A Conversation with Erik Spangler and Brian Sacawa from Mobtown Modern

Matthias Röder speaks with the founders of mobtown modern, saxophonist Brian Sacawa and composer Erik Spangler, about recliners and drinks at New Music concerts, how alternative listening environments and video projections create remixes of well-known repertories, and what’s coming up next in Baltimore’s most innovative New Music series.

The Operatic Canon: Forgotten Chestnuts and Poisoned Violets

As a genre, opera is not a high earner. Indeed, the amount of money that must be invested to produce one is staggering: the costs are high and possibility for success unpredictable. Thus the question of programming has been a primary concern since the start of public opera. What will audiences want to hear? How can balance be achieved between the composition and its execution? Which works will keep the reliable patrons coming and draw in new audience members to the performance?

Insects in a Tarkovskian Landscape: The Manhattan Sinfonietta at Harvard

I just returned from a great concert at Paine Hall and my ears are still resounding with the fabulous music I heard a few hours ago.

The program was part of the Fromm Foundation Series that always forms the high point of the concert season at the Harvard Music Department for me. This year, Hans Tutschku, the curator of the series, invited the Manhattan Sinfonietta under Jeff Milarsky to perform two programs of contemporary music that couldn’t be more exciting.

“Aufbruch und Ärgernis” – The never-ending Story of the Berlin Opera Crisis

The “crisis of opera” has become a standing phrase in the ongoing debate on Berlin’s cultural developement for almost twenty years. It served as analysis and apology; as rational for demand and decline. Yet, what it this crisis all about?

Robert Helps Festival: Piano Extravaganza

The University of South Florida’s School of Music is in the midst of the fourth annual Robert Helps International Composition Competition and Festival. Each year, this event pays homage to Robert Helps (1928-2001), composer/pianist, who was a faculty member at USF and one of the key promoters of new music during the second half of the twentieth century. His music is best described as belonging to New Romanticism and he had a particular fondness for piano pieces. Each year there is a $10 000 prize awarded to the most promising composition by a young composer, as well as a performance of the winning work (this year’s winner was Lyudmila German, whose Piano Sonata No. 1 we heard played excellently by USF faculty member Svetozar Ivanov as the second half of tonight’s program).

To Widen the Spectrum of Possibilities: An Interview with Marios Joannou Elia

The young Cypriot composer Marios Joannou Elia talks about his compositions for unusual performance spaces, the challenges of working outside of the opera house and concert hall, and his upcoming projects. Elia, who has studied at the Mozarteum in Salzburg, is the recipient of the Witold Lutoslawski Award and the Kazimierz Serocki Prize in Warsaw, the Edison Denisov Prize in Moscow and the BMW Patronize Award of the Musica Viva in Munich. He received numerous commissions and his music has been performed in prestigious performance venues such as the Staatsoper Stuttgart, the Berliner Philharmonie, as well as the Staatsoper Hannover.

Grassroots Documentary

Derek Sivers, founder of CDBaby and ardent supporter of independent music and artists, has started a new initiative to help young musicians get ahead in the music business: Grassroots Documentary.

What is the new project about? Well, essentially Derek goes out with his video camera and produces short interviews with people from the music industry. In those short videos (ca. 10 minutes each) these insiders talk about how the business works and how artists can have an impact in today’s music world. The idea is that the more information young musicians have about the way the business works, the better they will be positioned to participate sucessfully in the music market.

An Endurance Test Successfully Passed: The Ives Vocal Marathon at Wesleyan University

The Ives Vocal Marathon at Wesleyan University in Middletown, Connecticut (Jan. 29 – Feb. 1) was so named to advertise its ambition and athleticism: five musicians performed the complete solo vocal works of Charles Ives across six concerts in a four-day “Festival Presentation.” The Marathon aimed for completeness—two hundred and one performances of one hundred and eighty-five songs, plus variants. Participating athletes included Neely Bruce, the Marathon’s pianist and music director, and four charismatic vocalists: baritone David Barron, tenor Gary Harger, mezzo soprano Elizabeth Saunders, and soprano Johanna Arnold. These five had been performing the songs together over a three-year span, refining the final festival program through—in Bruce’s words—“a rather agonizing process” of determining which variants required inclusion. This was an Ives intensive for an eager audience, featuring sophisticated interpretations by five tireless and devoted musicians.

We are listening to Istanbul

Istanbul is going to be European Capital of Culture in 2010 and in preparation of the big festivities zeitschichten.com is going to explore with you the New Music scene of Europe’s largest city. Over the next year or so we will introduce you to some of the most exiting new music that is being composed, improvised, and performed in Istanbul today.