Category: Contemporary Classical

by Patrick Durek Since its inception in 1985, Cygnus Ensemble has been at the forefront of chamber groups dedicated to expanding the repertory. Generating works for subsets of its unorthodox…

Anybody seen the new Met production of Satyagraha? [youtube]sMtDI539bvI[/youtube]

By Ralph van Raat Usually, when thinking of contemporary classical music, one thinks of the rather abstract and cerebral music of the decade right after the Second World War. Some…

This past Friday, Westminster Choir College in Princeton, New Jersey hosted a masterclass for the Pictures 2008 project. This competition, sponsored by NJ Arts Collective and the Montclair Art Museum,…

I heard Gabriel Kahane at Joe’s Pub Wednesday night. If Billy Joel and Paul McCartney can write “classical music”, why can’t composers write “pop music”? 1. Gabe Kahane is a…

Tim Risher is a composer that I bumped into a long time ago on this here web thingy. His illustrious career has taken him from making new music in Florida,…

Okay, listen up. This is important. The American Music Center (AMC) and American Composers Forum (ACF) have teamed up with Columbia University’s Research Center for Arts and Culture to conduct…

The Pulitzer Prizes were announced today, and David Lang won the music prize for “The Little Match Girl Passion.” I haven’t heard the piece, but David is a reliably excellent…

I went to two excellent concerts recently which served as great illustrations of what happens when a composer really understands what the instruments he or she is writing for are…

Last week, the CBC  announced that the CBC Radio Orchestra, a fixture in Canadian musical life for 70 years,  would give its final concert in November.   This is a sign that: 1)…