Category: Headlines

Twelve composers have been selected to receive 2004 Fromm commissions from the Fromm Music Foundation at Harvard University.

They are:

• Scott Wheeler (North Reading, MA)
• Richard Teitelbaum (Bearsville, NY)
• Padma Newsome (Brooklyn, NY)
• Liza Lim (South Brisbane, Queensland)
• Massimo Lauricella (Genova, Italy)
• Panayiotis Kokoras (Katerini, Greece)
• Sungji Hong (Yongin-Shi, South Korea)
• Elliott Gyger (Cambridge, MA)
• David Froom (California, MD)
• Paul Dickinson (Conway, AR)
• Martin Brody (Cambridge, MA)
• Gordon Beeferman (New York, NY)

These composers were selected from among 207 applications. In addition to the awarded commissioning fee of $10,000, a subsidy is available for the ensemble performing the premiere of the commissioned work.

Carlisle Floyd Photo courtesy Boosey & Hawkes

President Bush has recognized the contributions of composer and librettist Carlisle Floyd to American cultural life with a National Medal of Arts. Floyd, one of eight artists and arts patrons so recognized this year, was in Washington, D.C., this afternoon for the official presentation of the award in the Oval Office.

Speaking from his hotel room this morning, Floyd said he was stunned when NEA Chairman Dana Gioia first called with the news. “It’s the last thing in the world I expected,” Floyd said. “As a matter of fact, I told [Gioia] at dinner last night that I thought he was calling to ask me to be on a [NEA] panel. It never occurred to me that it was this remarkable honor.”

Floyd is most widely known for penning operas that draw on American folk and religious music traditions, such as Susannah (which has had four productions by the New York City Opera alone since its premiere there in 1956) and Of Mice and Men based on John Steinbeck’s classic tale. A novel was once again the muse for Floyd’s most recent operatic production, Cold Sassy Tree, which received its premiere at Houston Grand Opera in April 2000. The Virgin Classics recording of Susannah won a Grammy for Best Opera Recording in 1995.

Though there is often talk about the diminishing place for serious music in modern America, Floyd is not so pessimistic. In his experience, serious music is alive and well. “Certainly my career has continued to flourish, so there’s still an audience out there. We can’t compete with the rock-and-rollers or the entertainment side, but that doesn’t mean that there’s not validity in what we do.”

Born in 1926, Floyd earned degrees in piano and composition at Syracuse University. His teaching career has included positions at Florida State University and the University of Houston. In addition, he is a co-founder of the Houston Opera Studio, a training and performance program for young artists.

Floyd has also composed a number of non-operatic works such as the orchestral song cycle, Citizen of Paradise, based on poems and letters of Emily Dickinson, and A Time to Dance, a large-scale work for chorus, bass-baritone soloist, and orchestra.

These days Floyd spends much of his time keeping up with performances of his work, which is published by Boosey & Hawkes. “I suppose you could call that looking after the children,” he said with a laugh.

Jazz Masters (l to r) Paquito D’Rivera (photo by Lane Penderson), Artie Shaw (Bruce Weber), Slide Hampton (Teri Bloom), Shirley Horn (Larry Basacca), George Wein (John Abbott), Jimmy Smith (R. Morishima), and Kenny Burrell (Bob Barry).

Since 1982, the National Endowment for the Arts has singled out great figures in jazz and dubbed them masters in their field based on nominations submitted by the public. Kenny Burrell (guitarist), Paquito D’Rivera (clarinetist-saxophonist), Slide Hampton (arranger-composer), Shirley Horn (vocalist), Artie Shaw (big band leader), Jimmy Smith (organist) and George Wein (jazz advocate) have been so honored this year.

The new class of NEA Jazz Masters will receive their awards, which include a one-time fellowship of $25,000, in January at a gala concert in Long Beach, California.

In making the announcement, Gioia noted that “from its earliest days until now [jazz] has continued to grow creatively—and yet the people who have given us this art form deserve far greater recognition.” The Jazz Masters program seeks to rectify that situation by directing public attention to some of the field’s greatest living figures.

Biographies of the 2005 NEA Jazz Masters:

• Kenny Burrell
• Paquito D’Rivera
• Slide Hampton
• Shirley Horn
• Artie Shaw
• Jimmy Smith
• George Wein

Martin Brody has been awarded the 2004/5 Roger Sessions Memorial Bogliasco Fellowship in Music, the Bogliasco Foundation has announced. He was chosen by the Foundation’s Music Advisory Board from among those American composers who have been selected to receive Bogliasco residencies at the Liguria Center for the Arts and Humanities, near Genoa, Italy.

Under the terms of the annual award, which has been made possible thanks to an anonymous donor, Brody will receive a cash stipend of $3,000 and his travel expenses will be paid. He is set to take up his residency in February 2005.

Brody is the Catherine Mills Davis Professor of Music at Wellesley College. During his residency, Brody will be working on his third chamber opera, Bisclavret, an adaptation of a medieval lai by Marie de France, which has been commissioned by the Boston Musica Viva for performance in Spring 2006.

Yotam Haber Listen to an excerpt from Haber’s award-winning Espresso

In a tiny New York studio just big enough for an upright piano, a chair, a desk, and an espresso machine, composer Yotam Haber found a rather unconventional muse. On a commission for Cornell University he wrote Espresso for wind ensemble in 2004.

The work has now received another push into the repertory. Espresso has been awarded the second bi-annual ASCAP/CBDNA Frederick Fennell Prize, an award that includes a $5,000 cash prize in addition to a performance—the 28-year-old composer’s first in New York City—during the National CBDNA Conference in February 2005 by Rutgers University Wind Ensemble.

Named for CBDNA founder Frederick Fennell, the competition is intended to encourage American composers between the ages of 18 and 30 to create new works for concert band.

Haber says he was looking to distance the piece from the stereotypical marching band sound and “just write interesting, engaging music for an ensemble that has now entered the mainstream of accepted ‘serious’ music ensembles.”

Playing off the title, he describes the work poetically as a “dark, short, concentrated shot of a piece” that ends with a calm coda, “an aftertaste, faintly recalling flavors just experienced.”

David Rakowski, whose own work for wind ensemble, Ten of a Kind, was commissioned by “The President’s Own” U.S. Marine Band, mentored Haber with characteristic good humor.

“The band that was rehearsing it for the first performance was having a difficult time,” Haber recalls. “It was too hard and the response I was getting from the student musicians was incredibly depressing. So I showed Rakowski the score and he said, “Well, even though Ten of a Kind was short listed for a Pulitzer, only two bands in the world have ever played it…so I’m not the guy to ask if it’s ‘too hard.’ ”

Haber, currently Information Services Coordinator at the American Music Center, is an ASCAP Foundation Morton Gould Young Composer Award winner. He has been a Fellow at the Tanglewood Music Center, the Aspen Music Festival, and been in residence at the Aaron Copland House and the Atlantic Center for the Arts. Haber holds a doctoral degree from Cornell University.

The ASCAP composer/judges for the 2004 competition were: Sir Richard Rodney Bennett, David Del Tredici, and Melinda Wagner. The conductor jurors selected by CBDNA were Thomas Duffy (Yale University) and Charles Peltz (New England Conservatory of Music). Additional works selected for Special Distinction and Honorable Mention by the panel will be circulated to ensembles performing at regional CBDNA conferences.

Recognized for Special Distinction:

• Eric Knechtges, age 26, Lansing, MI—Broken Silents for wind ensemble

Honorable Mention:

• Joseph Eidson, age 22, Jefferson City, MO—Chadron for wind ensemble
• Eli Marshall, age 27, Montville, ME—Grand Laudations for concert band
• Daniel Perttu, age 25, Columbus, OH—Atop Black Balsam for wind ensemble
• Carl Schimmel, age 29, Wakefield, RI—The Blatherskite’s Comeuppance for wind ensemble

Edward T. Cone

Edward T. Cone, music scholar, pianist, composer, and member of the Princeton faculty since 1946, died Saturday, October 23, following complications from open heart surgery. He was 87.

READ:

• The extensive NewMusicBox interview with Cone.
• The obituary that appeared in the Greensboro News & Record.

Dr. William A. Brown

Dr. William A. Brown, a founding member of the Center’s Black Music Repertory Ensemble and a Distinguished Professor of Voice at the University of North Florida, has died, reports the Center. Dr. Brown suffered a fatal heart attack at his home in Jacksonville, Florida, on October 20. He was 66.

Bill Brown was a tenor renowned for his “technical virtuosity, beautiful tone, and interpretative commitment” (The Boston Globe) who commanded a repertoire encompassing practically all musical genres and styles. He performed with leading orchestras and operatic companies throughout the world and appeared on all of the major U.S. television networks. He made recordings for CBS Records, London, Nonesuch, New World Records, Telarc, CRI, Gun Mar, Musical Heritage, Centaur, and Albany Records. Bill had a special affinity for 20th century music and appeared with many of the major contemporary music ensembles. Several major composers, including David Baker, Wendell Logan, and Olly Wilson, dedicated compositions to him. He was also a respected expert on, and advocate for, vocal works by black composers, and many singers have cause to be grateful for his generosity in sharing his knowledge, as well as music from his extensive personal collection. At the Center, he was appreciated for his dedication, his enthusiastic support, and his ebullient spirit.

Brown is survived by his mother Ida Mae Perry, and stepfather Jack Perry, a daughter Talya Harmon, a granddaughter, and fiancée, Brenda Kelly. The University of North Florida is planning a memorial service to be held in the near future, about which no details are available at this time.

***Reprinted with the permission of the Center for Black Music Research

Chatting with the Auracle

Today marks the official launch of Auracle, a networked sound instrument created this past year at Akademie Schloss Solitude in Germany by a group of artists led by Max Neuhaus. A live sonic tour through the site in planned for broadcast as part of the Donnaueschinger Musiktage, the annual new music festival sponsored by SWR radio in southern Germany.

Auracle is controlled by participant voices (though the sounds are glitchy computer tones) and is played and heard over the Internet. Players join “ensembles” for an interactive experience. A schedule for planned international meet ups is accessible on the site.

The Auracle team includes Max Neuhaus and Phil Burk (Technical Director) as well as fellows of Akademie Schloss Solitude Jason Freeman, C. Ramakrishnan, Kristjan Varnik, and David Birchfield (consulting fellow).

Reminder: The deadline to apply for a fellowship at the Akademie Schloss Solitude is October 31st. Check their website for details.

Tom Myron

Composer Tom Myron will be presented with a Maine Arts Commission’s 2004 Individual Artist Fellowship award at a reception this evening.

A total of three fellows have been awarded $13,000 for unrestricted use. Installation artist Amy Stacey Curtis won in the visual arts category. Author Maureen Stanton won in the literary arts category. The MAC Fellowship is the largest award given to an individual artist by a state arts agency in the U.S. The sole criterion for the fellowships is artistic excellence.

Tom Myron is a Portland-based composer who has written music for orchestras, instrumental soloists, filmmakers, and choreographers across the U.S., Great Britain, and Eastern Europe. Projects for 2005 include a new work for the Eclipse Chamber Orchestra, a recording studio collaboration with saxophonist James Merenda, and the score for a film about the life of Henry David Thoreau from Films by Huey.

Seven composers from across the country have been selected to participate in the fourth annual Minnesota Orchestra Reading Sessions and Composer Institute October 27-30, 2004.

Ranging in age from 20 to 36, the composers are:

• Patrick Burke from Yale University
• Fang Man from Cornell University
• Andrew Norman from the University of Southern California
• John Christian Orfe, formerly at Yale University
• David Plylar, formerly from Duke University
• Sheridan Seyfried from the Curtis Institute
• Rob Smith from the University of Houston

The participants will have their works read and rehearsed by the Minnesota Orchestra and participate in workshops with orchestra musicians and industry professionals. They will also take part in pre-reading discussions and receive post-reading composition mentoring with composer Aaron Jay Kernis, who serves as the Minnesota Orchestra’s new music advisor and chairman of the Institute. The Composer Institute is presented in partnership with the American Composers Forum and in cooperation with the American Music Center.

A total of 131 scores were submitted. The works were selected by a panel that included composers Michael Daugherty and Kevin Puts, as well as Minnesota Orchestra Acting Associate Principal Bass William Schrickel. Additional help was received from David Wolff of the American Composers Forum.

Edgemar at street level

John Cage would likely have been proud of “Listen Edgemar,” a sound installation that has been running since May in the underground parking lot of the Frank Gehry-designed Santa Monica shopping complex. Composers Hugh Livingston and Michael Zbyszynski are the masterminds behind the urban sound sculpture, which mixes various bits of found sound from the courtyard above with real instrumental sounds. Custom-programmed spatialization algorithms allow sound to follow curves through the space. A computer running Max/MSP routes sound to 16 speakers.

The instrument samples were performed by musicians including Pauline Oliveros (accordian), Philip Gelb (shakuhachi), Jessica Catron (cello), Jeremy Drake (guitar), Vinny Golia (single reeds and flute), and Paul Livingstone (sitar and Mexican guitar).

Jon Faddis

The Chicago Jazz Ensemble has announced the appointment of trumpet virtuoso, composer, conductor, and educator Jon Faddis as its new artistic director.

Best known for his leadership of the Carnegie Hall Jazz Band, Faddis, 51, spoke modestly of the appointment. “I was honored even to be considered, much less asked, to be [CJE’s] Artistic Director,” said Faddis. “My goals are to help raise the profile of the CJE, to further develop its musical excellence, to introduce new music with the band, to provide more opportunities for audience involvement and understanding, and to increase educational outreach to students and Jazz fans of all ages.”

Faddis received the first-ever honorary doctorate in Jazz Studies from the Manhattan School of Music (May 2003) and the Milt Jackson Award for Excellence and Accessibility in Jazz (2001); Faddis is also artist-in-residence, professor, and Director of Jazz Performance at the Conservatory of Music, Purchase College, SUNY.

CJE also announced the appointment of David Levin as the new managing director. Levin is a former vice president of WFMT Radio Networks, Chicago, where he played a part in the creation of the first fully customized satellite-delivered jazz and classical music format services.

The appointments of Faddis and Levin represent the culmination of a year-long search by Columbia College Chicago and the Chicago Jazz Ensemble’s Board of Governors to find a successor for the CJE’s founder and conductor, William Russo, who passed away in January of 2003. Russo founded the CJE in 1965 as a professional jazz orchestra in residence at Columbia College Chicago.

Composers waiting for word on the results of the 2nd Annual STUDIO for New Music Composers Competition—originally to have been announced on January 15, 2004—are still waiting.

Word had circulated in late spring that conductor and clarinetist JD Hixson, head of STUDIO for New Music, was suffering from health problems and had been hospitalized. In the months following, the related STUDIO for New Music website went offline and composers complained of unreturned emails and phone calls. The American Music Center continues to receive calls from composers concerned about the competition’s status.

Though an application fee of $40 was collected from each entrant, the competition has been plagued by administrative difficulties from the very beginning that made communicating with STUDIO staff nearly impossible both before the contest deadline and in the months since the awards were to have been announced.

Hixson was quick to return an inquiry from this reporter, however, and in an October 7 email explained that “a combination of my unforeseen and extended health situation together with the technical problems has resulted in this delay—a condition which both STUDIO and I sincerely regret.”

Composer Eric Flesher, the second-prize winner from the first STUDIO for New Music competition, was still waiting for his prize money when we contacted him back in March of 2004. He still has not received a check and, though disappointed that the money and the proffered recording opportunity have not come through, seems resigned to the fact that at this point they will likely never materialize.

“Clearly, this whole situation is quite regrettable,” Flescher said, “especially considering that there are numerous composers who entered the competition for this year who must still be wondering what happened to both their scores and entry fees. My feeling is that there are probably many issues causing Mr. Hixson’s reticence; nevertheless, it would be helpful for him and all concerned to at least communicate something—even if that should be that he had to shut down STUDIO.”

One of the technical problems to which Hixson referred in his email relates to the fact that the computer that contained many of the details about the applicants has malfunctioned which, he says, have added to his difficulties communicating with them about the problems the competition is facing.

“In the worst case scenario that the data is gone, if all registrants followed the instructions, in their packages that I have should be an additional envelope that pairs their name and contact info with the “application code” they were issued. So, upon the jury process, I will be able to compile a list of all participants and contact them,” Hixson noted.

According to Hixson, we can still expect that process to occur and “by the end of the year definitive results [will] be announced.”

• READ the previous update posted on March 31, 2004

Columbia University Honors Jonathan D. Kramer

Jonathan D. Kramer

Columbia University has added a section to its website in honor of composer and theorist Jonathan D. Kramer (1942-2004). The site outlines two funds named in his memory: the JDK Memorial Fund, which will provide commissioning funds to a young composer to write and record a composition; and the JDK Legacy Fund, designated to foster the continued performances and recordings of Jonathan Kramer’s music, and to carry on the publications of his scholarly works.

The site also provides biographical information, a works list, interviews, and photos of the composer, as well as eulogies from friends and colleagues.

Broken Pianos Make Great Art Projects

Artnet.com reports on the “coolest Chinese art party this season,” a.k.a. “The Bunker Museum of Contemporary Art”—basically an island of Kinmen (Quemoy) that has been taken over as the staging ground for exhibitions installed by 18 Chinese and Taiwanese artists and curated by New York-based artist Cai Guo-Qiang. On the talent roster is composer Tan Dun. His installation, Visual Music, has been constructed “inside a large bunker and features old pianos that have been destroyed and reassembled. In the dark spot at the end of the bunker, filled with the music of Beethoven and Bach, a little pyramid made of wooden pieces from a broken piano sits surrounded by three TV sets showing Tan playing and then smashing up a piano.”

“It’s like life, which is a refrain of resurrection,” Tan told Artnet.

Photos of the project are available here.

New Home for JALC Trumpets Jazz Greats

Clark Terry performs at the Ertegun Jazz Hall of Fame induction ceremony to honor inductee Louis Armstrong Photo by Wire Image, R.J. Capak

The Ertegun Jazz Hall of Fame has inducted its inaugural class of members. They are: Louis Armstrong, Sidney Bechet, Bix Beiderbecke, John Coltrane, Miles Davis, Duke Ellington, Dizzy Gillespie, Coleman Hawkins, Billie Holiday, Thelonious Monk, Jelly Roll Morton, Charlie Parker, Art Tatum and Lester Young.

Located within the new home of Jazz at Lincoln Center, Frederick P. Rose Hall, the Ertegun Jazz Hall of Fame includes a multi-media installation featuring a 14-foot video wall, interactive kiosks, touch-activated virtual plaques, and the great sounds of jazz.

It was named by Jazz at Lincoln Center Board member Ahmet Ertegun and his wife, Mica, in honor of his late brother and Atlantic Records partner Nesuhi Ertegun.

A 72-person international voting panel, which includes musicians, scholars, and educators from 17 countries, was charged with nominating and selecting the most definitive artists in the history of jazz for induction into the Ertegun Jazz Hall of Fame. Criteria for nomination include excellence and significance of the artists’ contributions to the development and perpetuation of jazz.

The Hall of Fame opens to the public on October 21, 2004.

Subito Music Welcomes Bill Rhoads & Assoc. as Subsidiary

Subito Music Corp. offices

Bill Rhoads & Associates, founded in 2001 as a promotion and business representation firm, has become a wholly owned subsidiary of Subito Music Corporation, expanding Subito’s range of services to encompass catalog and works promotion for publishers and composers.

In making the announcement, Bill Rhoads noted that “positive results of the complimentary dynamic between our companies will be immediately evident to our clients in form of enhanced promotional activity and a more flexible and efficient array of services offered to composers and publishers.”

Subito Music President, Stephen Culbertson added that the addition “represents the last link in the chain of a wide range of services Subito offers its customers.”

Lenny In Focus

Leonard Bernstein: An American Life, an eleven-part documentary series that considers the life and work of Leonard Bernstein, will air on radio stations around the world beginning in October 2004. This upcoming radio event took Steve Rowland six years to produce.

Bernstein’s career and life will be explored through the words of Bernstein’s own correspondence as well as interviews with more than one hundred people who knew and worked with him.

The series of 60-minute programs is narrated by Academy Award-winning actress Susan Sarandon. Alec Baldwin, Broadway star Maria Tucci, daughter Jamie Bernstein, and Schuyler Chapin, NYC’s Cultural Commissioner and Bernstein’s record producer and longtime friend, will voice the excerpted text of letters compiled from some 17,000 pieces of correspondence held by the Library of Congress.

John Adams, Marin Alsop, Betty Comden, John Corigliano, Adolph Green, Bobby McFerrin, Hal Prince, Mary Rodgers, Mstislav Rostropovich, and Stephen Sondheim, are among those interviewed for the series.

The eleven programs break down as follows: (1) Bernstein: The Early Years; (2) Twelve Gates to The City (Meeting the Mentors); (3) New York, New York; (4) Tonight; (5) A New Frontier/The Philharmonic Years; (6 and 7) Bernstein: The Conductor; (8) Crossroads; (9 and 10) Bernstein: The Composer; and (11) A Candle Burned At Both Ends.

John von Rhein wrote in Sunday’s Chicago Tribune that the program is “must-hear radio, essential listening for those who already know what all the fuss was about, but also essential for a younger generation who never saw or heard him and have only his extensive discography to judge him by.”