The executive of the national charity for new music in the UK says, “Working with a more representative group of composers leads to a more thrilling variety of new music, more artistic innovation and also, perhaps, a positive and constructive challenge to an industry that can sometimes fall back on traditional ideas of what, or rather who, constitutes a composer.”
Category: music
Frank Gehry’s New Concert Hall Opens In Berlin
Mark Swed reviews the sound of the new hall, and Christopher Hawthorne takes on the architecture (read that story here). Swed calls it the “graceful, airy, idealistic Pierre Boulez Saal, which opened here Saturday night. Rather than stand tall, it stands for something.”
Are Living Room Gigs The Future Of Music?
If they are, that’s somewhat similar to the past, of course. “It’s a very intimate experience; it’s so enriching and connecting.”
Opera Montreal Is Going All-Out For Pink Floyd
Will this bring in new audiences? “Opera hasn’t been a profitable business for a long time, but Pierre Dufour is betting $3.2-million that he can make money from an opera version of the most ambitious and successful of narrative rock albums: Pink Floyd’s The Wall.”
Laurie Anderson On Lou Reed As A Writer, Their Retirement Plans, And Their Archives
Anderson doesn’t want the archives to go to a university where no one can access them. That said, some things can’t be captured: “The one thing I really miss from this archive that was such a big part of Lou — and can’t really be archived — is his dedication to meditation. He made a very extensive study of the nature of mind, but there is no physical trace of it. He left no footprints.”
Will The New Birmingham Conservatoire Challenge London’s Dominance?
It’s going to be amazing. But, says its director ominously, “this conservatoire, the first to be newly built in Britain since 1987, may well be the last because of the reduction in funding for music.”
We Seriously Don’t Talk Enough About Clara Schumann, So Here You Go
Open a book about Brahms and get a lot more Clara than you bargained for: “Like many celebrity power couples, the woman is often more notable than the man. For a long time, it was easy to overlook Clara Schumann; Robert was the composer of them, really, and she was just the performer. But that’s wrong! It’s extremely wrong! She composed too! She performed all the time!”
For Estonia’s Centennial, ‘An Instrument For Every Child’
“The caveat here is that this [project] is not about handing out tambourines and triangles en masse, or thoughtlessly plonking any old instrument on the doorstep of every home, in the hope that a child will pick it up and become the next musical ingénue.” The plan, rather, is to focus on what one might call, in this context, infrastructure.
John Zorn Moves The Stone Inside The New School
“Showcasing a broad array of styles, from avant-jazz to contemporary classical, the Stone has operated as a nonprofit and is largely run by volunteers. Its vibe is informal but focused and a bit austere: No food or drink is served, and there is hardly room inside for socializing before or after performances. Artists, who have generally appeared in weeklong residencies, have been given wide programming latitude and receive all of the ticket revenue from their shows.”
The Plight Of The Page Turner
“As the pianist strides onstage, the page turner, cloaked in muted hues, trails behind. She is not to bow, but rather to sit immediately on the spare chair beside the piano bench and hunch. She is to be small and silent. … At the performance’s close, she is the first to retreat. The applause is not hers. She is also rarely missed. Many a show has gone on without a page turner.” Jennifer Gersten looks not only at this silent assistant’s subordination, but also at the times she (or he) has gotten a laugh, saved the day, and even had a part written by the composer.