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PostClassic

Kyle Gann on music after the fact

Rzewski and Gann, Together Again

Next Thursday, October 20, one week from tonight, I’ll be onstage at Miller Theatre at Columbia University – not performing, but interviewing formidable composer-pianist Frederic Rzewski. Our pre-concert interview is at 7:00, and at 8:00, expert new-music pianist Marilyn Nonken will play Rzewski’s famous classic The People United Will Never Be Defeated. This will be followed by the New York premiere of a new work, Rzewski’s Bring Them Home, featuring, besides Nonken, pianist Ursula Oppens and percussionists Tom Kolor and Dominic Donato. I’ll let you guess which recent war the title refers to.

The rather taciturn Rzewski tends toward the devilishly contrarian in public appearances; last time I ran into him was at an Ives festival in Berlin, where, asked to speak, he rose and announced, “I don’t know why they asked me here, because I really don’t like Ives’s music,” and soon sat down again. He’s a challenge to interview, but I’ve had a lot of good talks with him, and maybe I can draw him out comfortably. Hope to see some of you there.

What’s going on here

So classical music is dead, they say. Well, well. This blog will set out to consider that dubious factoid with equanimity, if not downright enthusiasm [More]

Kyle Gann's Home Page More than you ever wanted to know about me at www.kylegann.com

PostClassic Radio The radio station that goes with the blog, all postclassical music, all the time; see the playlist at kylegann.com.

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Sites to See

American Mavericks - the Minnesota Public radio program about American music (scripted by Kyle Gann with Tom Voegeli)

Kalvos & Damian's New Music Bazaar - a cornucopia of music, interviews, information by, with, and on hundreds of intriguing composers who are not the Usual Suspects

Iridian Radio - an intelligently mellow new-music station

New Music Box - the premiere site for keeping up with what American composers are doing and thinking

The Rest Is Noise - The fine blog of critic Alex Ross

William Duckworth's Cathedral - the first interactive web composition and home page of a great postminimalist composer

Mikel Rouse's Home Page - the greatest opera composer of my generation

Eve Beglarian's Home Page- great Downtown composer

David Doty's Just Intonation site

Erling Wold's Web Site - a fine San Francisco composer of deceptively simple-seeming music, and a model web site

The Dane Rudhyar Archive - the complete site for the music, poetry, painting, and ideas of a greatly underrated composer who became America's greatest astrologer

Utopian Turtletop, John Shaw's thoughtful blog about new music and other issues

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