CompositionToday - news and resources for Composers

Boulez the conductor

Tom Service in the Guardian watches and talks to Pierre Boulez about conducting, and old age.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/music/2008/aug/28/classicalmusicandopera2

John Adams audio interview

Alongside a feature article on John Adams this month, the New Yorker online has an audio interview available on its website at http://www.newyorker.com/online/2008/08/25/080825on_audio_adams

Kings Place opens in London

Kings Place opens in London
Kings Place�a new creative centre within 5 minutes walk of King�s Cross-St Pancras has opened in London. Amongst many other things, the centre will be the new home for the London Sinfonietta. Amongst the new music events in the opening festival this october are performances by Endymion, and the Duke Quartet.

Visit the Kings Place website

Chief Heckler made bankrupt

Composer Keith Burstein, known mainly as a founder members of 'Hecklers' who booed performances of Birtwistle's opera Gawain, has been made bankrupt following an unsuccessful attempt to sue the Evening Standard newspaper for a review they published of his opera 'Manifest Destiny'. Burstein said the review implied that he had sympathy for suicide bombers.

Yesterday, Mr Burstein failed in an attempt to convince Stephen Baister, the Chief Registrar, that the costs order made by the Court of Appeal should be stayed until he had a chance to take his case to the European Court of Human Rights.

Why Ad-Supported Music Won't Work: Blame The Labels

There's a lot of interest in ad-sponsored streaming music services like iMeem, and MySpace's upcoming music venture. One big question: How can they possibly surive? Answer: They can't, unless the labels change their pricing demands.

Read the full article here: http://www.alleyinsider.com/2008/7/why-ad-supported-music-won-t-work-blame-the-labels

For and against new music

Two interesting features in the guardian website today. First an all out attack on new music by Joe Queenan:

http://music.guardian.co.uk/classical/story/0,,2289751,00.html

and a reply by Tom Service

http://blogs.guardian.co.uk/music/2008/07/no_were_not_as_bored_as_you_ar.html

Avner Dorman on ASCAP

C:T Interviewee Avner Dorman features on a new Audio Portrait at the American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers website. The interview includes excerpts from the forthcoming studio album with Metropolis Ensemble performing the complete chamber orchestra concerti of Avner Dorman

http://www.ascap.com/network/audioportraits/Avner_Dorman/

KLANG: A Tribute to Karlheinz Stockhausen announced

The South Bank Center, London has announced details of its 'KLANG' festival - a tribute to Stockhausen who died last year.

http://www.southbankcentre.co.uk/festivals-series/stockhausen-festival

CBE for Michael Nyman, Knighthood for Mark Elder

In the Queen's Birthday Honours List, composer Michael Nyman, known for sometimes complaining about a lack of recognition from the establishment, has received a CBE. Mark Elder, widely respected music director of The Hall�, and one of the original ENO Power House triumvirate receives a knighthood.

Wuorinen to compose Brokeback Mountain Opera

The news that many thought was a hoax turns out to be true - ew York City Opera has indeed commissioned Charles Wuorinen to compose what Alex Ross famously dubbed a 'Gay 12-tone opera' - an opera based on Brokeback Mountain, the 1997 short story by Annie Proulx that became the basis for a 2005 movie that won three Academy Awards. The story is a cowboy romance about two ranch-hand buddies who start a homosexual affair when they meet on the fictional mountain in 1963.

Boosey's Emerging Composer Program

Oscar Bettison, Anna Clyne, and Du Yun are the first three composers to be signed to Boosey & Hawkes Emerging Composer Program.

In order to foster and develop the next generation of innovative composers, B&H is providing publishing, promotion, and career support to a select group of emerging composers for a specified period.

http://www.boosey.com/cr/news/B-H-announces-Emerging-Composers-project/11621

La Scala to stage Gore's 'Inconvenient Truth'

Composer Giorgio Battistelli has been commissioned to produce an opera based on the Al Gore's Global Warming Film 'An Inconvenient Truth' for the 2011 season at the La Scala.

http://ap.google.com/article/ALeqM5jgUbEEXuh301jjs3gwfNHt4OfdYgD90V9JD81

RPS awards for Macmillan Ades and Rebecca Saunders

The 2008 Royal Philharmonic Society Music Awards winners
were announced at the Dorchester Hotel, London on Thursday 15 May.

Among the prizes for composers, Thomas Ades was awarded the Large-scale Composition for Tevot, James Macmillan won the Opera and Music Theatre prize for The Sacrifice and Rebecca Saunders won Chamber-scale Composition for Stirrings Still

Tan Dun Profile

New York Times today has a feature on Tan Dun, discussing his past and what it means to be a Chinese composer in today's world. Particularly abrasive are some comments by English composer Alexander Goehr:

�Actually,� Goehr said, �what I warned them against was to do a Chinese version of Western music. Unfortunately my warning had little effect. They have become Western composers with a few temple bells.�

I repeated something Tan said about the need for modern Chinese artists to retain a certain innocence. Tan told me how he had tried to avoid being too sophisticated. �If you are too sophisticated,� he said, �you lose courage.� Theory, he maintained, �makes for more boundaries. Competing with the Europeans, by being more sophisticated, is to resist yourself. One plus one makes one. Yin and yang, inside and outside, honesty and pretension. I have practiced this philosophy for the last 20 years.�

Goehr sighed over the phone and said: �Yes, that is what I had hoped as well, that they would keep a freshness, find something different out of their own experience, like Janacek or Mussorgsky. But that hope was a little innocent, too. In fact, because of their success in every other field, the Chinese are now in the same state as people who are not Chinese. They know what the trends are. They are technically excellent, but the overall popularism, which is commercial in origin, will lead to kitsch.�

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/05/04/magazine/04dun-t.html?pagewanted=1&_r=1&partner=rssnyt&emc=rss

Alex Ross on John Luther Adams

In a new article for The New Yorker, Alex Ross talks about the composer John Luther Adams and the influence Alaska has had on him and his music.

http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2008/05/12/080512fa_fact_ross?currentPage=all

Henry Brant Dies at 94

Henry Brant, an adventurous American composer best known for his spatial music, in which the placement of performers on the stage and at carefully specified places around a concert hall is a crucial element, died on Saturday at his home in Santa Barbara, Calif. He was 94.

Boulez: I'm Not Shy

Composer and conductor Pierre Boulez has endured poisonous rows on the new music scene and vilification in the press, yet he insists that disagreement is helpful, in this article from the Guardian.

BBC Proms 2008 Announced

The 2008 Proms season has been announced, the first under new head of Proms Roger Wright. Along with a Stockhausen Day, there are BBC commissions for Simon Holt, Kenneth Hesketh, Karlheinz Stockhausen (a posthumous premiere), Jason Yarde, Gwilym Simcock, Stuart MacRae, Jonathan Harvey, Steven Stucky, and Anna Meredith (for the Last Night, which Roger Norrington conducts) and numerous UK premieres.

New work too loud for orchestra

Today's Guardian reports that a piece by Swedish-Israeli composer Dror Feiler's Halat Hisar (State of Siege), has been dropped from its programme by the Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra, after its members claimed the music was so loud that it gave them ear problems and headaches.

David Lang wins Pulitzer Prize

David Lang has won this year's Pulitzer Prize in music, with his The Little Match Girl Passion, commissioned by Carnegie Hall and available to listen to online here:

Runners up were �Meanwhile� by Stephen Hartke and �Concerto for Viola� by Roberto Sierra.

Alex Ross was a finalist for his book on 20th Century Music "The Rest is Noise" and bizarrely, the winner in the Feature Writing category was Gene Weingarten�s piece Pearls Before Breakfast, about Joshua Bell's busking attempts, which was widely condemned in the classical music world as a non-story.