Ahira's Hangar

David Zindell's Neverness, A Requiem for Homo Sapiens and all things Science Fiction and Fantasy
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 Post subject: Classical?
PostPosted: Fri Jan 17, 2003 1:16 am 
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I kno Duchess loves classical--I'll name 5 of my fav pieces, and c where it goes from there...
Water Music
Handel's Messiah
Sheep May Safely Graze
The 4 Seasons
Peter and the Wolf...
And now Danlo looked in that direction, too. He remembered that snowy owls mate in the darkest part of deep winter, and so along with this beautiful white bird perched in a tree a hundred feet away, he turned to face the sea as he watched and waited.

Ahira, Ahira, he called out silently to the sky. Ahira, Ahira<i></i>


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 Post subject: classical
PostPosted: Fri Jan 17, 2003 1:44 am 
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Beethoven's ninth and fifth
Mozart's requiem
Rochmanicoff's second
(I can never spell his name right!)
Taichovsky's War of 1812 overture
(I can never spell his name right, either)
I also like Handel (Messiah, Water Music, Royal Fireworks) and the Four Seasons, and Pachabel's Canon.

<i>Edited by: Duchess of Malfi  at: 1/16/03 11:07:46 pm
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 Post subject: Re: classical
PostPosted: Thu Mar 13, 2003 4:18 am 
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5? Oh my goodness!! No, I think I'll have to bump this up to my 10 "Desert Island" cd's. And some are multi-disc sets. Hope that's not cheating. (Don't care if it is )

-Bartok's string quartets
-Bartok's Concerto for Orchestra
-Bartok's Sonata for Two Pianos and Percussion
-Beethoven's complete string quartets (OK, that's a LOT of discs I'll settle for... Well, I'd only be willing to give up the first 6)
-Beethoven's complete piano sonatas (Again, a lot. I'll settle for the last 4)
-Beethoven's symphonies
-Bartok's Sonata for Unaccompanied Violin
-Brahms' German Requiem
-Brahms' Double Concerto
-Brahms' Piano Concerto #2
-Monteverdi's madrigals (At least books 4, 5, and 6)
-Mozart's "Haydn" Quartets
-Mozart's Requiem
-Purcell's Dido and Aeneas
-Purcell's Fantasias for Viols
-Schubert's cello quintet
-Schubert's three song cycles
-Another disc of misc Schubert songs
-Verdi's Requiem
-a disc of Wagner's preludes and overtures

And Bach, Bach, Bach! Let's see...
-Unaccompanied violin
-Unaccompanied cello
-My favorite disc of organ music
-St. Matthew Passion
-St. John Passion
-Cantata 140
-Cantata 4
-Cantata 106
-Goldberg Variations
-Brandenburg Concertos

OK, Part II of my 10 "Desert Island" discs another time. (Hey, look at that! I kept the Bach discs down to 10!) Fist and Faith<i></i>


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 Post subject: Re: classical
PostPosted: Thu Mar 13, 2003 4:55 am 
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5 eh.

Beethoven's 9th and 7th symphonies
Schubert's String Quintet
Brahms 3rd symphony
Mozart's Eine Kleine Nachtmusik
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 Post subject: Re: classical
PostPosted: Thu Mar 20, 2003 2:38 am 
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Attended a performance of Brahms 3rd Symphony, among others, last night. Excellent! <i></i>


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 Post subject: Re: classical
PostPosted: Fri Mar 21, 2003 5:32 pm 
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Ah, that would have a fine thing to attend! Our lives are the songs that sing the universe into existence.~David Zindell<i></i>


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 Post subject: Re: classical
PostPosted: Tue Apr 01, 2003 5:19 pm 
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Just got a 10 CD set at the warehouse club for $15.00

#1 Vivaldi --Four Seasons; Mandolin Concerto in c major

#2 Bach -- Brandernberg Concerto no. 1 in F Major; Brandernberg Concerto no. 2 in F Major; Brandenberg Concerto no. 3 in G Major; Brandernberg Concerto no. 3 in G Major

#3 Handel -- Water Music; Concerto grosso in G, Op 3 no. 3

#4 Telemann -- Suite in D for Trumpet; Suite in D for 2 Trumpets;Suite in D for 3 trumpets; Overture in F

#5 Bach --Orchestral Suite no. 1 in C; Orchestral Suite #2 in B Minor; Orchestral Suite no. 3 in D

#6 Handel -- Music for the Royal Fireworks; Concerto Gross in B Flat Op.3 no.2; Concerto Gross in F, Op.3.no.4; Concerto Grosso in D, op.3 no.6

#7 Corelli -- Trumpet Sonata in D; Concerto Grosso Op.6 nos. 5-8

#8 Bach -- Violin Concerto in E; Violin Concerto in A Minor;Concerto for 2 Violins in D Minor; Concerto for 3 violins in D Minor

#9 Handel -- Messiah Hallelujah; And He Shall Purify; Worthy is the Lamb; Samson: to Sing and Dance; Jeptha: How Dark, O Lord

#10 Bach -- Toccata in D; Rejouissance; Adagio, from Oboe Concerto; Organ Concerto in D; Sinfonio from Christmas Oratorio
Gluck -- Dance of the Blessed Spirits
Handel -- Largo from Xerxes; Arrival of the Queen of Sheba Ode on St. Cecilia's Day
Pachabel -- Canon in D


I'm pretty excited, I already had a few of these (primarily Handel, Pachabel, and the Four Seasons) , but quite a bit of it is completely new to me. Our lives are the songs that sing the universe into existence.~David Zindell<i></i>


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 Post subject: Re: classical
PostPosted: Sun Dec 18, 2005 6:26 pm 
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www.mlive.com/search/index.ssf?/base/fe ... ENT&coll=2

Quote:Recording of Bolcom epic nominated for Grammys
Hill performance had a cast of hundreds
Friday, December 9, 2005
BY ROGER LELIEVRE
News Arts Writers
An Ann Arbor recording of a local composer's epic classical work has earned nominations for four Grammy Awards, the music industry's top honor.

William Bolcom's "Songs of Innocence and of Experience,'' performed by a cast of hundreds at Hill Auditorium, got nominations as best classical album, best choral performance and best classical contemporary composition. The producer of the recording, Tim Handley, was also nominated as classical producer of the year for several works, including "Songs.''

"It was very, very nice news,'' Bolcom said Thursday, the day the nominations were announced. The honor is only the latest for Bolcom, whose past accolades include a Pulitzer Prize and two previous Grammy nominations for works with his wife, Joan Morris, one of the soloists in "Songs.''

Bolcom's work is a song cycle, setting to music the poems of William Blake. It famously took the composer 25 years to finish the piece, and while it has always been well regarded, its massive scale has limited the number of times it's actually performed. So when the University Musical Society presented a 20th anniversary performance of the work April 8, 2004 in Hill Auditorium, it clearly was an event, and respected classical label Naxos took the opportunity to make a recording.

The concert involved some 450 performers from the University of Michigan, where both Bolcom and Morris are on the faculty, and beyond. The nomination for the album names conductor Leonard Slatkin and choir directors Jerry Blackstone, William Hammer, Jason Harris, Christopher Kiver, Carole Ott and Mary Alice Stollak. Morris, Christine Brewer and the University of Michigan School of Music Symphony Orchestra are named as performers. The choral nomination also names Measha Brueggergosman, Ilana Davidson, Nmon Ford, Linda Hohenfeld, Carmen Pelton, Marietta Simpson, Thomas Young, the Michigan State University Children's Choir, the University of Michigan Chamber Choir, University of Michigan Orpheus Singers, the University of Michigan University Choir and the University Musical Society Choral Union.

Others involved in the project included conductors Kenneth Keisler and Jonathan Shames. Speaker and vocalist Nathan Lee Graham also participated, as did the Contemporary Directions Ensemble. In keeping with Bolcom's habit of drawing from various musical styles, so did local harmonica virtuoso Peter Madcat Ruth and rising-star fiddle player Jeremy Kittel.

Critics swooned over the resultant recording. In The New York Times, Anthony Tommasini named it one of the best classical albums of the year, calling it "a gripping live performance of this ambitious masterpiece, over two hours of music for orchestra, multiple choruses and soloists that audaciously synthesizes wildly diverse musical styles.''

Bolcom said Thursday he's undecided if he will attend the Grammy Awards ceremony Feb. 8 at the Staples Center in Los Angeles "I haven't thought that far ahead,'' he said. "Those things are so tedious - they're generally a zoo.''

He credited U-M composer Michael Daugherty with helping to get the recording project off the ground in the first place. "It wouldn't have happened without (him) spearheading it. He went to terrific trouble to convince the powers that be they had to do this thing,'' Bolcom said. "He really went to bat and I am very thankful for that.''

The Grammy Awards, presented by the National Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences, are generally considered the biggest musical prizes in the country. Nominations were announced Thursday in 108 categories, and there were some other local ties.

Another recording of Bolcom works, Carole Farley's "Bolcom: Songs,'' with the composer at the piano, was nominated as best classical vocal performance and best engineered classical recording.

A recording of Daugherty works by Marin Alsop and Evelyn Glennie was one of the albums included in Handley's producer of the year nomination, and their recording of his piece "UFO'' was nominated as best instrumental soloist performance with orchestra.

Also, a recording by conductor Yakov Kreizberg, a U-M graduate, of Bruckner's Symphony No. 7 was nominated for best orchestral performance and best engineered classical recording.

Although Bolcom is not planning a party to toast the nominations, he said that doesn't mean there are no plans to mark the occasion.

"We are celebrating in one kind of a way,'' he explained, "with the opening of my wife's show,'' "Barnum's Nightingale'' at the U-M's Clements Library. "Joan wrote the play, directed it and sings a couple of songs in it.''

For more information including a full list of nominees, see www.grammy.com. Roger LeLievre can be reached at (734) 994-6848 or by e-mail at rlelievre@annarbornews.com.


******************************************************

Our lives are the songs that sing the universe into existence.~David Zindell
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 Post subject: Re: classical
PostPosted: Sun Dec 18, 2005 6:35 pm 
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newyorkphilharmonic.org/adams/interview.cfm

A very powerful and moving piece of modern classical music is by composer John Adams called On the Transmigration of Souls, in memorial to the lost victims of Sept. 11. The above link is to the New York Philharmonic website, who commisioned the piece, and to an interview with Adams.

The piece is unusual in that it interweaves sound recordings with live choirs and the orchestra.

From the interview:
Quote:
Well, if you are an experienced composer, you should not have to shy away from considering "the profoundly intense." I have certainly confronted deep emotions in my music before, certainly in works like Harmonium, which has poetry by John Donne and Emily Dickinson, The Wound-Dresser with its Whitman texts about the suffering and death of young men and boys during war time, and in The Death of Klinghoffer, my opera about terrorism and the assassination of an elderly American Jew.

Finding the right text to set is half the challenge in creating such a piece. In the case of "Souls," I realized immediately that this event — "9/11" — was already so well documented, the drama so overdescribed and the images so overexposed that I didn't really need to worry about an "exposition" of my material. Every listener hearing this piece will already know the story. So, in a way, that kind of "numbing familiarity" gave me a certain freedom to work with the material.

I had no desire to create a musical "narrative" or description. Nothing could be more distasteful and banal. However, something I had seen on an amateur video taken minutes after the first plane had hit the first tower stuck in my mind: it was an image of millions and millions of pieces of paper floating out of the windows of the burning skyscraper and creating a virtual blizzard of white paper slowly drifting down to earth. The thought of so many lives lost in an instant — thousands — and also the thought of all these documents and memos and letters, faxes, spreadsheets and God knows what, all human record of one kind or another — all of this suggested a kind of density of texture that I wanted to capture in the music, but in an almost freeze-frame slow motion.

So I eventually settled on a surprisingly small amount of text. And this text falls into three categories. One is the simple reading of names, like a litany. I found friends and family members with different vocal timbres and asked each to read from the long list of victims. Then I made a sort of mantra-like composition out of the tape-recorded reading of these names, starting with the voice of a nine year-old boy and ending with those of two middle aged women, both mothers themselves. I mixed this with taped sounds of the city — traffic, people walking, distant voices of laughter or shouting, trucks, cars, sirens, steel doors shutting, brakes squealing — all the familiar sounds of the big city which are so common that we usually never notice them.

While a recording of the reading of names and the city noises quietly surrounds the audience, the onstage chorus sings texts that I took from missing-persons signs that had been posted by the families of the victims in the area around Ground Zero. These signs, photos of which were taken by Barbara Haws, the New York Philharmonic's archivist, had tremendous poignancy. Most had been hastily written and photocopied, usually with a snapshot photo along with a physical description and often a heart-wrenching little message at the end, something like "Please come home, Louie. We miss you and we love you." What I discovered about the language of these messages was that it was invariably of the most simple and direct kind. No one stunned by the shock of a sudden loss like this has time or inclination to speak or write with eloquent or flowery language. Rather one speaks in the plainest words imaginable. When we say "words fail" in situations like this, we mean it. So I realized that one of the great challenges of composing this piece would be finding a way to set the humblest of expressions like "He was the apple of my father's eye", or "She looks so full of life in that picture."
******************************************************

Our lives are the songs that sing the universe into existence.~David Zindell
<i>Edited by: Duchess of Malfi at: 2/15/06 10:42 am
</i>


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 Post subject: Re: classical
PostPosted: Fri Feb 10, 2006 4:14 pm 
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www.ums.org/homePageDocs/BolcomGrammy.pdf

William Bolcom's Songs of Innocence and Experience won four Grammy's this year for classical music. ******************************************************

Our lives are the songs that sing the universe into existence.~David Zindell
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 Post subject: Re: classical
PostPosted: Sat Feb 11, 2006 4:34 am 
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www.mlive.com/entertainment/aanews/inde ... xml&coll=2

Quote:At Wednesday night's Grammy ceremony, the recording of "Songs'' - Bolcom's composition based on William Blake poems - was named best classical album, best choral performance and best contemporary classical composition. The producer of the recording, on the Naxos label, was also named classical producer of the year.

The honor is merely the latest for Bolcom, one of several U-M faculty members long considered among the country's top classical composers. His past accolades include a Pulitzer Prize in music and two previous Grammy nominations for works with his wife, Joan Morris, one of the soloists on "Songs.''

"It's the pinnacle of his work. There isn't any piece like it,'' Kiesler said.

******************************************************

Our lives are the songs that sing the universe into existence.~David Zindell
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 Post subject: Re: classical
PostPosted: Wed Feb 15, 2006 5:38 pm 
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One of the things I have been trying to do lately in this thread is to pull attention to some living composers, and to the unusual things they have been working on; whether it is John Adams who brought prerecorded materials into his powerful work commemorating the Sept. 11 disaster, to William Bolcom and his great work Songs of Innocence and Experience which touches upon nearly every genre of American music.

Classical music is alive and well, and is currently filled with experimentation.

I will not be able to go to the concert described in the following article, as I must work tonight. But it sounds interesting, and it sounds like the composer combines music with film for one of his works.

www.mlive.com/entertainment/aanews/inde ... xml&coll=2
Quote:
Forget 'the usual' for UMS concert Andriessen does things differently
Monday, February 13, 2006
BY SUSAN ISAACS NISBETT
News Special Writer
Just a few tips for anyone planning to attend Wednesday's University Musical Society concert of Dutch composer Louis Andriessen's works:

Forget the usual and customary concert time, and the usual and customary concert expectations.

Dress warmly; don't leave home without hat, gloves or scarf. Do bring along a spirit of adventure.

And if nudity on screen in the service of art troubles you, stay at home or skip the film that constitutes the performance's second half.

Staying home, though, deprives you of an evening of works by one of Europe's most eminent - and maverick - living composers. Andriessen, 66, has a catalog of staggeringly diverse works in almost all established genres and as well as in genres he forged alone. A central figure in the Dutch contemporary arts scene, Andriessen often writes for unusual combinations or instruments (lots of winds), and, more recently for voice and strings.

His music, which mixes and quotes from genres "high'' and "low,'' has distinctive sonorities and propulsive energy. It may not sound familiar, but it is accessible, seductive and avant-garde.

Andriessen is in residence at the University of Michigan for the next two weeks, speaking, working with students, conducting master classes and, of course, presiding over concerts of his works.

"The name of this university is quite well known in Holland,'' he said by phone from there before departing for the U.S. "It's one of the few universities where you can study Dutch language. When poets in Holland can't be reached, you know they have a semester in Ann Arbor.''

Programming director Michael Kondziolka describes Wednesday's concert as "accessible, exciting, entertaining and immediate.''

The entire concert is "outside the box.'' The beginning, in fact, is outside the theater. That's where the warm clothing comes in. Things get under way at 7:30 p.m. at Burton Memorial Tower, with a piece Andriessen wrote for carillon, "Arrival of Willibrord.''

Andriessen wrote "Willibrord'' at the request of his hometown of Utrecht. "During the war,'' he said, referring to World War II, "the bells in the city were hidden from the Germans, who had the tendency to have them melted for cannons. When I was 6 years old, at the Liberation, the first thing the city did was to put the bells back in the towers. It made an enormous impression on me.''

And who was Willibrord? Andriessen said he was an Irish monk who galloped into the Netherlands to Christianize the population. "At that time,'' he said, "we were a completely wild and savage people. And we still are,'' he added tongue-in-cheek.

Willibrord's musical escapades last about 9 minutes. Then, with the sound of his horse's last hoofbeats, listeners can trot off to Power Center, where the remainder of the concert takes place.

The U-M Symphony Band will be on hand to help recreate live the music for Andriessen's 1991 film with Peter Greenaway, "M is for Man, Music, and Mozart,'' which will be screened post-intermission to constitute the program's second half.

The film, commissioned by the BBC to mark the 200th anniversary of Mozart's death, mixes animation, theater and dance, and the dancers, nude and powdered white, appear on a set based on a 17th century theater of anatomy.

A woman sings words through the alphabet until she reaches the letter "M,'' at which point the Gods decide to use it to make Man. Parts of the body and words beginning with the letter M are displayed, while the naked, flour-white performers assemble the Man. Text on screen explains that having made Man, it was necessary to give him movement, and then music. Music reaches its apotheosis in Mozart - an interesting statement from a most avant-garde 20th- and 21st-century composer.


******************************************************

Our lives are the songs that sing the universe into existence.~David Zindell
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 Post subject: Re: classical
PostPosted: Mon Feb 20, 2006 5:44 pm 
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Besides William Bolcom, Ann Arbor is also blessed in being the home of another leading American composer, Michael Daugherty.

www.michaeldaugherty.net/reviews.cfm?ReviewID=6&Age=

Quote:
Composer's 'MotorCity Triptych' links diverse sounds of Detroit
Thu, Jan 04, 01

Composer's 'MotorCity Triptych' links diverse sounds of Detroit

By Lawrence B. Johnson / Detroit News Music Critic

Imagine the Detroit experience as a tapestry of sound: the blend of cultures, the rush of automobiles, the beat and harmony that was and is Motown. Such is the complex, evocative weave of composer Michael Daugherty's MotorCity Triptych (2000), which has its world premiere tonight in a concert by the Detroit Symphony at Orchestra Hall.

"What I really tried to do is create a sound world where one can hear the diversity of what it means to live in Detroit," says Daugherty, professor of music at the University of Michigan and composer-in-residence with the DSO.

"I approached this piece like an actor researching a role. I spent a year driving around the city and talking to people, and you hear those impressions in the three parts of my work -- the Middle Eastern violin passages, the industrial sounds, a glimpse of keyboard harmony by Stevie Wonder.

"MotorCity Triptych is like a drive along Michigan Avenue from downtown to River Rouge through Dearborn."

In that spirit, Daugherty's title, Triptych, has a double meaning. It describes a symphonic work in three movements -- "Motown Mondays", "Pedal-to-the-Metal" and "Rosa Parks Boulevard" -- and it plays on the American Automobile Association travel planner called Triptik. "Motown Mondays" recalls a series of performances in 1966 by pop artists such as the Four Tops and the Supremes at the Roostertail nightclub in Detroit.

But don't come expecting to hum along to symphonic arrangements of Motown hits. That isn't Michael Daugherty.

His inspiration may come from popular culture, but his creative methods are rigorously intellectual. The catchy tunes and broad gestures of an Aaron Copland are not for him. In the complex web and surprising turns and juxtapositions of Daugherty's music, a listener hears more of Charles Ives or, as he suggests, Gustav Mahler.

"It was Mahler's music that first got me interested in writing for the orchestra. I like his rich sound, the intricate, contrapuntal way he constructs his music and the way he drew on so many different kinds of music of his time. I sort of identify with Stravinsky, too, with all those amazing rhythms and unusual extensions of the instruments.

"What I have written here is all within my own style, my own voice. Motown to me represents one of the first crossovers of classical and rock because you had members of the DSO playing those recording sessions in the wee hours. It's music I grew up with.

"But to hear that sound played by a full symphony orchestra would be silly. The original would be better."

Likewise, the tableau called "Pedal-to-the-Metal" draws freely and quite personally on the sounds of Middle Eastern music.

"There's a place called the Prestige Club on Telegraph in Dearborn, where you can hear musicians from Iraq or wherever touring the country. I like that kind of music. Maybe the riskiest part of Triptych is the way I've included the sound of Middle Eastern fiddles."

The final movement, "Rosa Parks Boulevard," a tribute to the civil rights pioneer and to the freedom implied by the naming of a street for her, had a separate premiere by the DSO last June. "The symbols I've used in Triptych represent Detroit, but they would make perfect sense to people elsewhere," Daugherty says. "That's the point. The culture, the character of Detroit is international."

******************************************************

Our lives are the songs that sing the universe into existence.~David Zindell
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 Post subject: Re: classical
PostPosted: Sun Mar 12, 2006 7:23 pm 
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Wow, it's nice to see Louis Andriessen's name brought up here, duchess! And he's in residency at the U of Michigan? Cool!

He was the honored guest composer about 12 years ago at our New Music Festival in Winnipeg, an annual affair begun in 1992 that celebrates and plays exclusively works by living composers (Canadian and international) over the course of a single, intense week.

I remember being bowled over by Andriessen's De Staat at the Festival. It was a monumental work for orchestra that incorporated pre-recorded electronic sounds. If I remember correctly, the mystical and bizarre electronic sounds were projected around the walls of the concert hall, creating an immersive and sometimes overwhelming sonic experience. De Staat got pretty loud, but it was the loudness of musical epiphany, so that was okay.

I don't quite recall what other works of Andriessen's were performed. I'll have to dig through my program notes from that year's festival.

There is definitely wonderful - and accessible - contemporary classical music being written and peformed, if one looks around. In addition to pioneering artists like Andriessen, there are young composers today barely out of their teens who are also creating fresh and vital works and taking classical music well into the 21st century. It is this sense of freshness that makes the New Music Festival special to me. Over the years, we've heard works that were written just the week prior to the Festival, sometimes the night before! While certainly not every work will go down as a classic, what is important here is the idea that a living composer is right there on stage communicating his/her passion for music to the audience. And it's not all serious business: new music can be just fun and goofy too. There are some pieces that work more as performance art and are absolutely hilarious live on stage.

Anyway, I've heard enough new music through the years at the festival to have formed a good idea of my favorite living composers and favorite works. These are some:

Steve Reich: Eight Lines (a classic minimalist piece)
Jim Hiscott: Dancing On Wings Of Fire (for button accordion and orchestra!)
John Adams: The Chairman Dances (a charming concert suite adapted from his opera Nixon In China)
Glenn Buhr: The Cycle of Spring (a celebration of birth and beginnings using Inuit words sung along with orchestra)
Akira Nishimura: Heterophony of Two Pianos & Orchestra (Heterophony: "the simultaneous variation of a single melody." This vivid and otherworldly piece is now one of my favorite piano works in all of classical music.)
Krysztof Penderecki: String Quartet No.2 (well, I love anything by this composer, really)
Kelly-Marie Murphy: From The Drum Comes The Thundering Beat (a crowd pleaser, but nothing wrong with that!)
Joan Tower: Violin Concerto (a modern masterpiece for the violin, if I may be so bold)
Ann Southam: Rivers (An anthology of virtuoso solo piano pieces. I haven't heard all of them, but the ones I've heard are utterly beautiful.)

I have recordings of some of these works. (Some of which are radio broadcasts of the concerts I've taped.) I wish I could send you (or anyone else interested) some mp3's of these works so you could check them out for yourself.





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 Post subject: Re: classical
PostPosted: Wed Mar 22, 2006 6:06 am 
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The new music festival sounds Wonderful!!! As far as I know they do not have anything like that around here, though we do get occasional world premieres at area concert halls, usually works by advanced graduate students in composition at the University.

The Ann Arbor Symphony Orchestra usually (though not always) makes a point of including a new piece (often by one of those advanced students) at most of their concerts. ******************************************************

Our lives are the songs that sing the universe into existence.~David Zindell
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