CONTENTS

IN THIS ISSUE ..., 3
BIOGRAPHY: Richard Rivera,4
BRAVI TO ..., 4

An Interview with George Walker,  Duffie, 5

LEGATO NOTES
No Restin’ at the Westin: The Busy CMA Conference, 2004  Kaufman, 6

LIVE EVENTS
In Brevity There Can Be Wisdom McBride, 9
Cosi Fan Tutte? Non Piu   McBride, 9
Ending with a Bang!  Liechty, 10
U.S.-Antillean Echoes Back and Forth
     de Clef Piñeiro, 10
Myriad Musical Minds  Cleary, 11
Music Without “Reason”   Cleary, 12
O que Orquesta tan rica!  de Clef Piñeiro, 12
The Long and the Short of It  Cleary, 13
“Intruder” in the Musical Landscape  Kroll, 13
Putting Harrison into Context  Pehrson, 14
Fiddler on the Roof of Technology  BLC, 14

Scelsi: “All of the Above”  Pehrson, 15
Marriage, Murder and Masochism   BLC, 16
…and So…they Played   Liechty, 17

DOTTED NOTES from…
Frank Retzel; Jon Liechty; John de Clef Piñeiro; Mark Greenfest; Peter Kroll; BLC, 17

SPEAKING OUT
LETTERS, 19
OP-ED  BLC, 19

RECORDINGS
An Ancient Instrument in Today’s World
      Kroll, 21
From Britain and Britten et al with Love
      Mitrano, 21
Setting the Themes  BLC, 21
Sax Act  Mitrano, 22

CDS IN BRIEF & RECENT RELEASES
Luis Antonio Escobar: Canticas y Madrigales       BLC, 22
Igor Stravinsky: FIREWORKS
      BLC, 23

THE PUZZLE CORNER:
Another outstanding winner, 24

COMPOSER INDEX, 26

BULLETIN BOARD, 27

WEB SUPPLEMENT

Gala Announcement

Who Will Be the Next New Music Champion? The Envelope, Please!
Gala 2004 will feature three new awards and celebrate with music, music, music!

Festival

Dresdener Tage des Zeitgenössisches Musik

Myriad Musical Minds

by David Cleary ©2004

‘Dancing With Dinosaurs.’ Milton Babbitt: Homily (1987) • Margaret Brouwer: Chamber Concerto (Mvt. II, 1991) • Peter Flint: Migratory Routes (Mvts. III and V, 2002) • Charles Fussell: Piano Trio (1999) • Aaron Jay Kernis: Mozart En Route (1991) • Eric Moe: On the Tip of My Tongue (Mvt. IV, 1993) • David Rakowski: Twofer (n.d.) • Elena Ruehr: The Law of Floating Objects (2000) • Scott Wheeler: Brief Glimpses (n.d.). Dinosaur Annex Music Ensemble and Nicola Hawkins Dance Company. Tsai Performance Center, Boston University, Boston, MA. November 14-15, 2003 (*denotes world premiere)

The Dinosaur Annex Music Ensemble’s unusual name stems from its initial incarnation as a pit band for the now defunct New England Dinosaur Dance Theater troupe. This pair of concerts, given in tandem with the Nicola Hawkins Dance Company, thus represented a return to roots for the group.

Of the myriad musical entities encountered on Friday evening, four pleased especially. David Rakowski’s top-notch violin/cello duo Twofer is cleverly and satisfyingly constructed, delineating an ABAB format whose brief outer sections contrast greatly in tempo and mood, leaving the two central portions to develop these truncated bookends extensively. Common to all are snatches of octave material, which neatly impart overall unity. Homily (1987) by Milton Babbitt proves much, making most convincing use of varied sticks and overlaid rhythmic planes. A second listen to The Law of Floating Objects, a flute and tape selection by Elena Ruehr first encountered on a Dinosaur Annex concert a few years ago, reaffirmed its luscious layering of Stravinskian primitivist lines in neo-process fashion while revealing a subtle underlying sense of balance and unfolding that imparts depth to its gorgeous sonic landscape. Brief Glimpses by Scott Wheeler takes its flute and viola pair on a short but sweet journey from angular rawness to placid warmth, anchoring its spiky material upon recurring E-flats.

The concise character piece movements of Charles Fussell’s Piano Trio, while structurally nebulous both singly and as a unit, demonstrate a fetching sense of pro.le and polished handling of an unusual harmonic idiom that mixes Expressionist polytonality and Coplandlike openness. Scored for string trio, Aaron Jay Kernis’s Mozart En Route derives its melodic fabric from the master’s K. 563 Divertimento, cleverly pushing said material through both high- and low-culture contexts. What it lacks in formal tightness is made up for in cheeky attitude and supple speech.

The remaining items, single movements from Eric Moe’s On the Tip of My Tongue (for bass clarinet and synthesizer), Margaret Brouwer’s Chamber Concerto (for clarinet, piano, and percussion), and Peter Flint’s Migratory Routes (for Pierrot ensemble plus percussion) are to varying degrees texturally motoric and aesthetically disposable, filled with energy but mostly short on memorable contour and convincing architecture. The Moe work’s consistency of texture made it the best of these selections.

The accompanying choreography was richly evocative and generally seemed a good fit for the underlying music. The bare-bones approach to lighting, costumes, backdrops, and props imparted a sense of elemental urgency to the dancers’ movements. Of special merit were the vibrant terpsichorean solos by Nicola Hawkins (to Wheeler’s piece) and Jessica Reed (to the Rakowski).

Performances on the musical end of things unfortunately proved of highly variable quality. Some items, such as the Kernis, Moe, and Brouwer, seemed under-rehearsed, though in all fairness, no amount of polish could have ably put forth the last named spectacularly ungainly clarinet writing. The best such executions were, however, well worth the price of admission. One should single out percussionist Craig McNutt (in the Babbitt), Sue Ellen Herschman-Tcherepnin (in the Ruehr), and Cyrus Stevens and Michael Curry (in the Rakowski) for particularly exemplary efforts.