Category: Headlines

Living as we are in a capitalist society, arts organizations are often called upon to justify their funding requests in comparison with the other economic needs of the community they serve. It can get to be a sticky debate when the more esoteric cerebral needs of the public face off against the financial bottom line. Two reports have recently been released that may help presenters of the arts in that endeavor.

Strictly dealing with economic realities, Industries 2005: The Congressional Report is a new study released by Americans for the Arts that demonstrates how arts-related businesses provide significant employment across the U.S. The report considers creative industries “the high-octane fuel that drives the ‘information economy’—the fastest growing segment of the nation’s economy.”

The study covers six creative industries: museums and collections; performing arts; visual arts and photography; film, radio, and TV; design and publishing; arts schools and services. In summary, the report shows that arts-centric organizations represent 4.4 percent of all businesses and 2.2 percent of all jobs in the country. More than 578,000 arts-related businesses employ 2.965 million people and more than half of the Congressional districts have at least 5,200 arts-centric employees. Individual reports break down the statistics by Congressional district. Music is singled out under the performing arts category.

On the radio side, the news with regard to the nations public radio station has been a bit dark of late as station continue to announce a decrease in musical programming to make way for more popular talk-radio shows. American Public Media’s Classical Music Initiative has released Classical Radio 101: A Primer for Performing Arts Partnerships.

The report is a guide to today’s classical music radio universe and a primer on how radio is made. The paper includes ideas and tips for partnering with local public radio stations and national distributors, plus information on funding resources, rights and clearances, web initiatives, audience research, and more. To download a copy, visit www.classicalmusicinitiative.org.

Being placed on hold is bad enough, but stress levels only seem to rise when a company uses that opportunity to force you to endure awful music and advertising while you wait.

Inspired by this situation, the Siday Music On Hold Program was developed last year as a partnership between the American Music Center and the Eric and Edith Siday Charitable Foundation. The AMC can now commission composers directly to fulfill this communication need. Beginning in June 2005, callers to the American Music Center will hear specially commissioned works whenever they are placed on hold.

Composers Halim El-Dabh, Raz Mesinai, Ira J. Mowitz, Larry Polansky, Roddy Schrock, and Randall Woolf are the recipients of the first Siday Music On Hold Awards. Each composer will be awarded a $1,000 commission to create an original electro-acoustic piece for use as on-hold music in AMC’s telephone system.

The program seeks to honor the legacy of Eric Siday, a pioneering electro-acoustic composer and educator best known for the musical logos used for commercial entities like Maxwell House coffee and ABC-TV.

Music on Hold awardee Larry Polansky finds the opportunity especially intriguing. “What I like about the project,” he says, “is the fact that it creates a new kind of public art, putting some of the most interesting music in one of the least interesting places, the telephone system, and there’s something important and beautiful about that.”

[Ed. Note: Stay tuned for an in-depth feature on the Siday Music On Hold Program this summer on NewMusicBox.]

Composer T.J. Anderson is among the eight new members elected to The American Academy of Arts and Letters for 2005. He will be inducted at the annual ceremonial held in May in good company. Also elected this year are architects Maya Lin and James Stewart Polshek, landscape architect Laurie Olin, artists Kiki Smith and Cindy Sherman, playwright Tony Kushner, and poet Rosanna Warren.

Anderson is likely best known works such as the song cycle Songs of Illumination (1990), Squares (Essay for Orchestra, 1965) and Chamber Symphony (1968, recorded by the London Philharmonic Orchestra), and for the first complete orchestration of Scott Joplin’s Treemonisha. His compositions are published by American Composers Edition, Inc., C.F. Peters, Carl Fisher, and Bote & Bock in Germany.

Born in 1928 in Coatesville, Pennsylvania, Anderson earned degrees from West Virginia State College, Penn State University, and the University of Iowa. He studied composition with George Ceiga, Philip Bezanson, Richard Hervig, and Darius Milhaud. He has held teaching positions at Tennessee State University, Morehouse College, and Tufts University, where he is currently the Austin Fletcher Professor of Music Emeritus. He resides in Chapel Hill, North Carolina, where he writes music fulltime.

Writing for Contemporary Composers on Contemporary Music, Elliott Schwartz noted, “Many African-American composers of ‘classical’ music are confronted by a unique set of experiences—influences from two worlds, so to speak. Thomas Jefferson Anderson has successfully balanced both; his music speaks to, and draws from, the heritage of European Art Music and the culture of Black America.”

We may be avoiding the heat of the ’90s culture war, but federal support of the arts isn’t improving any, either. According to the American Symphony Orchestra League’s Government Affairs department, “the President has requested level funding for the National Endowment for the Arts, and for the fifth consecutive year has omitted Arts in Education funding from his budget request. In addition to federal funding levels, the U.S. Congress may soon act on major policy areas affecting orchestras, including nonprofit governance and visa reforms.”

The ASOL, a service organization for American orchestras, monitors arts-related federal issues, especially those effecting orchestras, throughout the year and suggests ways the artistic community can impact outcomes. Regular updates are posted here: http://www.symphony.org/govaff/what/index.shtml.

In addition, the League’s 60th National Conference, “Make the Case for Orchestras,” will be held in Washington, D.C., from June 14-18, 2005. The conference agenda includes opportunities for delegates to lobby their members in Congress. The ASOL is further tying its conference to D.C. by presenting their annual Gold Baton Award (for distinguished service to music and the arts) to National Symphony Orchestra Music Director Leonard Slatkin and to the Congressional Arts Caucus. Representative Louise Slaughter (D-NY) and Representative Chris Shays (R-CT) will accept on behalf of the Congressional Arts Caucus.

A composer of work for orchestra, band, chorus, jazz ensemble, and various chamber ensembles, his recent projects include Burning Blue (Fanfare-Overture for Winds, Brass, and Percussion) commission by the United States Air Force Heritage of America Band, and Immigrants Still, based on a text by poet Richard Wilbur. A recording of three of his orchestral works featuring the London Symphony Orchestra and English hornist Thomas Stacy under the baton of JoAnn Falletta will be released on the Naxos American Classics series this fall.

Fuchs received his PhD in 1988 from Juilliard where he studied with Milton Babbitt, Vincent Persichetti, David Diamond, and Stanley Wolfe.

Mostel is the composer/director of Travels of Babar, a take off on the classic book and illustrations by Jean de Brunhoff. He has also created a repertory of compositions for one-of-a-kind instruments as the founder of the Tibetan Singing Bowl Ensemble: New Music for Old Instruments.

The full article is available here: http://www.nyfa.org/level3.asp?id=323&fid=6&sid=17

MAP was formed in 2001 by music students at Stony Brook University to promote peace through music. The first Music for Peace Project in 2004 included 70 concerts in 13 countries in 50 hours.

Of auxiliary interest, the categories “Natural Sounds & More” and ” From the Nation’s Attic” include field recordings of natural and manmade sounds, and audio artifacts including music from old sci-fi films and a lesson from Pete Seeger about how Lead Belly’s guitar music is notated.

Newspaper headlines and culture critics can worry over the state of the arts in America, but Joanne Cossa is an arts administrator undeterred by their lamentations. When she becomes the executive director of the American Music Center on March 14, she will bring not only impressive leadership and fundraising experience to the organization’s helm but also an enthusiasm undiminished by her years of experience in the performing arts.

“I wanted to do something that was exciting and to be in a field where there was real work to be done,” says Cossa of her new position at the AMC. “New music is one of the most vibrant, exciting and just plain fun areas of the cultural scene in this country today, and it deserves as wide an audience as possible.”

In her new role, Cossa is not only charged with representing the interests of the organization’s 2,500 members but also championing new American music on an international stage. Noting AMC’s history of promoting new music and supporting composers in their work and their lives, Cossa speaks excitedly of carrying forward that mission in today’s artistic environment. She points out that “younger generations of composers and audiences and artists of all kinds are not pigeonholed. New music now takes so many different forms and that’s a healthy thing….I think that the mission of this organization is to continue to break down the barriers and to let more people know what’s going on out there.”

A broad goal, but professionally Cossa is no stranger to meeting a challenge. As the executive vice president of Symphony Space between 1988 and 2003, she presided over the transformation of the cash-strapped New York City venue into a viable culture center. Her major accomplishments included a $13 million renovation and expansion of the theatre complex and a $24 million capital campaign. She also played a key role in expanding Symphony Space’s programming, presenting a broad range of artists to an even broader audience.

Cossa started out as an actress and singer in New York before the demands of marriage and family eventually led to a fulltime job in the subscription department at City Opera. A few career moves later she was asked to catalog the music library at the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center, and it was there that she discovered her professional calling and met her mentor, the arts administrator Norman Singer. Singer, who had run the concert bureau at Hunter College, “taught me everything he knew,” says Cossa.

Ultimately, Cossa spent fifteen years with the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center, including seven as its executive director, but she missed having a hand in the larger sphere of performing activities. She explains, “I was too busy going to chamber music concerts to go to the ballet or to go to the theatre. I was interested in doing something that would reach a broader constituency, would be artistically diverse, and was philosophically worthy rather than just art for art’s sake. And Symphony Space wanted desperately to make the arts accessible to everybody.”

The move was a risky one. Symphony Space was having a great deal of trouble raising money. “Many of my years in the ’90s were spent trying to stave off disaster. But it also gave me opportunities,” recalls Cossa. “It was an extremely rewarding job. I was there all the time. Every night I missed everything else that was happening in town.”

Most recently Cossa served as General Director for Glimmerglass Opera in Cooperstown, New York, where she again had remarkable success building organizational relationships. This resulted in better artistic relationships internally and it improved the financial health of the organization through effective fund raising and management.

In the course of her career, Cossa has witnessed firsthand the transformation of the performing arts industry in America from a time when “subscriptions were the lifeblood of every arts organization and the people that attended were generally middle class professionals. The husbands came from work and the wives were responsible for organizing the social schedule. They decided what they were doing on every night of the week almost a year in advance.” As such Leave it to Beaver social structures gave way, the arts had to operate more like businesses—to finance venues and create programs that serve the needs of artists while concurrently building the audiences of the future.

Cossa has dedicated her career to providing that platform. “I had a facility with numbers and for fundraising—for solicitation, for being able to communicate why somebody should be interested in giving money to an art form. So I decided that this is it for me. I don’t have the determination to be a performer; I’m going to help other people perform and make arts happen.”

John Adam’s On The Transmigration Of Souls Best Classical Contemporary Composition, Best Classical Album, and Best Orchestral Performance

Love ’em, hate ’em, or find them largely irrelevant, the 47th Annual GRAMMY® Awards were presented last night. The jazz and classical categories never figure prominently in the televised portion of the little gold statuette distribution, but the artists and labels behind the production of these discs get their share of honors as well.

John Adams cleaned up on the classical side of the aisle. Best Classical Contemporary Composition, Best Classical Album, and Best Orchestral Performance all went to the Nonesuch release of Adams’s On The Transmigration Of Souls, as performed by New York Philharmonic, Brooklyn Youth Chorus, and New York Choral Artists under the baton of Lorin Maazel.

Adams is the first-ever living composer to have won Best Classical Contemporary Composition three times, having previously won in 1989 for his opera Nixon in China and again in 1998 for his orchestral composition El Dorado. Samuel Barber also won three, but two of those were awarded posthumously which is not unusual in the classical categories.

On The Transmigration Of Souls is also only the second piece ever to win both a GRAMMY and a Pulitzer (the first was Samuel Barber’s Piano Concerto), and only the second recording ever to win three different classical GRAMMYs in one year. (The first was for Benjamin Britten conducting the recording of his War Requiem which won Best Classical Album, Best Classical Contemporary Composition, and Best Choral Album in 1963.)

Maria Schneider’s Concert In The Garden Best Large Jazz Ensemble Album

David Frost picked up the Producer Of The Year award in the classical division and Jack Renner got an engineering nod for his work on Jennifer Higdon’s City Scape. (You can get a glimpse of David Frost at work in the recording studio with John Corigliano in this month’s issue of NewMusicBox.)

Among the jazz honorees, Bill Frisell’s Unspeakable won for Best Contemporary Jazz Album. Noteably, Maria Schneider’s web-only ArtistShare release, Concert In The Garden, picked up the Best Large Jazz Ensemble Album award.

André Previn’s Violin Concerto Anne-Sophie/Bernstein: Serenade with the conductors’ wife Anne-Sophie Mutter as soloist was honored as Best Instrumental Soloist Performance (with Orchestra). Susan Graham won Best Classical Vocal Performance for her Ives: Songs and Southwest Chamber Music under Jeff von der Schmidt picked up Best Small Ensemble Performance for Carlos Chávez—Complete Chamber Music, Vol. 2.

Los Angeles Guitar Quartet’s Guitar Heroes Best Classical Crossover Album

The Broadway musical Wicked composed and produced by Stephen Schwartz and released on Decca Broadway won for Best Musical Show Album. The Lord Of The Rings—The Return Of The King composer Howard Shore got a nod for Best Score Soundtrack Album For A Motion Picture, Television Or Other Visual Media as well as the Best Song for same alongside songwriters Annie Lennox and Fran Walsh.

The Los Angeles Guitar Quartet’s Guitar Heroes won for Best Classical Crossover Album.

W. Stuart Pope Photo courtesy ASCAP

W. Stuart Pope, president of Boosey & Hawkes, Inc. from 1964 until his retirement in 1984, died January 24, 2005 after a long illness. He was 83.

“Stuart’s tenure as a music publisher was distinguished by his very sensitive ear for talent and by his expansive interest in the dynamics of music-making on a broad level,” noted Jennifer Bilfield, the current president of Boosey & Hawkes in New York. “His personal elegance and presence added luster to his role at the helm of B&H and in recent years, as his health weakened, I was very moved by his ongoing determination to remain connected to our business and to the music world. He will be missed…but remembered warmly, and always with great respect.”

Pope dedicated much of his career to promoting the work of some of the 20th century’s leading American composers, including Elliott Carter, Steve Reich, Dominick Argento, Alberto Ginastera, and Ned Rorem. A man with broad musical tastes and a deep commitment to the field as a whole, Pope was also a board member of ASCAP, the Aaron Copland Foundation, and American Music Center (at one point serving as treasurer), and the Music Publishers Association (serving two terms as president).

“His generous spirit and wise counsel was always welcome,” said Frances Richard, vice president and director of concert music at ASCAP where Pope also served as a member of the Symphony and Concert Committee. “We shall miss his elegant, knowledgeable, and gracious presence.”

Pope first came to music as a chorister in England and, after graduating from the Royal College of Organists, served as organist at London’s Crown Court Church of Scotland.

The new music community reacted to the news of Pope’s death with fond remembrances.

Steve Reich recalled when Pope first asked him to join Boosey & Hawkes in the early 1980s. “I accepted his generous offer,” wrote Reich, “and it turned out to be a relationship as close to ideal as one can imagine between composer and publisher. It should also be noted that, at the time Stuart brought me into Boosey & Hawkes, he brought in Elliott Carter as well—certainly surprising many that one man could have musical tastes that ranged from one end of the musical world to the other. It was to his great credit that Stuart Pope wanted to include good music—regardless of the style it was written in. He will missed by many in the musical world.”

AMC Board member James Kendrick, who took over Pope’s position at Boosey and is currently Acting President of European American Music Distributors LLC, writes, “I never had the privilege of working for Stuart Pope. Instead, in 1985, a year after he retired, I was given the terrifying (and impossible) task of trying to fill some of the biggest and most important shoes in American music publishing.

“Stuart, whom I came to know from work on the Music Publishers Association board and from other industry contacts before and after my time at B&H, was a true gentleman and a great friend and champion of American composers and their music. I came to know him best through the composers he nurtured, the music he published, and the staff he influenced so positively, particularly Sylvia Goldstein, David Huntley, Jean Golden and Michael Murray. Although some of my fumblings must have made him (not to mention the staff, the composers and his colleagues like Ellis Freedman) cringe, he never sought to interfere, but always let me know that he was there if I needed to talk things through, and it was a great comfort to know that. Stuart’s friends around the world will miss him, but the music he championed long will be a wonderful reminder of his generous and wise soul.”

Pope is survived by his wife, Doris; daughters Judith Browne and Brenda Pope-Ostrow and son John; and three grandchildren.

A memorial service is scheduled for 2 p.m. Feb. 19 at the Princeton United Methodist Church in Princeton. Arrangements are by Mather-Hodge Funeral Home, Princeton.

Memorial contributions may be made to Princeton United Methodist Church, 7 Vandeventer Avenue, Princeton, New Jersey, 08542-6920 or the Hospice Memorial Fund of Princeton Healthcare System Foundation, 253 Witherspoon Street, Princeton, New Jersey, 08540-9914.

The overarching title for the 2005 membership conference of Chamber Music America was “Found in the Shuffle.” While that name doesn’t initially seem to be saying much, it proved an extremely apt metaphor for a weekend that wound up being the best conference this organization has held in recent memory. Indeed, despite the shuffle that threatens to turn conferences such as these into formless pandemonium, sessions were well coordinated and what was ultimately “found” in this particular shuffle seemed to be an unprecedented openness toward composers and new music.

“Crumb” cake at the CMA conference Photo by Robert Starobin

In addition to the usual CMA rituals for composers—receptions sponsored by ASCAP and BMI—there were several sessions devoted specifically to interacting with several of the key composers of our time: George Crumb, Peter Schickele, Tod Machover, and 2004 Pulitzer Prize winner Paul Moravec. The two concerts that took place during the weekend were also contemporary music centric, so much so that when the Ying Quartet played Mendelssohn it seemed strangely out of place. This is undoubtedly because throughout the weekend there seemed to be a tacit understanding that new music, rather than a specialty area on the periphery of the chamber music world, was actually its core.

New music as embraced by Chamber Music America also incorporates jazz and world music traditions. Sunday afternoon’s annual commissioning showcase concert featured only one piece that fits a more conventional definition of new music, Ingram Marshall‘s In Deserto (Smoke Creek). But despite references to Bach and Sibelius throughout the piece, anyone familiar with Marshall’s music knows how unconventional it is. Plus it was written for the Clogs, an electro-acoustic outfit of electric guitar, cello, bass, drums, and bassoon known primarily for their self-composed sonic landscapes more closely aligned with alternative rock. The other music featured on the concert that afternoon, Jovino Santos Neto‘s Brazilian jazz band and David Krakauer‘s Klezmer Madness, which incorporated hip-hop grooves and even rapping from band member So Called, seemed even more light years away from a string quartet playing Haydn. (This concert will be featured in an upcoming NewMusicBox webcast.)

Chamber Music America, at least in the tone they set for this year’s conference, seemed completely in lock step with New Yorker music critic Alex Ross, whose keynote address recommended rethinking four commonly-held perceptions about this music:

1. Classical music is innately superior to other music; it’s not a product, but a way of life.
2. Certain concert behaviors are necessary to appreciate classical music: the dress and silent ritual (absolutely no clapping between movements!).
3. Seriousness must be a governing value. This is not about entertainment.
4. Popular music is the enemy.

Ross’s mantra, that “We need to stop being aristocrats and start being democrats,” elicited a sweeping round of applause which was probably only partly the byproduct of the attendees’ partisan political leanings in a speech given only a week before the re-inauguration.

The “new music as cure” verdict found its way into numerous anecdotes throughout many of the conference’s sessions as well. During a session on radio titled “Audience Building Over the Air,” Steve Robinson, vice president at WFMT Radio in Chicago, claimed that “classical music on the radio is booming” and bragged that he broadcasted the Pacifica Quartet‘s performances of all five Elliott Carter string quartets during a fund drive and it didn’t turn people away. In a session titled “Programming for the Long Term,” moderator Daniel Barnard, who runs the Music at Noon Series at Penn State University in Erie PA, discussed the importance of challenging audiences as opposed to merely programming to their comfort zone. As it turns out, Barnard is also a composer.

During a session devoted to Paul Moravec’s 2004 Pulitzer Prize winning composition Tempest Fantasy for clarinet, violin, cello, and piano, in which the entire composition was performed by the same players who premiered it last year, Trio Solisti violinist Maria Bachmann recounted how the group’s success is directly related to their commitment to new music but was careful to explain their selection process: “It’s very hard to bring new music across if you’re not passionate about it. We only play music we believe in.” Attendees were encouraged to actively seek out new music. Moravec proclaimed, “This is a golden time for new music; it’s not the 20th century anymore!”

In the session “Adding Vocal Music,” new music came across as a badge of honor for chamber musicians, separating them out from the dinosaurs in the orchestral profession who continue to ignore new music. Soprano Elizabeth Keusch even recounted a comment from an orchestral musician which sparked laughter across the room: “I can’t do all that new music; I like to space out.”

During the presentation of this year’s ASCAP/CMA Adventurous Programming Awards, George Steel, the executive director of Columbia University’s Miller Theatre, who has made a name for himself as a fearless presenter of new music concerts, went so far as to castigate presenters of “unadventurous programming” and refusing to pay attention to “totally new groovy music” claiming that the only way to reach new audiences is with the new: “There’s the 1percent who listen to standard repertoire, and then there’s the 99 percent who we wish would come; the way to reach them is adventurous programming.” (A complete list of this year’s award recipients is available on CMA’s Web site.)

If such euphoric advocacy wasn’t enough, Chamber Music America even provided conference attendees with a list of the 101 Great American Ensemble Works, culled from membership submissions over the past several months. Presumably this list will inspire a greater awareness of this repertoire and ideally performances of it around the country. The complete list appears at the end of this article.

The final session of the conference was a general session with Peter Schickele, who in addition to making everyone laugh, made a series of comments that seemed tailor-made to make even the most standard repertoire-entrenched musicians and presenters comfortable with the wide stylistic vocabulary of the most recent new music. He described how the 1960s were a golden age in pop music because there was much less of a focus on oldies. While he clearly favored the new over the old, he carefully played to the more traditionally-oriented members of the audience by humming passages from famous standard repertoire works. He also pointed the finger at certain modernist composers whose compositional aesthetics were partially responsible for many people turning away from new music.

“Webern will never be standard repertoire,” Schickele proclaimed while singing the praises of minimalism for bringing back “tonality, the composer as performer,” and above all, a “beat.” He lamented that “there isn’t more sight-readable new music” stressing the crucial role amateur music making plays in getting people to appreciate repertoire.

At the Annual Membership Meeting, CMA board president Phillip Ying said that there were four key priorities for CMA in the future: extending residencies, more commissions, an expanded website, and field research. It will be interesting to see where Chamber Music America goes as an institution following such a conference.

101 GREAT AMERICAN ENSEMBLE WORKS
As Nominated by the Membership of Chamber Music America

John Adams: Road Movies (violin, piano)
George Antheil: String Quartets #1-3
Louis Armstrong: “West End Blues” (jazz ensemble)
Daniel Asia: String Quartet #2
Milton Babbitt: All-Set (sextet)
Samuel Barber: Cello Sonata (cello, piano)
Samuel Barber: Dover Beach (baritone, string quartet)
Samuel Barber: String Quartet
Samuel Barber: Summer Music (wind quintet)
Amy Beach: Trio in G (violin, cello, piano)
Martin Bresnick: *** (clarinet, viola, piano)
Dave Brubeck: “Blue Rondo a la Turk” (variable)
John Cage: Third Construction (percussion quartet)
Elliott Carter: Cello Sonata (cello, piano)
Elliott Carter: Piano Quintet (piano, string quartet)
Elliott Carter: String Quartets #1-5
G.W.Chadwick: String Quartets #4 & #5
Chen Yi: Qi (flute, cello, piano, percussion)
Dan Coleman: String Quartet #2
Ornette Coleman: “Lonely Woman” (jazz ensemble)
Valerie Coleman: Umoja (wind quintet)
John Coltrane: A Love Supreme (jazz ensemble)
John Coltrane: “Giant Steps” (jazz ensemble)
Aaron Copland: Clarinet Sextet (clarinet, piano, string quartet)
Aaron Copland: Piano Quartet (violin, viola, cello, piano)
John Corigliano: Violin Sonata (violin, piano)
Ruth Crawford-Seeger: String Quartet
Donald Crockett: Ceiling of Heaven (violin, viola, cello, piano)
George Crumb: Ancient Voices of Children (mezzo, piano, oboe, percussion, mandolin, harp
George Crumb: Black Angels (string quartet)
George Crumb: Vox Balanae (flute, cello, piano)
Richard Danielpour: A Child’s Reliquary (violin, cello, piano)
Mario Davidovsky: Synchronisms No. 2 (flute, clarinet, violin, cello, tape)
Miles Davis: “So What” (jazz ensemble)
David Del Tredici: Heavy Metal Alice (brass quintet)
Paul Desmond (arr. Dave Brubeck): “Take Five” (jazz quartet)
Paquito D’Rivera: Aires Tropicales (wind quintet)
Jacob Druckman: Come Round (flute, clarinet, violin, cello, piano, percussion)
Duke Ellington: “Mood Indigo” (jazz ensemble)
Morton Feldman: String Quartet #2
Irving Fine: Partita (wind quintet)
Arthur Foote: Nocturne and Scherzo (flute, string quartet)
Lukas Foss: 13 Ways of Looking at a Blackbird (soprano, flute, piano, percussion)
Gabriela Lena Frank: Los Sombras de los Apus (4 cellos)
Dizzy Gillespie: “A Night in Tunisia” (jazz ensemble)
Osvaldo Golijov: Dreams and Prayers of Isaac the Blind (clarinet, string quartet)
Herbie Hancock: “Maiden Voyage” (jazz ensemble)
John Harbison: Mirabai Songs (flute, clarinet, viola, voice, harp)
John Harbison: Wind Quintet
Lou Harrison: Varied Trio (violin, piano, percussion)
Stephen Hartke: King of the Sun (violin, viola, cello, piano)
Julius Hemphill: “The Hard Blues” (saxophone quartet or sextet)
Jennifer Higdon: Impressions (string quartet)
Andrew Hill: “Dusk” (jazz ensemble)
Lee Hoiby: Dark Rosaleen (violin, viola, cello, piano)
Lee Hyla: Dream of Innocent III (amplified cello, piano, percussion)
Andrew Imbrie: Pilgrimage (flute, clarinet, violin, cello, piano, percussion)
Charles Ives: 3 Quarter-tone Pieces (2 pianos tuned a quarter-tone apart)
Charles Ives: Piano Trio (violin, cello, piano)
Charles Ives: String Quartets #1 & #2
Ben Johnston: String Quartet #4
Aaron Jay Kernis: musica celestis (string quartet)
Leon Kirchner: Piano Trios #1 and #2 (violin, cello, piano)
Ernst Krenek: String Quartet #8
Benjamin Lees: String Quartet #5
John Lewis: “Django” (jazz quintet)
Charles Martin Loeffler: Music for Four Stringed Instruments (string quartet)
Steven Mackey: Indigenous Instruments (flute, clarinet, violin, cello, piano)
Thelonious Monk: “In Walked Bud” (jazz combo)
Thelonious Monk: “Round Midnight” (variable)
Paul Moravec: Tempest Fantasy (clarinet, violin, cello, piano)
Conlon Nancarrow: String Quartets #1 and #3
Charlie Parker: “Donna Lee” (jazz ensemble)
Richard Peaslee: Distant Dancing (brass quintet)
George Perle: Sonata a quattro (flute, clarinet, violin, cello)
Walter Piston: String Quartet #1
Walter Piston: Flute Quintet (flute, string quartet)
Quincy Porter: String Quartet No. 3
Kevin Puts: Dark Vigil (string quartet)
Steve Reich: Different Trains (string quartet, tape)
George Rochberg: String Quartet #3
Ned Rorem: Santa Fe Songs (voice, violin, cello, piano)
Christopher Rouse: Ogoun Badagris (5 percussion)
Frederic Rzewski: Coming Together (variable)
Paul Schoenfield: Café Music (violin, cello, piano)
Roger Sessions: Viola Quintet (string quintet)
Wayne Shorter: “Footprints” (jazz ensemble)
Adam B. Silverman: Sturm (violin, cello, piano)
Stanley Silverman: In Celebration (violin, cello, piano)
David Stock: For Emily (violin, viola da gamba, theorbo)
David Stock: Speaking Extravagantly (string quartet)
Eric Stokes: Brazen Cartographies (brass quintet)
Steven Stucky: Nell’ombra, nella luce (string quartet)
Joan Tower: Petroushkates (flute, clarinet, violin, cello, piano)
George Tsontakis: String Quartets #3 & #4
Chinary Ung: Oracle (flute, clarinet, violin, cello, percussion)
Stefan Wolpe: Quartet (trumpet, saxophone, piano, percussion)
Judith Lang Zaimont: Doubles (oboe, piano)
Zhou Long: The Ineffable (flute, violin, cello, percussion, pipa, zheng)
John Zorn: Masada (jazz ensemble)
Ellen Taaffe Zwilich: Piano Trio (violin, cello, piano)
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Classical Radio in D.C. Under Possible Threat

Wednesday’s Washington Post included a report that WETA-FM, the Arlington-based NPR affiliate that has carried classical programming since 1970, looks likely to switch to an all-news format. Not that anyone really expects to read classical radio station success stories these days, but still the industry quickly circulated the news via email with notes of dismay.

Post Staff Writer Paul Farhi reports that “the station’s management intends to present a proposal to overhaul daily programming to the board of directors next week” and that, if approved, classical programming “would be largely replaced by month’s end.” Farhi’s sources suggest that the move “was signaled in early January, when the station hired a new program director, Maxie C. Jackson III,” known for his skill developing news and talk programming.

The classical community is not standing idling by while it waits for the axe to fall. Uli Bader, director of Artistic Planning at the National Symphony Orchestra, has started collecting signatures on an email petition addressed to the Board of Directors of WETA that reads in part: “I consider the program change of WETA FM to news-only and the cancellation of classical music on your station a tragedy and a catastrophe for music and the arts. We have truly enough news channels and your step is going into the wrong direction. I know about financial restrictions but there must be more creative ways to solve this problem.”

In a letter to the editor on the classical music news site MusicalAmerica.com, Jim Allison, program director at D.C.’s conservatively programmed Classical 103.5 WGMS, countered that “while it indeed seems likely that WETA-FM will follow the trend of public stations around the country and drop classical programming in favor of news, Washington will continue to be well served by Classical 103.5 WGMS.”

James Jordan is set to take the reins of The American Composers Forum’s Philadelphia Chapter. Jordan, tapped to be the new chapter director, will primarily focus on developing programs and funding to support new music initiatives in the area. According to the ACF, an immediate priority is managing a collaborative commissioning project between the Philadelphia Orchestra and ACF Philadelphia commemorating the 300th birthday of Benjamin Franklin.

Originally from Philadelphia, Jordan is a graduate of Temple University where he majored in double bass performance and composition. He most recently served as The Choral Arts Society of Philadelphia’s operations manager. Jordan has also maintained an active performance career and is a founding member of Conjunto 23.

The annual four-day Ojai Music Festival has received a grant of $25,000 from The James Irvine Foundation in “acknowledgment of the Festival’s ability to foster rising composers and to give established artists an opportunity to perform new repertoire,” said Jeffrey P. Haydon, executive director of the festival. The grant, which is provided over a two-year period, will be applied towards fees for guest artists, including Oliver Knussen, the festival’s 2005 music director.

Since its founding in 1947, the Ojai Music Festival has presented John Adams, Aaron Copland, Igor Stravinsky, Michael Tilson Thomas, Esa-Pekka Salonen, Lukas Foss, Dawn Upshaw, André Previn, Kent Nagano, and many others. The 59th Ojai Music Festival will run June 9-12, 2005.

Las Vegas Philharmonic Music Director Harold Weller has commissioned three original music compositions about Las Vegas in honor of the city’s 100th birthday. Philharmonic Associate Conductor Richard McGee, Dan Welcher of the University of Texas, and Pulitzer Prize winner George Walker will each write a work for the six-year-old ensemble. The commissions, funded by a grant from the city’s Centennial Committee, will be premiered during the Philharmonic’s 2005-06 season.

Tonic, that bastion of avant garde and experimental music on New York’s Lower East Side since 1998, appears to be is serious danger of closing up shop.

In a plea for help posted on their website, the venue owners state that they “need to raise upwards of $100,000 in the next few weeks.” Apparently, growing financial troubles due to rent increase, insurance costs, robbery, and building maintenance have pushed the organization to the edge. They are now facing eviction.

Hoping to turn the situation around, a series of fund raisers are scheduled and donations are being solicited. Tonic is also collecting and publishing testimonials on their website, such as this one from WFMU Music/Program Director Brian Turner:

Tonic has been an essential part of not only the New York music community but to the progression of music itself. It’s given a venue to activities so diverse and adventurous that few places would have the spirit to approach, not only providing the stage, but nurturing the scene and allowing for sound’s possibilities to be reality. I hope the people will pick something on the schedule this month and attend and spread the word, I can’t think of this place simply not being around.