Posted by composer on Apr 29, 2009 in
New Music Concerts 
Carleton College will be the stage for a rare live performance of renowned avant-garde composer Annea Lockwood‘s controversial yet notable work for piano, “Piano Burning.” First performed in 1968, this ground-breaking composition centers around the actual burning of a piano—one that is beyond repair and ready to be discarded—allowing the listener to hear a variety of pitched and unpitched sounds as the piano strings heat and break. The performance will take place Thursday, April 30 at 8:45 p.m. on the “Bald Spot,” the central open area of the Carleton campus.
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Tags: Conceptual Composition, Music Composer News, New Music Concert
Posted by composer on Apr 29, 2009 in
Music Composition Education 
Noah Webster Academy third grader Madeline Nelson changes notes on a Smartboard in Ben Peterson's music class Tuesday, April 28, 2009. Students in Peterson's class composed music to go along with a classmate's poem Tuesday. MARIO RUIZ/Daily Herald
Noah Webster students compose music from poetry
From Daily Herald
Genelle Pugmire – CORRESPONDENT
Move over Mozart, the first- through sixth-grade students at Noah Webster Academy are composing music on a scale even Amadeus would be jealous of. The lyrics are provided by the school’s annual poetry contest winners from each grade.
The idea started last year when Racheal Routt, the school’s media specialist, and Ben Peterson, its music teacher, joined two projects into one great competition. According to Routt it begins with a celebration of poetry.
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Tags: Composition in the Classroom, Music by Children, Music in the Classroom
Posted by composer on Apr 28, 2009 in
Composer News Seth Bisen-Hersh sounds like a busy guy, penning six cabaret acts of original material – including The Gayest Straight Man Alive, Neurotic Tendencies, and Why Am I Not Famous Yet? – and composed the original musicals The Spickner Spin, Meaningless Sex, and Trivial Pursuits. He also works steadily as a musical accompanist and vocal coach (whose students, by the way, get their own weekly showcase at Don’t Tell Mama).
http://nytheatremike.wordpress.com/2009/04/27/seth-bisen-hersh-has-writers-block/
Turkish composer Koray Sazli truly knows what it means to overcome hardship and make dreams come true. Sazli, an accomplished composer of orchestral music, has been blind since the age of 9. He used a braille writer, a recorder and a piano for composition in college.http://unlvrebelyell.com/2009/04/27/blind-composer-strikes-a-chord/
Student musicians from Cockeysville Middle School gathered Sunday for a benefit concert to remember classmates Greg and Ben Browning, and their parents, lost last year in a spasm of family violence that horrified their suburban community.
http://www.baltimoresun.com/news/local/baltimore_county/bal-md.concert27apr27,0,2666682.story
Congratulations to these Shorter College Students and a hearty thanks for the Georgia Music Teachers Association for their support of music teaching and the art of music.
http://www.romenewswire.com/index.php/2009/04/27/shorter-students-win-top-honors-at-music-competition/
Tags: Living Composer, Music Composer News
Posted by composer on Apr 28, 2009 in
Historic Composers 
http://www.playbillarts.com/features/article/7978.html
Charles Dutoit and the Philadelphia Orchestra have been exploring the work of Hector Berlioz this spring, with performances of The Damnation of Faust through May 2 and his Requiem slated for June. Music journalist Peter G. Davis profiles the French composer.
Three composers of genius dominated mid-19th century Europe: Richard Wagner (1813–83) in Germany, Giuseppe Verdi (1813–1901) in Italy, and Hector Berlioz (1803–69) in France, each embodying the ideals of high musical Romanticism in very different ways. Although audiences back then may not have viewed this mighty triumvirate with quite the same sense of awe and historical inevitability that we do today, few doubted their importance. In 1850 the 37-year-old Verdi was already a prolific and internationally successful opera composer, while his exact contemporary, Wagner, was stirring up heated controversy with his early operas and revolutionary theories about the “music of the future.”
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Tags: 19th Century Composer (1800s), Composer
Posted by composer on Apr 26, 2009 in
Uncategorized 
Miami Herald Ellen 4-26-09 Taaffe Zwilich, the first woman to win a Pulitzer Prize in music, turns 70 on Thursday, and while the milestone is significant, most people would find it difficult to believe.
With her unfailing good cheer and prolific musical output, Zwilich remains a strikingly youthful presence.
And, while the birthday of the home-town composer — Zwilich was born in Miami and is a seasonal resident of Pompano Beach — has been overlooked by South Florida’s musical institutions, it is being celebrated in appropriate style elsewhere.
Zwilich’s Fifth Symphony premiered at Carnegie Hall last October under the baton of James Conlon. Several new recordings of her music have either been released or are in the pipeline.
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Zwilich (pronounced SWILL-ik) has been remarkably prolific. She has written in all genres except opera and has created an extensive body of work, averaging more than one new composition a year since she ”started counting” in 1971.
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Tags: Living Composer