Who-cares-about-the-Super-Bowl-now Monday
Doubtless legions of Sequenza21 fans are crestfallen this morning. Being people of superior intellect, you were all hoping for a New England / New Orleans Super Bowl. Now we get the Bears and the Colts. In any case, Prince is the halftime show this year. Can you guess what young composer went on the record a few years ago saying “Nothing is better than Prince?”
Well, Bach is better than Prince–but that’s just me . . .
Oh – something else that’s better than Prince: Ian Moss and his burly crew of choral composers are commandeering the Norwegian Seaman’s Church this coming Friday night. In addition to a New York premiere by Ian, C4 will be performing some new Scandinavian choral music by Egil Hovland and Victor Strandberg. Lutefisk at intermission.
Also you may want to tune in to David Letterman tonight. Members of new-music-friendly Brooklyn Philharmonic and their music director Michael Christie will be accompanying Nellie McKay. Way to go, gang!
(I hadn’t heard of Nellie McKay before receiving the Brooklyn Phil’s announcement yesterday.)
Back here at the Situation Room (where news is breaking all the time), Lawrence Dillon has a nice dispatch from the very honorable-sounding North Carolina Symphony; it seems they’re doing their bit for new music. And in the Composers Forum, A.C. Douglas is taking a beating. Care to join?
Better than Prince? Why—there’s Andrew Lloyd Webber, there’s Aaron Jay Kernis, there’s Tan Dun, Ana Lara…the list of twiddledum and twiddledee is joyfully endless.
Thanks for the shout, David. I know I haven’t been very visible on these pages recently and I apologize. One reason is that I’ve been very busy with this project. The entire program, as in all of C4’s concerts, consists of music by living composers, and more than half of the works on this program will be world premieres. I hope some of the S21 faithful will see fit to check it out. There’s a lot of really interesting stuff going on in choral music but you rarely hear about it in the traditional new music circles. Hopefully we’ll start to change that! 🙂
Always nice to see the East Coast mentality rearing its ugly head 🙂 Crestfallen my proverbial tuckus…some of us have been waiting 20 years to see Chicago in the Super Bowl again. Though it would have been nice to see the Bears spank the Patriots…again.
Gotta get back to writing scripts – I’ve begun a new radio show called “The Composer Next Door” featuring established and emerging composers from around the country. I’ll send a more in-depth release soon.
I was very bummed by the Saints loss. I was more than happy to give them props at the CMA awards ceremony last weekend when all the ASCAP composers got to go up to the podium and introduce themselves (I am a New York based composer coming from New Orleans by way of Ohio – long story…).
I have a lot of New Orleans centric links on my website that I try to update and add to if anyone is curious.
There is always next year.
Prince probably dresses more like Bach than any other living pop musicians do. . .
Oh — didn’t realize that. Thanks.
BTW — I’m probably guilty of appearing to try to start a silly pop/classical fight here. Just spoofing the vacuity of statements like “Prince/Bach is better than Bach/Prince.” The world is big enough and better off for the both of them.
Cheers all.
It was Nico Muhly, and he said it to me, for an article on young composers in the NYC area. I had asked him what pop music he was listening to, and he listed some names, adding, “Nothing is better than Prince.” It should have been clear from the preceding sentence — and if it’s not the fault is mine — that he was talking about current pop musicians, not all of Western music history.