The melody had to come first.  Until he had it, composer John Corigliano waited — about 12 years — before accepting percussionist Evelyn Glennie’s commission for a new concerto. Corigliano admits that he’s a slow writer and that coming up with a fresh new tune isn’t easy.  But it didn’t really take him that all that time to string the notes together. The real challenge was whether or not a lyric, sustained line could be achieved from the vast battery of percussion instruments that better are at exploding than at singing.  Eventually the composer did find his magical answer...

Canadian composer Rodney Sharman has three new works debuting this month… First up is the world premiere of his new Violin Concerto on March 6 and 7 with soloist Jonathan Crow and the Victoria Symphony, conducted by music director Tania Miller.  Then on March 26 and 27, the same orchestra with guest conductor Alain Trudel premieres “Romantic Ideals.”  The pieces are the culmination of Sharman’s three-year residency with the orchestra.  Yet another premiere, “Song without Words” for English horn and orchestra, took place last season. Sharman’s third...

Nicholas Chase will be in good company this week at the Other Mind Festival in San Francisco.  He’s a composer fellow hobnobbing with Louis Andriessen and other more senior composers, all on hand for the week-long series of events, now in its 16th season. Nick is a Ph.D. candidate in the iEar program at Rensselaer Polytechnical Institute in Troy, NY. Though he’s been in the Capital Region for at least a couple of years now, he considers himself bi-coastal, with bases of operation also in the Bay Area and Seattle. A new project in California is the UFOrchestra – Unidentified Future...

The filmmaker, music producer and dancer Eva Soltes has been at work on a documentary about the late Lou Harrison for at least a decade (and it probably feels even longer to her).  The long awaited debut of “Lou Harrison: A World of Music” has finally been announced for Saturday, February 26 at the National Gallery in Washington DC.  A DVD release of the film is eventually planned. The premiere of “A World of Music” will take place the same week as two all-Harrison concerts, also in Washington: All-Harrison gamelan concert  by the Wesleyan University Gamelan, the Wesleyan...

Jennifer Higdon’s former student has become one of her latest and biggest champion.  The 31-year old violinist Hilary Hahn commissioned, premiered and recorded Higdon’s Violin Concerto, which won last year’s Pulitzer Prize for Music.  This month Hahn performs the work in Philadelphia and New York, with the Curtis Symphony Orchestra, Juanjo Mena, conductor: Monday, February 14 Verizon Hall, Kimmel Center Tuesday, February 15 Stern Auditorium, Carnegie Hall Click on the following picture to be taken to YouTube for videos of the pair talking about the Concerto: _____________________________________________________________________________________________________________ In...

On the Fox show “Glee,” the teenagers Kurt (Chris Colfer) and Blaine (Darren Criss) are an adorable young couple who aren’t drenched in shame, being beat up or suffering from a disease. Best of all, they sing to each other. Besides the positive nature of their portrayal, a touching part of this pair is that they’re members of the high school glee club.  Choirs – at school and church – were for me a safe haven from bullying as well as a place to begin to learn how to express myself and explore my artistic side. If only I could have flirted with the other choir buys...

December 30, 2010 marked the centennial of Paul Bowles, who died in 1999. Conferences and celebrations have already happened in Seville, Cologne, Lisbon, Boston and Tangier – where Bowles spent his last decades. A three-day “Celebration of Multi-Artistry” will take place in February at the University of California Santa Cruz. Best known as an author (“The Sheltering Sky”), Bowles was also a composer during his early career in Manhattan as well as a music critic under Virgil Thomson at the Herald Tribune. This event will give a special emphasis to his music as each day...

It’s no secret that British composer Thomas Ades is gay and if you research just a bit it’s easy to find that his partner is the video artist Tal Rosner. They collaborated in 2008 on a piano concerto with video, “In Seven Days.” The piece was performed January 6-8 by the New York Philharmonic, with Ades as soloist and music director Alan Gilbert conducting.  Unfortunately there’s no mention of the fact that they are partners on the Philharmonic’s website nor in Anthony Tommassini’s Times review (okay, maybe he didn’t know). But if these two were...

The New Yorker critic, best selling author and MacArthur fellow, Alex Ross released a new book in the fall, Listen to This. In the Preface, I say that the aim is to “approach music not as a self-sufficient sphere but as a way of knowing the world.”  I treat pop music as serious art and classical music as part of the wider culture; my hope is that the book will serve as an introduction to crucial figures and ideas in classical music, and also give an alternative perspective on modern pop. A more thorough introduction to the book is on Alex’s site The Rest is Noise, including iTunes...

In December the Manhattan School of Music gave three staged performances of Lee Hoiby’s “Summer & Smoke,” a 1971 adaptation of a Tennessee Williams piece with a libretto by Lanford Wilson. Anthony Tommasini in the Times gave a very positive review, especially of the work referring to the “sure dramatic pacing and understated expressivity, in music admirable for its directness and melodic grace” (When Youthful Desire Grows Into Regret).  Not surprisingly, James Jordon (Parterre Box) was harsher in his review for the New York Post saying the original Williams material...