COMPOSER-VOCALIST LISA BIELAWA
April 16, 2009— New York , NY —The American Academy in Rome announced today that Lisa Bielawa is a recipient of the 2009 Rome Prize in Musical Composition. Continue reading ‘COMPOSER-VOCALIST LISA BIELAWA’
New Issue: Elliott Carter — 100 Years
[This is only one excerpt from the complete Dotted Notes found in our magazine.]
From Leonard Lehrman:
The New York premiere Feb. 23, 2008 of Dark Heaven Angel by Garth Edwin Sunderland, Music Editor of the Leonard Bernstein Office and Artistic Director of the Lost Dog New Music Ensemble, was performed by solo cellist Eric Jacobsen, occasionally using two bows, and inadvertently assisted by car horns from outside Judson Memorial Church. The major work presented by said Ensemble also featured Mr. Jacobsen, and five players, conducted by Silas Huff, with solo dancer Dora Arreola, in Peter Maxwell Davies’s “Vesalii Icones,” a sensitive 14-part instrumental passion narrative from Gethsemane to the Resurrection, as inspired by 16th century drawings, De Humani Corporis Fabrica by Andreas Vesalius. Continue reading ‘Dotted Notes…’
by Larry Vide ©2008
Robert Moran: The Dracula Diary. Libretto (included) by James Skofield. Houston Grand Opera Studio. Catalyst/BMG Records. 09026-62638-2. (71:24)
Continue reading ‘Operatic Bats in the Belfry’
by BLC ©2008
Kyle GANN: Private Dances (2000-04); Hovenweep (2000); Time Does Not Exist (2000); The Day Revisited (2005); On Reading Emerson (2006). Sarah Cahill, piano; Da Capo Chamber Players. New Albion, NA 137. (70:46)
Continue reading ‘Moving Meditations’
by Leonard Lehrman ©2008
“The Unquiet Heart: American Song Cycles.” • Ronald Perera: Sleep Now • Libby Larsen: Try Me, Good King • Stephen Paulus: Songs of Love and Longing • Bruce Adolphe: A Thousand Years of Love. Karen Smith EMERSON, soprano; Arlene Shrut, piano. Albany/Troy 909. Time: 72:03 Continue reading ‘Le dernier cri de coeur’
CRITIC-AT-LARGE: Leonard Lehrman
Is The Rest Really Just Noise?
©2008
Alex Ross’s long-awaited book, The Rest Is Noise: Listening to the Twentieth Century (Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 2007, 624 pp., 21 photos, no musical examples), is the most ambitious overview of its kind since William Austin’s Music in the 20th Century (W.W. Norton, 1966, 708pp., 41 photos, many musical examples). Comparing the two may be instructive: Continue reading ‘CRITIC-AT-LARGE: Leonard Lehrman
Is The Rest Really Just Noise?’
Well, we sure are hearing quite a lot these days about those rotten apples turning our economy into a nightmare. One supposes that this is the news that sells; it certainly doesn’t help the economy to know all of that. We don’t hear nearly as much about real heroes, those among us whom we can claim as genuine national treasures regardless of the state of the national treasury. Continue reading ‘In This Issue (Vol.16#2)’
Robert Sherman, Debra Kaye, Carlton Wilkinson, Leonard Lehrman and Helene Williams, Arlene Gottfried, Eve Beglarian Continue reading ‘Bravi To …’
Musical Thoughts on the Lincoln Bicentennial (Feb. 12, 2009)
Copyright 2009 by Leonard J. Lehrman, Critic-at-Large
“There’s a brand-new wind a-blowin’ down that Lincoln road.” So wrote Langston Hughes, in 1940, words set to music by Elie Siegmeister (1909-1991) and published as the 181st and last song in his collection, A Treasury of American Song. And so sang The Metropolitan Philharmonic Chorus last month in Great Neck, Huntington, and Manhattan, at three of the 15 Elie Siegmeister Centennial concerts scheduled this year. As we welcome that “new wind” in Washington today, and commemorate the bicentennial of Abraham Lincoln’s birth this month, a look back at the music inspired by our 16th president would seem to be in order. Continue reading ‘Musical Thoughts on the Lincoln Bicentennial (Feb. 12, 2009)’
© Jan. 20, 2009 by Leonard Lehrman, Critic-at-Large, The New Music Connoisseur
I used to have a button, lost now these many years unfortunately, that said “I Was There, [at the] March on Washington, Aug. 28, 1963.” (Many are wearing similar buttons today, referencing the historic inauguration of a president whose rise that march helped make possible.)
I was there, with my father - and heard Dr. King’s historic speech of the century, “I Have A Dream.” I was there when it was transformed into one of the great choral works of the century, Elie Siegmeister’s cantata of the same name Continue reading ‘I Was There’
The Elie Siegmeister Centennial Concerts & CD
The Elie Siegmeister Centennial CD is here! — “a timely album of varied and eminently worthy discoveries” - Robert Sherman. Come hear the music of Elie Siegmeister - and his students - in 16 concerts planned for 2009. More …
The Prof. Edgar H. Lehrman Memorial Foundation and The Elie Siegmeister Society request contributions — letters, programs, recordings, anecdotes, and donations — toward the forthcoming bio-bibliography More …
