Classical Music, Click Picks, Competitions, Concerts, Contemporary Classical, Music Events, Uncategorized

Casting a Wide Net for the Three Bs

If you believe that the importance of the arts in these times is inversely proportional to the economic news, than there’s never been a better time for YouTube’s Symphony Orchestra. YouTube announced today the winners of the world’s first orchestra selected entirely through video auditions on-line, a process yielding more than 3,000 videos from all over the world, and 200 finalists.

Since I work in the social media aspects of business software marketing, it’s been a fascinating experience to see my husband, Bill Williams,  in his role as the Music Coordinator for the YouTube project, examine many of the nuances and applications of social media’s power.

The global YouTube community, and Michael Tilson Thomas, Music Director of the San Francisco Symphony, selected from the finalists more than 90 musicians playing 26 different instruments from 30 different countries including: Australia, Austria, Belgium, Bermuda, Brazil, Canada, China, Columbia, Czech Republic, France, Germany, Greece, Hong Kong, Hungary, Israel, Italy, Japan, Lithuania, Malaysia, Mexico, Netherlands, Poland, Romania, Russia, South Korea, Spain, Sweden, Ukraine, United Kingdom, and the United States.  Many of the winners have played professionally but a number of them have not.

The musicians will travel to Carnegie Hall in April for a summit and for a concert under the direction of Tilson Thomas. Selected submissions will be compiled into a mashup video, which will premiere at the Carnegie Hall concert on April 15. The concert will uniquely cover the 1200 year span of classical music and many surprises are in store for the concert-goer. Tickets are on sale now.

Since the launch of this initiative in December 2008, the YouTube Symphony Orchestra’s channel has received more than 13 million views worldwide. To further demonstrate the commitment of YouTube to this genre, new features to improve the site quality and functionality are present on the Youtube.com/symphony channel. According to the press release, The YouTube Symphony Orchestra marks the first program on YouTube to welcome submissions from nearly every country in the world, and the channel continues to be available in 16 different languages.  YouTube has partnered with more than 40 major classical music organizations and institutions to bring this initiative to musicians around the world.

Nothing this ambitious has ever been undertaken in the world of classical music in such a short period of time.    One  perspective is that the discovery of hidden talent can mean the difference between just another orchestra assembled by conventional means and a orchestra chosen in part by us, by subject matter experts, and by the crowd, providing a point of reference for the way we participate in the arts in the future.

In addition to marketing software, Margot also plays a mean jazz piano and is the only person I know who has Giant Steps as a ringtone. JB

by Margot Heiligman
Contemporary Classical

Obama and “The Arts”: A Tale of Elitism and Terminology

The LA Times had an encouraging piece a few days ago about the Obama family’s interest in the non-pop arts (thanks to Alex Ross for the link).  Apparently the Obamas recently attended an Alvin Ailey performance at the Kennedy Center, and the First Family has a long history of participation in, and patronage of, dance, classical music, museums, etc.  The article, however, is chock full of some appaling elitism.  Let’s take a look.
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by Galen H. Brown
Concerts, Contemporary Classical, File Under?, Music Events, Performers

Jarvis at TCNJ

It might be a small, unassuming, and verdantly appointed campus, but within lurks a strong new music contingent! The College of New Jersey is having a faculty composer recital next week.

Peter Jarvis, director of the New Jersey Percussion Ensemble, will be performing the premiere of Carlton Wilkinson’s piece for drum set Jungle 5-7675, a work he commissioned, on the program this coming Thursday. Four other composers on faculty will also be featured.

Music Faculty Composers Recital

Featuring works by Robert Young McMahan, Teresa Nakra, Ralph Russell,

William Trigg, and Carlton Wilkinson.

Thursday, March 5, 2009 @ 8 PM

Mildred & Ernest E. Mayo Concert Hall, Music Building

Free and open to the public.

For more information, please email music@tcnj.edu or visit www.tcnj.edu/~music

TCNJ is located at 2000 Pennington Road, Ewing, NJ 08628-0718.

Parking for music events is available in lots 3-6.

by Christian Carey
Contemporary Classical

Tweet Memories

Some enterprising folks have put together an updatable master list of artists, musicians and bands on Twitter. (Yes, now you too can tell Jimmy Eat World what you had for breakfast).  Why don’t one of you geeky types with some time on your hands rush over to Google Docs and create a spread sheet where Composers, Real Musicians (like the ones who read S21) and fellow travelers can add their Twitter addresses.  We’ll do a link

by Jerry Bowles
Contemporary Classical

Who Knew? (beside the droogs, of course)

If you tend to enjoy “litterchur” as well as classical music, you also tend to become aware that authors such as Friedrich Nietzsche, Ezra Pound, and Paul Bowles were intermittently serious about composing music.

One I did not know about, but was brought to our attention in an email received today, was Anthony Burgess. Always to be known best for his — by no means favorite — novel A Clockwork Orange, Burgess composed more than 175 works, as well as a few opera libretti.

Which brings us to the Harry Ransom Center, an artistic and cultural archive at the University of Texas in Austin, where this Friday evening (the 26th) there’s a concert featuring Burgess’ music, interspersed with readings from his own “litterchur”. Even if you’re not in the Austin area, never fear: it’s also being webcast live. Full information on both the concert and webcast can be had at this page.

Feel free to remind us in the comments, of any other musical authors that slipped our minds.

by Steve Layton
Contemporary Classical

Daze of Our Lives

Our always adventuresome friends at Starkland have outdone themselves this time with an ambitious  65-minute studio composition by Phil Kline commissioned specifically for high-resolution surround sound and DVD.  Around the World in a Daze offers Kline’s trademark boombox choirs, as well as (it says here) “an ethereal Ethel string quartet, a weird madrigal, hyper-dense bells (hundreds of thousands at one point), richly mournful multi-tracked vocals, soaring violinistics from Todd Reynolds, and an immersive environment of 15,000 African gray parrots.”

I’m a big fan of innovative packaging (this is one of my all-time favorite books) and Daze is an amazing example of cool presentation. The custom‑designed double digipak includes an Extras disc with a composer-produced music video, a 30-minute interview with Kline and John Schaefer, as well as a 24-page booklet.  Release date is March 24. (Yes, I know I had 4 before.)

Ok, let’s have a contest.  The first person who can correctly guess the two-part 20th century piano sonata that I would like someone like Blair or Jenny or Sarah to play at my memorial service (not currently on the calendar, as far as I know) gets a copy of Around the World in a Daze.  One small catch–you have to write a little review that we’ll publish here on the frontpage so the rest of us will know what you thought. 

by Jerry Bowles
Composers, Concerts, Contemporary Classical, File Under?, New York

Monday at Merkin: Six premieres by the New York New Music Ensemble


Two of New York New Music Ensemble’s members, clarinetist Jean Kopperud and pianist Stephen Gosling, will be premiering six new pieces at Merkin Concert Hall on Monday, Feb. 23 at 8 PM.

The pieces were composed for the duo by Eric Moe, Paolo Cavallone, Steve Ricks, David Felder, James Primosch, Jason Eckardt, and Harvey Sollberger.

Apparently they’re calling this the Rated X Project, but we’re hoping everyone at Merkin keeps their clothes on. Really.

by Christian Carey
Contemporary Classical

Your MoM

Last Wednesday, February 28, I had the pleasure of seeing two superb up-and-coming chamber ensembles on a double bill at Music On MacDougal in downtown Manhattan. 
 
Moet TrioThe Moët Trio (Yuri Namkung, violin; Yves Dharamraj, cello; Michael Mizrahi, piano) had the first half of the program, and they opened with John Zorn’s Amour fou.  The Zorn was a surprisingly modernist piece for a composer who is known as a pivotal figure in the downtown scene, and while I can’t say I liked it I definitly respected it.  It was one of those pieces where every note was exactly the right note for what the piece was trying to do, from the scraping harmonics of the opening theme to the moments of wildness that occasionaly break out of the otherwise fairly chilled out atmosphere.  Next was Richard Danielpour’s A Child’s Relquary, which was omposed in response to the death of conductor Carl St. Clair’s 18 month old son in 1999.  The piece is romantic and lyrical–cinematic at times–and even in the context of a trio Danielpour’s mastery of orchestration is plainly evident.
 
Attacca QuartetAfter a brief intermission, the Attacca Quartet (Amy Schroeder, violin; Keiko Tokunaga, violin; Gillian Gallagher, viola; Andrew Yes, cello) launched into Gyorgy Ligeti’s String Qurtet No. 1, “Metamorphoses Nocturnes.”  As with so much Ligeti, the piece starts out in a nice yet seemingly unremarkable way–chromatic lines over a drifting, slithering accompaniment.  But Ligeti has a better intuitive sense of effective overall dramatic structure than just about anybody in the business, and that opening music evolves and builds, growing in intensity, and by the time the athletic second theme arrives about a minute and a half in everything makes sense.  Those opening moments turn out to be critical to the overall architecture of the piece.  After the Ligeti, which was the highlight of the evening, Attacca offered an excellent rendition of the String Quartet in G minor, Op. 10 by some guy named Claude Debussy.  But that dude bought the farm way back in 1918, so I feel no obligation to talk about his piece.
 
Both groups played wonderfully throughout, and I look forward to hearing them again sometime soon.  The next Music On MacDougal concert is this Wednesday, February 25, and features David T. Little’s Newspeak ensemble.
by Galen H. Brown