The “snowpocalypse” which has blanketed vast areas of the northeastern United States over the past week has even taken its toll on our intrepid world-traveling Chatterer

By Dan Visconti

A cat on your lap, or better on your keyboard, is one of the best things that a composer could ask for!

By Dan Visconti

Is our tiny community so desperate for concerts that we must welcome and tolerate the behavior of anyone willing to buy a ticket?

By Dan Visconti
In new music, where the importance of context is absolutely crucial for the listener, where should the responsibility for this context fall and who is best equipped to provide this context: the composer, or a third party?

By Dan Visconti
The orchestra can wear jeans and all that, but if performing organizations are seriously looking to cater to their audience’s very real desire for less rigidity and greater authenticity, maybe handing out a little book with essays that are tacitly implied to be the last, best word on the program isn’t the best way to drum up the awe of exploration.

By Dan Visconti

Just think how much more you’d enjoy your favorite music if you listened to it instead of just hearing it, and then imagine how much more you’d hear as a result.

By Dan Visconti

I’ve found that arranging some of my works for slightly different performing forces was one of the best investments I have ever made.

By Dan Visconti
Very often when I’ve heard performers complain about a difficult piece of contemporary music, their complaints are directed towards a real or perceived lack of initiative on the part of the composer; particularly with passages that will require a great deal of practice to execute, any indication that the composer has asked for this sacrifice flippantly—and without proper regard for the difficulties of performing musicians—is greatly frowned upon.

By Dan Visconti

One of my absolute favorite parts of most traditional Thanksgiving dinners is “leftovers”; having just completed a large musical project, my compositional life is littered with musical leftovers as well.

By Dan Visconti
I’m just now reading through the novel (published in 2008) that will form the basis for the libretto of the opera I am about to write, and I’m acutely conscious of my own imminent musical setting and having a hard time enjoying the book