Cold Wednesday Miscellany
Robert Ashley’s latest opera, Concrete, deals with the secrets of ordinary people who are accompanied by Ableton Live. It opens tonight. Steve Smith had a substantive piece in the Times…
Lost and Found
Jerry sent me a box load of CDs for review under the agreement that I will choose lesser-known composers. So a new column called “Lost and Found” is born, and…
But what I really want to do is compose!
Anyone who’s dabbled even casually with the music world knows it’s full of heartbreak, exhilaration, passion, and drama. A profession overstuffed with possibilities for storytellers in all media, it’s a…
Equality of the composing sexes
Five minutes before Elisabeth Lutyens appeared live on BBC Radio 4’s ‘Start the Week’ in 1979 she threatened to denounce Russell Harty as a ‘homosexual interviewer’ if he mentioned the…
Better late than never…
We’re a little late in reporting this, but last month composer George Tsontakis was awarded the Charles Ives Living by the American Academy of Arts and Letters. I had never…
Michael Brecker (1949-2007)
Mark Turner said it best, as reported by Do the Math: Fuck those motherfuckers who don’t give it up for Michael Brecker. GRFMG5C2PPA
Steve’s click picks #12
Our regular listen to and look at living, breathing composers and performers that you may not know yet, but I know you should… And can, right here and now, since…
If Art Happens in a Forest, and There’s Nobody Around to Hear it, is it Still Art?
It seems that conceptual artist Jonathon Keats has created a cell-phone ringtone based on John Cage’s 4’33” called My Cage (Silence for Cellphone), which is exactly what it sounds like:…
Last Night in L.A.: 25 Years for the New Music Group
There hasn’t been much contemporary music in Los Angeles over the past month. (Does music over the holidays have to be so traditional? Isn’t there much festive contemporary music?) But…
When in the Bowery…
Because I find myself suddenly and inexplicably old I will not be attending the great two-band, no waiting show at the Bowery Poetry Club this Sunday night, featuring Industrial Jazz…