ZoomClouds: S21 Composers Forum

One of the things that almost all composers discover as they go along is that their musical world becomes more private and more peculiar. There's less willingness to take in the rest of the world, but at the same time the increasing ability to absorb solitude ensures that one's train of thought hold...

... eed three bottles of whiskey just to get through the coachings. Pressler’s recital on Saturday night was centered around Classical works written by composers at the ends of their lives, and it was easy to see that he is, at 83, assessing his own past and future. Mozart’s Rondo in A Minor, K. 511, ...

... of fifth graders.I suggested they sponsor a competition. They liked the idea. It took us until November to work out all the details, then our student composers got to work. They had two months to write the piece, produce the score and print out the parts. The deadline was last week.Participation in ...

... a piece by Huang Ruo. That fit beautifully with our department interests, so Ruo was our guest last week for the ACME concert.Huang Ruo is what many composers strive to be: uncompromising artistically and tremendously successful professionally. He often walks the borders between music and not-music...

We all know how crucial it is for inexperienced composers to hear their music. I almost said “young composers,” but inexperience isn’t about age, necessarily. Of course, it’s important for all composers to hear their music, but for inexperienced composers every performance is a formative experience....

... and culture on one another. Sometimes a and b are reversed for variety. It’s a very effective and illuminating approach. It's especially nice to have composers' impacts expanded beyond their peers, which is how music history is usually presented.3. Personal resonance – I’ve always been a subscri...

... Forum Concert -- Mister Blister was written for Violin Futura, Piotr Szewczyk's baby. He commissioned a bunch of two-minute pieces from a variety of composers and played them all over last season -- I think he's playing them again next month in Santa Fe.• MusicNow Fest at Eastern Michigan Univer...

... been a polarizer in other music settings, always unintentionally, and I have to admit that it makes me smile. I remember showing the same piece to 4 composers at a series of master classes. Two liked it quite a bit, two thought it was absolute garbage. Another time, the deliberations for a conte...

... y stoked about it. A performer contacts me out of the blue and wants my music? That is still squarely in the "awesome" column of my book.I know some composers who don't get that excited about performances of their pieces in certain venues. Or others that grow tired of having so many performances o...

... at I haven't wanted to listen to it. I used to be the same way: constantly frustrated musically. I was a real pain in the ass to be around, as some composers will tell you. In recent months, though, things have really lightened up for me personally and musically. I've stopped taking myself so da...

... joy/not enjoy listening to any of the other pieces. They are all separate works but, as a whole, they make some interesting artistic connections.Can composers write prequels (and not in a "Bruckner 0 and 00" sort of way)?ally prefer one over the other.If time travel ever becomes a viable option, I'...

... shown me earlier on, but maybe they assumed I was catching on before I really had the hang of it.It’s also recently struck me that my disinterest in composers who focus on originality may have something to do with my birth order – certainly, growing up, I had frequent reminders that everything I di...

... reate a Young People's Blogger Society at their Symphony? This can be incorporated into the school music programs, where students can learn about the composers, the music and soloists in the concerts they will attend. The symphony orchestra might have a special Young People's Blog reception followin...

... aning that the crop of interested students were having their degree plans aborted by the administration. Well, in early April, based solely on these composers' music, the administration reinstated the comp degree. And they decided to un-cancel Composition I. My teaching load is going through the ...

... Chamber Singers, some twenty strong, commissioned the piece for their 30th anniversary. Besides the commission, PCS sponsored a competition for young composers in honor of the occasion, which my student James Stewart won, so the evening also featured the premiere of Stewart’s The Desert. Bolcom’s p...

... h older pieces, refining them and prepping them for recording sessions.It’s given me some time to reflect on the nature of professional success. Some composers seem to have a nose for money – for relentlessly tracking down funding sources and bagging them one after another, like hunters after prey. ...

... is forearm. His response? POW! He slugged me as hard as he could, running off laughing, “I lose!”I wonder how many geeky children have grown up to be composers, taking revenge on their childhood tormentors with a musical bait and switch?July 2009, so, again, I’ll be in pre-compositional mode until m...

I have, as I suppose many composers have, a frighteningly profound relationship with the tools of my trade. Piano, pencil, music paper, laptop, keyboard. I can spend a ridiculous amount of time with these tools, while not really being aware of them, in the way my eyelashes come in handy several ti...

A few weeks ago, I wrote about the orchestral competition I’m judging this summer. When I first got the list of ten finalists (no composers’ names) one of the titles immediately stuck out to me – in a bad way. “I sure hope this isn’t the best piece,” I thought, “because I can’t stand the title.” The...

... ag.The Ravinia Festival announced its first composer competition last fall. In honor of Abraham Lincoln’s bicentennial, coming up in 2009, they asked composers to submit piano trios inspired by Lincoln’s words. I’ve always loved combining spoken text with music, so I wrote them a piece using two of ...

... the Vox Novus 60x60 is out and in effect. As a "bang for the buck" recording project, you are never going to do better than buying 120 pieces by 120 composers. There are great tracks, there are funny tracks, there are tracks that are just weird. The best thing is, if you dislike a track, you only...

... word “interdisciplinary” could be used, but even that term already smells of early-00s staleness. But then, terminology has always been a problem for composers.Anyone who has collaborated a lot (or just once and never again!) can probably recall an instance where having to collaborate was tedious ra...

Note: All posters welcome, but this is aimed at a music appreciation class I teach. We'd love to hear from composers besides me, though. If this is the only topic you see posted, go to:http://sequenza21.com/banks.htmlWell, we are done with the post-debussy portion of our Music and Culture class, and...

Note: All posters welcome, but this is aimed at a music appreciation class I teach. We'd love to hear from composers besides me, though. If this is the only topic you see posted, go to: http://sequenza21.com/banks.htmlIs the “Afro-American Symphony” an expression of the voice of Black America or ...

... s case, failure to reach the audience is indeed failure. But for my concert music, I invite the audience to meet me half-way. I think it’s fine for composers to be critical of a close-minded audience. To be un-thinking is as dangerous as it is undesirable. I say this, having gotten almost all po...

... ed with Randy Nordschow’s thread on NewMusicBox, with its inflammatory assertion that … “it's time to face the fact that, yes, maybe we really aren't composers.” He also states that if you aren’t making the bulk of your income from composing, you are really a “hobbyist.” This was cause for some g...

... the presentation? There are several pieces for recorded media alone that I love, but I don’t ever want to hear them in a darkened room full of bored composers again. I’d rather hear these works at home, on headphones. What about live performers? I love to watch ensembles, large and small, perform...

... l.The real issue in my life is patience. I am tremendously impatient with my own life. I've been measuring my abilities and accomplishments against composers with a 10 - 15 year head start. I'm 34. I've done a heck of a lot in that time, especially considering that I didn't seriously start compo...

Ok, I've become obsessed. The past two weeks or so I've been spinning a lot of Sibelius symphonies and post-minimalist/totalist/choose-your-term composers. These are not necessarily the "two great tastes that taste great together" but I'm enjoying the whole experience.With both obsessions, I think...

... usic is more successful when I just sit back and let the music simply "be." This makes teaching composition a little harder for me. I think younger composers need to get in their own way for a while in order to discover their own road. Or, to use a Dune-ism, their Golden Path. There is a flow st...

... 't reading this, you should still be interested in it. I'll just hope you find out about it some other way.FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE60x60 Dance pairs 60 composers with 60 choreographers for an electrifying one-hour multimedia performance60x60 will take place at the World Financial Center’s Winter Garde...

... roficiency. In this, as in all of his explanations, he was very clear, and very attuned to the needs of his audience, which consisted of about thirty composers and pianists.Finally, he played the second movement of Birtwistle’s Harrison’s Clocks, a piece that demands fleet fingers and mind-numbing c...

... cliché. I love being boxed in by clichés: I’m forced to do something obvious, and I have to try to do it better than it’s ever been done before.Some composers strain to avoid cliché -- in a situation like this, I welcome cliché, because it takes that much more skill and imagination to make the musi...