I was supposed to run a contest promoting the premiere of Magnus Lindberg’s Kraft tonight at the NYPhil but I forgot (that’ll teach them to do business with a card-carrying member of the Medicare set) so this is a makeup.  I have tickets for the October 12 performance for the first person who can tell me the name of American composer whose Second Symphony is based on a single lyrical motif and explain what in the hell this has to do with Magnus Lindberg.  I also have a pair for the first person to correctly identify the Helsinki hotel at whose bar my wife and I paid $50 for two bloody marys about 20 years ago.  One hotel per person, please.  Bonne chance.

New clue: Jose’s Howard Hanson is a good try and may be the winner but he is not the composer or connection to Magnus Lindberg I had in mind.  So, here’s an additional clue:  the composer in question was also a pretty well-known music critic and he died at 63.

There are a couple of posts over at our new sister ship Chamber Musician Today that cry out for comment.  Alas, the folks who visit there so far seem to be a bit more shy than the S21 gang so I’d like to recruit some of you to run over and stir up some trouble.  In New Rules for Classical Musicians, violinist Marjorie Kransberg-Talvi argues that it is unrealistic to expect struggling big city music organizations to pay the same salaries and maintain the same work rules they’ve had in better times.  The Detroit Symphony strike, she says, is simply hastening its own demise.  After seeing the current salary figures she quotes, I suspect she is right.   The other post that commands your attention is Drew Baker’s Not Just Professors in Training:  Empowering Composers After Graduation.  I suspect you can guess what that one’s about.

So run on over to CMT, click the sign up link in the green box in the right sidebar (takes 30 seconds, tops) so your name will appear on your comment, and do do that voodoo that you all do so well around here.

Dear Jerry:

I am extremely interested in educating myself on the trends in new “downtown” as well as much “uptown” music (e.g. the music, methods and processes of; yourself, David Lang, Meredith Monk, Nico Muhly, Toru Takemitsu, Steve Reich, Morton Feldman, Carl Ruggles, Charles Ives, Lou Harrison), and I am in search of resources online to meet this end.  I want to know them the way you do, or the way a composition professor would.  The online resources of which I am aware are The New Grove Dictionary, Music Theory Spectrum, The Society For Music Theory, and Sequenza21.com.

If you haven’t checked out Chamber Musician Today, the latest, greatest (and only) new addition to the Sequenza21 family, you’re missing some really good stuff. Some very talented people have signed up already and have added their blogs to the daily content flow and it’s starting to look like a web community for musicians and composers with real potential. If you were to run over there right now, for example, you could read a report from the Native American Composers Apprentice Project in Moab, Utah from Ralph Farris, violist of the terrific contemporary string quartet Ethel or a post by Matt Albert of eighth blackbird about how we all know the Italian words but just how loud is loud anyway? You could check out cellist Emily Wright piece about things that can, and do, go wrong during auditions or Chris Foley’s definitive post on how to build and maintain a repertoire list. For the more spiritually minded, there is a a piece by violinist Marjorie Kransberg-Talvi on how the world needs more conductors with bigger souls and less hair and a meditation of the hidden meaning of the low “A” by oboist Alison Lowell.   And that’s not to mention some inside dope on composing from Steve Reich and a wonderful meditation on sound by Jeffrey Agrell, University of Iowa prof and horn man extraordinaire.

Come on over, sign up (the green box at the top of the right sidebar), comment, post something, review a CD, add your blog.  It’s fairly straightforward but the “Help” section is helpful and if you need extra attention, send me an e-mail.

Chamber Music America and ASCAP team up each year to present awards for Adventurous Programming to honor U.S.-based professional ensembles, presenters, and festivals that have “…demonstrated a commitment to contemporary chamber music through adventurous, distinctive programming.”

Ensembles (contemporary, mixed repertory, and Jazz) and presenting organizations (contemporary, mixed genre, and jazz) are considered.   The awards will be presented during the next CMA National Conference in New York City, January 13-16, 2011. Each recipient will receive a $500 award and a plaque.

This year’s deadline is October 1, 2010.  (This is an in-office deadline, not a postmark date).  For more information and to download the program guidelines, application and FAQs, visit the CMA website .

The catalog for New York City Opera’s 2010-2011 arrived by post yesterday and, as usual, the Met’s poor cousin on perpetual life support has cobbled together a few interesting-looking programs to accompany the usual Donizetti and Strauss crowdpleasers. There is the long-delayed premier of A Quiet Place, Leonard Bernstein’s final stage work, the New York premiere of Seance on a Wet Afternoon, the first opera of Stephen Schwartz who did the Broadway hits Wicked, Godspell and Pippin, and–most intriguing of all–an evening called Monodramas–three one acts by John Zorn, Morton Feldman and Arnold Schoenberg.

But, what caught my eye was the news (to me) that the New York State Theater, the NYCO’s home, is now called the David H. Koch Theater. David Koch is a familiar figure on the New York social and philanthropy scene, with weitere Infos hier detailing his and his brother’s ownership of Koch Industries, the second-biggest private company in the United States. He is a multi-billionaire who trails only our esteemed mayor as the wealthiest man in New York. He has given millions of dollars to various arts organizations over the years. He has given many, many more millions of dollars to fund radical right-wing causes. He and his brother are the deep pockets behind the “grassroots” Tea Party Movement and virtually every other campaign to destabilize the American government and purge it of “liberal” influences.

When Koch ran for vice president on the 1980 Libertarian ticket, his campaign called for the abolition not just of Social Security, federal regulatory agencies and welfare but also of the F.B.I., the C.I.A., and public schools—in other words, as Frank Rich notes, “..any government enterprise that would either inhibit his business profits or increase his taxes.” Further proof that the acorn does not fall far from the tree, the Kochs’ father–Fred–was on the governing board of the John Birch Society. Fomenting civil unrest and paying entertainers like Glenn Beck and Rush Limbaugh to  confuse the rabble about who their true enemies are has been a Koch family enterprise for at least 50 years.  In tandem with Rupert Murdoch, they own the mind of every new Timothy McVeigh and abortion clinic bomber this country will produce in the next several decades.

Many artsy-fartsy New York beneficiaries of Koch’s arts benevolence were aware of his conservative leanings and although they widely considered him a jerk on a personal level, they chose not to delve too deeply into his other causes for fear of losing a sugar daddy. I didn’t know is not a legal defense but it makes a convenient excuse sometimes. That changed last week with Jane Mayer’s devastating profile of the Koch brothers in the New Yorker.

Nobody in the arts and music world can now claim they don’t know.  What will be most interesting is how they choose to react.

Fanfare, please.  From the creators of Sequenza21 comes a new web community–Chamber Musician Today.  Something like that anyway.  Go over and register and you’ll find there are lots of neat things you can do there.  You can blog directly on the site whenever you feel like it, you can post concerts and announcements to the Calendar page, you can review a CD, comment, add a profile, even add your existing blog feed to the Autopost and the software will automatically pull in your last 10 posts and all new ones.  The ones that are on target (i.e., have something to do with chamber music) will mysteriously appear at Chamber Musician Today, as well as your own blog, multiplying your readership into the dozens.

The site is pretty easy to use.  Once you register and log in, the green dashboard on the right contains all the links you’ll need.   Remember that whatever user name you choose is what will appear on your posts and comments.

Some of you may recall that I previewed the site several weeks ago under the name Chamber Music Now but our friends at chambermusicnow.org were concerned that it might encroach on them a bit so–because I am an incredibly nice human being–I decided to go with Chamber Musician Today instead although it’s really not as good and cost me another $350 for a new software license but who’s counting?

Consider this a beta opening (which is what web people say when they aren’t sure if all the buttons work right yet).   If you see something that doesn’t do what it’s supposed to do, please let me know.

Xin Wang & Alvin Crawford in the 2008 world premiere of Sanctuary Song, presented by Tapestry & Theatre Direct in association with Luminato.

Turns out the Hartford Opera Theater folks are not the only group that creates short operas through a collaborative process. In fact, they may have “borrowed” the idea from a Toronto-based organization called Tapestry New Opera, which has been holding an annual Composer-Librettist Laboratory (known affectionately as the LibLab) every year since 1995. LibLab is also the model for the English National Opera Studio’s All In Opera, as well as Pacific Opera Victoria’s Composer-Librettist Workshop.

Here’s how it works: four composers and four writers are brought together for a 10-day period of collaborative discovery through the creation of sixteen 5-minute scenes, each of which are written, composed and performed within a 48 hour cycle that is repeated four times, enabling each writer to work with each composer. Guiding the composers and librettists throughout the process are dramaturg (I thought a cure have been found for that, but I guess not) Michael Albano and musical dramaturg Wayne Strongman, Tapestry’s Managing Artistic Director. At the disposal of the creative teams will be some of Canada’s most respected performers, including soprano Carla Huhtanen, mezzo soprano Kimberly Barber, tenor Keith Klassen, baritone Peter McGillivray, as well collaborative pianist Christopher Foley. Out of this seminal laboratory, nearly 100 artists have graduated with 43 teams emerging to create new works for the stage, either for Tapestry of for other companies nationally and internationally. Tapestru is currently celebrating its 30th season.

This year’s Composer-Librettist Laboratory is coming up in a couple of weeks–August 23rd to September 2nd at Toronto’s Rosedale United Church. The writers chosen are Hannah Moscovitch, Anusree Roy, Michael Pollard, and Maja Ardal. Joining them will be composers Norbert Palej, Anna Höstman, Iman Habibi, and Gareth Williams. Also joining Tapestry in 2010-2011 is multi-talented theatre and opera artist Marjorie Chan, as the company’s new Writer in Residence, a role most recently assumed by Governor General’s Award Winner Colleen Murphy. Marjorie is a graduate of the LibLab (2003 and 2009) and librettist for the Dora Award-winning new opera Sanctuary Song which premiered with Tapestry and Theatre Direct for the 2008 Luminato Festival.

Thanks to S21 familiar Chris Foley, bloggerturg of The Collaborative Piano Blog and Legacy Leadership Intern at Tapestry for the tip.