Eighth Blackbird partners with Finale; Relaunches Competition
I just got off the phone with a reporter from the Chicago Reader, who read our February 12th coverage of Eighth Blackbird’s Composition Competition (on Twitter, this came to be…
Xenakis on a Raft or Steven and Doug Go Boating
Not a short order in a Greek coffee shop but the first American open-air performance of Iannis Xenakis’ Persephassa (1969), a thunderous work for six percussionists, including founding member of…
Happy Birthday Igor Stravinsky (1882-1971)
Igor Stravinsky’s birthday is today. Check out this recording of Stravinsky’s own Greeting Prelude, which was played on the occasion of Louis Andriessen’s 70th birthday by Reinbert de Leeuw and…
The Kids are All Rite
Rite Simon Bolivar Youth Orchestra of Venezuela; Gustavo Dudamel, conductor Deutsche Grammophon CD True, Stravinsky’s Sacre du Printemps is a watershed work. It serves as many a classical listener’s jumping…
Remembering Jack Beeson
Word of Jack Beeson’s death reached me yesterday; very, very sad news– and also shocking. Not just because I’d studied with Jack at Columbia in my last year there and…
Locrian Chamber Players this Thursday
Eclectic in their programming and superlatively talented, the Locrian Chamber Players have a unique mandate: they are the only new music ensemble which limits their repertoire to works composed in…
Jack Beeson, 88
American composer Jack Beeson died of congestive heart failure on Sunday, June 6 at St. Luke’s-Roosevelt Hospital in New York City, at the age of 88. His family was with…
RVW captures my Memorial Day wish
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3zfHiloldtg
Short Chat with Elizabeth Ziman
Brooklynite singer/songwriter Elizabeth Ziman is probably best known for her work with the indie pop band Elizabeth and the Catapult. But Ziman, a trained pianist who studied film scoring, was…
The Dharma on the Potomac
The National Symphony Orchestra has been hosting composer John Adams over the past two weeks in presentations of his own works as well as works of the 20th century American,…