who was the first woman to conduct at the BBC Proms? No it wasn't the ubiquitous Marin Alsop. It is more than ten years since Odaline de la Martinez made her first Proms appearance, and it doesn't do any harm to shift some of the attention on women conductors over to this very talented lady, especially as she also composes.

Born in Cuba and raised in the USA Odaline de la Martinez is now based in London. She retains strong links with South America, and was awarded the Villa-Lobos Medal by the Brazillian government. As well as guesting with mainstream orchestras Martinez is also founder and music director of contemporary ensemble Lontano. Her first opera, Sister Aimée was premiered in the US in 1984. She has her own record label Lorelt which specialises in music by women composers, Latin American and contemporary composers.

To give a taste of her composing style here is a short extract from the second movement Song of the rider of her 1983 Canciones for voice, piano and percussion.
This is available on the Lorelt CD British Women Composers Volume 2 together with works by Judith Weir, Melinda Maxwell, Hilary Tann and Eleanor Alberga.

Odaline de la Martinez is very much a lady of many talents, and one whose work is well worth exploring further.

If you enjoyed this post take an overgrown path to First performance - Douglas Weiland's Second Piano Trio, Pavey Ark

Originally from On An Overgrown Path, ReBlogged by jeff on Aug 17, 2005 at 02:40 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Eighth Blackbird 2005-2006 Season

The upcoming touring season of the Eighth Blackbird is now available.

Originally posted by Mike from Avant Music News, ReBlogged by jeff on Aug 17, 2005 at 02:34 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Why DRM Will Kill Mobile Music

An insightful article covers the absurdity of DRM on music releases.

Originally posted by Mike from Avant Music News, ReBlogged by jeff on Aug 17, 2005 at 02:33 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Brief Review of Xenakis Performance

A few quick words on a solo Xenakis performance:

The program opened with the world premiere of SummerSteps, a dance and percussion collaboration involving Green, Bang on a Can All Star percussionist Steven Schick, and dancers Monica Bill Barnes and Jane Blount. The chief interest here was not so much the tepid choreographic scored improvisations as [...]

Originally posted by Mike from Avant Music News, ReBlogged by jeff on Aug 17, 2005 at 02:33 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

High Zero 2005 Festival

If anything, this year’s High Zero Festival probably won’t be boring…

Now in its 7th year, Baltimore’s High Zero Festival is the largest, wildest, and arguably the best festival of experimental and improvised music on the East Coast. An event that would be completely exotic anywhere in the world, the critically acclaimed international festival is an [...]

Originally posted by Mike from Avant Music News, ReBlogged by jeff on Aug 17, 2005 at 02:30 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

August 16, 2005

Proms 2005

I've moved from the edge of the Berkshires to Berkshire--specifically Reading--for the rest of the month. It easy to get from here to London to hear Proms concerts. Americans who don't know otherwise often think that the Proms concerts are something like...

Originally posted by Rodney Lister from Sequenza21, ReBlogged by jeff on Aug 16, 2005 at 06:45 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Yin and Yang Revisited

In comments to the Masculine/Feminine post, Steve Layton -- do check out the very striking images on his homepage, as he’s a fine artist as well as musician -- made a comment about masculine/feminine being but a single aspect of the yin and yang in music.

Originally posted by Cary Boyce from Sequenza21/Composers Forum, ReBlogged by jeff on Aug 16, 2005 at 06:44 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Newsbits

A few items that have trickled in over the last coule of weeks: Graham Bowers has a few of his acclaimed experimental pieces online. Mike Pride has released a live recording on Sachimay Interventions. Meanwhile, The Red Masque has a couple of upcoming shows and the Cooler in the Shade series is featuring some well-known [...]

Originally posted by Mike from Avant Music News, ReBlogged by jeff on Aug 16, 2005 at 06:43 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Composers in Cowtown: New Music at the 12th Van Cliburn International Piano Competition

The Cliburn's second American Composers Invitational included works by five Americans: Sebastian Currier, Jennifer Higdon, Daniel Kellogg, Jan Krzywicki, and Ruth Schonthal.

Originally from NewMusicBox, ReBlogged by jeff on Aug 16, 2005 at 06:42 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Links for the week

Originally from The Rambler, ReBlogged by jeff on Aug 16, 2005 at 02:22 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Level 3 of composerly arrival?

So here I am in Lithuania, using the free internet connection at the hotel I'm staying in to post something on Sequenza21.

"What's wrong with him?" You're probably thinking about now. After all, I'm allegedly on vacation, ostensibly for the premiere here...

Originally posted by Frank J. Oteri from Sequenza21/Composers Forum, ReBlogged by jeff on Aug 16, 2005 at 02:20 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

XL - hear it on an overgrown path

XL is the new choral work by English composer Anthony Pitts. It uses the same forces as Tallis' sublime 40 part motet Spem in Alium, and was composed as a companion piece.

Anthony has just emailed me with an audio link which means on an overgrown path readers can hear the first third of XL online using this link. It is a substantial 5 minute excerpt, so it gives you a good flavour of this fascinating work -

XL is on a new Harmonia Mundi CD sung by the Rundfunkchor Berlin directed by Simon Halsey. It also includes the Tallis motet, Knut Nystedt's Immortal Bach, and Zoltán Kodaly's substantial Laudes organi.

Other posts linking to the work of Anthony Pitts, and well worth reading are Jerry Springer rebel grabs Gramophone accolade and
Raindrops are falling on my chant.

Originally from On An Overgrown Path, ReBlogged by jeff on Aug 16, 2005 at 02:19 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

New York: Homemade Instrument Day

The mercury brushed 100 degrees on Sunday here in New York, but that didn't seem to put much of a damper on Homemade Instrument Day at the Lincoln Center Out-of-Doors Festival.

Originally from NewMusicBox, ReBlogged by jeff on Aug 16, 2005 at 02:19 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Do the new

Allan Kozinn's got an astute article in today's Times that addresses the issue of "whether orchestras can find the will and the flexibility to tap into hot works when they turn up, or whether their idea of exciting programming is simply to group repertory favorites under facile thematic banners, with the occasional premiere thrown in dutifully and the word "exciting" splashed across the brochure." In particular, Kozinn is referring to 2005 Pulitzer Prize-winning composer Steven Stucky's Second Concerto for Orchestra, which he heard recently at Tanglewood. After this year's Pulitzer was awarded, there was a great deal of discussion on the issue over at Sequenza21 and NewMusicBox (whose discussion link has disappeared but is doing a nice service with the Pulitzer Sonic Gallery). Anyway, it's nice to see a reaction in the MSM:

While intending no disrespect to the Tanglewood Music Center or its superb young musicians, who produced a fantastic performance, I wondered why I had had to drive 150 miles to hear a student orchestra play it, some 17 months after a premiere that, by all accounts, was a success and four months after its Pulitzer?

Where, to put it differently, were the New York Philharmonic, the American Composers Orchestra, the Orchestra of St. Luke's, the American Symphony Orchestra and all the other orchestras that while away the musical season in a city that regards itself as the center of the musical universe? And what about orchestras elsewhere that might have picked up on the work , then brought it to New York on tour?

If you are an orchestra administrator, and you've just clucked your tongue and muttered, "He knows perfectly well that it doesn't work that way," maybe it's time to think again about how it can work, or should.

orchestras might change their tune? I'm not going to hold my breath.

Originally posted by Brian Sacawa from Brian Sacawa: Sounds Like Now, ReBlogged by jeff on Aug 16, 2005 at 02:18 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Satoko Fujii on Tour

Pianist Fujii is on tour this fall in North America, and Europe: American & European Tour: Satoko Fujii Four America-Canada tour 2005, for new CD”Live in Japan 2004″ release Natsuki Tamura - tp; Satoko Fujii -p; Mark Dresser -b; Jim Black -drs Sat. September 10, Guelph Jazz Festival, Canada, 4:00 pm Guelph Youth Music Centre 75 Cardigan St. in Guelph http://www.guelphjazzfestival.com/ Sun. September 11, [...]

Originally posted by Mike from Avant Music News, ReBlogged by jeff on Aug 16, 2005 at 02:17 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Electroacoustic Music Days 2005

If you’re looking for an excuse to visit Greece, look no longer. The Electroacoustic Music Days 2005 is taking place in October.

Originally posted by Mike from Avant Music News, ReBlogged by jeff on Aug 16, 2005 at 02:17 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Italian Instabile Orchestra in England

The Italian Instabile Orchestra has planned a short tour of England in November.

Originally posted by Mike from Avant Music News, ReBlogged by jeff on Aug 16, 2005 at 02:17 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

You Make the Call

Still relevant?

Pierre Boulez, Le Marteau sans maître

1. Avant l'Artisanat furieux. Rapide

2. Commentaire I de Bourneaux de solitude. Lent

3. L'Artisanat furieux. Modéré sans rigueur

4. Commentaire II de Bourneaux de solitude. Rapide

5. Bel édifice et les pressentiments - version premiere. Assez vif

6. Bourneaux de solitude. Assez lent

7. Après l'Artisanat furieux. Rapide

8. Commentaire III de Bourneaux de solitude. Assez lent

9. Bel édifice et les pressentiments - double. Tempo libre de récit

Originally from ANABlog, ReBlogged by jeff on Aug 16, 2005 at 02:16 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Electroacoustic Music Days 2005, Rethymno, Greece

Originally from NetNewMusic Contemporary Music News, ReBlogged by jeff on Aug 16, 2005 at 02:14 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

ARTSaha ! Contemporary Music Festival

Originally from NetNewMusic Contemporary Music News, ReBlogged by jeff on Aug 16, 2005 at 02:14 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Masculine and Feminine Endings

Remember those terms from the not-so-distant past? Ascriptions of masculine and feminine show up in theoretical and musicological analyses of Brahms, Beethoven, and Tchaikovsky, and undoubtedly a host of other mainstream composers. So can one actually hea

Originally posted by Cary Boyce from Sequenza21/Composers Forum, ReBlogged by jeff on Aug 16, 2005 at 02:14 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

August 15, 2005

A Love Supreme (1964). John Coltrane /carl stone playlist/

I see that composer Carl Stone has been listening to John Coltrane's A Love Supreme as played by Carlos Santana and John McLaughlin as well as music by Dumisami Muraire, Mykal Rouse, Henry Brant, Glenn Gould and others. I'm always interested in what people actually listen to. In this case, not surprisingly, it's a diverse list.

gable: aworks coltrane stone consciousness revolution era coltrane: del.icio.us wikipedia google news yahoo audio singingfish stone: wikipedia

Originally posted by Robert Gable from aworks :: "new" american classical music, ReBlogged by jeff on Aug 15, 2005 at 02:35 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Latest From Innova

Innova is offering new releases from George Cartwright and Gerald Busby, as well as a reissue of Harry Partch’s Delusion ofthe Fury.

Originally posted by Mike from Avant Music News, ReBlogged by jeff on Aug 15, 2005 at 02:34 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Pumpin' it Up

So this may be an insy bit off-topic, but let’s throw caution to the winds, shall we? Last night I went to a nice bar with my roommate. The scene appeared to be composed of twenty-something graduate student-types and young professionals. Most were talk

Originally posted by David Salvage from Sequenza21/Composers Forum, ReBlogged by jeff on Aug 15, 2005 at 02:34 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

August 14, 2005

Walking

Both in reality and perception, jazz appears more likely to do something new than chamber music. Too bad. What would chamber music be like, if we all expected “exhilirating originality”?

Originally from Sandow, ReBlogged by jeff on Aug 14, 2005 at 07:21 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Innovator Created New Sounds, Instruments

An article discusses Darrell DeVore, a long-time maker of experimental instruments.

Originally posted by Mike from Avant Music News, ReBlogged by jeff on Aug 14, 2005 at 07:20 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Plug it again, Sam

With recent discussions and legal actions regarding payola, an article posits that payola always was around and that it will continue to be around even after satellite and Internet radio break portions of the vice grip that a handful of organizations have on public airwaves.

Originally posted by Mike from Avant Music News, ReBlogged by jeff on Aug 14, 2005 at 07:20 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

The Music of Jeff Harrington

Composer and blogger Jeff Harrington has released sme of his albums online for free download.

Originally posted by Mike from Avant Music News, ReBlogged by jeff on Aug 14, 2005 at 07:19 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Alter ego

Erik Spangler is not just another composer with a Ph.D from Harvard University. He's also a DJ/turntablist. Known as DJ Dubble8, Erik synthesizes his interest in music for the concert stage with his passion for beat-making into some really cool stuff. I'm proud to boast that the first of his experiments into this realm was a piece called pastlife laptops and attic instruments, which was written for me and premiered last October at an integrated multimedia concert of electro-acoustic music that featured the unsurpassed video artistry of Johnny DeKam. Erik's remixed the track and it's now available on a CD titled Tomkins County Organic: homegrown beats vol. I, which can be purchased at CD Baby. Check it out! Incidentally, the live version of...

Originally posted by Brian Sacawa from Brian Sacawa: Sounds Like Now, ReBlogged by jeff on Aug 14, 2005 at 01:17 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

August 13, 2005

Why Noise, Why Now

An article discusses the recent surge in “noise” music.

Originally posted by Mike from Avant Music News, ReBlogged by jeff on Aug 13, 2005 at 09:44 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

New Crumb Recording Reviewed

A blurb on the latest Crumb recording from Bridge Records:

Bridge Records is a small mom-n-pop company up the Hudson from New York, run by guitarist David Starobin and wife Becky, and one of its missions is to create a complete recording of the music of grand old George Crumb. The ninth disc, now at hand, [...]

Originally posted by Mike from Avant Music News, ReBlogged by jeff on Aug 13, 2005 at 09:44 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

More FONT Information

The Festival of New Trumpet Music is continuing to get coverage, including this interview with Dave Douglas.

Originally posted by Mike from Avant Music News, ReBlogged by jeff on Aug 13, 2005 at 09:43 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Tanizaki does ongaku

As Japan hurtled into modernity during the late nineteenth and early twentieth century not all Japanese were that fond of the changes taking place. The rush to Westernization and the ensuing orgy of foreignism led many of the country's greatest writers and intellectuals to protest the direction Japanese culture was taking. In the December 1933 and January 1934 issues of Keizai ôrai Tanizaki Jun'ichirô, one of Japan's greatest novelists, published an eloquent and often amusing flowing commentary on the virtues of traditional Japanese architecture, drama, food, feminine beauty, and various other aspects of Japsnese culture, including the Japanese toilet, among other things. The essay was titled In Praise of Shadows (In'ei raison). Here's what he said about Japanese music:

"Japanese music is above all a music of reticence, of atmosphere. When recorded, or amplified by a loudspeaker, the greater part of its charm is lost. In conversation, too, we prefer the soft voice, the understatement. Most important of all are the pauses. Yet the phonograph and radio render these moments of silence utterly lifeless. And so we distort the arts themselves to curry favor for them with the machines. These machines are the inventions of Westerners, and are, as we might expect, well suited to the Western arts. But precisely on this account they put our own arts at a great disadvantage."

Originally posted by Brian Sacawa from Brian Sacawa: Sounds Like Now, ReBlogged by jeff on Aug 13, 2005 at 09:43 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Before my time

Originally from Renewable Music, ReBlogged by jeff on Aug 13, 2005 at 01:28 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Uncovered - classical music orgies on the internet

Following on from the discovery of the Arnold Schoenberg jukebox comes news from Overgrown Path reader Rodney Lister at Harvard of classical music orgies on the internet.

'I was just looking over your list of classical music on the web and noticed that you don't include WHRB...

Originally from On An Overgrown Path, ReBlogged by jeff on Aug 13, 2005 at 01:27 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Doctor Atomic (2005). John Adams /getting ready/

• "Director Peter Sellars has an unusual new creation -- turning the world's first atomic bomb project into music." Associated Press
• "The opera, which is set in 1945 in the final hours leading up to the first atomic explosion, is indeed a community effort for the Bay Area, connecting the Berkeley-based composer not only with Oppenheimer, a former professor of the University of California (Berkeley), but also with local events observing the 60th anniversary of the United Nations, a conference of the American Physical Society celebrating 2005 as the World Year of Physics, a seminar on Oppenheimer at the Stanford University Institute for International Studies, and a Bay Area film festival of 'post-atomic' films and 'mad scientist' movies dating back to the 1920s." Gramaphone
• "There's more than a little irony in the...

Originally posted by Robert Gable from aworks :: "new" american classical music, ReBlogged by jeff on Aug 13, 2005 at 01:25 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Fringe Classical

A review of two classical events recently held in the UK is available. One included performances of works by King Crimson, Frank Zappa, Raymond Scott and Astor Piazzolla, while the other covered works by Ennio Morricone.

Originally posted by Mike from Avant Music News, ReBlogged by jeff on Aug 13, 2005 at 01:23 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Sofia Gubiadulina Article

There may be many contenders for the title of “Greatest Living Composer” but Sofia Gubaidulina would be considered by many to be a member of that group. A rare article covers her life and music.

Originally posted by Mike from Avant Music News, ReBlogged by jeff on Aug 13, 2005 at 01:23 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

August 12, 2005

Leaving it to Chance

An article discusses a new Cage video based on Cage’s techniques.

Originally posted by Mike from Avant Music News, ReBlogged by jeff on Aug 12, 2005 at 09:13 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Five Things to Know Before This Weekend's Cocktail Party

William Bolcom is a Pulitzer Prize-winning composer AND was popular in high school. Something doesn't seem fair about that. MORE...

Originally from NewMusicBox, ReBlogged by jeff on Aug 12, 2005 at 09:13 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Where Art Cannot Go

Yesterday at a press conference for Dr. Atomic, its outspoken and sometimes provocative director and librettist Peter Sellars suggested that perhaps there are some places that art should not go.

Originally from NewMusicBox, ReBlogged by jeff on Aug 12, 2005 at 09:13 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Michael Christie Named Music Director of Brooklyn Philharmonic

The 31-year-old conductor has signed a three-year contract to begin September 2005.

Originally from NewMusicBox, ReBlogged by jeff on Aug 12, 2005 at 09:13 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Their "new" favorites

As a nice treat today, the music critics from The New York Times offer up some of their favorite contemporary music recordings. Here's the story's lead:

It is hard to know, anymore, exactly how to define contemporary Western classical music. How recent does a work have to be? For that matter, how Western does it have to be, with, for example, the stimulating incursions Chinese composers have made in the United States? And does the term "classical" even retain any significance as the music returns to its roots, in a sense, becoming ever more saturated with pop gestures and idioms? However you choose to define it, "serious" music seems livelier and more variegated today than it has in many a decade, a trend the classical music critics of The New York Times are eager not only to acknowledge but also to encourage. And so, with rough justice, we present for your consideration and listening pleasure critics' selections of CD's by a handful of composers who we think deserve broader recognition, however disparate the starting points. They are Olivier Messiaen, Luciano Berio, Alfred Schnittke, John Corigliano and Stephen Hartke. Some are alive, some dead, and there is little to unite them in terms of age or nationality. But you have to start somewhere, and all at least helped set the table for 21st-century music; some are still partaking of the feast.

Ok, now for the big question: Who's your favorite New York Times critic?

Originally posted by Brian Sacawa from Brian Sacawa: Sounds Like Now, ReBlogged by jeff on Aug 12, 2005 at 09:12 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Brian Eno on the Microsoft Boot Sound

'I made 84 pieces. I got completely into this world of tiny, tiny little pieces of music. I was so sensitive to microseconds at the end of this that it really broke a logjam in my own work. Then when I'd finished that and I went back to working with pieces that were like three minutes long, it seemed like oceans of time.'

Q and A With Brian Eno

Originally posted by jeff from beepSNORT, ReBlogged by jeff on Aug 12, 2005 at 06:44 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Finale

Some interesting events coming up around New York City next week, but first – this just in: Steve Reich has another accolade to pick up. Next Sunday, Reich will head up to New Hampshire to accept the MacDowell Medal, an award whose past recipients include...

Originally posted by David Salvage from Sequenza21, ReBlogged by jeff on Aug 12, 2005 at 06:35 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

New York: Countdown to Dr. Atomic

John Adams and Peter Sellars count down to the premiere of Dr. Atomic at a New York press conference.

Originally from NewMusicBox, ReBlogged by jeff on Aug 12, 2005 at 06:35 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Schoenberg speaks

When I set up this site last year, one of my first links was to www.schoenberg.at, the bangin' website of the Arnold Schoenberg Center in Vienna. You won't find a more comprehensive online documentation of a composer, maybe of any artist in any medium. And the site has continued to grow over the past year. Schoenberg WebRadio, the audio portion, offers dozens of historical items, including a flavorful recording of Schoenberg conducting the second movement of Mahler's Second Symphony. Schoenberg Jukebox allows you to listen to the composer's entire output. And, for the musicologically inclined...

Originally posted by Alex Ross from Alex Ross: The Rest Is Noise, ReBlogged by jeff on Aug 12, 2005 at 06:34 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Arts and Communism redux

Originally from The Rambler, ReBlogged by jeff on Aug 12, 2005 at 02:16 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Two for Thursday night

Time to breathe some life into this thing. OK, I've got a confession to make. I call myself a composer, but I spend precious little of my time actually writing music. I could cry about how busy I am, but the fact is that the same was true when I was in...

Originally posted by Ian Moss from Sequenza21/Composers Forum, ReBlogged by jeff on Aug 12, 2005 at 02:15 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Wiki classical music repository?

Interesting interview in yesterday's Guardian (11th Aug) with Wikimedia Foundation founder Jimmy Wales.

It says..."Among the (new Wikimedia Foundation) projects under discussion is....a repository of classical music to be performed by student orchestras."

No other information in the article about the music project. But it could be part of a programme through which the innovative and ambitious Wikimedia spreads its wings over many forms of culture, including an archive of paintings by old masters, and a new audio file format to rival MP3.

Wikipaedia has gone from zero to 22 million entries in less than five years. Could this be the 'free culture movement's' way to spread the word about classical music?

Watch this space.

Email this story to a friend or colleague with your comments, using this link.

If you enjoyed this post take an overgrown path to Paying the piper

Originally from On An Overgrown Path, ReBlogged by jeff on Aug 12, 2005 at 02:14 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

On "the list"

Everybody's got a list. I mean, most saxophone professors have a list--a list of suggested repertoire and etudes for their students, which tells you what freshman "should" play, what sophomores "should" play, what graduate students "should" be playing, and so on. To be honest, I don't like the idea of a list so much. In fact, it runs counter to my teaching philosophy so much so that I would frequently brush off suggestions by my mentor Don Sinta that I would be wise to begin compiling such a list--for the future. My issue with the list is that every student that studies with me comes in with a different and unique skill set...

Originally posted by Brian Sacawa from Brian Sacawa: Sounds Like Now, ReBlogged by jeff on Aug 12, 2005 at 02:12 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Interpretations 2005-2006 Season

The details are available on the Interpretations 2005-2006 schedule:

Thursdays at 8 PM at Merkin Concert Hall, 129 W. 67th: September 15 - Ursel Schlicht & Robert Dick / Yasunao Tone October 6 - Steve Lacy (1934-2004): A Celebration of his music November 10 - Earl Howard & soNu December 1 - Wadada Leo Smith & Alan Kushan %u2013 Composer/Performer Collectives: curated [...]

Originally posted by Mike from Avant Music News, ReBlogged by jeff on Aug 12, 2005 at 02:11 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Summer Opera: Death in Venice at Glimmerglass

As far as I know, this is not a significant anniversary year for Britten. So, what reason can there be to explain why this seems to be the Year of Britten at summer opera festivals? Ionarts has reviewed Gloriana at Opera Theatre of St. Louis and Peter Grimes at Santa Fe Opera, but those are not the only Britten productions this summer. In Opera in the Summer 2005, I noted the production of one of my favorites, the malevolent The Turn of the Screw (1954), which was at the Festival d'Aix-en-Provence in July (I didn't find any reviews). Back in the United States, Glimmerglass Opera is performing another of Britten's darker operas, Death in Venice (1973), through August 21. Martin Bernheimer was up in New York to review the production, along with the Donizetti (Death in Venice/Lucie de Lammermoor, New York, August 3) for the London Financial Times...

Originally from ionarts, ReBlogged by jeff on Aug 12, 2005 at 12:03 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Cabrillo Music Festival Review

A review of the opening of the Cabrillo Music Festival has been posted.

Originally posted by Mike from Avant Music News, ReBlogged by jeff on Aug 12, 2005 at 12:02 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

August 11, 2005

Good vibrations

There's a neat piece in the Times about an instrument often pigeonholed into the realm of spooky sci-fi effects--the theremin. It's too bad that so many of the early theremin virtuosi or "wizards" took a completely new and unlimited sonic palette and simply made it do things that any other western instrument could do, like play "Flight of the Bumblebee" or something. Maybe if more cats--unlike humans, who are so grounded in western tonal music--played the theremin we might witness the instrument's full potential. Although one guy, who is definitely not a cat, doing some really original and innovative stuff with the theremin, is Boston-based improviser James Coleman. Tim plays with him sometimes and shared one of James' albums with me last time I was out there. If you're interested in finding out more about the theremin, here's a good book. And find some good web resources here, here, and here.

Originally posted by Brian Sacawa from Brian Sacawa: Sounds Like Now, ReBlogged by jeff on Aug 11, 2005 at 09:14 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Heeeey, Ocarina! (Sung like “Heeeey, Macarena!”)

William Bolcom’s headed for some reminiscing back at his old high school in Everett, WA. It’s a cute article, so give it a look.

Back here at the Situation Room, Anthony is looking for pieces written in 1969 and 1985 to demonstrate the variety of music that can be written in the same year; someone send Lou Bunk some dancing girls, huh?; and Pliable has a post just below...

Originally posted by David Salvage from Sequenza21, ReBlogged by jeff on Aug 11, 2005 at 06:48 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

why I am getting used to MIDI files

Everything to date on my music site, in terms of MP3 downloads, is generated by my computer thanks to MIDI. It's not optimal, of course, but were I to invest in better software and hardware, I could probably pull it off pretty convincingly.

Still, there are significant limitations from realizing one's music via MIDI. However, I've gotten impatient waiting for musicians to perform my music. I'm grateful to several folks I've met in the past year, such as Christina Fong and the Rangtzen Quartet, Carmen-Helena Tellez, Jeffrey Biegel, Patrick Kabanda, David Salvage, Alan Thiesen and others who either have performed my music (Christina Fong/Rangtzen Quartet) or expressed an interest in doing so. And I'm doing as much as I can to generate interest in my music, while holding down a very busy position at MedCases, doing some volunteer work, spending time with the family, etc. My music is included in Kyle Gann's Postclassic Radio program on the Web, and will soon be featured on Contemporary Classical Radio on the Internet as well. So things are moving forward, and the situation appears promising.

Still, I can't wait another 25 years to have something of mine performed by live performers. So I'm very committed to making my music available as MP3 files on the Web. Already, I'm told by composer/IT guru Jeffrey Harrington that the MP3 file of five notes for christina fong has been downloaded more than 690 times through the Sequenza21 Listening Room. That's just from this one site...

Originally from david's waste of bandwidth..., ReBlogged by jeff on Aug 11, 2005 at 04:42 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Exciting new music discovery from Australia

Well OK this one is stretching it a bit. But it is the 'silly season' for news stories, and it makes a great headline doesn't it? Dr Janice Stockigt from Melbourne University has unearthed a brand new 11 movement Dixit Dominus by Vivaldi in Dresden, get the whole story at Now for some very little known Vivaldi.

But there's lots of genuine new music news as well. Next week's BBC Proms have some real gems. These include the world premiere of Marc-Andre Dalbavie's Piano Concerto played by Leif Ove Andsnes. This is a BBC co-commission with the Cleveland and Chicago orchestras, so we should be hearing a lot more of it. And don't miss Tippett's Symphony No 4 on Friday 19th September conducted by that great champion of his music Sir Colin Davis. Picking up the antipodean thread I started with listen out for Douglas Lilburn's (see photo) 1961 Symphony No 3 played on Thursday 18th by the New Zealand Symphony Orchestra. He is a very underrated composer who deserves a wider audience...

Originally posted by Pliable from Sequenza21, ReBlogged by jeff on Aug 11, 2005 at 02:24 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Chiseling Away at the Iceberg

Originally from Form/Content, ReBlogged by jeff on Aug 11, 2005 at 02:18 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Hendrix in space

"Yeah, I never did want to go to the moon too much. I always wanted to go to Saturn or Venus, or something like that; something that could show me some kind of scenery. I believe that maybe in one sense we might be nothing but little ants to them, you know. Quite naturally they might not even want to bother us, you know, the might be on their way to somewhere else. I mean you wouldn't go about two miles out of your way just to step on an ant hill. I don't know what everybody should be scared about though. They should try to get in contact some kind of way. It's very abstract type . . . but you know, I don't know, I really care not to dream about getting into something and going off, you know, away to somewhere else."

--London, December 1967

Originally posted by Brian Sacawa from Brian Sacawa: Sounds Like Now, ReBlogged by jeff on Aug 11, 2005 at 02:18 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Reblog this!

Composer Jeff Harrington takes the day's "best of the best" (I think) and blogs them again--I mean, reblogs them. A helpful tool for the blogger on the go. But be careful, you wouldn't want to miss another monsoon haiku. (I don't think they make the cut on Jeff's page!)

Oh my, three posts in one day?! I feel like Terry Teachout!

Originally posted by Brian Sacawa from Brian Sacawa: Sounds Like Now, ReBlogged by jeff on Aug 11, 2005 at 02:17 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

String Quartet No. 4 (1970). Alan Hovhaness /*****/

Creeping starism...

1. Paint the Silence. South.
2. String Quartet No. 4. Adagio Ma No Troppo. Alan Hovhaness. Shanghai Quartet.
3. El Salon Mexico. Aaron Copland (arranged for piano by Leonard Bernstein). Eugenie Russo.
4. The Cat. Jimmy Smith. Kudos to my recently deceased Oklahoma grandmother-in-law. Who knew she had such jazz tastes?
5. Yellow. Petra Haden and Bill Frisell. A Coldplay song by real musicians.
6. Sonntag. Alexander Hacke. From a recent The Wire CD.
7. The Duel. Dexter Gordon. Boldface or italicize?
8. Piano Sonata Op. 26: Adagio mesto. Samuel Barber. Emanuele Arciuli. 1999 CD of the Year?
9. Piano Sonata Op. 26: Fuga-Allegro con spirito. Samuel Barber. Emanuele Arciuli. Did I mention how good the CD is?
10. Salvese Quien Pueda: Juana's Epic Re-Version (Edit). Juana Molina. From the same The Wire CD.
11. I Loves You, Porgy. Sun Ra.
12. Concerto in D minor: Andante. Vivaldi. Guillou. For organ. What's up with his "new" work?
13. Arias, Interludes And Inventions (5). Robert Moran. Jayne West, Soprano / Piano Circus Band. Not enough attention on Robert Moran.
14. M'bifé (Balafon). Amadou & Miriam. New album.
15. Artistiya. Amadou & Miriam. Did I mention they have a new album out?
16. Arias, Interludes And Inventions (2). Robert Moran. Jayne West, Soprano / Piano Circus Band. Did I mention Moran deserves more attention?

The most American aworks post is here, inspired by the music of Alan Hovhaness. Since then, I don't really have any major new thoughts on religion, the Amish, Alan Hovhaness, Hoosier mores, or American Muslims. I can say I'm much more aware of China (Hi Norman. Hi Wayne) and I do sometimes wonder if after A Love Supreme, John Coltrane practiced nihlism.

In 1970 according to Wikipedia, Charles Wuorinen, at age 32, won the Pulitzer Prize, Davy Jones left the Monkees, Randy Bachman started Bachman Turner Overdive and Black Sabbath released Black Sabbath. I was probably listening to Chicago's 25 or 6 to 4, If You Could Read My Mind by Gordon Lightfoot and/or Santana's Black Magic Woman. By this time, I knew who Ferde Grofe was (Hi Mrs. Merrill). I remember buying the singles Venus by Shocking Blue and Whole Lotta Love by Led Zeppelin. I also vaguely remember Bobby Sherman. George Crumb wrote Ancient Voices of Children and Ligeti wrote Continuum but it took me another twenty years before I "grokked" contemporary classical...

Originally posted by Robert Gable from aworks :: "new" american classical music, ReBlogged by jeff on Aug 11, 2005 at 02:16 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Pamela Z in Boulder

Sound artist Paemal Z will be performing at the Boulder Museum of Contemporary Art.

Originally posted by Mike from Avant Music News, ReBlogged by jeff on Aug 11, 2005 at 02:16 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Kandinsky: How to

Wassily Kandinsky reveals the three mystical necessities:

1. Every artist, as creator, must express what is peculiar to himself (element of personality).
   
2. Every artist, as child of his time, must express what is peculiar to his own time (element of style, in its inner value, compounded of the language of the time and the language of the race, as long as the race exists as such).
   
3. Every artist, as servant of art, must express what is peculiar to art in general (element of the pure and eternally artistic, which pervades every individual, every people, every age, and which is to be seen in the works of every artist, of every nation, and of every period, and which, being the principal element of art, knows neither time nor space).
   

from Art

Originally posted by Brian Sacawa from Brian Sacawa: Sounds Like Now, ReBlogged by jeff on Aug 11, 2005 at 12:26 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

August 10, 2005

Lera Auerbach: The Total Package

The Russian-American composer/pianist Lera Auerbach (b. 1973) will pick up the 2005 Hindemith Prize, worth 20,000 Euros, tomorrow at Reinbek castle during the Schleswig-Holstein Music Festival. Sonia Wieder-Atherton, violoncello and the composer herself will perform the European premiere of her Sonata No. 1 for violoncello and piano at the awards ceremony in Reinbek.

Auerbach (b. 1973) is one of the most widely performed composers of the new generation. She is the youngest composer on the roster of the...

Originally posted by Jerry Bowles from Sequenza21, ReBlogged by jeff on Aug 10, 2005 at 07:13 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Lera Auerbach receives 2005 Hindemith Prize

American composer wins one of Europe's preeminent contemporary music prizes.

Originally from NewMusicBox, ReBlogged by jeff on Aug 10, 2005 at 07:07 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

What to Make of Free Beethovens?

The BBC recently offered free downloads of several Beethoven symphonies, and almost 1.4 million copies were downloaded. Is the online world an answer to dwindling classical CDs sales, where a successful CD sells a couple of thousand copies? Will this allow less-known composers to garner more exposure? An article discusses the ramifications.

Originally posted by Mike from Avant Music News, ReBlogged by jeff on Aug 10, 2005 at 07:06 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

1969 and 1985

Tom DePlonty gave me a good idea for my class - doing a cross-section of music created in a given time period. My plan is to demonstrate to the students the wide variety of music created in a given year. I'll most likely do this for one class day early...

Originally posted by Anthony Cornicello from Anthony Cornicello, ReBlogged by jeff on Aug 10, 2005 at 07:06 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Wake up! – It’s Wednesday

Some good stuff happening here at the fun-house. Do you know what a “blogule” is? Arnold Rosner does. Elodie loves the Miller Theater (so do I), but she’s a little underwhelmed by the coming season’s Composer Portraits series (so am I). And get over an...

Originally posted by David Salvage from Sequenza21, ReBlogged by jeff on Aug 10, 2005 at 01:59 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Who am I?

While researching another post I came across, completely by chance, a perceptive appreciation of Leonard Bernstein's Mass.

The following was written by a well-known musical figure. But who was it? Answers please to be added as using the comments feature at the foot of the post. I'm interested to see if anyone can correctly identify the author as the tone of the piece is quite surprising once you know who wrote it. On Friday I'll add the next section that the mystery author wrote, which should make the answer clearer....

Originally from On An Overgrown Path, ReBlogged by jeff on Aug 10, 2005 at 01:59 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

for Lou Harrison

On September 27 at the New England Conservatory, the Callithumpian Consort will perform for Lou Harrison, a 66-minute elegy for string quartet, two pianos and string ensemble composed by our northern friend John Luther Adams. Here are John's notes for the...

Originally posted by Jerry Bowles from Sequenza21, ReBlogged by jeff on Aug 10, 2005 at 12:43 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Lots of Stuff at Bard’s Copeland Fest

Bard is having a Copeland Festival but the interesting sidebar is that a large number of modern classical composers will be performed over the course of three weekends.

Originally posted by Mike from Avant Music News, ReBlogged by jeff on Aug 10, 2005 at 12:43 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Near Final Version of Trio for Horn, Violin and Piano

I've put the latest draft of the new Horn trio up. It's got a new slow ending, and a few more dramatic moments and interruptions. I'm still going to tweak a few spots, but it's essentially finished. Draft 2 of...

Originally posted by jeff from The Music of Jeff Harrington, ReBlogged by jeff on Aug 10, 2005 at 12:43 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

August 09, 2005

Shadowtime IV - The Ruins of Germany and the Rise of a "Greater" Music

Originally from Renaissance Research, ReBlogged by jeff on Aug 9, 2005 at 06:34 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Stockhausen and the Number 6

Other Articles: Charles T. Downey, Stockhausen Rising in Milan (Ionarts, May 10, 2005) Barry Didcock, The Man Who Fell to Earth - Karlheinz Stockhausen, Madman or Genius? (The Glasgow Sunday Herald, March 27, 2005) Charles T. Downey, Fiat Lux, Stockhausen Dixit (Ionarts, October 16, 2004) Robert Hilfery, "The Greatest Work of Art in the Entire Cosmos" (Andante.com, September 2001)

Pierre Gervasoni has published a long interview with modern composer Karlheinz Stockhausen ("J'ai créé une tradition de la précision d'exécution", August 9) in Le Monde. The discussion took place at Stockhausen's home in Cologne, which he designed and helped build (my translation):

Do your house's dimensions have any symbolic meaning?

No, not all. Well, it is true that the architecture is based on the hexagon, like the hives of bees, and that the number 6 has played an important role in my compositions. When you consider, for example, that six is the sum of 1+2+3, you get a structure much more solid than one based on four, for example.

How many children do you have?

Six. But that was not a conscious choice! Anyway, getting back to the house, each room is a subdivision of a hexagone. Also, all the windows were built with a 60°ree; angle, which makes a truly extraordinary reflection of light. In the evening, in the kitchen or in my office, the trees of the surrounding forest and the plants in the garden are reflected on the windows in such a way that you can't tell where the house stops and nature begins. [...]

Since your scores are so precise, can you imagine that performers could execute them correctly today without your help?

This is pure hypothesis because, for us musicians, there has always been a tradition. If performers were to decide to perform one of my works, they would be completely stupid not to speak with the people who have already played it with me and not to contact me in order to work from the recordings I have made, for years, on 16-track tape, which allow you to hear each part separately and sometimes even to have a click-track with it to help you perform the tempos exactly. I have created a tradition in precise execution that makes for a very good school. [...]

The perception of your words has sometimes required some explanation. This was the case regarding your response, sharp, it must be said, to the attacks of September 11, 2001.

That was a mean ploy by a man, a radio journalist in Hamburg, who wanted to take revenge on the festival that had invited me. He cut off the beginning of the sentence, where I was saying that Lucifer had manifested himself in New York and thus made me come off, with his personal remarks, like a supporter of Bin Laden! The evening that the show was broadcast, the Hamburg cultural representative, worried in the week before local elections, came to tell me that they had to cancel my four concerts. Then the director of a foundation, presider over by former chancellor Helmut Schmidt, shared with me his fear of diplomatic complications with the United States and Israel if they went ahead with my concerts. They had all become crazy! No one even tried to find out exactly what I had said.

If you don't remember it, Stockhausen was quoted as saying that the September 11 attacks were "the greatest possible work of art in the entire cosmos . . . Compared to this, we are nothing as composers." I was not particularly upset by his remarks at the time (read the whole quotation that appeared then, not just this little tag), and his explanation of what happened seems plausible enough.

Originally from ionarts, ReBlogged by jeff on Aug 9, 2005 at 06:33 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

August Paris Transatlantic Available

This month’s Paris Transatlantic includes a long review of the Vision Festival, as well as many articles and reviews.

Originally posted by Mike from Avant Music News, ReBlogged by jeff on Aug 9, 2005 at 06:33 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Tuesday = Snooze-day

Jeffrey Zeigler is the Kronos's new cellist. Read all about it...

Otherwise, all the news is at S21 today. Check out David Hanlon's report from Banglewood just below; Ian Moss has some new CD Reviews; my baiting over at the Composers Forum hasn't...

Originally posted by David Salvage from Sequenza21, ReBlogged by jeff on Aug 9, 2005 at 02:17 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

David Hanlon at Banglewood

You gotta love a place whose outreach efforts include playing the seventh inning stretch of a local baseball game in 7/8 (naturally) with instruments made of hula hoops and PVC pipes that sound like a chorus of squawking dinosaurs.

This was the Bang on a Can Summer Institute of Music, aka Banglewood

Originally posted by David Salvage from Sequenza21, ReBlogged by jeff on Aug 9, 2005 at 02:17 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Henry Cowell

Excerpted from Nicolas Slonimsky: Writings on Music edited by Electra Slonimsky Yourke.

Originally from NewMusicBox, ReBlogged by jeff on Aug 9, 2005 at 02:16 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

In Conversation with Electra Slonimsky Yourke

An interview with the editor of Nicolas Slonimsky: Writings on Music.

Originally from NewMusicBox, ReBlogged by jeff on Aug 9, 2005 at 02:16 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Monday thoughts

Originally from Musical Perceptions, ReBlogged by jeff on Aug 9, 2005 at 02:15 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Doctor Atomic (2005). John Adams

With a headline of "Marker leader in the opera of ideas: The US composer does not shy away from tought subject matter. But he also relishes the discipline of writing for a broad audience," Andrew Clark interviews John Adams in today's Financial Times. The article describes his upcoming opera Doctor Atomic:

The score includes a form of musique concrete -- industrial and military sounds, the sound of the weather and recordings of 1940s pop music, to be filtered through speakers round the auditorum.

The drama is set on the day before the first test of the atomic bomb. Adams says the libretto includes "real dialogue, violent arguments, and a love scene."

In broader discussion, when asked if he is a political composer, Adams hedges but says that...

Originally posted by Robert Gable from aworks :: "new" american classical music, ReBlogged by jeff on Aug 9, 2005 at 02:14 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Cryptogramophone On Tour

A number of Cryptogramophone artists are on the road now or hitting it soon.

Originally posted by Mike from Avant Music News, ReBlogged by jeff on Aug 9, 2005 at 02:14 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Lucerne Festival

Need an excuse to go to Switzerland? The Lucerne Festival is offering performances of material by Lachenmann, Stravinski, Schoenberg, Berg, Nono, Hollinger, Rihm and others.

Originally posted by Mike from Avant Music News, ReBlogged by jeff on Aug 9, 2005 at 02:14 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Carter / Weber / Stravinski Reviewed

A Boston performance of pieces by these three composers is reviewed.

Originally posted by Mike from Avant Music News, ReBlogged by jeff on Aug 9, 2005 at 02:13 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Lachenmann +, Lucerne Festival Concerts

Originally from NetNewMusic Contemporary Music News, ReBlogged by jeff on Aug 9, 2005 at 02:07 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Two Piano Concerts, Gallery 1412, Seattle

Originally from NetNewMusic Contemporary Music News, ReBlogged by jeff on Aug 9, 2005 at 02:07 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

August 08, 2005

Music and Gender

Do you think some composers – regardless of their gender – write “masculine” or “feminine” sounding music? Is it plain silly to say that Beethoven is manly and Debussy womanly – or is there something interesting (if not really accurate) behind such state...

Originally posted by David Salvage from Sequenza21/Composers Forum, ReBlogged by jeff on Aug 8, 2005 at 06:55 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Jeffrey Zeigler Joins Kronos Quartet

Cellist Jeffrey Zeigler replaces Jennifer Culp.

Originally from NewMusicBox, ReBlogged by jeff on Aug 8, 2005 at 06:54 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Continuum Sax, Sydney

Steve Layton writes "Continuum Sax: "4 x 4" 8pm Saturday 20 August 2005

Margery Smith, soprano sax; James Nightingale, alto sax; Martin Kay, tenor sax; Jarrod Whitbourn, baritone sax; and special Guest Artist: Gail Priest, Sound Artist

Music Workshop, Sydney Conservatorium of Music Full price $28; Concession & Under 30 $20 Bookings tel 02 8256 2222 or tickets available at the door.

Continuum Sax, in collaboration with sound artist Gail Priest, present an exciting concert that includes the world premiere of a new work for saxophone quartet by Jane Stanley, the Australian premiere of Rolf Gehlhaar's Divine Wind, a new work for saxophone and electronics devised by Gail Priest and Continuum Sax, and a performance of Andrew Ford's Four Winds to mark the launching of Continuum Sax' second CD.

Originally from NetNewMusic Contemporary Music News, ReBlogged by jeff on Aug 8, 2005 at 06:54 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Monday Molto Largo e Doloroso

Well, one more week to go here on the frontlines of S21, and it’s a pretty slow day out there.

Back here at the chocolate factory, Larry Dillon gives us a peek into his workshop: it sounds like he’s working on a fascinating series of string quartets; a...

Originally posted by David Salvage from Sequenza21, ReBlogged by jeff on Aug 8, 2005 at 02:11 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

August 07, 2005

What Classical Music Stations Actually Play

Here are some interesting stats from 10 classical music radio stations. It answers questions about which composers get played the most. No huge surprises, other than there seems to be more variety on classical radio than I had expected.

Originally posted by Mike from Avant Music News, ReBlogged by jeff on Aug 7, 2005 at 09:39 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Forget It, Jake. It's Chinatown.

Jason Kao Hwang – The Floating Box: A Story in Chinatown New World 80626-2 (2 CD)

Jason Kao Hwang self-identifies, vigorously and defensively, as a “downtown jazz composer/violinist”; perhaps he fears that his street cred will be tarnished by his having...

Originally posted by Evan Johnson from Sequenza21, ReBlogged by jeff on Aug 7, 2005 at 09:38 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

COBAIN DIED FOR SOMEBODY'S SINS BUT NOT MINE

Originally from uTopianTurtleTop, ReBlogged by jeff on Aug 7, 2005 at 01:32 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

August 06, 2005

Landmarks (6)

Pauline Oliveros: In Memoriam Nikola Tesla, Cosmic Engineer (1969): commission as accompaniment to Merce Cunningham's dance Canfield, Oliveros wrote a piece where the musicians of the company (Tudor, Mumma) uses the theatre itself as an instrument. The musicians discuss, then venture out of the pit (1969: remember "extravehicular activity"?) to test and measure the room, and finally, the hall is...

Originally from Renewable Music, ReBlogged by jeff on Aug 6, 2005 at 10:19 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Short Ride in a Fast Machine (1986). John Adams /radio airplay/

Art Smoot has several years of data on what 10 US classical radio stations actually played. For example, the stations played works of Beethoven 15390 times, Aaron Copland 3747 times, John Adams 543 times, Schoenberg 323 times, Philip Glass 147 times, John Cage 50 times, and Steve Reich 27 times. For the specific works of  Adams, no surprise about the popularity of the short pieces, although I was glad to see Shaker Loops and the Violin Concerto in the top ten:

1. 186 Short Ride in a Fast Machine
2. 110 The Chairman Dances
3. 30 Shaker Loops
4. 29 Tromba Lontana
5. 25 Chairman Dances
6. 18 Pavane: She's So Fine
7. 16 Harmonielehre
8. 14 Violin Concerto
9. 10 Lollapalooza. On the Transmigration of Souls
10. 9 Common Tones in Simple Time
11. 8 Harmonium
12. 7 Death of Klinghoffer : Desert Chorus
13. 6 China Gates. Rag the Bone
14. 4 Century Rolls. Down East (arr.)
15. 3 Standchen : The Little Serenade. Naïve and Sentimental Music - II Mother of the Man. Slonimsky's Earbox
16. 2 Dharma at Big Sur. Dogjam. Manny's Gym (Century Rolls). Naïve and Sentimental Music - I Naïve and Sentimental Music. Songs (5) (arr.). The Wound Dresser.
17. 1 At the River (arr.). Baudelaire Songs (arr.). El Dorado Part II Soledades. El Nino. Fearful Symmetries. My Father Knew Charles Ives. Naïve and Sentimental Music

robert gable: aworks adams culture wars era. adams official del.icio.us wikipedia google news yahoo audio singingfish amazon. 1986

Originally posted by Robert Gable from aworks :: "new" american classical music, ReBlogged by jeff on Aug 6, 2005 at 10:18 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Yankee Doodle Fantasy (1944). Harry Partch

I've not heard much of Harry Partch's music, but for the last two months, I've been downloading Innova tracks from eMusic. I don't have any particular intellectual interest in tuning, instrument building, or even mixed media. And yet to my surprise, I am enchanted and in some weird kind of way, I also think Partch's music can sound beautiful.

Dr. Dick has a post from last month, The Beautiful Is Difficult. It's more from the point of view of the composer. But as a listener, unlike with say the string quartets of Carter, I have just "clicked" with Partch's music i.e. no effort required. I retain the right to change my mind...

robert gable: aworks partch great depression/ww ii era. partch: del.icio.us wikipedia google news yahoo music singingfish alex ross. yankee doodle fantasy: allmusic. innova recordings. 1944

Originally posted by Robert Gable from aworks :: "new" american classical music, ReBlogged by jeff on Aug 6, 2005 at 10:18 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

New Horn Trio and Revelations in Tuning

I'm 99% done on a new trio for Horn, Violin and Piano. I am going to free up the piece a bit with a few more spaces/holes and I'm almost done with an ending which will be quiet (like Irae).

Draft Realization of Trio for Horn, Violin and Piano

I spent most of the morning, coding up a little program in Java to write SYSEX tuning files to my old Yamaha TG77. It was a bit of a pain, because it involved a lot of 'bit-twiddling' which Java programmers just don't do that much of these days, thankfully. Here's the source if anybody wants it, it's not commented and is a bit rough but it works. It takes a text file with 128 values and spits out a MIDI Sysex file which can then be transmitted to your Yamaha TG77, SY77 or SY99. Feel free to take, steal, not give me credit... whatever. It doesn't use the Javax MIDI classes, cuz I just couldn't get them to do the arbitrary data I needed for a tuning dump.

TG77Tune.java

The good news after all that pain, is that I can now realize Michael Harrison's Revelation tuning. A microtonally modified Just Intonation tuning that uses the black keys to produce beats by using them as 'comma' tones. Tones, almost in tune with the note below them, but in tune in a Just way to the other black notes.

Here's a little improv I did this afternoon on my TG77 using that tuning. It produces heavenly beats and pulses. I'll probably write a few piano pieces with it next.

Piano Improvisation with Michael Harrison's Revelation Tuning

Originally posted by jeff from The Music of Jeff Harrington, ReBlogged by jeff on Aug 6, 2005 at 10:17 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Academy d'Underrated, Operatic Wing

From recordings, I’ve known and loved Aaron Copland’s opera The Tender Land for over thirty years, but I had never seen a production of it until last night at Bard’s Summerscape Festival. It’s true the piece is a little more stage-awkward than I’d imagined: some of the lyrics are more pictorial than dramatic, and the first love scene between Laurie and Martin takes place at an otherwise racuous party, which must be imagined silently continuing in the background. (Staging also failed to clarify Top’s peculiar second-act story, which scandalizes Laurie’s mother, and which must have some underlying denotation I can’t discern - please explain for me if...

Originally from PostClassic, ReBlogged by jeff on Aug 1, 2005 at 09:59 PM

Posted by jeff at 01:47 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Harry Potter and the Carnival of Music #9

Ron looked disgusted as he slammed down the pile of books from Flourish and Blotts. "I thought I was just going to learn about magic at Hogwarts. Now they tell us we have to learn this quadrivium nonsense!" he grumbled. "Look at all the books we have from Professor Gann alone! The spells on how to defend against a critic seem useful, but I don't get the rest of the lot."

Hermione looked exasperated. "Ron, it is essential that we understand...

Originally from Musical Perceptions, ReBlogged by jeff on Aug 6, 2005 at 01:40 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Whatever happened to Howard Hanson?

Back in the late 70’s, when I was going through my post-Mahler phase, two LP’s were on my turntable a lot. They both featured works by composers who were then unknown in the UK.

The first was ‘Chuck’ Gerhardt conducting the National Philharmonic Orchestra (a crack session band comprising front desk players from the leading London orchestras) in Howard Hanson’s Symphony No 2 “the Romantic.” (See photo of Hanson to above). This is a wonderfully passionate account that is playing on vinyl as I write. It eclipses any subsequent recordings including the composer’s own interpretation on Mercury. The wonderful 12” RCA Gold Seal LP sleeve has a beautifully atmospheric black and white Christian Steiner (see footnote) shot of Hanson on the cover smoking a politically incorrect cigarette. CD jewel cases certainly killed the art of record sleeve design...

Originally from On An Overgrown Path, ReBlogged by jeff on Aug 6, 2005 at 12:40 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

New York Soundtrack

S. Reich, City Life, New York Counterpoint, Eight Lines, Violin Phase..., Ensemble Modern

The soundtrack for New York is Steve Reich’s City Life / New York Counterpoint. It’s an accessible and very involving modern work, and if you want to find out where John Adams got his ideas for the Grammy-winning 9/11 memorial The Transmigration of Souls, go no further. The soundtrack of New York is the bustling of pedestrians, cars honking, tourists chattering, and (though less and less) someone screaming obscenities in broad daylight that would leave a Yugoslavian truck driver green with envy. I opted out and imposed my own audio-footprint onto the city.

Originally from ionarts, ReBlogged by jeff on Aug 6, 2005 at 12:38 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Steven Mackey: Outsider on the Inside

Call it the "mutt" aestheticSteve Mackey does, being a dog loverbut it just might be the voice of this generation.

Originally from NewMusicBox, ReBlogged by jeff on Aug 6, 2005 at 12:37 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Musicians Working with Video: A Primer

The future for multi-media artcreating a fluid interchange between music, image, story, performers, and ever-evolving technologyopens up all sorts of new territory. What follows are a few notes from my own explorations into these new possibilities.

Originally from NewMusicBox, ReBlogged by jeff on Aug 6, 2005 at 12:37 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

This week in Internetland

What if everyone's favorite child sorcerer was studying composition? Check out this amazing Harry Potter recast from Scott Spiegelberg, assistant professor of music at DePaw University. It's the ninth installment in John Lanius's Carnival of Music.

Musicformaniacs.blogspot.com, curated by Mr Fab since October 2004, is a virtual Wal-Mart of " 'outsider' recordings and utterly unique sounds." A great lunchtime playground for audiophile...

Originally from NewMusicBox, ReBlogged by jeff on Aug 6, 2005 at 12:37 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

August 05, 2005

It’s Friday!

Some pretty interesting stuff today. Ivan Hewett writes in the Telegraph about a problem I’ve noticed for a while: classical music doesn’t work so well on iPods. Also, read about Lalo Schifrin’s new work “Letters from Argentina” – after which the article will self destruct in five seconds.

Been meaning to mention this for awhile but the best place on the web to find out what's happening on all the music blogs is Jeff Harrington's New Music Reblog. Jeff is the major domo...

Originally posted by David Salvage from Sequenza21, ReBlogged by jeff on Aug 5, 2005 at 10:33 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Londonist spot-on in its assessment of Stockhausen...

Londonist spot-on in its assessment of Stockhausen: Basically, he's the Michael Jackson of the post-war avant-garde.

Originally from The Rambler, ReBlogged by jeff on Aug 5, 2005 at 02:05 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

No such thing as an unknown Venezuelan conductor

24 year old Venezuelan conductor Gustavo Dudamel gets his big break tonight (5th August) at the BBC Proms when he takes over at short notice from an indisposed Neemi Jarvi. And the media are making a big deal about this conductor who is supposed to be unknown outside his native country where he conducts youth orchestras.

It is great to see young talent getting...

Originally posted by Pliable from Sequenza21, ReBlogged by jeff on Aug 5, 2005 at 02:05 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

August 04, 2005

ARTSaha Festival

A contemporary music festival called ARTSaha will be taking place late this month in Omaha. Featured composers are Ives, Lucier, Lachenmann, Stockhausen and others.

Originally posted by Mike from Avant Music News, ReBlogged by jeff on Aug 4, 2005 at 08:37 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

More on Stockhausen in London

A few more details from the latest article.

Originally posted by Mike from Avant Music News, ReBlogged by jeff on Aug 4, 2005 at 08:37 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Bergeronized

Read Kurt Vonnegut's 1961 anti-egalitarianism fable Harrison Bergeron (full text; relatively short). If our culture continues to perpetuate the "no music is better than any other music" fallacy, I assume we will end up as Bergeronized Composers.

Originally posted by Alan Theisen from Alan Theisen, ReBlogged by jeff on Aug 4, 2005 at 06:27 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Mash-up, ca. 1906

To blogizens, looking for the latest mash-up, Charles Ives should be seen as a sort of patron saint, because it was his invention, after-all. "Central Park in the Dark (in the Good Ole Summer Time), or A Contemplation of Nothing Serious, or Central Park in the Dark (Some 40 Years Ago)" incorporates five separate tunes: "Ben Bolt" "The Campbell's are Comin'", "Hello! Ma Baby", "Violets", and "Washington Post March". Quotation is one thing, a device as old as the hills, but Ives is not delicately troping l'homme armé. Instead, he replicates the experience of a crepuscular stroll through Central Park, with competing buskers and town bands, each tune a violent intrusion on the ears of the ambler, but managed with techniques which lay the groundwork for everything DJ Shadow ever did.

Whether he was writing a Fugue in Four Keys or taking the piss out of Mendelssohn with "Song Without (Good) Words, or The Good & The Bad: Melody in F and F-flat", Ives was one of art's great utilitarians, never taking himself so seriously as to forget that all music is at its heart a diversion. To that end, ANALOG will be performing some special mash-ups of his music on the Octets concert of ARTSaha.



By the by, Ives' alma mater (mine too) has an absolutely fantastic illustrated catalogue of Ives' works online:

Song Without (Good) Words

Originally from ANABlog, ReBlogged by jeff on Aug 4, 2005 at 04:41 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Anthony Cheung at Tanglewood

N.B. Anthony Cheung is one of the six Composition Fellows this summer at Tanglewood. He's currently in the D.M.A. program at Columbia, and his bio is disgustingly accomplished. I'd hate his guts, except for two things: he's a great guy and his music is...

Originally posted by David Salvage from Sequenza21, ReBlogged by jeff on Aug 4, 2005 at 04:39 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Thursday Poco Piu Mosso

It’s Thursday, it’s hot, and there’s some cool stuff going on. Ole Karlheinz Stockhausen’s slated to play his first concert in the U.K. since 2001: the program will include a section from "Licht." Michael Gordon and Richard Foreman are collaborating on an...

Originally posted by David Salvage from Sequenza21, ReBlogged by jeff on Aug 4, 2005 at 04:39 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

START MAKING SENSE

Originally from uTopianTurtleTop, ReBlogged by jeff on Aug 4, 2005 at 01:54 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Wavemaker (1978). John Adams

Peter Koht previews the Cabrillo Music Festival including a quote from David Harrington of the Kronos Quartet about their return to the festival:

...the group's first violinist and artistic director David Harrington remembers their first appearance at Cabrillo. "We played the world premiere of a John Adams piece called The Wavemaker, which eventually evolved into Shaker Loops."

Wavemaker was a string quartet written the same year as Shaker Loops. Adams on the piece from americanmavericks:

...The "waves" of Wavemaker were to be long sequences of oscillating melodic cells that created a rippling, shimmering complex of patterns like the surface of a slightly agitated pond or lake. But my technique lagged behind my inspiration, and this rippling pond very quickly went dry. Wavemaker crashed and burned at its first performance. The need for a larger, thicker ensemble and for a more flexible, less theory-bound means of composing became very apparent.

robert gable: aworks adams consciousness revolution era. del.icio.us: adams. wikipedia: adams 1978. google news: john adams cabrillo music festival. earbox.com.

Originally posted by Robert Gable from aworks :: "new" american classical music, ReBlogged by jeff on Aug 4, 2005 at 01:52 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

August 03, 2005

It's About Time: A (Rather Long) Case Study of Classical Music and the Media

Last Week's Time Magazine article on the Marin Alsop/Baltimore Symphony flap was interesting in several ways.

First, it was clearly more of a gender equality story than a classical music story -- even the title seems to be a pun on Virginia Woolf's...

Originally posted by Galen H. Brown from Sequenza21/Composers Forum, ReBlogged by jeff on Aug 3, 2005 at 09:28 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Teaching 20th Century Music

This year, I'm teaching a course on 20th Century Music. It's a one-semester course, and most of the students in it are non-music majors (it fulfills some general education requirement). I've taught the class before, but I've decided to revamp what I'm...

Originally posted by Anthony Cornicello from Anthony Cornicello, ReBlogged by jeff on Aug 3, 2005 at 09:26 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Sony Fake Critic - Class Action Lawsuit Won

From BoingBoing.net not exactly a new music-related story, more of an indicator of things to come as industry embraces viral/subversive marketing techniques; another indicator of an industry OUT OF CONTROL!. Sony has been forced to pay $5 to any moviegoer who can claim they were tricked into seeing a movie based on a review by their David Manning, fake film critic. Not only do we have government producing fake criticism (US Agriculture Department, US Education Department), now industry is doing it to itself.

Claim Form

Originally posted by jeff from beepSNORT, ReBlogged by jeff on Aug 3, 2005 at 02:24 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Wednesday Andante

Dragged up the lines this morning and found a few interesting things. The new NewMusicBox is available, and they’re featuring a conversation with a different American composer every day this month. George Crumb is gearing up for a premiere in Salzburg:...

Originally posted by David Salvage from Sequenza21, ReBlogged by jeff on Aug 3, 2005 at 01:54 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Golijov's Miracle in Santa Fe

Mark Swed, writing in the Los Angeles Times, says Osvaldo Golijov's ill-fated first opera has made a miraculous recovery: Death, like all those tourists packing every corner of Santa Fe in its high season, happily takes a holiday under the blazing sun of...

Originally posted by Jerry Bowles from Sequenza21, ReBlogged by jeff on Aug 3, 2005 at 01:53 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

What To See at FONT

A short article makes recommendations for the Festival of New Trumpet music.

Originally posted by Mike from Avant Music News, ReBlogged by jeff on Aug 3, 2005 at 01:52 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Stockhausen To Play Concert in London

The headline says it all. The date is October 22nd.

Originally posted by Mike from Avant Music News, ReBlogged by jeff on Aug 3, 2005 at 01:52 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

New Berio Recordings Reviewed

A brief review of some new Berio releases is available.

Originally posted by Mike from Avant Music News, ReBlogged by jeff on Aug 3, 2005 at 01:52 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Summer Opera: Ainadamar in Santa Fe

Sadly for me, I had to leave New Mexico before the big-time premiere of Osvaldo Golijov's one-act opera Ainadamar, revised for Santa Fe Opera after being performed at Tanglewood and by the Los Angeles Philharmonic. Well, the premiere was Saturday night, and the big boys are starting to weigh in on it. Starting with the biggest of the big, Bernard Holland was there to review the opera (Haunted by the Deaths of Martyrs, a Century Apart, August 1) for the New York Times:

The dead and dying appear in layers, one layer bleeding into the other. Blended too is Spain's darker side, with its dignity and repressed violence, and that same soul transplanted to Latin America, now invested with the garish and the lugubrious. In Mr. Golijov's music, flamenco and its Phrygian melody blare through amplification; so too do Afro-Cuban pounding and delicate Caribbean dance rhythms. Like his fellow Argentinean Astor Piazzolla, Mr. Golijov does not harness popular music; he liberates it. The energy is freed from a simple dance band function and allowed to wander into modulating keys and new meters. This is "low art" arranged in sophisticated sentences. Some of the close-harmony singing might come from a Xavier Cougat movie. Mr. Golijov takes his brass fanfares from the bullring and his sentimental moods off any old record or sheet music he can find. He is not afraid to get his hands dirty.

Now this may sound like hitting below the belt, pulling out that "low art" card, but compared to the savaging Golijov's opera received at its Tanglewood premiere, this is a rave. To give you an idea of how a full-force lunge for the vitals looks on paper, here are a few choice excerpts from Holland's colleague, Anthony Tommasini (New Operas Remember The Agony Of Lovers Left Behind, August 13, 2003), for the New York Times:

Given Mr. Golijov's high promise and enormous gifts, his one-act opera "Ainadamar" was a major disappointment. He has conceded in recent interviews that he was late in composing this 70-minute score and that it had the earmarks of a rush job. [...] Though dramatic events occur in the opera, the story itself is a recollection and lacks narrative tension. This would be no problem, if there were more tension in the music. In places you hear palpable evidence of Mr. Golijov's great skills: some duets for the older and younger Margarita in which ruminative vocal lines are enshrouded by hazy, luminous, bittersweet orchestra harmonies; some playful song-and-dance numbers for the women's chorus sung with an intentionally nasal Latin American twang. And there are brilliant episodes of taped music: when the sounds of gurgling water and galloping horses are terrifyingly merged, and when the rifle shots that take down García Lorca are turned into crazed rhythmic volleys.

But whole patches of the score sound like generic Latinized vamping. Over droning pedal tones, slinky minor-mode melodies in the strings or voices spin and turn, film-scorish music that makes a big deal out of prolonging the half-step dissonance before the melody resolves into the tonic pedal tone. And an early episode of percussion in which the players break into hand-clapping makes you think of the Copacabana band.

Other Reviews: Mark Swed, Out of failure, a new victory (Los Angeles Times, August 2) Chris Shull, Revolutionary music: Harth-Bedoya conducts 'Ainadamar' on opening night (Ft. Worth Star-Telegram, August 1): the conductor in Santa Fe, Miguel Harth-Bedoya, is music director of the Fort Worth Symphony Alex Ross, Deep Song: Ainadamar (The New Yorker, Sept. 1, 2003)

In my experience, reviews don't get much more venomous than that. Actually, "low art" and "film-scorish" are not unjust, given how heavily Golijov does rely on the vocabulary of pop music much...

Originally from ionarts, ReBlogged by jeff on Aug 3, 2005 at 12:02 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

August 02, 2005

The Emancipation of Judgment

Is the Tate Gallery rejection of a collection of paintings by the Stuckists an example of careful critical evaluation or yet another example of how the arbiters of taste limit audience awareness of artistic possibilities?

Originally from NewMusicBox, ReBlogged by jeff on Aug 2, 2005 at 11:59 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

sad to say...

Spinning a thread off of the yarns below, I’m interested in the concept S21 readers have of tragedy, of which the Mahler-Schnittke variety seems to me like just one type. When I think of tragedy, I’m more inclined toward the Oedipus-Lear model. I don’t...

Originally posted by Lawrence Dillon from Sequenza21/Composers Forum, ReBlogged by jeff on Aug 2, 2005 at 11:58 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Tuesday Poco Meno Mosso

Alright well it’s taken me a while to check my lines this morning, and it seems there’s little but bottom feeders to report. Still, this is all worth glancing through.

A "Peace Symphony" commissioned by the Defense Ministry of Iran has been released on CD. The composer: Majid Entezami. You, too, can conduct the Birmingham Symphony Orchestra if . . . the price is right. Yale University Press's publishing a new book called "Composers in the Movies." (Impromptu, anyone?) Ever heard of Vasif Adigozalov? He's big in Azerbaijan. Here's anis all worth glancing through.

Originally posted by David Salvage from Sequenza21, ReBlogged by jeff on Aug 2, 2005 at 06:43 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Music Since 1960: Rzewski: The People United Will Never be Defeated

Originally from The Rambler, ReBlogged by jeff on Aug 2, 2005 at 06:42 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Audience Like Flood's Problems

Since I've been so forthright in my promotion of the music like water service, I'd like to backtrack a second and point out my views of the problematic nature this system will create. What are the problems inherent in creating a primarily online audience base? In my experience, there are several important ones, including:

1. Anonymity of Audience

I have no way of knowing that some taste maker, somebody who could potentially shift some $$$ or audiences or performances my way has downloaded and totally dug my music. There is an implicit assumption that the downloading of music is always anonymous and not something such as a purchase that might benefit from some type of validation. Admittedly, this is a leftover part of the online::offline critical machine, but it still effects how the online audience responds and how even millions of downloads can produce no effect whatsoever in the offline audience.

2. Assumptions about offline credibility

There are still assumptions that if you deploy your content primarily offline that it is because you have to. That you've been forced to, from a lack of interest in the real world, typically because you suck. Amazingly, my friends who shell out $$$ to record and press their CD's in what used to be called vanity projects can more easily get online reviews with 1/100th of the number of listeners.

3. Bandwidth Costs

Even one recommendation can lead to a catastrophic failure in your ability to maintain a decent pipe of content.

4. Limited Offline Recognition

No matter how many listens I've received, the offline critics are primarily focussed on live performances and real CD's. No matter the size of the audience (often miniscule) or the number of CD's the musician has sold.

Anyways, I've been pitching more musicians get their music online and give it away... these are a few of the pitfalls that await this type of distro methodology. I'll be adding a few more as they wack me across the head.

Originally posted by jeff from beepSNORT, ReBlogged by jeff on Aug 2, 2005 at 06:39 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Simply chic symphonies?

The overgrown path leads to the symphonies of Leonard Bernstein.

There have been very perceptive posts from Hucbald (check his excellent blog A monk's musical musings) and Fairhaven Friend (who contributed my guest blog A year at the symphony) on my recent Mass post. These prompted me to listen last night to Bernstein’s Kaddish Symphony (No 3) in his own performance with the New York Philharmonic and soprano Jennie Tourel.

It strikes me that Bernstein’s symphonies contain the same blazing creativity that crackles through Mass, without the excesses and indulgences that flaw it. Why aren’t these works better known? Or am I wrong? Are these simply chic symphonies?

Here are two very brief tasters...

Originally from On An Overgrown Path, ReBlogged by jeff on Aug 2, 2005 at 03:49 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Chorals (1978). John Cage

After listening to one⁸ the other day and blogging about it, I feel like I have walked through the looking glass, thanks to Mr. Cage...

Yesterday, inspired by Devin Hurd's comment to my post that said, live anyway, one⁸ was "haunting," I made a quick trip to Amoeba/SF to see if I could find another recording of one⁸ just to see if maybe the recording I had was deficient. Allas, nothing in stock (although kudos to Mr. TSR for pointing out the 70s retro Everything Comes & Goes which I did buy). Today, after a fast lunch in downtown San Jose, I stopped at the San Jose State/City of San Jose library to look for a book on a particular subject. After not finding what I was looking for, I decided to make a quick pass through the SJS music library (which is surprisingly good). Of the 5000 or so available CDs, mostly classical, the third CD I happened to thumb through was the Irvine Arditti recording of one⁸. Eerie.

I also did a quick search on the shelves for James Pritchett's The Music of John Cage, a good overall text on the subject. That led me to Christopher Shultis' Silencing the Sounded Self: John Cage and the American Experimental Tradition, which I've started to read (and which is also available via Amazon for $427.10!).

Shultis posits that experimental tradition as revolving around two archetypes: the Emerson/Ives "controlling selves" and the Thoreau/Cage "co-existing selves". The author says he will try to place various poets and composers in the context of three criteria:

1. "a controlling or co-existing connection with nature"
2. "symbolism versus the thing itself"
3. "intention versus non-intention, manifested as either projection/observation or sound/silence"

In a comment to my prior post, Steve Layton points to the Rob Haskins website with some relevant notes on Cage's number music. Then today, I read, wait for it, Rob Haskins' liner notes to the Arditti recording on Mode I just checked out. He has a good quote from Cage about studying the violin's capabilities as he wrote Chorals and Cheap Imitation in preparation for his Freeman Etudes:

I study under [Paul] Zakofsky's patient tutelage, not how to play the violin, but how to become even more baffled by its almost unlimited flexibility.

There are aspects of both Ives and Cage I like and aspects I don't; I'm curious if a little study in this area results in any synthesis in my musical perspective. In any case, I like the little Cage-ian lesson about non-intentionality I've just had.

robert gable: aworks cage consciousness revolution era. del.icio.us: cage. wikipedia: cage 1978. google news: john cage black sabbath matmos. johncage.info. cd baby: steve layton.

Originally posted by Robert Gable from aworks :: "new" american classical music, ReBlogged by jeff on Aug 2, 2005 at 12:03 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

I Go To Yet Another Avant-Garde Concert

I hope I'm not just turning into an old curmudgeon. I don't get out much these days. Too busy, etc. But I did feel the urge to drive over the bridge tonight to attend one of SFSound's concerts at the ODC Theater on 17th in S.F. I give SFSound lots of applause for carrying the banner and the tradition of sit-down concerts of new (and not-so-new) music... what was once called "Modern Music". And, I'm happy to say, the ODC Theater was almost full. Pretty good for a Monday night!

Tonight's event started with a solo clarinet improvisation by SFSound's founder, Matt Ingalls. (I think he prefers to be called ma++, but I'll stick with Matt.) For me, this was a repeat of his performance at The Hemlock Wednesday night. And I didn't like what I heard then, nor tonight. This sort of reed-splitting hysteria lacked any introspection and sputtered off into some delirious incoherent scream worthy of a spoiled 6-year-old. I was surprised that someone seemingly so hip would try to reproduce the overused blabberings from previous avant-gardes. Nothing new here. So retro, I was baffled.

Solo instrument improvisation is a special art. In some cultures it's the highest art. For example, the flute playing of Hariprasad Chaurasia. Solo improvisations must be compelling and draw the listener into the web spun by the performer. Unfortunately, Ingall's playing merely cataloged all the aggressive extended performance techniques he's mastered, and only served to separate this listener from the performer while...

Originally from All I Know, ReBlogged by jeff on Aug 2, 2005 at 12:02 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

sad to say...

Spinning a thread off of the yarns below, I’m interested in the concept S21 readers have of tragedy, of which the Mahler-Schnittke variety seems to me like just one type. When I think of tragedy, I’m more inclined toward the Oedipus-Lear model. I don’t think anyone would claim that Shakespeare suffered personal tragedies on the scale of the Holocaust or the gulags (or African slavery, to name something that took place on this soil that belongs on any short list of horrors).

And yet he created stunning, shattering works that people still respond to today. Obviously, musical tragedy is a very different thing from the theatrical kind. But I think that there can be music combining intense poetry of expression on a level that has nothing to do with bathos. Here are three American works that I believe have very different but very powerful emotional impacts: The Unanswered Question, Black Angels and Different Trains. Interestingly, I don’t even have to name the

Originally posted by Lawrence Dillon from Sequenza21/Composers Forum, ReBlogged by jeff on Aug 2, 2005 at 12:02 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

August 01, 2005

Regina, Briefly Out of the Closet

I’ve seen Marc Blitzstein’s opera Regina staged in its entirety. Not many people living today can say that; the number will swell another thousand or two by week’s end, as the work continues to run at Bard’s Summerscape Festival. Far be it from me to review a work presented by an institution which keeps me on its payroll, but it is worth reporting something about so rarely performed an opera. We have so many operas that possess some underground reputation, but that are performed less often than once per generation, due to presumed flaws whose seriousness we rarely come into a position to gauge. American music is rich in these known-of but unheard works: Antheil’s Transatlantic and Helen Retires, Douglas Moore’s The Ballad of Baby Doe and Carrie Nation, Carlisle Floyd’s Susannah, Bernard Hermann’s Wuthering Heights, and on and on. Probably they are all unstageworthy to varying extents; but how few people...

Originally from PostClassic, ReBlogged by jeff on Aug 1, 2005 at 09:59 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

In the Music Like Water World Flows the True Artist

Gerd Leonhard, self-proclaimed Musical Futurist writes an article getting a lot of attention at NewMusicBox. In it he examines the implications of a world where music is so commoditized, through online subscription services, such as Yahoo and the new Napster, that music has become a utility, like water.

From the article, Once music is unleashed and the dinosaurial fight for the simple privilege of having access to it is over for good, distribution ceases to be a barrier to entry: all music, all artists, and all writers will be in those pipeline... ...the real challenge and the real opportunity going forward: getting exposure and being discovered—the rest is already built into the pipeline.

What Gerd misses out on, is the fact that this is a great thing, because, it levels the playing field. In this type of world, the cream rises to the top, not the merely over-promoted and well-connected. Music that matters will be noticed because it is listened to.

Other writers including Pliable at On an Overgrown Path fears for the artists. His blog haiku:

Water from faucets
sounds like a listener's dream -
will hurt true artists

Hurt true artists? Huh? The majority of true artists now are fighting to get through the ear canal. They're not the ones on the radio, getting recorded. They're the artists that are not getting promoted in record stores, getting performed in concert halls. They're the ones that didn't spend the money to hire an agent like so many composers, didn't spend the money to hire an orchestra and record their own music while pretending its a real record company recording and promoting their music.

The Music Like Water flow will be huge, it will be meritocratic and it will create giant new opportunities for curators, critics, musician-networks. The main problem in getting paid, which is what everybody always focusses on, in this world is the over-abundance of musicians, not the collapse of the inherent assumptions about music distribution. This glut of artistry is one of the real problems and its a good problem. We need competition, to make better music. We need to hear everybody so that for once, the Nancarrow's don't have to almost die in obscurity.

The big question, is will we be up to building the future curatorial forums? I see the music blog as a prime contendor and the reblogging movement, re-mixing aggregated micro-content into forms that will promote more better variety and more better personalization.

Originally posted by jeff from beepSNORT, ReBlogged by jeff on Aug 1, 2005 at 07:06 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Music-like-water

A world where music is available via the latest technologies for a single monthly subscription charge. A world with unlimited access to a huge range of music. A world where the music business will explode and reinvent itself. A world where listeners are empowered, and the reach of new music is limited only by your own imagination. A world where the major record companies aren’t invited to the party. A world where music becomes a utility on tap, just like gas and electricity.

A world where music is like water.

No, Pliable hasn’t been on the wacky backy again. Music-like-water is the title of a really thought provoking paper from Gerd Leonhard published on New Music Box, the web magazine of the American Music Center. (And many thanks to Garth Trinkl who blogs at Renaissance Research for bringing it to my attention). Leonhard is the founder of ThinkAndLink, a consultancy working in the area of convergence between the entertainment and technology sectors. When he is not future-gazing Leonhard is a pretty mean guitarist and composer, and winner of a Quincy Jones Award. His blog is also worth a visit.

The main thrust of Leonhard’s paper is that consumers are now taking charge of their own entertainment, and the borders between performance and copy, and access and ownership have been crossed. He says the music business is rapidly moving towards a flat charge for access, and away from the historic, and clumsy, pay per performance model. A flat charge for access is how utility providers operate, and is where his catchy music-like-water moniker comes from. Leonhard predicts that once distribution is no longer a barrier to entry, the music market will explode. And the traditional record companies will be left for dead as new players control the flow of music-like-water...

Originally from On An Overgrown Path, ReBlogged by jeff on Aug 1, 2005 at 01:59 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack