Musical Mashup or Composers Say the Darndest Things
From the CBC: Toronto composer James Rolfe has won the $7,500 Jules Léger Prize for New Chamber Music for his contemporary work raW, the Canada Council for the Arts announced Thursday.…
Calling All Clarinetists
Our friend Marco Antonio Mazzini is inviting all clarinetists to participate in the first “Musical Marathon – Prize for Most Creative Interpretation” contest that will take place on the web, from January…
Happy New Year from An Overgrown Path
For articles on every one of the contemporary composers pictured above, and more, click on Overgrown Path’s People of the Year for 2006.
Joan Baez sings Sibelius
Yes, you read that right. 2007 brings the fiftieth anniversary of Jean Sibelius’ death, and his tone poem Finlandia was written as a protest against Russian influence in Finland at the end of the 19th…
Oh, It Doesn’t Look at All Like Christmas
You wouldn’t know it from the freakish weather (60 degrees today) here in the Center of the Universe but it’s Christmas time and that means it’s time for Phil Kline to lead…
Come on, you know you care, a little bit…
It’s that time of the year again, folks, when composers around the world turn their attention to Los Angeles, with bated breath, waiting to hear who is, in fact, the…
Celebrating Benjamin Britten
Benjamin Britten, composer, pianist, conductor, pacifist, humanitarian, and visionary, died on December 4th 1976. The thirtieth anniversary of his death is being celebrated with the remarkable story of how he…
The Case of Martin Bresnick
Martin Bresnick turned 60 last month and he’s celebrating the event with two events at Zankel Hall this week. One piece will be on the Bang on the Can All-Stars…
One day, two musicians, three anniversaries
There are three anniversaries today of important events connected by a fascinating thread. November 22nd is remembered by many for the assassination of John F Kennedy in Dallas in 1963, while…
New music and the wider culture
‘If you’re talking about “relevance to the wider culture” and “speaking to our times“, and all that Greg Sandowian stuff, I couldn’t possibly care less … People seem to forget that…