CompositionToday - news and resources for composers

Met to stage new Glass Opera about Walt Disney

Gerard Mortier, New York City Opera's general-manager and artistic-director designate, announced today that the company has commissioned Philip Glass to compose a new opera - Glass's 24th no less - based on the life of Walt Disney. Titled The Perfect American, the opera is scheduled to open the City Opera's 2012-13 season, in time for Philip Glass's seventy-fifth birthday.

Glass said "The pulse of his life has to be the pulse of our own American culture. And, like other aspects of life here, it is unimaginable, alarming, and truly frightening"

Leila Josefowicz and Alex Ross win MacArthur Fellowships

Violinist Leila Josefowicz, who recorded both the Adams and Knussen Violin Concertos has been awarded a coveted MacArthur Foundation Fellowship, dubbed the "Genius Award". Also awarded this year was New Yorker critic and therestisnoise blogger Alex Ross.

Mauricio Kagel dies in Germany at 76

Argentine-born composer Mauricio Kagel, whose experimental body of work also ranged into theater, has died in Germany, his publisher said Thursday. He was 76.

The C.F. Peters musical publishing house said Kagel died overnight in Cologne following a long illness, but did not give details on the cause of death.

Kagel was born in Buenos Aires on Dec. 24, 1931, into a Jewish family of German-Russian origin.

A self-taught composer who learned to play instruments including the piano, organ and cello, he studied literature and philosophy at the University of Buenos Aires and at age 18 became an adviser to an avant-garde group, Agrupacion Nueva Musica.

In 1955, he rose to become a director at the Argentine capital's Teatro Colon.

Two years later, he went on a student grant to Germany, where he settled � working in chamber and electronic music. His musical theater piece "Sur Scene" � first performed in 1960 � established a genre of "instrumental theater" that became a prominent part of his work.

Kagel was known for a humorous approach to art, with works such as "Fantasie fuer Orgel and Obligati," which included a toilet flush as an instrument.

Information on survivors and funeral arrangements was not immediately available.

Passionato website launch

Passionato is a new website claiming to be the world�s most comprehensive online classical resource, providing access to catalogues from the largest major classical record labels as well as the key classical independent labels. Best of all, it's DRM free

http://www.passionato.com

BBC Visionaries

A new series of the BBC Visionaries program that debates the merits of some of the most innovative and iconic composers will include two debates on (relatively) contemporary music - one program pits Boulez against Philip Glass, another pits Shostakovich against Takemitsu.

BBC Visionaries website

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