From the World
Paul Sacher Foundation Archives
Located in Basel, Switzerland, the Paul Sacher Foundation houses a large depository of musical materials (sketches, manuscripts, recordings, video, etc) and encourages scholarly investigation of twentieth and twenty-first century music, particularly of its own holdings. It was started in 1973 with the purpose of preserving the musical library of Swiss conductor Paul Sacher. Since then it has greatly expanded into “an international research center for the music of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, with some hundred estates and...
read morePhilharmonic 360- Stockhausen’s “Gruppen”
The New York Philharmonic is rolling out the big guns for their presentation of Stockhausen’s Gruppen next month. The large, three-orchestra piece has only been performed in New York once before, and will be receiving its second and third performances on June 29th and 30th. Because of the immense dedication and planning it takes to perform this work, it is rarely performed. This work isn’t simply one orchestra spread divided into three groups and placed in different areas of the hall, but three orchestras, each requiring its own...
read moreShaham Premieres New Works
World famous violinist Gil Shaham is presenting two world premieres during his upcoming concert appearances. The Avery Fisher Prize-winner and Musical America’s Instrumentalist of the Year will present Richard Danielpour’s new violin concerto Kaddish with the New Jersey Symphony, and Julian Milone’s In the country of lost things… in Europe while on tour. These new works are paired with other rarities from the repertoire exploring “Violin Concertos of the 1930s”. With the Danielpour in late April Shaham is also performing Berg’s...
read moreNew York City Opera 12/13
Over the last few there have been many announcements of major music organization’s new seasons and the exciting inclusion of new and 20th-century works included on the programs is promising. Earlier this week one of New York, and America’s, biggest supporters of modern and contemporary music, New York City Opera, has announced their plans for what seems to be an exhilarating set of programs. While they are offering two new productions of lesser performed works by operatic masters– the upcoming season features Rossini’s Moses in...
read morePulitzer Prize in music 2012
Kevin Puts, has been awarded the 2012 Pulitzer Prize in music for his opera “Silent Night”. The award is presented annually to an outstanding work by an American that has had its first performance or recording in the United States during the year. “Silent Night”, with a multilingual libretto by Mark Campbell, is in two acts and follows the story of spontaneous cease-fire among Scottish, French and Germans during World War I around Christmas 1914. The opera is adapted from the 2005 film Joyeux Noël, directed by Christian Carion....
read moreGuggenheim Fellowships 2012
The John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation has announced the Fellows for 2012 which includes ten composers. They are Tom Cipullo, Fang Man, Vivian Fung, Daron Hagen, Huck Hodge, Keeril Makan, Alex Mincek, Bobby Previte, Kate Soper, and Xiaogang Ye. The grants are presented to artists and scholars “who have demonstrated exceptional capacity for productive scholarship or exceptional creative ability in the arts,” and are intended to provided financial assistance to allow them greater creative freedom free from their regular...
read more26, 28, 29
The Spoleto Festival, long known for its dedication to new and contemporary music, is offering up a particularly fertile series of programs during its 2012 season. Among the new operas, theater, dance and concert music this year are three works by John Cage: Twenty-Six, Twenty-Eight, and Twenty-Nine. This orchestral trilogy is the last of Cage’s works to not have had an American premiere. The three works were composed at the end of Cage’s life in 1991 and were first performed in 1992 at the Alte Oper (Grosser Saal) in Frankfurt, Germany....
read morePassions
While most commemorate Good Friday with performances of more traditional musical fare, such as one of Bach’s passions or a similar work, a less conventional observation of the day was offered by the Boston Modern Orchestra Project (BMOP). On Friday evening, BMOP along with the Harvard-Radcliffe Collegium Musicum and soloists presented performances of Arvo Pärt’s Passio Domini Nostri Jesu Christi Secundum Joannem (The Passion of Our Lord Jesus Christ According to John) and David Lang’s The Little Match Girl Passion. Each passion offered...
read moreJohanna Beyer, Works for Percussion Ensemble
The early 20th-century was the time of exploring new means of musical expression: from the rhythmic revolutions of The Rite, to Schoenberg’s development of a new way to organize the western scale’s twelve pitch-classes, to the multitudes of other experimentations, some of which lasted, some of which didn’t. In this search for new possibilities, several maverick American composers turned to percussion for new timbres and textures. What they found was an untapped source of infinite possibilities. Though the role of percussion in the...
read moreCarl Ruggles, The Complete Works
Carl Ruggles was one of America’s most curious composers, yet he also is one of the least known. Because of his intense dedication to finely tuning his works, his is output is incredibly small (Webern’s output towers over Ruggles’s oeuvre of works he actually finished). Nonetheless, what he did create was innovative and original. In April, the Other Minds label will be rereleasing a long out of print recording that includes all of Ruggles’ music. The works on the disc are performed by the Buffalo Philharmonic led by Michael Tilson...
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