Raise your hand if you can name a GLTB community orchestra. (And it doesn’t count if you or your spouse is a member of one!) Sure, there’s lots of gay choruses. Here in little Albany, New York we’ve actually go two. And GLTB marching bands usually show up out of the woodwork when it’s time for a parade. But gay orchestras?? Well, I can find ten.  They’re located in five countries, with two launched in just the past year, and three with word “rainbow” in their name.  Here’s the run-down: Mirna Ogrizovic-Ciric ATLANTA PHILHARMONIC ORCHESTRA (Atlanta,...

Douglas Quint can’t remember which came first in life, ice cream or music. But he’s made both into professional pursuits. As a bassoonist he’s got an active freelance career across the northeast and a fine pedigree, having studied at Tanglewood and earned a bachelors from the Manhattan School of Music and a masters from The Juilliard School.  He’s a member of the Pro Arte Chamber Orchestra of Boston and with his long-time ensemble, the Zephyros Winds, he’ll go on an Asian tour next month. But with last summer’s launch of the Big Gay Ice Cream Truck on the streets of Manhattan, he and...

Talk about bringing music to the people! Composer/performer Byron Au Yong is putting opera in bottles (no deposit required). At least that’s the impression given by the subtitle to a 2008 piece. But the work’s name – “Kidnapping Water: Bottle Operas” – is actually deceptive. Rather than mass-produced take-home music, the piece is more about making audiences go the distance. Like a musical Christo and Jeanne-Claude, the 39-year old Seattle-based composer created a series of 64 musical miniatures, each for a singer and a percussionist.  They’re mean to each be performed in...

Composer Robert Baksa readily admits that he writes music in which the underlying intelligence and rigor is not always apparent on first listen. And he’s comfortable with that — mostly. “A review of my first Flute Sonata said that the harmony was so simple it would make Mozart or Handel climb the walls,” Baksa says. “Actually, there’s polytonality in that piece, it just doesn’t sound that way.” Baksa’s newest CD, “Journeys” (MSR Classics), features more than an hour of flute and guitar music performed by the Heim Duo from Alabama. And it is, indeed, more warm and sweet...

“A guerrilla is someone who is sacrificing his life… Without blood there is no cause… I use (the term) Gay Guerrilla in the hopes that I might be one if called upon.” – Julius Eastman After Julius Eastman’s never-fully explained death in 1990, his legacy was thought to be lost.   Four years ago he was rescued from obscurity by the release “Unjust Malaise” (New World Records). The result of years of dogged research and recovery by composer Mary Jane Leach, the collection consisted of 3 CDs worth of archival concert recordings. This past fall, one...

Big classical music institutions (i.e. symphonies and opera companies) have long been on the Stephen Sondheim bandwagon and the occasion of his 80th birthday year (which is today–3/22/10) has been a great excuse for them to further horn in on the musical theatre domain, where the composer has excelled. But one classical pianist, Anthony de Mare, has come up with a fresh approach to celebrating Sondheim.  About five years ago, de Mare began talking with composer friends — and he knows lots of composers — about them making short (10 minutes or less) piano arrangements/reworkings/homages...

Call them the children of Kronos. No, not the Greek Titan, who ruled Earth and the heavens, but the Kronos Quartet, the San Francisco-based ensemble founded in 1973 that reinvented the string quartet. With an exclusive dedication to contemporary music — from minimalism to salsa — the Kronos created such a hip and flamboyantly costumed image that it was dubbed “classical music’s fab four.” Today, a healthy batch of young ensembles — string quartets and otherwise — show they are equally committed to 20th- and 21st-century music, as well as to presenting themselves...

British composer, conductor and pianist Thomas Ades, 39, is no stranger to Carnegie Hall. He and/or his music seems to be there multiple times every season lately.  And on Saturday March 27, he makes his piano recital debut in the big hall, Stern Auditorium. His program features a “concert paraphrase” (sounds like Liszt) of his own opera, “Powder Her Face” (1995).  Can’t forget that when the opera was performed in a semi-staged version at BAM in the late 90s, the biggest hook for news coverage was the oral sex scene. The rest of Ades’ program is wide ranging,...

“The Other Mendelssohn” is the name of musicologist R. Larry Todd’s latest book, a thorough-going biography of Fanny Mendessohn Hensel that uncovers lots of unknown material, perhaps most importantly about the large number of her own works as a composer. If you’re currently busy surfing the web, then you may be like me and not have sat down, turned off the media and read a good music biography in more than a while. So, in honor of Women’s History Month, the author has been good enough to give people like us some highlights of Fanny’s life and almost forgotten...

On the night of January 12 in Minneapolis, Jeffrey Brooks had a dream in which his friend and fellow composer Eleanor Hovda appeared, informed him that she had died, and urged him to pass on word to David Lang, another close friend and the co-founder of Bang on a Can in New York. Hovda had indeed passed away, exactly two months prior, after eight years of declining health and a three-month stay in a hospice in northern Arkansas.  Hovda, 69, shared a home in Fayetteville with her companion of 20 years, the conductor Jeannine Wagar. A native of Minnesota, Hovda spent much of her career in New York...