NEWS IN BRIEF: 3/29/02
Five Receive Copland House Residencies
This year’s Aaron Copland Awards composers residencies have been awarded to Chester Biscardi (52, New York City), James Grant (47, Rehoboth Beach, Delaware), Hayes Biggs (44, New York City), Anthony Gatto (38, Minneapolis), and Andrew Rindfleisch (37, Cleveland Heights, Ohio). Dan Becker and Jerome Kitzke have been named as alternates. Spatial composer Henry Brant, 88, has been invited by the Board of Directors to stay as a guest composer in the fall of 2002, rescheduled from a previously planned visit.
Each composer is invited to take up residence for one to two months in Aaron Copland’s restored New York home. Now in its fourth year, the award is intended to allow the composers to focus solely on their work, free of distractions. Their meals, housekeeping, local transportation, and other needs are provided for.
This round’s jury—which included Martin Bresnick, Tania León, Paul Moravec, Andrew Imbrie, and Stephen Paulus—selected the participants from over 120 applications.
Glass To Keynote Opera Conference 2002
Philip Glass, composer of numerous groundbreaking operas including Einstein on the Beach, will officially open Opera Conference 2002. The conference brings together opera insiders from around the globe. His remarks will address his views on opera and include suggestions for encouraging continued creativity and innovation in opera.
The conference is organized under the auspices of OPERA America in conjunction with Professional Opera Companies of Canada/Compagnies d’opera professionnelles du Canada, and Opera Volunteers International. More than 500 are expected at this year’s event which will be held in Toronto April 20-24.
Marc A. Scorca, President and CEO of OPERA America, noted that Glass’s comments “will be valuable reminders of our shared commitments to excellence and public service.” Referencing OPERA America’s regranting programs which have assisted in the production and development of a number of operas, including several of Glass’s own works, he adds, “OPERA America’s long history of supporting new works by Mr. Glass and his contemporaries makes this confluence all the more significant.”
Music Library Association 2002 Awards & Elections
The Music Library Association has announced its 2002 awards and the results of its board elections. Of particular note are the Dena Epstein award, created to support research in archives or libraries internationally on any aspect of American music, and the Gerboth Award, this year awarded to support research concerning the creation of a digital library environment.
With the support of the Epstein award, Clemens Gresser (Doctoral student, University of Southampton, England) will study the New York School composers (Earle Brown, John Cage, Morton Feldman, and Christian Wolff) from 1950-1970, looking specifically at the performance of the music. This research will be incorporated into his Ph.D. dissertation, American Experimental Music (1950-1970): Changing the Relationships between Composers, Performers, and the Audience. Robert Haskins (Doctoral student, Eastman School of Music) will use his award to research on the compositional processes involved in John Cage’s Number Pieces. In particular, Haskins will examine the role that pitch plays in these compositions. Research accomplished through this grant will become part of his Ph.D. dissertation entitled An Anarchic Society of Sounds: The Number Pieces of John Cage.
John Anderies (Music Librarian, Haverford College) was recognized with this year’s Gerboth Award. The goal of Anderies’s project is to bring together music information objects (e.g. audio, score, text) in a digital library environment so that music faculty and students of the three small colleges of the Tri-Co consortium (Bryn Mawr, Haverford, and Swarthmore Colleges) would have local and remote access to a core digital music repertoire.
The board 2002-03 Board of Directors:
Vice-President/President-Elect: Laura Dankner (Assoc. Professor/Music Librarian, Loyola University)
Recording Secretary: Michael Colby (Music Librarian, Univ. of California-Davis)
Members-at-Large:
Joe Boonin (Head Librarian, Recorded Sound & Moving Image Circulating Collection, NY Public Library for the Performing Arts)
Virginia Danielson (Richard F. French Librarian, Loeb Music Library, Harvard University)
Alan Green (Head, Ohio State Univ. Music/Dance Library)