After Austrian born composer and conductor Peter Paul Fuchs died about a year ago in North Carolina our English home Pliable wrote two short tributes to him On An Overgrown Path with John McLaughlin Williams. Fuchs’ widow saw the tributes and supplied Bob with previously unpublished biographical material and photos. To mark the first anniversary of Fuchs’ passing, Pliable published a new profile at On An Overgrown Path and on Wikipedia (which had no entry for him) using this material. And here’s some good news: Scott Unrein has revived his Nonpop Music podcast and blog. We alll know Brian Eno but how many of you
Read moreElizabeth Brown and other cutting-edge stuff coming up at the Issue Project Room… All kinds of funny business going on at the Brooklyn Philharmonic, world premiere by Susan Oetgen coming up there… Philadelphia Biblical University pays tribute (5 April) to the late composer Harry Hewitt (no better link, I’m afraid)… 13 April–tribute to women composers from Musique a la Mode – some GREAT performers on this one… Alarm Will Sound has a call for scores for NYC-area composers. Huzzah! Deadline: 1 April, y’all… Okay, my conscience (and inbox) is clear.
Read moreThe Keys to the Future festival, at Greenwich House’s Renee Weiler Concert Hall, presents 3 consecutive nights of recent solo piano music – each concert features 4 pianists. The fundamental premise of this festival is that the contemporary scene is characterized by unprecedented diversity, and that that is a good thing. On these poly-stylistic programs, sometimes the only thing that two given pieces on one of our programs have in common is that they are notated and contemporary. I prefer this to a concert of works all in the same style – when a post-minimalist work follows an atonal modernist
Read moreThe world has always been violent, hence the classical desire to restrain the beast within. But is this kind of art enough when the world seems to spin out of control more and more each day, with headlines soaked in blood, and anger and distrust every way you turn? Should art address disjunction/disconnection, or should it act like Bocaccio, who entertained his guests with stories while the plague raged outside his door? These are essential questions, and The San Francisco Ballet’s four- work Program 5, which I caught Saturday evening 15 March at the Opera House, seemed whether consciously or not,
Read moreEclairs Sur L’Au-dela. Messiaen. Simon. Berlin. Joshua Light Show. And to all Blue Devils fans: Sorry, suckers.
Read moreAlready mentioned at Bruce Hodges’ Monotonous Forest, and soon should be buzzing all over the new-music web, but this is so absolutely inspired and well-executed that I just have to help spread it around even more: Virgil Moorefield (who was one of my click picks here not so long ago) recently directed the Digital Music Ensemble at the University of Michigan in a miniature version of Karlheinz Stockhausen’s already-audacious Helikopter-Streichquartett. To me this version is every bit as audacious as the original, subversive and absolutely respectful at the same moment… And both visually and aurally stunning, to boot. There are two Quicktime
Read moreThe Keys to the Future festival, at Greenwich House’s Renee Weiler Concert Hall, presents 3 consecutive nights of recent solo piano music – each concert features 4 pianists. The fundamental premise of this festival is that the contemporary scene is characterized by unprecedented diversity, and that that is a good thing. On these poly-stylistic programs, sometimes the only thing that two given pieces on one of our programs have in common is that they are notated and contemporary. I prefer this to a concert of works all in the same style – when a post-minimalist work follows an atonal modernist
Read moreThis year’s Iron Composer Omaha competition is open nationally to people between the ages of 18-26. First prize is $500 and loads of bragging rights. Because we were focusing ARTSaha! 2007 on Futurism, we settled on the main motif of The Jetsons theme song as the secret ingredient. The five finalists had five hours to write a piece for woodwind quintet based on that four-note cell. The secret ingredient could be anything from a narrative outline, to a poem, a chord sequence, or even a found object. Our chairman last year was Hal France, longtime conductor of Opera Omaha. If
Read moreThe Keys to the Future festival, at Greenwich House’s Renee Weiler Concert Hall, presents 3 consecutive nights of recent solo piano music – each concert has 4 pianists. The fundamental premise of this festival is that the contemporary scene is characterized by unprecedented diversity, and that that is a good thing. Each of the 3 evenings presents some strange juxtapositions of styles – sometimes the only thing that two pieces on one of our programs have in common is that they are notated and contemporary. I prefer this to a concert of works all in the same style – when
Read more(OK, OK I know, the puns don’t come any worse than that…) No F.Z. music, but rather a reminder that The excellent U.K. ensemble Psappha (with help from Lancaster University and the BBC Singers) is in the middle of a great webcast series. You can watch and listen already to any of the pieces from the first two concerts, the third concert available March 31st. Webcast #1 includes Larry Goves’ Four Letter Words, Gyorgy Kurtag’s Signs, Games and Messages and Scenes from a Novel, and Gyorgy Ligeti’s Aventures & Nouvelles Aventures. Webcast #2 is all Claude Vivier: his Et je reverrai
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