Tags: Beethoven
Composer’s Corner with Jake Runestad
It is a pleasure to be a guest blogger on Polyphonic.org and I am excited to share a behind-the-scenes look at my latest project: Dreams of the Fallen, an exciting new work for orchestra, chorus, and solo piano commissioned by a consortium of orchestras, private sector donors, and acclaimed pianist Jeffrey Biegel - a champion of
Read More →O sweet mystery of life
…or one of them at least - is what conductors actually do. I thought it was all about the hair; Justin Davidson thinks it’s more than that: “Knowing the score”—the expression implies mastery, but it doesn’t suggest the sustained and solitary study that’s required to achieve it. There are a few miles of roadway that
Read More →Louisville: a local view
This was sent as a letter to the Louisville Courier-Journal but not published. Unfortunate, as it is a very thorough look at the situation from an experienced local observer: One really doesn’t know whether to laugh or to cry in response to Chuck Maisch’s column about the Louisville Orchestra that appeared in the Courier-Journal on
Read More →League Conference: New American Music Innovation Panel
Panel members: Patrick Castillo, Director of Artistic Planning, St. Paul Chamber Orchestra; Delta David Gier, Music Director, South Dakota Symphony; Paul Gunther, Principal Librarian, Minnesota Orchestra; and Aaron Kernis, composer. Aaron Kernis spoke first – he is the founder and leader of the Composers Institute in Minneapolis. A bit of history: he was part of
Read More →Guest Bloggers: Colin Thurmond and Rich Chwastiak
AcousticaElectronica AcousticaElectronica. Quite a mouthful to say, but then again – quite an idea. The concept of the show was simple. Blend the virtuosity found in the classical concert hall with the energy of the late-night dance club. The show … Continue reading →
When the Audition Has No Winner
“Ladies and gentlemen, I’m sorry, but I don’t think we can choose a player for our orchestra from these candidates.” Has anyone you know heard words similar to those recently? I wouldn’t be surprised if you said “yes” because it’s been happening across the country with increasing frequency for several years now. A couple weeks
Read More →Duende
I have always made it a policy not to miss an opportunity to hear great artists at the end of their careers. Interestingly, it was a young pianist years ago who crystallized for me the preciousness of artistry enriched by … Continue reading →
When Die Walküre meets Den Schneesturm
…the blizzard wins. Here in Milwaukee we’re having the first day of rehearsals canceled for snow that I can remember. We had a run-out to Green Bay canceled due to snow a number of years ago, but given that traffic was moving at 25 mph on the freeway and Green Bay was 100 miles away,
Read More →The kid stays on the podium
There’s something about conducting this kid really gets, although he really should have turned the last page of the score before he thought the piece was over: Wouldn’t it be nice if more kids this age thought Beethoven was this much fun? And why don’t they, anyway? I wonder what would happen if kids treated
Read More →A Tale of Two Audiences
A Tale of Two Audiences Let’s talk about programming, shall we? Any music director of an American orchestra, when programming a season, is striving to create balance. What does the orchestra need to play in order to grow artistically? What does the audience want to hear? What do they need to hear in order to
Read More →El Sistema Conference: YOLA
The conference was hosted by the Los Angeles Philharmonic to showcase their YOLA project: Youth Orchestra LA. On Friday we were bused to the Expo Center, which most of us assumed was some sort of civic center. Instead, it turned out to be a huge Parks and Recreation campus in South Central LA (now referred
Read More →On Indispensability
“The cemeteries of the world are full of indispensable men,” Charles de Gaulle once famously remarked. A rather public discussion of whether music directors can be indispensable is happening over the physical health of James Levine and its impact on the institutional health of the Metropolitan Opera and the Boston Symphony. At some point the
Read More →Resistance is apparently futile
This article on composer/programmer David Cope and the compositional software he’s created is absolutely amazing: It was here, half a dozen years ago, that Cope put Emmy to sleep. She was just a software program, a jumble of code he’d originally dubbed Experiments in Musical Intelligence (EMI, hence “Emmy”). Still — though Cope struggles not
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