NOTE: This is not yet the final updated list that you received in the handout at Saturday's session. I will update this entry to reflect that information early this week. I'll also work on making the weblinks active so you can go to the websites directly from this entry. Again, that will take a couple of days. Happy hunting!

Recommended resources for information, leads on new piano music


Pianists

Gloria Cheng
www.gloriacheng.com

Eve Egoyan
www.eveegoyan.com

Marino Formenti
www.marinoformenti.com

Ursula Oppens
http://www.colbertartists.com/ArtistBio.asp?ID=41

Marilyn Nonken
www.marilynnonken.com

Lisa Moore
www.lisamoore.org

Stephen Drury
www.stephendrury.com

Sarah Cahill
www.sarahcahill.com

Kathleen Supove
www.supove.com


Other resources to learn about new music:


New Music Box: the E-zine of the American Music Center:
www.newmusicbox.org

Alex Ross:
blog: www.therestisnoise.com
book: The Rest is Noise # Hardcover: 640 pages
# Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux; First Edition edition (October 16, 2007)
# Language: English
# ISBN-10: 0374249393




John Adams: China Gates (1977) www.schirmer.com
John Adams: American Berserk (2001) About American Berserk
Boosey and Hawkes Piano. 15 pages. Published by Boosey & Hawkes (HL.48019656).
ISBN 1423449517.

The Carnegie Hall Millenium Piano Book (Andriessen, Rzewski, Carter, Harbison and others) (Book/CD). By Various. Piano. BH Piano. Book with CD. 104 pages. Boosey & Hawkes #M051246175. Published by Boosey & Hawkes (HL.48002532).


Rain Tree Sketch
(for Piano). By Toru Takemitsu (1930-1996). This edition: SJ01010. Schott. 6 pages. Published by Schott Music (HL.49042583).
ISBN 489066310X. .

Rain Tree Sketch II
(In memoriam Olivier Messiaen - for Piano). By Toru Takemitsu (1930-1996). This edition: SJ01072. Schott. 8 pages. Published by Schott Music (HL.49042645).
ISBN 489066372X. .


Steven Stucky
Album Leaves -- 8'
Piano
Published: #140-40098
Theodore Presser company
www.presser.com

Judith Weir: The King of France
Chester/Novello
www.chesternovello.com



Etudes for Piano - Volume 1
(Etudes pour piano, premier livre). By Gyorgy Ligeti (1923-). For solo piano (Piano). This edition: ED7989. Schott. 56 pages. Published by Schott Music (HL.49007687).ISBN 3795795176.


Frederic Rzewski's autograph scores free on Icking Music Archive:
http://icking-music-archive.org/ByComposer/Rzewski.php

Just spent a day and a half up in Charlotte, visiting my mom and playing a house concert on Sunday afternoon...this morning we popped into the Jerald Melberg Gallery on Sharon-Amity Road (near intersection with Providence Road) to see a small but powerhouse exhibition of very recent works by the South Carolinian artist Brian Rutenberg, now based in New York City. Rutenberg's vivid abstract paintings, inspired by the natural imagery of the Low Country, are almost too intense to be fully appreciated in the intimate space at Melberg. Maybe it just seems that way to me because I'm recalling the extraordinary retrospective of this (still quite young) artist at the State Museum in Columbia in 2006, in a much larger and airier space. I became a fan through seeing that show, and the fact that Rutenberg turned out to be a fellow Glenn Gould fanatic cinched the deal for me (when the Nickelodeon Theatre played "32 Short Films About Glenn Gould" three years ago, Rutenberg was on hand to introduce the film and the effect Gould's legacy and example had on his own life as a creative artist).

Anyway, this is a marvelous show and is up only until the end of this week, so if you are in Charlotte or have reason to be there this week, don't miss it. Here is more information from the Jerald Melberg Gallery website. And if you do see this exhibit, make sure you have lunch or dinner next door at Eddie's. And for that matter, you're not far at all from the Mint Museum on Randolph Road, which has a big show up (until late June) of masterworks from the New Orleans Museum of Art.

Opera at USC does not easily shy away from challenges. Several years ago they made a solid go at Benjamin Britten's "Rape of Lucretia", more recently they very successfully tackled Kurt Weill's "Threepenny Opera" and Dominick Argento's "Postcard from Morocco," none of which are easy fare for undergraduate or even graduate-level vocal students. By doing these kinds of works, the opera program not only benefits its students who grow musically and artistically through these "trials-by-fire" but the Columbia community, which then gets the opportunity to hear important works that go beyond the more familiar operatic classics. The cultural life of our city is enhanced immeasurably, especially because the students tend to do such a good job, the productions intriguing and often immensely entertaining within limited resources, thanks to the ingenuity and talents of opera director Ellen Douglas Schlaefer, who joined the faculty several years ago. [full disclosure: my wife Lynn Kompass is the vocal coach and responsible for the singers' musical preparation for Opera at USC].

Opera at USC's tradition of boldness continues this weekend, with three performances of Ned Rorem's very new opera, "Our Town," based on the play by Thornton Wilder. Composers from Aaron Copland to Leonard Bernstein had sought to adapt this classic play over the years, but the Wilder estate never granted the rights to do so, until Rorem. The opera, like the play, is designed to be staged with a minimum of "stuff," and was written with small opera companies and high-quality university opera departments in mind. In fact, it was commissioned by and premiered at Indiana University in 2006 with other schools such as the North Carolina School of the Arts as co-commissioners. More recently, the Juilliard Opera Center has produced "Our Town," and other opera companies from Kansas City to Idaho are taking it on.

Certainly with over 500 art songs to his credit, one cannot think of another living American composer who knows more about writing for the voice than Ned Rorem. (Next month Susan Graham and Orpheus premiere a new cycle of songs with chamber orchestra). But there are other sides to his prolific output; for one thing, he has produced an enormous body of work in the chamber music realm. Rorem is one of those composers who, because they stuck to working within a tonal framework throughout the second half of the century, were thought of as "conservative" and not necessarily part of the discussion of who the important American composers of our time have been. But now, in the wake of the anti-modernist revolt led first by the minimalists and then by the eclecticists and post-modernists, we're starting to listen with fresh ears to a lot of composers from those years that may have been unfairly pigeonholed.

I mention this in conjunction with Rorem because recently I heard his suite "Ariel" on poems by Sylvia Plath, written for soprano, clarinet, and piano in 1971, and performed to devastating effect at USC by soprano Tina Milhorn Stallard, clarinetist Joseph Eller, and my wife Lynn on piano. I kept thinking that in 1971 this music was probably not academically thorny ("crunchy" has become a favorite term for this music among musicians) enough to avoid derision in those circles; but the reaction to that modernism had not yet really taken hold by that time. Result: a work like "Ariel" falls through the cracks, and yet: a lot of it is very spiky, and today sounds pretty darn challenging at times, in fact, a heck of a lot bolder than a lot of music I hear from some rather prominent young composers today. Moreover, when Rorem uses relatively transparent tonality in this cycle (the second song, I think) it can be even more crushing, especially when juxtaposed with the darkness, the ache of Plath's poetry.

I know a little bit of Rorem's other works but that "Ariel" experience doubled my appetite to hear this USC production of a work written nearly 40 years later. Indeed, at 85 Rorem shows little sign of slowing down. There's so much that he has written that I feel now I'd like to catch up on; if you are in Columbia or anywhere near it, don't miss this opportunity both to hear a new work from this American master and at the same time to experience another example of the good work that Opera at USC does, year after year. It's a program eminently worthy of your support, something we can be very proud of in this town.

For an interesting overview into the opera from the composer himself, plus librettist J.D. McClatchy, and Thornton Wilder's nephew Tappan (was his middle initial "Z"?), check this link out from Indiana University's original production.

Opera at USC's performances of "Our Town" will take place at the Longstreet Theatre on the USC campus, at the intersection of Sumter and Greene streets. The shows are Thursday, April 23 at 7:30 PM; Friday, April 24 at 7:30 PM; and Sunday, April 26 at 3 PM. Call 803-777-0058 for tickets, or try at the door but seating is very tight at Longstreet so get there early.

[photo: Ned Rorem at Indiana University, 2006; credit: Indiana University]


.

...between now and early June...

...Schubert Adagio and Rondo Concertante, Brahms C Major Piano Trio, Berg 4 Pieces for clarinet and piano Op. 5, Prokofieff Overture on Hebrew Themes, Dvorak 3 Slavonic Dances for piano 4 hands, Brahms 6 Pieces Op. 118, Schumann Adagio and Allegro for cello and piano, Beethoven Op. 69 Cello Sonata in A Major, Brahms A minor Trio (clarinet, cello, piano) Op. 114, Suite by Olssson (Swedish composer) for clarinet and piano, Beethoven Sonatas Nos. 5, 6, AND 7 for violin and piano, Terry Riley's Heaven Ladder Book 7. 

In this week alone we've seen the players in two major American orchestras take significant pay cuts: the St. Paul Chamber Orchestra, and just announced, the Atlanta Symphony. Atlanta's cut is in the area of 5 percent, but for the coming season, SPCO's is a whopping 12%. This is starting to emerge as a national trend, as orchestras fight for survival in tough economic times. The question is, if some of the higher-paid orchestras in the nation take salary cuts to survive, will their salaries take a quantum leap back up once an economic recovery is in place? I'm betting not, rather that this represents a longer-term trend. The good news in all of this is that management in both cases is taking even larger cuts in pay, conductors too. It seems to me that the glut in the number of musicians produced by American music schools inevitably must bring the "price" of an American symphony musician downward. That it has not really done so up to now has been, I think, due to the general economic growth of the 1990's which masked this underlying phenomenon. Now that the economic crisis is threatening the very existence of several orchestras (whose salary structure, after all, is not strictly based on consumer demand, i.e., ticket sales)  the reality of permanently lower salaries for orchestral musicians is here to stay, I believe.

I don't really worry about the players in places like St. Paul or Atlanta, who will still be making a good living. Speaking from a regional perspective, I do however continue to feel bad for the players in Charlotte, who work hard, are fine, well-trained musicians, live in what has been (until the recent banking bust) an obscenely booming city, and whose base pay is under $38,000. Or the players in Charleston...yes, that orchestra tends to hire young players fresh out of music school who often use it as a first job on the way to a better-paying one...but the latest round of cuts leaves most of them making under twenty grand. That's no living.

Update 4/9: Each day brings new word of orchestras "voluntarily" agreeing to pay cuts; today's news is from the Utah Symphony, where the agreed-to cut for this year is 11.5%...again, projected to be a one-time thing but one wonders. Meanwhile here in the Midlands, this week's Free Times has an excellent cover story and must-read on cutbacks in arts funding locally, with a roundtable discussion with representatives from the music, visual arts, and theatre scenes.