Concert Music

Choral Music by Ivette Herryman Released by Walton Music

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A new piece by MSU DMA student Ivette Herryman Rodríguez has been published by Walton Music, a division of GIA Publications.The piece can be seen featured on their “2015 New Releases” page. The title, “Sigue” (Continue) and is inspired on a poem by Nicolas Guillen, Cuba’s national poet. Musically the piece recreates the Cuban genre known as Son, which is a hallmark of Cuban Music.

The MSU Women’s Chamber Ensemble will close their concert on Saturday with a performance of the piece. Congratulations, Ivette!

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Telling Science Through Music: the Crossroads Project

“The audiences would understand it on an intellectual level,” says Davies. “The science is pretty self-explanatory and very compelling.” But they didn’t seem to personally connect with the information. They understood it, but they weren’t feeling it, he says — and weren’t taking any action.

It was as if he were informing people about the dangers of smoking, and then watching them go out afterward and light up cigarettes.

Davies became passionately interested in finding ways to change people’s behavior when it comes to climate change.

But how?

He left Oxford, England and quantum optics for Logan, Utah and a job at the Utah State University Climate Center.

One day it occurred to him that maybe music was the answer. His idea was a hybrid event: one that sort of combined a lecture on climate with a musical performance — performance art and performance science.

(read the rest and listen to the String Quartet commissioned from Laura Kaminsky).

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MSU Composition project “Voicing Poetry” featured on local NPR

Philip Rice (center) and Cindy Hunter Morgan (right), with Current State host Mark Bashore
Credit Scott Pohl/WKAR

Current State host Mark Bashore talks with two of the artists who worked on the project. Philip Rice is a student in composition at MSU, and Cindy Hunter Morgan is a local poet and lecturer in the English department. See the full story and listen to the broadcast here.

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“The Source”: New Oratorio about WikiLeaks

Continuing with the topic of scandals and current events as topic for dramatic musical works—here is a piece on NPR about a new oratorio to premiere at the Brooklyn Academy based on the WikiLeaks debacle. Before there was the story of whistle blower Edward Snowden, there was Chelsea Manning and her disclosure of military documents to WikiLeaks. Now there is composer Ted Hearnes and a new oratorio using these documents as well as the identity struggles of Manning due to his sex change.

Submitted by Ricardo Lorenz

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Innovations in Concert Etiquette

Baldur Bronnimann recently shared a compelling blog about making some changes to conventional concert etiquette. He states that we, as listeners, often accept unspoken rules quietly and that these rules are ‘making the experience of classical concerts worse than it should be.’ Although I am supportive of many of these ideas, I don’t totally agree with that statement as I feel there is a lot of room for these conventions and there is still a consortium of musicians who value them.

There’s a lot more I could say on this topic, but I’m curious on how other’s feel about the blog itself as well as many of the suggested innovations. Have you ever been to a concert that utilized some of these behaviors? What did you like? What did you not like?

You can read the blog here:

10 things that we should change in classical music concerts

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– PJF

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Alex Ross: The Met’s “Klinghoffer” Problem

For a little while, it seemed as though the controversy over John Adams’s 1991 opera, “The Death of Klinghoffer”—a dramatization of the 1985 Achille Lauro hijacking, during which members of the Palestine Liberation Front murdered the Jewish-American businessman Leon Klinghoffer—was beginning to fade. When the opera was first seen in New York, at BAM, in 1991, it sparked outrage in onlookers who felt that it unduly favored the Palestinian point of view, not least because the score begins with a lamenting chorus of Palestinian exiles (“Israel laid all to waste”).

Read the rest at newyorker.com

 

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World Premiere at Michigan State

From the Eastern American Music Distributors Company

World Premiere of Robert Beaser’s The End of Knowing at Michigan State University

World Premiere of Robert Beaser's <em>The End of Knowing</em> at Michigan State University

On September 25, Kevin Sedatole leads the Michigan State University Band in the world premiere of Robert Beaser’s The End of Knowing, for soprano, baritone and wind ensemble. The premiere takes place at Michigan State University’s Wharton Center in East Lansing, Michigan, and features soprano Lindsay Kesselman and baritone Benjamin Park as soloists.

Commissioned by a consortium of 27 bands across the United States, The End of Knowing is a powerful setting of texts from poets Seamus Heaney, Alfred Noyes, Joseph Brodsky, Gjertrud Schnackenberg, Chidiock Tichborne, Theodore Worozbyt and James Joyce. Beaser describes the work as “a dramatic meditation on the nexus of religion, politics and the fragile human condition.”

Following the premiere, the work receives several performances by ensembles across the country, including a featured performance in Nashville at the College Band Directors National Association (CBDNA) Conference in March 2015.

For more information on Robert Beaser, please visit www.schott-music.com.

Details on the premiere can be found at music.msu.edu.

Robert Beaser
The End of Knowing (2014)
for soprano, baritone and wind ensemble
texts (Eng) by Seamus Heaney, Alfred Noyes, Joseph Brodsky, Gjertrud Schnackenberg, Chidiock Tichborne, Theodore Worozbyt and James Joyce
pic.2(2.afl).2.ca.Ebcl.3.bcl.cbcl.2.cbsn.ssax.asax.tsax.barsax-4.3.2.btbn.2euph.1-timp.7perc-hp.pno/synthesizer-db
30’

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New Music Detroit: Strange and Beautiful Music VII

New Music Detroit will present Strange Beautiful Music VII this Saturday (Sept. 13, 2014).

New Music Detroit will host a 6-hour event for new music including two world premieres: John Zorn’s “Trilogy” and a work by Detroit native, Frank Pahl.  New York-based violinist, Todd Reynolds, will join us for a set of composition and improvisation.  NMD will perform Detroit’s premiere of David Lang’s “Death Speaks”  with special guest, Shara Worden. Also featured are GVSU’s New Music Ensemble, Miles Brown Quartet, Donald Sinta Sax Quartet, and Clem Fortuna.

Get more details on the NMD website.

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Statements

 

Our new album, Statements, featuring all music of MSU composers, is now available online and in print. The first run of 1,000 copies is circulating among members of the studio, and can be obtained free of charge. Special thanks to Mark Sullivan for the photographs, Philip Rice for the jacket design, and Justin Rito for heading up the whole operation. The full album can be heard online and downloaded for free via Bandcamp.

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