violinist Matt Albert and clarinetist Michael MaccaferriJennifer Higdon – winner of the 2010 Pulitzer Prize for Music – just had her latest major premiere, “On A Wire.” It’s a concerto for the contemporary ensemble Eighth Blackbird and was premiered last week with the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra and conductor Robert Spano, who’s been a longtime champion of Higdon. The performers have already...

As a trombonist and composer Monique Buzzarté has performed in traditional orchestras and chamber music settings and collaborated in the most advanced realms of new compositional and experimental techniques.  Based in New York, she was dubbed a “Soloist Champion” by Meet the Composer in 2008 for her long advocacy of contemporary works.  Since 1983, her project New Music from Women: Trombone has commissioned...

Jennifer Higdon can add the 2010 Pulitzer Prize to her ever-growing list of accolades. She received the award today for her Violin Concerto, which was premiered by soloist Hilary Hahn (her former student at the Curtis Institute) in 2009. It was commissioned by the Indianapolis Symphony, the Toronto Symphony Orchestra, the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra and The Curtis Institute of Music. The concerto is published by Lawdon Press,...

The St. Louis Symphony Orchestra and Chorus with music director David Robertson will premiere Meredith Monk’s newest orchestral work in a one-night-only performance on Saturday, March 13. Along with the as-yet-untitled piece, the program will feature Monk’s 3-minute hit “Panda Chant” (1984) and another work for orchestra and chorus, “Night” (1996/2005).  Monk and members of her vocal ensemble...

Pauline Oliveros has won the William Schuman Award from Columbia University. She’s the first woman composer to be so honored since the award was established in 1981.  The most recent winner was John Zorn in 2006. The prize “honors the lifetime achievement and lasting significance of a contemporary American composer” and comes with a $50,000 purse. A celebratory concert and tribute will be given in Miller Theater on...

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. ...

Chris Lastovicka swears that she never thought of the gay allegory in her opera about UFOs and alien abduction until I asked.  Maybe I’ve just been exposed to too much queer theory and too many “gay readings” of the Harry Potter books, in which the magically gifted (GLTB folks) are hopelessly lost among the muggles (straights). But the opera “Crossing the Horizon” is, after all, a collaboration between two lesbian...

Thanks to all of you who visit this site, My Big Gay Ears surpassed 5,000 hits today. That’s since launching in late September 2009. But only 13 comments?? Come on folks, let’s get some conversation going! I invite you to consider this posting an open forum for ideas and suggestions on how to build on the site, help promote out musicians, and encourage new talents — or whatever else you think MyBigGayEars...

Composer Pauline Oliveros’ trainings in Deep Listening are conducted in immersive retreat settings each summer and the locations are usually pretty spectacular, if remote. Participants bond over meals and recreation and begin morning and afternoon sessions in meditation.  In addition to Oliveros’ informal instruction, the new age-y atmosphere includes discussion and sharing, an introduction to Tai Chi, and sometimes...

An event on January 23 at Roulette in New York will mark the release of “Sounding Out,” a new DVD of works by six lesbian composers. Produced by Everglade Records, the collection features music by Madelyn Byrne, Renee T. Coulombe, Linda Dusman, Mara Helmuth, Kristin Norderval and Anna Rubin. “It is now ‘okay’ to come out as gay or lesbian,” writes Coulombe, in a statement about how the project was conceived....