Radio

Composers, Contemporary Classical, Radio

Twenty-Five Hours For YOU To Be Heard

marvin

In this year where up is down and blue is red, one constant remains: our radio pal Marvin Rosen‘s end-of-year, day-long marathon playing recent music by living composers. But how does he get enough great, new stuff to program 25 hours? Why, from YOU! Marvin needs, wants, loves your submissions of pieces you’ve composed in the last few years. So read on, and find out what you need to do to make Marvin’s marathon mus-tastic.

CALL FOR NEW MUSIC RECORDINGS

to be presented during the 11th Live Marathon (10th devoted to 21st century music) curated and hosted by Marvin Rosen, host of the award-winning program, Classical Discoveries and presented on WPRB, Princeton NJ at 103.3 FM or on line at: www.wprb.com

The title of this year’s radio extravaganza —  “24 HOUR PLUS – VIVA 21-ST CENTURY”  —  will start Tuesday, December 27th at 1:00pm (EST time) and will go nonstop, live, until 2:00pm on Wednesday, December 28th, and yes, this year’s Marathon will run like last years did — 25 hours.

This year Marvin is requesting composers to send him recordings of works completed between 2008-2016

Only recordings on CD (no MP3’s, no downloads) will be accepted and must be received by Marvin no later than Saturday, December 3, 2016. The maximum length of each work submitted should be no more than 15 minutes.

All private recordings must have good sound quality and released for radio broadcast by the owner of recording (a statement from submitting person is sufficient).
Marvin knows that in today’s time many music transactions are done via downloading etc., but since he has a full time job, as well as other volunteer duties, the recording submission process has to be done as conveniently for Marvin as possible.
If you are interested in being part of this crazy annual new music marathon please e-mail Marvin directly for more instructions at: requestformarvin@gmail.com

by Steve Layton
Composers, Contemporary Classical, Events, Radio

Call for New Music Recordings — Spread Your Sound Around!

Marvin-300x237“…Crazy is good, folks! So come on down to Crazy Marvin’s Modern Music Warehouse! We’re wheeling!! We’re dealing!! We’ll play play PLAY all day day DAY!!!…”

OK, OK, maybe not quite that crazy… But once a year our good friend Marvin Rosen goes crazy in the best way over at Princeton’s radio station WPRB, (103.3 FM, or online at: www.wprb.com). For the last six years Marvin has offered up a one-man, 24-hour radio marathon of contemporary music. And by contemporary, I mean things from just the last year or two, and often recordings culled directly from the composers themselves.

This year Marvin is upping the crazy ante just a little bit, by choosing to go 25 straight hours, and he’s on the hunt for YOUR submission to be played during the marathon.

The title of this year’s radio extravaganza is “24 HOUR PLUS – VIVA 21-ST CENTURY”. It will start Saturday, December 28th at 2:00pm (EST time) and will go nonstop live until 3:00pm on Sunday, December 29th.

This year Marvin is requesting composers to send him recordings of works completed in 2012 and 2013.

Only recordings on CD (no MP3’s, no downloads) will be accepted and must be received by Marvin no later than Saturday, December 13, 2013. Marvin knows that in today’s time many music transactions are done via downloading etc… But since he has full-​time ​job, as well as plenty of other volunteer duties, the recording submission process has to be done on CD to make the listening and selection as simple as possible.

The maximum length of each work submitted should be no more than 15 minutes.

All private recordings must have a good sound quality and released for radio broadcast by the owner of recording (a statement from submitting person is sufficient).

If you’re interested in being part of the craziness, please e-mail Marvin directly for more instructions at: Marvinarosen@gmail.com

PS – Feel free to spread the word, and even freer to get off your composerly bum and submit something!

by Steve Layton
Broadcast, Composers, Contemporary Classical, Radio

The End of “Classical Discoveries Goes Avant-Garde”

Marvin Rosen interviews composer Alex Shapiro.

For years now, long-time WPRB radio host Marvin Rosen has brought the world (though it’s in Princeton, New Jersey, it also streams live over the web) all manner of “Classical Discoveries” every Wednesday from 5:30 to 11 AM ET. But from 11 AM until 1 PM “Classical Discoveries” switched gears to become “Classical Discoveries Goes Avant-Garde“, serving up the newest — and often by radio standards, the “difficult” — works to an enthusiastic audience eager to hear what’s going on today in contemporary classical music. Often there were also interviews with established and up-and-coming composers and performers as well.

The broadcast landscape for such stuff is already so very tiny in the vast radio world of “safe” music, talk, news, sports, etc; unfortunately it’s about to shrink even more, as Marvin’s “Classical Discoveries Goes Avant-Garde” slot is being shut down by the WPRB powers-that-be in favor of other programming. Joe Barron over at the “Liberated Dissonance” blog has more on the story. Marvin is truly one of the most warm and selfless people I know, working so hard each week to bring his listeners this stuff — even when stylistically it might not be his personal cup of tea — simply because he really loves our living music of today in all its forms, and feels so strongly the need to share that enthusiasm with the wider world.

Marvin’s “Classical Discoveries” show will remain a WPRB Wednesday-morning fixture, but the last “Classical Discoveries Goes Avant-Garde” is this Wednesday, 11 AM until 1 PM. Tune in if you can, broadcast or online, and a huge round of applause to Marvin for what he was able to bring both the living composers and adventurous listeners these past five years.

[Update: the management of WPRB has responded with some further amplification, in the comments at the end of this post.]

by Steve Layton
File Under?, Radio

Q2 Wants to Hear from You!

Q2, The online “Living Music, Living Composers” arm of New York’s classical radio station WQXR (105.9 FM) is requesting some feedback from its listeners. Their Listener Survey (available online here), subtitled “Help Us Serve You!”, provides Q2 listeners with an opportunity to let the station know what’s working and what you would like to see changed. Please take a few minutes and let the good folks at Q2 know that you’re out there listening with discerning ears and an appetite for more contemporary classical listening fare.

by Christian Carey
Broadcast, Contemporary Classical, Lectures, Podcasts, Radio

Chris Cutler on Radio Web MACBA

Drummer, composer, and lecturer Chris Cutler
Drummer, composer, and web radio star Chris Cutler

Radio Web MACBA is a radiophonic project from the Museu d’Art Contemporani de Barcelona (MACBA) website that explores the possibilities of the internet and radio as spaces of synthesis and exhibition. The programs are available on demand, and as a podcast subscription.

Beginning with a program called Probes #1, drummer extraordinaire Chris Cutler (one of the founding members of the legendary band Henry Cow) examines the side-effects of the collapse of tonality in the 20th century, and intriguingly addresses the idea of Western music notation and modern recording as “memory technology.” As Cutler explains, “Different forms of memory will engender different forms of music.”

“In the late nineteenth century two facts conspired to change the face of music: the collapse of common practice tonality (which overturned the certainties underpinning the world of Art music), and the invention of a revolutionary new form of memory, sound recording (which redefined and greatly empowered the world of popular music). A tidal wave of probes and experiments into new musical resources and new organizational practices ploughed through both disciplines, bringing parts of each onto shared terrain before rolling on to underpin a new aesthetics able to follow sound and its manipulations beyond the narrow confines of ‘music’.”

“This series tries analytically to trace and explain these developments, and to show how, and why, both musical and post-musical genres take the forms they do. This first program sets the scene and investigates early reconsiderations of pitch: probes that postulate new scales to be constructed through the ever-greater subdivision of the inherited intervals of equal temperament.”

Probes #1 is a fascinating podcast, just one of several on the RWM website. Special thanks to composer and sound artist Douglas Henderson for bringing this site and Culter’s podcasts to my attention.

by Chris Becker
Contemporary Classical, Events, File Under?, Radio

Viva 21st Century

classicaldiscoveries logo

From Friday 2 PM to Saturday 2 PM (EST), broadcaster Marvin Rosen will be hosting “Viva 21st Century,” a marathon of recent classical music on Princeton’s WPRB 103.3 FM (also on the web at www.wprb.com). The broadcast will include over eighty composers.

Marvin has informed me that my “Gilgamesh Suite EP” (out now on BandCamp) will be featured sometime between 7 and 9 PM on Friday.

More details below.

Viva 21st Century

Classical Discoveries will present the 10th Annual program and the 6th 24-Hour Marathon totally devoted to music composed in the 21st century.

VIVA 21ST CENTURY – INTERNATIONAL EDITION

24-HOUR LIVE WPRB RADIO BROADCAST with Marvin Rosen

starts: Friday, December 28, 2012 – 2:00pm
ends: Saturday, December 29, 2012 – 2:00pm.

Approximately 80 composers will have their works aired during this marathon.
Milosz Bembinow, Thomas Blomenkamp, Sylvie Bodorova,Christian Carey, Jennifer Castellano, Daniel Dorff, Hugues Dufourt, Rosemary Duxbury, Ivan Erod, Vladimir Godar, Ola Gjeilo, Jennifer Higdon, Matthew Hindson, Mary Ann Joyce-Walter, Lei Liang, Michel Lysight, Peter Machajdik, Franco Antonio Mirenzi, Andrew Rudin, Carl Ruttl, Somei Satoh, Ravi Shankar, Ylva Skog, Allan Stephenson, John Tavener, Giel Vleggaar, Joelle Wallach and many, many others.

For Internet listeners link to excellent Time Zone Converter: http://www.timezoneconverter.com/cgi-bin/tzc.tzc

Facebook event page here: RSVP and invite your friends!

by Christian Carey
Broadcast, Classical Music, Composers, Contemporary Classical, Experimental Music, Houston, Radio

Composer Talk on KTRU

Trio Oriens_Becker_Tsai

(“Composer Talk” co-hosts Chris Becker and Hsin-Jung Tsai with Trio Oriens)

Howdy pardners!

Some of you may remember that a little over two years ago I relocated from New York City to Houston, TX. Since then, I have been enjoying what is truly a lively and diverse music and arts scene (clap, clap, clap, clap) “deep in the heart of Texas!” This past year in particular has been especially stimulating and busy for me as a composer, performer, writer, and DJ.

Yes, DJ. As in radio DJ. As in, “Tune in Saturday, December 29th, 2012, 4:30 p.m. to 7:00 PM central time for Composer Talk at 90.1 HD2 KPFT and streaming live on the web at ktru.org!”

“Composer Talk” is a spin-off of KTRU’s contemporary music program Scordatura which airs Saturdays from 2:00 PM to 7:00 PM CT. The current Scordatura hosts include composer Paul Connolly, bassist and composer Thomas Helton, and pianist and composer Hsin-Jung Tsai. Awhile back, Hsin-Jung interviewed me for an edition of Scordatura, and she and I had so much fun talking about music that we decided to make it a regular thing. Hence, “Composer Talk,” a monthly radio show that features the two of us playing recordings of and talking about contemporary music. Just music and talk, you know, no big whoop.

For each edition of “Composer Talk,” Hsin-Jung and I bring in whatever music we think needs to be shared with the world that month (we always bring more music than we have time to play) and just let it roll. There’s no script. We play raw recordings of premier performances, unreleased recordings by friends far and wide, deep vinyl cuts, and CDs that come to us from great independent labels including Innova, New Amsterdam Records, American Modern Recordings, Cantaloupe Music, and many others.

We’ve had the pleasure of interviewing guest artists in the studio for “Composer Talk,” including Houston’s own Trio Oriens, marimba player Wei-Chen Lin, composer Joseph Phillips, and pianist Robert Boston.

Some of our listeners enjoy just checking in for a few minutes at a time, while others let the show play in its entirety. Unfortunately, the show isn’t archived, so any unplanned alchemy that happens only happens once, kind of like music: ephemeral and (we hope) fun.

“Composer Talk” airs this Saturday, December 29th, 4:30 p.m. to 7:00 p.m. (Central Time) in high definition at 90.1 HD2 KPFT and streaming live on the web at www.ktru.org.

by Chris Becker
Classical Music, Composers Now, Contemporary Classical, Contests, Media, Music Events, New York, Online, Opportunities, Radio, Resources, The Business, Twentieth Century Composer, Websites, Women composers

Lend Your Voice to Q2 Music

Picture courtesy of Q2 Music

Sometimes, classical music gets a bad rap. To be perfectly honest, there is a chunk of the population that finds it to be synonymous with any number of derogatory terms: boring, annoying, or pompous.  Some classical music lovers and advocates will counter this popular belief with arguments that only go to further the opinion of the other side: “Some people want to listen to mindless music”, “Some people simply don’t have patience”, etc. These ridiculous arguments only go to further the stereotype that classical music lovers are all pompous windbags who believe themselves to be uniquely educated and informed.

How, then, do we get people to forget their misconception, and believe that EVERYONE can enjoy or even love classical music, regardless of education, socioeconomic standing, or profession?

It all comes down to how classical music is presented; and now, for a limited time,  you could join one organization that does it right.

(more…)

by Jonathan Lakeland
Contemporary Classical, Online, Radio

Call for recorded music written to commemorate 9/11 tragedy

We Remember September 11 // 24 Hour WPRB Live Radio Marathon

At the 10th anniversary of September 11, Classical Discoveries with Marvin Rosen will present a 24 hour live radio marathon, totally devoted to music written by composers from many countries as a reaction to the unforgettable events of that day. The program will air on WPRB 103.3 Princeton and around the world at www.wprb.com and will start on Saturday, September 10 at 7:00pm ET until 7:00pm the next day, Sunday, September 11, 2011.  Marvin has already in quite impressive collection of 9/11 works some of which have already been broadcasted on his program, but he would like to get other compositions as well.

The call is for music written as a reaction to 9/11 that is within the Classical Discoveries and Avant-Garde Edition format, for any combination of instruments, voices and electronics. Non-commercial recordings are accepted as long they have good quality sound and are on CD (no MP3 and DVDs).

If you are sending a private recording:
§    You must have the name of the composer, title, and timing marked on the CD
§    all information including performers, composers bio, notes about work,  should fit in the CD tray.
§    CD should be placed in a plastic CD case to prevent scratching
§    Broadcast release form should be attached
Each composer whose work is selected will be notified prior to the broadcast.
Unused CDs will be not returned to composers, except if prepaid envelope is attached

Before sending any recordings, please contact Marvin for his postal mailing address at: marvinfor911@gmail.com.  Marvin has established this special e-mail address so that no mail will be lost. He will answer within 10 days of each inquiry, but if no answer is received please resend your email.

Deadline for accepting recordings is Friday, August 12, 2011.

For more information closer to the Marathon check the Classical Discoveries website, or Marvin’s new blog MarvinTheCat.

by Steve Layton