March 15: DDT and Courtenay Budd will perform two song cycles: Lament for the Death of a Bullfighter and Miz Inez Sez (Symphony Space)

March 23: Four Hand Piano recital DDT and Marc Peloquin. DDT will premiere the big new solo Ray’s Birthday Suit. (The Barge under the Brooklyn Bridge)

March 25-26: American Opera Projects presents Haddock’s Eyes. (Galapagos Arts Space, Brooklyn)

March 29: Tilson Thomas and the San Francisco Symphony perform Syzygy with soprano soloist Kiera Duffy (Zankel Hall)

April 12: Felix Variations (world premiere), String Quartet No. 2 (NY Premiere), A Field Manual, performed by Felix Del Tredici, the Orion Quartet and the Fireworks ensemble with soloists Courtenay Budd and Michael Kelly. (Le Poisson Rouge)

Earlier this month the Detroit Symphony and conductor Leonard Slatkin performed “Final Alice” with soprano Hila Plitman.  Here are some choice excerpts from a review by Mark Stryker for the Detroit Free Press:

It’s not just that such an opulently tonal score — with its sing-songy Big Tune based on what critic Andrew Porter called a “Tea for Two” rhythm — was so contrarian in an era when high-modernist severity and purity ruled the roost. Or that the orchestration might have made Richard Strauss blush, with its gazillion strings, quadruple woodwinds, six horns, four trumpets, nine percussionists and a “folk group” of two soprano saxophones, accordion, mandolin and banjo.

Or that Del Tredici also employs a bullhorn and a theremin, whose campy electronic whine quavered whenever Alice grew or shrank. Or that the acrobatic demands placed on the narrator-singer-actor required superhuman agility, stamina and diction from amplified soprano Hila Plitmann, who delivered brilliantly. She sang Del Tredici’s luscious arias with soaring affection and shuffled personas like a demon to play Alice, the King and Queen of Hearts, the White Rabbit and the Gryphon.

No, in the end what was so striking was the crazy combustion. The sheer barrage of noise, crescendos, glissandos, multiple tempos and looking-glass distortions created a hubbub so self-indulgent that I kept saying: I can’t believe Del Tredici wrote that.

But as the King of Hearts intoned, we should start at the beginning. Del Tredici spent 20-plus years obsessing over Carroll’s “Alice” stories. “Final Alice” is his most grandiose vision, with texts drawn from the trial scene of “Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland” other Carroll stories and poems, as well as the Victorian verses that Carroll and others parodied. Don’t worry too much about the specifics. It’s messy. Deal. Dive in and sort it out later.

Then, on Thursday March 8 begins the latest and greatest installment yet of Michael Tilson Thomas and the San Francisco Symphony’s American Mavericks program.  Concerts and sundry special events large and small continue through the end of the month at Symphony Hall in San Francisco, in Ann Arbor, Chicago and in New York at Carnegie Hall.

The programs are an astounding mix of audacious music from the 20th and 21st centuries.  And of the 17 composers listed on the program’s website, 7 are gay or lesbian. So wouldn’t it be great if the conductor and visionary mastermind behind all of this was also out?!  Talk about an irony that someone who champions the daring and experimental is so timid and reserved.  (Honestly, if anyone can find documentation of MTT ever speaking to the gay press or otherwise being publicly out, please post it in the comments section for all to see.)

Anyway, for those of us not lucky enough to be in one of the chosen Maverick cities, there’s lots of cool stuff on the American Mavericks site.  And WQXR is dedicating most of the month of March to related programs on its contemporary music web station Q2 Music.

Here’s a teaser video from one of the most intriguing programs, bringing together vocalists Jesse Norman, Meredith Monk and Joan LaBarbara performing John Cage’s “Songbook.”  (Is anyone placing bets on whether Norman actually shows up for the performances?)

Sunday afternoon’s program featured something far better than a risky premiere.  Instead, it was Jennifer Higdon’s Violin Concerto, which was written in 2009 and received the 2010 Pulitzer Prize for Music.  That award doesn’t always mean enduring quality but Higdon’s concerto has got the stuff.

One of today’s most widely performed composers, Higdon writes in the current style that might be dubbed post-ugly.  The concerto, like most of her music, is lively, fluent and engaging, but also extraordinarily demanding on the players, both soloist and orchestra alike.

It was written for and recorded by star virtuoso Hilary Hahn, a former student of Higdon’s at the Curtis Institute.  Sunday’s soloist was another Curtis student, 21-year old Benjamin Beilman.  He’s the first performer to take up the work after Hahn and this was his debut in the piece. He delivered with distinction and flair.

The first movement’s cadenza is a genuine tour de force, with a pilling up of themes and showy devices.  Higdon, who spoke before the piece, said she wondered if it was actually playable but Beilman tackled it with ease and confidence

After a stretch of romantic relaxation in the central movement, based on the form of the chaconne, comes the finale, which Higdon likened to a violin in a race at the Olympics.  The hurdles on the track were the colorful explosions from the orchestra.  The Glens Falls players shined in the numerous brief solos.

Beilman’s encore, from Prokofiev’s Sonata, revealed one of his gifts that was largely missing from the hyperactive concerto, a warm radiant tone.

After intermission, Beethoven’s Symphony No. 6 “Pastoral” sounded like a different orchestra had taken the stage. The woodwinds were sour and out of tune at the launch of the first movement and the babbling brook of the second had a meager flow rate.  But Peltz added momentum with each movement and the playing got better for it.

Despite the struggles, or perhaps because of them, it was an engaging performance over all.  In other words, there was always something to listen for, good or bad, rather than just sitting through another accurate but rote account of the familiar classic.

Originally appeared in the Times Union.

IN OTHER HIGDON NEWS:

The long awaited opera (Higdon’s first) for the San Francisco Symphony will no longer be in San Francisco.  The Sante Fe Opera has stepped up to take on the commission.  After a long search for the right subject, and then a protracted negotiation for rights, the source material is in place:  ”Cold Mountain,” the best-selling novel by Charles Frazier.  The Opera Company of Philadelphia is a partner in the commission and production and the premiere is slated for 2015.

Here are more details from the Sante Fe Opera’s press release:

COLD MOUNTAIN – Jennifer Higdon, composer; Gene Scheer, librettist

2015 marks the 150th anniversary of the end of the Civil War.  Cold Mountain is Charles Frazier’s powerful account of one soldier, W. P. Inman, who deserts the Confederate army as the war is coming to an end and makes his way back to his home on Cold Mountain.  The novel won the 1997 National Book Award and was made into a film in 2003. The film was nominated for seven Academy Awards.

The Civil War has a special resonance for New Mexicans.  The New Mexico Territory was the site of one of the final and westernmost battles of the Civil War, fought at nearby Glorieta Pass in 1862.  Historians have called it a major event in the history of the Civil War.  The village of Pecos is the site of an annual reenactment of the skirmish.

Cold Mountain composer Jennifer Higdon is one of the most in-demand composers today.   She was awarded the 2010 Pulitzer Prize in Music for her Violin Concerto and a Grammy the same year for her Percussion Concerto. blue cathedral, written in 2000, on the death of her brother, has become one of the most performed modern orchestral  works.  Her compositions have been performed by leading orchestras throughout the country and she has received commissions from numerous instrumental ensembles.

The versatile American librettist and composer Gene Scheer is the librettist.  Among his many projects are several with composer Jake Heggie, the latest being Moby Dick for the Dallas Opera which was premiered in 2010.  He collaborated with Tobias Picker on two operas, An American Tragedy, premiered at the Metropolitan Opera, andTherese Raquin for the Dallas Opera.  He has written songs for singers including Renée Fleming, Sylvia McNair and Stephanie Blythe, and a song cycle, Voices from World War II for Nathan Gunn.

Nathan Gunn, who will sing the role of W.P. Inman, is one of the country’s leading operatic baritones.  He has performed in virtually every major opera house in the world and is admired as an interpreter of new works including operas by Tobias Picker, Daron Hagen, Andre Previn and Peter Eötvös.  He collaborated with Gene Scheer on the opera An American Tragedy, and the song cycle Voices from World War II.  Gunn is also a distinguished concert performer and recitalist.  He appeared in the 1998 production of Berlioz’ Beatrice and Benedict and the following year in Strauss’ Ariadne auf Naxos in Santa Fe.  He is currently Professor of Voice at the University of Illinois at Champaign-Urbana.

When it filed for bankruptcy earlier this year, the venerable institution became a sad symbol for the fragile state of the economy and the arts in general. Only the near demise of the New York City Opera — once an annual visitor to Saratoga — has been bigger news.

Meanwhile the orchestra keeps playing and awaits its young music director Yannick Nezet-Seguin, whose tenure is still more than a year from starting. It’s a period of transition for the annual summer residency at the Saratoga Performing Arts Center as well, after last year’s retirement of music director Charles Dutoit. It’s only logical to conclude that every guest conductor this season might also be auditioning.

Marin Alsop was a fine choice to lead Wednesday’s opening night (7/27/11). There’s her family history with the Spa City, but more importantly she has an obvious rapport with the players.

She launched the evening with a vivid account of Beethoven’s “Leonore” Overture No. 3. There were even more dramatic highs and lows in Tchaikovsky’s Symphony No. 6 in B minor, Op. 74 “Pathetique,” which ended the night.

Alsop, who conducted from memory, didn’t take long in bringing out the symphony’s bleeding heart. During the opening Adagio the strings surged as the winds pulsed. After the waltz in the second movement got going, she occasionally dropped the beat and just gave small jabs of accents to the cellos and basses or the brass. Throughout it all, Alsop seemed in firm command and yet allowed enough room for the players to achieve a state of raucous exultation.

A tight and lively reading of Bruch’s Violin Concerto No. 1 in G Minor, Op. 26 featured Sarah Chang as soloist. She displayed a characteristically impressive technique combined with a slightly austere tone. Though not exactly a warm presence on stage, Chang can be fun to watch, especially when she tilts so far backward while playing a long line. After ending some phrases in the final movement, she swung her bow down in a long arc, something like the pendulum of a clock.

The evening ended with an unexpected encore, one of Brahms’ Hungarian dances. Brief and fast, it was filled with light percussion in the Turkish style.

Previously on MyBigGayEars:

Marin Alsop: From the lawn to the podium

Singers never have it easy.  The volatile human body is their instrument and the change of seasons, allergies and drafty concert halls are not their friends.

But some special pity — and praise — must go to the sopranos who slave over the demanding works of living composers.

Over the last 10 years, soprano Hila Plitmann has become the go-to diva for composers with their grand visions.  She’ll be performing a piece of John Corigliano with the Albany Symphony on Saturday night at EMPAC, in a program that’s part of the orchestra’s annual American Music Festival.

“There’s the combination of looking at something that’s very demanding and also the fear of the unknown,” says Plitmann of her now familiar routine of reading through a brand new score. “Your stomach falls down 500 floors and I’ll say did I really sign the contract to do this? Holy crap!”

Even when a piece is familiar, it can be a trial.  Plitmann cites as an example her performance two weeks ago with the Pittsburgh Symphony and conductor Leonard Slatkin of David Del Tredici’s “Final Alice.”  Plitmann has become the soprano of choice for Del Tredici, who helped re-established a romantic style in American music, but who also seems to think sopranos are superhumans with voices that can hang out in a stratospheric range for minutes on end.

“It’s like running a fricking marathon on stage,” says Plitmann of “Final Alice,” just one of many Del Tredici works she’s sung and recorded.   “But I don’t care if he wants me to stand on my head naked. If it makes sense in the piece, then fine.  The structure and the inner connectivity of the music and the relationship to the dramatic idea behind the piece is so unified that it’s a masterpiece.”

Focusing on the vision and genius behind a score gets Plitmann through a lot.  Another recent example is her work with composer/conductor Thomas Ades.  In March they joined forces with the Boston Symphony Orchestra for excepts of his opera “The Tempest” and last month they were with the Los Angeles Symphony for the premiere of his setting of “The Importance of Being Ernest.”

“I sang the part of Ariel (in “The Tempest”) and most of the vocal music writing is just insane,” she says. “But there’s so much sense to the writing that it feels right.  It still doesn’t make it easy. It’s physically demanding but I find that very fulfilling.”

“The writing can be simple,” adds Plitmann, “but if it’s a bad piece, then it’s hard to sing because it doesn’t make sense or connect.”

Obviously this soprano knows the minds of composers.  Not only does she collaborate with them regularly, she’s married to one.  Her husband is Eric Whitacre, whose choral music has become hugely popular in recent years.

Add John Corigliano to the list of star composers who’ve come to count on Hila Plitmann.  The two first had a passing acquaintance when Plitmann was a student at Juilliard, where Corigliano teaches. (Whitacre and Plitmann also met at the famed Manhattan conservatory.)

A few years ago when Corigliano orchestrated his song cycle “Mr. Tambourine Man” (Sylvia McNair debuted the original version with piano) he turned to her for the recording.  The 2008 Naxos disc with the Buffalo Philharmonic won Plitmann a Grammy Award for best classical vocal performance.

As part of his residency with the Albany Symphony, Corigliano will be on hand Saturday when Plitmann sings his “Vocalise.” (The concert is also being recorded for future release on disc.) The piece was written for the New York Philharmonic and debuted in 1999 as part of a set of new works by various composers titled “Messages for the Millennium.”

Plitmann doesn’t seem to rank the wordless “Vocalise” in the category of her most difficult repertoire.  But it has its challenges, namely technology.  Corigliano calls on the soprano to sing both with and without amplification, his message for the millennium being that the palette of the orchestra should expand to include electronics.

“He decided to do this crazy surround sound,” explains Plitmann. “There’s just one microphone on the soprano but the amplification incorporates all these sounds and techniques which surround the audience. There’s the sense that he uses technology as another expressive tool and that reflects the time we live in.”

Conductor Leonard Slatkin, soprano Hila Plitmann, and composer David Del Tredici after the recent performance in Pittsburgh of Del Tredici's "Final Alice." (photo courtesy Doug Bauman)

Originally appeared in the Times Union, Albany, NY

Previously on My Big Gay Ears:

John Corigliano: Searching for a Tune

The beautiful, terrifying music of John Corigliano

Albany Symphony Orchestra
David Alan Miller, conductor
Nathan De’Shon Myers, baritone
Carnegie Hall, May 10, 2011

How appropriate that a festival called Spring for Music resulted in a new blossoming sound of an orchestra. It was the Carnegie Hall debut of the Albany Symphony Orchestra, a reprise of an all-American program titled “Spirituals Re-Imagined.”  A great accomplishment long in the planning, the concert should make music director David Alan Miller and the community that supports his efforts immensely proud.

A more than respectable-sized audience turned out, including about 500 devoted fans from the Capital Region as well as a substantial number of New Yorkers, many from the music business. They could hardly have asked for a more incisive or energetic evening.

Even to those who have already had extensive exposure to the orchestra, the famous hall revealed many strengths.  There was gusto and enthusiasm, plus accuracy and insight — assets already present at most ASO outings.  New was the expansive space that allowed a welcome breathing room for Miller’s always big ideas and the player’s often meaty sound.

In Copland’s “Appalachian Spring,” which ended the night, the strings went from vigorous to consoling and back again.  Miller took the famous “Simple Gifts” theme at a good clip yet clarinetist Susan Martula and oboist Karen Hosmer maintained both clarity and delicacy.

George Tsontakis’ “Let the River Be Unbroken,” the opener, began and ended with violinist Gregor Kitzis as a strolling fiddler.  Yet the stand out string playing came from concertmaster Jill Levy, who dug heartily into a brief solo.  Though the passage was full of weird harmony it felt right in the hazy, fun collage of a piece.

Another memorable moment in the Tsontakis was a gentle swell from the brass. Otherwise, they didn’t exactly hold back.  Their climaxes in the Copland were terrific, full bodied but not blaring.  Again, the hall had something to do with that.

Principal trumpet Eric Berlin obviously relished his sassy solo at the end of Stephen Dankner’s “Wade in de’ Water,” played with a mute and in a jazzy talking style.

That came at the end of the set of eight spirituals, with baritone Nathan De’Shon Myers.

Some of the variety and detail in the spirituals was lost this time and Myers’ performance was compelling but uneven.  Whether it was because of the size of the hall or the volume of the orchestra, he had to work hard and tended to over sing at points.  He did rally for that rousing finale though and it prompted a spontaneous standing ovation.

Speaking of applause, the three curtain calls at the end of the night seemed to affect Miller, who acknowledged his players and his audience with equal fondness.

Originally published in the Times Union, Albany, NY

Read more about the ASO in New York at HudsonSounds.org

Dallas Symphony Orchestra
Jaap Van Zweden, conductor
Carnegie Hall, May 11, 2011

The Dallas Symphony Orchestra’s May 11 concert at Carnegie Hall was the only program in the Spring for Music Festival that featured a single work. “August 4, 1964” was written by composer Steven Stucky and librettist Gene Scheer and premiered in Dallas in September 2008. Best described as an oratorio, it commemorates the centennial of President Lyndon Johnson by focusing on two pivotal events — one having to do with civil rights, the other with the advance of the Vietnam War — which occurred in a single day.

While the sheer scale of the undertaking must surely be a point of pride for the DSO, the piece itself seemed a curious choice for a festival meant to showcase orchestras. During the performance, lead by music director Jaap Van Zweden, the orchestra’s presence fell low in prominence. There was also the huge, all-volunteer Dallas Symphony Chorus plus four vocal soloist.

The over arching presence, though, was of the themes of race, war and corruption that are still a long way from being resolved in the American psyche. Granted that’s big stuff for an orchestra to take on. Yet it never felt that the eighty-minute piece elevated the discussion.

Scheer’s libretto, drawing extensively on historical documents, deals with prejudice and murder in the south and cataclysmic events in southeast Asia, all amidst the mundaneness of a busy day in the White House. Almost none of it called out for music. Stucky’s settings were either literal and obvious or melodramatic and overwrought.

For a tribute to LBJ, the creators didn’t give the guy many points, casting him as someone at the mercy of events beyond his control and making decisions based on incomplete and inaccurate intelligence. A short scene early on did nicely depict several aspects of Johnson’s persona, including his confident swagger, distaste for intellectuals and slight paranoia. Baritone Rod Gilfrey gave his performance erratic bits of a Texas accent. Yet as the piece progressed, the role seemed to fall uncomfortably into the upper reaches of his range. This, combined with a slow cadence to the words, shrank the president into someone uncomfortable in his office, if not his own skin.

Contrast this with tenor Vale Rideout as a shrieking and hysterical, chicken little of a defense secretary (Robert McNamara). The other soloists, soprano Indira Mahajan and mezzo Kristine Jepson, portrayed the mothers of slain civil rights activists who mostly grieved and sobbed. All four principals were attired in dignified clothes from the early 60s. The text was projected, line by line, onto the wall above the stage.

It fell to the chorus and the orchestra to briefly infuse the evening with poetry and eloquence. Near the opening, the chorus sang portions of a poem by Stephen Spender, set in a conservative style, reminiscent of Randall Thompson. The chorus, prepared by Donald Krehbiel, sang with outstanding clarity and warmth.

Less moving was a lengthy elegy for orchestra positioned at the dead center of the work. Though hushed and deftly scored, its modest melodic contours felt like little more than a respite amidst the hollow frenzy of the night.

Orpheus Chamber Orchestra
Thursday April 28, 2011
Troy Savings Bank Music Hall

There was magic to be heard, but little slight of hand to watch on Thursday night at the Troy Savings Bank Music Hall.  The occasion was a concert of the Orpheus Chamber Orchestra, in a return presentation by the Troy Chromatics.

With up to 33 players onstage but no official leader, one expected to see more demonstrative gestures — nods of the head, swaying bodies, jiggly eyebrows — than there actually was.  The group is now in its 39th season of tackling large and small works without an overlord conductor to keep everybody together.

Orpheus has a democratic system of decision making, but in the midst the music there’s no time for a vote and someone has to give cues that say things like “Now!”   Somehow the varied program of works kept happening, often beautifully, though the players’ inner workings were usually subtle to imperceptible.

Violinist Arabella Steinbacher was the guest soloist in three pieces.

Hartmann’s Concerto Funebre dates from 1939 and commemorates the Nazi annexation of Czechoslovakia.  The emotional affects of war are present in practically every bar, especially the austere opening passages, which brought to mind Schoenberg’s haunting “Survivor from Warsaw.”  And yet the actual writing was not particularly jagged or angular at all. It was the orchestration and the sentiment, as well as the restrained but searing performance, that gave it such an edge.  The ironic and slashing Allegro evoked many similar movements by Shostakovich.

Steinbacher’s tone blossomed over the course of the evening, from a cool clear line in the opening of the Hartmann to a shade brighter by its end.  Then after intermission, she was full of color and warmth in the rippling strains of Mozart.

The evening began with 13 wind players in Richard Strauss’ Serenade, Op. 7.  An early work, it was tuneful, uncharacteristically light, and well played.  Maybe the four horns did take some advance in the first crescendo.

Haydn’s Symphony No. 104 in D Major ended the program with a full stage and a full sound. The first chair violinist raised his bow extra high to launch key moments. But Haydn’s playful scoring became darned fun to follow as the rhythms and tunes jumped unexpectedly between sections. Since there were no obvious visuals to track, it was now the audience working without the aid of a conductor.

Two quick movements from Handel’s Water Music were offered as an encore.

Albany Symphony Orchestra
David Alan Miller, conductor
with Nathan De’shon Myers, baritone
Friday, April 29, 2011
Troy Savings Bank Music Hall

Friday’s concert of the Albany Symphony Orchestra at the Troy Savings Bank Music Hall was no mere local try out, but a thoughtful program handsomely played.  Nevertheless a repeat performance on May 10 was on the minds and tongues of many.  That’s when the ASO will make its Carnegie Hall debut.

It’s worth being explicit:  almost anybody with the dough can rent Carnegie and then boast forever after that they played there. The ASO was selected by the hall to be part of the first Spring For Music, a festival of innovative American orchestras.

After nine years of covering the orchestra, no other particular evening of works comes to mind as a better snapshot of what David Alan Miller has forged over his 19-year tenure. The opener was a 1994 piece by George Tsontakis, a local composer of international renown. Next were eight selections from “The Spirituals Project,” a brilliant two-year commissioning effort. After intermission came a beloved American classic, Copland’s “Appalachian Spring.”

An all-American night certainly isn’t a rarity with the ASO, but more typically the wrap-up to a concert is some European masterpiece, large or small.  Miller expends most of his time in the outback of American repertoire, commissioning new works from younger composers and, less frequently, reviving things from the mid-20th century.  Hearing the Copland felt like the ASO was rightfully claiming prime real estate.

Playing the full ballet score, rather than the familiar suite, kept the ears alert for lesser known passages and changes in orchestration.  Just as the ASO usually ends a night wringing every bit of life from a symphony, this performance often bordered on the raucous, with meaty brass, heavy percussion and full-bodied strings.

Baritone Nathan De’shon Myers has a more mature sound and greater interpretative depth than when he premiered the spirituals in 2004-2005. The pieces themselves remain compelling.  Far more than arrangements, most are mini-dramas and several evoked the era of the Iraq War.

Tsontakis’ “Let the River Be Unbroken” is a delightful weaving together of Appalachian folk songs with hazy instrumental effects reminiscent of Ives.  It begins with a fiddler in the back out the house who plays as he walks down the aisle.  I’m looking forward to hearing and reporting how this and the rest of the program sounds in Carnegie Hall.

Twenty-five year old Cleveland violinist

What’s a typical workday for you?
Work for me consists of practice, emails, discussing career plans and engagements with my manager, cleaning the apartment, making sure the laundry and vacuuming are done (an OCD behavior of mine), and any interviews/press.

Do you have a workspace in your home or do you need to leave the house?
One of the bedrooms serves as a practice area, and I keep my sheet music and violin in there.  However, the stage is my true work space, and that requires travel!

How much do you travel for your work? Do you find it stimulating or a hassle?
I travel about 25 weeks per year, and have experienced enough airplane delays/cancellations for a lifetime.

Do you keep up with technology?  What tools work for you and which ones have you found to be overrated?
My Blackberry is always with me, and I am in love with my MacBook.  However, the time apart from both on planes and on vacation cannot be valued enough!

Have you ever experienced discrimination in the music business because of your sexuality?
Everyone in the music and theatre business is gay or bi-curious.

Ever gotten any advantages because of your sexuality?  How about being invited onto “the casting couch”?
I have many gay friends in the industry, including conductors.  I like to think that my talent and hard work lead to more opportunities, but if someone likes how I look, that’s okay, too!

Are you single or coupled?
There is a beautiful person in my life

Do you give PDAs? (public displays of affection)
Depends on how much wine I have had, but I am not to hide how I feel.  I’m a big hugger.

What’s on your bed table?
A Leonard Bernstein biography, a couple of CD’s, and a few more intimate things.

What TV shows do you watch?
HGTV ‘Househunters’, Desperate Housewives, The View, Oprah, and yes, Keeping Up with those pesky Kardashians.  I especially love The View and Barbara Walters…I wish I could perform on their show.

Is there a relationship between your sexuality and your creativity?
My inspiration and musical ideas come from my life experiences, education, and interactions – everything is interconnected.  My emotions and visceral reactions tied to music aren’t dissimilar to the feelings from my sexuality.

What’s the gayest musical thing you’ve ever done?
Performing in the pit band for a local production of Seussical the Musical.

Where did you grow up and has that affected your sensibilities as a musician?
Cleveland, Ohio. Hearing the world-reknowned Cleveland Orchestra and having the Cleveland Institute of Music down the road were two luxuries I am thankful for!  I like to think I have a big city mentality with Midwestern sensibility.

What’s the best arts/entertainment experience you’ve had in the past year (as an audience member)?
Seeing Itzhak Perlman rehearse with the New York Philharmonic, and being moved to tears by his honest playing, presence, and sheer connection with the music.  It was a spiritual experience.

Who was your most influential teacher and why?
That is like asking a parent to pick a favorite child.  Liza Grossman started me on the violin and gave me the inspiration and deep sound in my ear. David Russell instilled a sense of polish and practice standard.  Linda Cerone took me through the repertoire and changed my playing level 180 degrees.  And Chee-Yun focused on commitment, reaching the core of the music, and delivering every night on tour.

Do you like to collaborate or be the boss?
I’ve always said I’m versatile.

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 and the piece — titled “Conjurer” — premiered in 2007.  It will be performed on Saturday night by Glennie and the Albany Symphony Orchestra with David Alan Miller conducting at the Troy Savings Bank Music Hall.  The same forces will make a recording for Naxos.

“Like with any other concerto, I wanted people to come out of a performance and have a melody that they could remember,” says Corigliano. “But I just didn’t know if I could do that.  Usually after a percussion concerto I’m dazzled yet can’t remember any music, just flourishes and bangs.”

Corigliano recalls a decade or so of running into Glennie at various music festivals and events and how she kept pestering him for a concerto.  It was only after he thought of a new way of playing the marimba that he accepted.

The strips of wood that make up the marimba are typically struck with mallets of various sizes and weights.  But they can also deliver a haunting, ringing tone when a bow — the kind used by a violinist or cellist — is slowly drawn across the blunt end.

After coming up with the notion of striking and bowing the marimba at the same time, Corigliano tested it with some students at Juilliard where he teaches. Satisfied with the results, he finally began writing the concerto, which is about half an hour long.  The elusive melody arrives in the second of its three movements.

Corigliano may be best known for his opera “The Ghosts of Versailles,” which premiered at the Met in 1991, and his score to the 1998 film “The Red Violin,” for which he won an Academy Award. He is the only composer besides Aaron Copland to have received an Oscar as well as the Pulitzer Prize.

Though one of today’s most popular composers, Corigliano is hardly a factory of hits.  He will write short things for fun or special occasions.  Examples are his current project to honor conductor Marin Alsop’s 20-year tenure at the Cabrillo Festival, and there’s also the set of three cabaret songs with comic lyrics by Mark Adamo, his husband and the composer of the hit opera “Little Women.”

But as with the percussion concerto, he accepts a major new commission only when the project posses a good challenge and he already sees a solution.

“I start from the beginning with, why are you writing this and what do you want to accomplish that’s a new fresh direction?” he says. “Then I map out an entire piece. I refine it and refine it until it’s like a blue print for an architect.”

Corigliano is no avant gardist — he has that fondness for a good melody — yet he’s gone in some surprising directions.  In 1997 he wrote a piece for two pianos tuned a quarter-tone apart.  Also in the late ‘90s when the New York Philharmonic commissioned a piece to mark the new millennium, he added a soprano and electronics to the orchestral pallet.  That piece, “Vocalise,” will be performed by the ASO on May 21 at EMPAC.

He’s also a dabbler, fixing and revising a piece until it’s just right.  That process has continued with the Percussion Concerto.  The orchestral accompaniment was originally all strings, but he’s recently added a compliment of 12 brass players to the finale.

“This is an unusual concerto, it’s intimate, not just all banging,” he say. “But in the last movement, when Evelyn really gets going on those tam tams and drums, she completely drowns out the strings.”

Again, always looking for solutions to musical problems, he added brass.

“A regular orchestra always has the brass players.  They’d just be backstage playing cards.  So why not have them come out and give the orchestra a boost?” says the composer.  Yet the sudden addition of brass became a major new budget item for the Albany Symphony Orchestra. “It’s not like the Philharmonic, where the brass are just there,” acknowledges the composer.

Corigliano’s first hearing of the revision will be in Thursday’s rehearsal. But there’s no guarantee it will be performed on Saturday

“If I don’t like it in rehearsal, we’ll cut it,” says the composer. “David Alan Miller will probably be livid because he had to hire all these extra people. So I hope I like it!”

Originally appeared in the Times Union, Albany, NY

Previously on My Big Gay Ears:

The beautiful, terrifying music of John Corigliano

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

Sharman’s third March premiere is “Notes on ‘Beautiful.’”  Based on a song from “Sunday in the Park with George,” it’s a short piano work that’s part of Anthony de Mare‘s program of tributes to Stephen Sondheim.  The premiere is March 5 at the Banff Center.

A resident of Vancouver, Sharman has also held residencies with the National Youth Orchestra of Canada and the Vancouver Symphony Orchestra. He’s collaborated extensively with choreographer James Kudelka, writing four different scores for his work at various U.S. and Canadian ballet companies.

Sharman, 52,  says that there’s an occasional gay current in his works, such as the 1998 opera “Elsewhereless,” with a libretto by the filmmaker Atom Egoyan.  And then there’s “gay humor” in cabaret songs, including “Wooden Shoes,” about his Dutch ex-husband, and “Crossing Over” about a straight cross dresser.