Author: Jerry Bowles

Contemporary Classical

Cellist Wanted

Hello Jerry Bowles and Sequenza21,

I am writing from the office of Bang on a Can in Brooklyn. We are currently beginning a search for a new cellist to be a member of the Bang on a Can All-Stars.  In order to reach the broadest possible pool of applicants, we would love to list this job opening on the Sequenza21 website.  Attached is a description of the position and the application procedure. Please reply to jeremy@bangonacan.org, or call the office at 718-852-7755 and ask to speak with me or our executive director Kenny Savelson.

Best,

Jeremy Thal

Bang on a Can

Cello Search-Ad.doc

 

by Jerry Bowles
Classical Music, Contemporary Classical, Metropolis Ensemble, New York

The Sooner The Better

Andrew Cyr writes: 

Hi Jerry,

I just wanted to give you a heads up about a couple of things:

Avner Dorman, the composer we just cut an album with (in editing mode now), had some incredible news in Germany, which I think is potentially worthy of a post. His new percussion concerto was just premiered in Hamburg a few weeks ago, and was just added in a rare surprise programming shift, with Munich Symphony — when was the last time you heard an American symphony do something like that!  Check out the press release, which I received from his publisher, Schirmer.  You can have a look at his website, too, http://avnerdorman.com , for additional info too…

In Metropolis news, another very talented composer we’re
collaborating with, Ryan Francis (b.1981), has won a prestigious
commission from the American Composers Forum, for a piano concerto which we will premiere in April….  There’s pretty much complete info for you on that on our homepage, under NEWS (we’ve a blog post about it) http://metropolisensemble.org/ — might be worthy of a post with you at some point, if you announce these kind of things.  I think Ryan is an incredibly talented composer to be watched…

Hope all is going well in the new year, and thanks for all your
support!!!

All the best,

Andrew

by Jerry Bowles
Classical Music, Composers, Contemporary Classical

Elmer Gantry was drunk.

Who’s going to see Elmer Gantry at Montclair later this week?  Want to write a review for us?  No money but an incredible amount of love, peace and understanding (and what’s so funny about that?) and the next 10 Mozart CDs companies send me by mistake.   

Marvin is doing the world premiere of the Alan Hovhaness concerto Shambala, for violin, sitar and orchestra, originally composed for Yehudi Menuhin and Ravi Shankar, on his Classical Discoveries radio program on January 30 during the 9 am EST hour.  As usual, you can listen to it on the web at WPRB in Princeton.

The broadcast marks the February 14th release of the OgreOgress DualDisc comprising three Hovhaness works, each featuring violinist/violist Christina Fong. Both Shambala and Janabar (1950) appear in world-premiere recordings, while the concerto Talin was last recorded in its original viola & strings format in 1957.

I had a real thing about Sinclair Lewis when I was 10 or 11 years old.  Read Arrowsmith, Dodsworth, Elmer Gantry, Babbitt, Main Street back to back.  Lewis created characters that were not so much flesh and blood as archetypes of American mendacity.  I soon moved on to Hemingway and Faulkner but Lewis–who was hardly in that league as a writer–was my first real exposure to concepts like satire and irony and skepticism and, for better or worse, far more influential in shaping my views of the world.    

by Jerry Bowles
Classical Music, Composers, Contemporary Classical

Elias Tanenbaum, 1924-2008

Yet another one, via Carson Cooman:

Elias Tanenbaum, composer, teacher and long-time New Rochelle resident died on Thursday after a long illness. He composed over 140 works in all idioms, including music for concert, jazz, theater, television, ballet and electronic and computer music. His music has been performed extensively throughout this country, Europe and Japan and recordings of his music can be found on Albany, New World, MMC and other labels. Mr. Tanenbaum was the Founding Director of the Electronic Computer Music Studio at the Manhattan School of Music in New York City, and he was a member of the composition faculty there for almost 30 years. Born in 1924 in Brooklyn, New York, Elias Tanenbaum studied trumpet at an early
age and played with many jazz bands. He volunteered for the U.S. Army in World War II, and lost his right leg above the knee in Southern France in 1944. After being awarded a Purple Heart, he received a Bachelor’s from the Juilliard School of Music in 1949, and an M.A. from Columbia University, all on the G.I. bill. Besides music, he loved art, movies, reading, cooking, politics and comedy. He lived in New Rochelle, New York from 1959. He is survived by his wife of 55 years, pianist Mary Tanenbaum, his brother Ray, two children, David and Jacob, and three grandchildren, Zachary, Simon and Nicky. 11 AM memorial gathering will be held on Sunday at the Funeral Home followed by a 12 PM service.

GEORGE T DAVIS FUNERAL HOME 14 Lecount Place New Rochelle, NY 914 632 0324

by Jerry Bowles
Classical Music, Contemporary Classical

Sequenza21 2.0

Given the inexplicable stature of our little S21 community, it occurred to me a couple of weeks ago that we should do something useful.  I’ve chatted with a few of the regulars and gotten some good ideas but I thought I would open up the discussion to everybody.

Here’s what we have so far: 

1) another Sequenza21 concert like the very successful one we had a couple of years ago.  We’d raise a little money from readers and I would shake down…ur, trade a few record companies some free advertising for dollars.  My feeling is that if we go the concert route, we should have somebody prominent who is not a composer curate the program to avoid the unfortunate tendency of the selection committee to be overrepresented on the program.  Ideas?

2) a Sequenza21 virtual CD or CDs.  Steve Layton has some great thoughts on this that would keep the costs down and avoid the wrath of ASCAP.  Maybe, Steve could elaborate.

3) A modest Sequenza21 commissioning fund for composers and who contribute here regularly.  (We’ll have to define what contribute here regularly means).

4) Some sort of outreach to performers and musicians who are not composers.  We’d like to get more of them involved in S21.  Maybe a Performers Forum?

5) Something we haven’t thought of yet but you have.

The floor is now open.

by Jerry Bowles
CDs, Composers, Contemporary Classical

You Ought to Be in Movies

I am not, generally speaking, a big fan of movie music although the ability to produce useful art on demand appeals to my lifetime hack sensibilities.  I don’t think Bernard Hermann and Miklos Rozsa are overlooked concert hall geniuses who might have been among the greats had they not traded their souls for big houses in Beverly Hills.  They are what they are.

Writing for films is a craft, not an art, but it is a demanding craft that not every composer–even a great one–can do.  In Andre Previn’s memoirs of his Hollywood years (which is called No Minor Chords because Irving Thalberg once degreed that no MGM picture should ever contain music with a minor chord), Previn writes of having taken one of the big moguls, Louis B. Mayer, I believe, to the Hollywood Bowl to hear the Sibelius Violin Concerto.  Afterwards, he asked him how he liked it.  “Well,” Mayer said.  “It was good but he couldn’t write for pictures.”

I suspect Mr. Mayer was right.  Many “serious’ composers (and writers, too, think of Faulkner) are not good at writing for pictures.

The latest example of underachievement in the category of film music is Osvaldo Golijov, whom Francis Ford Coppola specifically commissioned to write the music for Youth Without Youth, Coppola’s recent comeback film which was seen by absolutely nobody.  On the surface, Golijov’s enormous multicultural sound palette would seem perfect for film.  Alas, the result is more insipid than limpid, if you know what I mean.

On the other hand, Jonny Greenwood of Radiohead fame nails his film debut with the score for There Will Be Blood.   The music has to be pretty dramatic to match Daniel Day-Lewis’ over-the-top, spit-slinging, snot-dripping performance as a rabid early oil man but Greenwood pulls it off.  So he’s channelling Penderecki, Gorecki, and Messiaen, originality is less important than conveying mood in film music.  Like Ry Cooder, another unexpected star of film music, Greenwood shows himself to be a master of atmosphere and shifting physical and mental landscapes.  If he wants to give up his day job, he’s probably got a future in Hollywood.

by Jerry Bowles
Classical Music, Contemporary Classical

That’s Earle, Brother

I missed this little diatribe from Bernard Holland in the Times.  Thanks to Carmen Tellez for bringing it to my attention:

Unpleasant truths were another topic brought back forcefully by a concert at the Kitchen in September, by the fine young group Either/Or. Here was a program of 1960s arrogance and self-absorption, with people like Cornelius Cardew, Christian Wolff and Earle Brown as the main offenders. Listening to a collection of composers sharing inside jokes and private messages in music that reeked of contempt for the public made me get down on my knees and give thanks that an era so damaging to music was over. It didn’t drive an intelligent public away from classical music by itself, but it helped.

by Jerry Bowles