Death is not taking a holiday. I learned on my way to California that my good friend Martha Herr died on Halloween. She had survived breast cancer twice, and this time succumbed to a brain tumor. She was a phenomenal singer, and though she started out working with the Creative Associates at SUNY Buffalo, she spent the bulk of her career teaching at The University of São Paulo, where she became the world's leading authority on Portugese diction for singers. She and her then-husband John Boudler commissioned an early work from me, Cherokee Songs … [Read more...]
Archives for 2015
A Gentle Rain of Adjectives
My Romance Postmoderne has now been called gorgeous and calming; my suite The Planets has been dubbed weighty and cerebral. I can think of some award-winning composers who would be baffled by at least the second assessment. … [Read more...]
Like I Said
In The Atlantic: “Academics, in general, don’t think about the public; they don't think about the average person, and they don't even think about their students when they write... Their intended audience is always their peers. That’s who they have to impress to get tenure.” What have I been saying? … [Read more...]
How Ives Did it
Next week I'll be in Santa Barbara giving the Karl Geiringer Lectures, named for a famous musicologist who taught there, one (public) on microtonality, and the other (for musicologists) about what we can learn about Ives's compositional process from his sketches. The latter is mostly about the First Piano Sonata, since we have many more preliminary sketches for that than for the Concord, and there's really only one page I'm discussing at length: the presumptive first sketch written at Pine Mountain, CT, and dated Aug. 4, 1901. But it's a … [Read more...]
There’s Doin’s a-Transpirin’!
Gannian events abound. This weekend I'll be in Philadelphia participating in workshops devoted to performing the works of Julius Eastman, run by the Bowerbird Ensemble. Sadly, my teaching schedule precludes my being there for the opening performance of Crazy Nigger tomorrow night. A week from Saturday, on Oct. 24, the NewEar ensemble is playing my 75-minute suite The Planets at St. Mary's Episcopal Church in Kansas City, the first ensemble to do so besides Relache, who commissioned it. Lee Hartman is conducting the piece, which I think is a … [Read more...]
Memories of an Early Frost
My mother often told me, and I half-remember it, that when I was a toddler I would listen patiently to her reading poetry for as long as she would do it. It is to this that I attribute my love for writing vocal music. I have always been extraordinarily fascinated by the simple fact that words have their own inherent rhythms without which they can hardly be understood. For me to set words is like setting gemstones, and I always have to choose a setting that makes the sound of the word, not necessarily its meaning, shine to advantage. I know … [Read more...]
Diffident Leviathan
Accordionist Veli Kujala did a lovely job on my piece Reticent Behemoth for his quarter-tone accordion. Here's the recording from the world premiere last Thursday in Turku, Finland (duration five and a half minutes). I do love the accordion, and Veli made the piece sound more delicate and nuanced than I could have expected. I'm hoping to write him another piece or two. … [Read more...]
Strange Bedfellows
I've got a performance coming up at Bard College [where I teach] this Saturday. My office Disklavier will play my Bud Powell homage Bud Ran Back Out, and famous composer Joan Tower, no less, is slated to play the second dance, "Sad," from my Private Dances. As you can see from the accompanying poster, Kurtág, Corigliano, Ligeti, and I are making a once-in-a-lifetime appearance on the same program. If it weren't for Crumb and Bolcom I'd feel a little out of place. The MIDI graphic on the poster is a section from my Nude Rolling Down an … [Read more...]
Postminimalism Takes Finland
The Fifth International Conference of Minimalist Music, in Turku and Helsinki (harbor above), Finland, was a smashing success. I ate sautéed reindeer and plenty of herring. We ended up Sunday night with only a few people left in the upstairs bar at the Torni Hotel, with Helsinki in the background (clockwise: my wife Nancy, Kay and Keith Potter, Dean Suzuki, Jonathan Bernard, Patrick Nickleson): And here we are eating at the Sea Hors Restaurant: Dean, Nancy, Pwyll Ap Sion, Kay, Patrick, Keith, myself, and Jonathan: A concert of … [Read more...]
Fun with the Finns
I'm off to Turku and Helsinki, Finland, this week where I will be the featured composer at the biennial conference of the Society for Minimalist Music. There will be a concert of mostly my music Saturday night at the Sibelius Academy Music Centre (since there's "Mostly Mozart," I've always pictured a "Generally Gann" festival), and I am to be interviewed onstage beforehand. It'll be old friends week, and you can see the conference schedule here. Robert Fink and Jelena Novak are the keynote speakers. I didn't need to give a paper this year, but … [Read more...]
Hyperrealism: Chamber Music from Mars
You may not have heard of Noah Creshevsky (born 1945), but he is, and has been for decades, one of the most amazing figures in current American music. His music, all electronic as far as I've heard, which he aptly terms "hyperrealist," is a surreal mix of samples, chamber music from Mars. Weird as hell on first listening (and second and third), it nevertheless flows with its own inner logic, and is easily acclimated to. I've told him that, if I had the amazing electronic-music chops he has, I'd be trying to do something similar. Perhaps because … [Read more...]
Mezcal, Pulpo, and the Long View of Culture
Oaxaca was a blast. It's in the mountains and doesn't get hot, and in the tropics so it doesn't get cold. The peso is really low at the moment, so we felt like we could buy anything that caught our fancy. The worst meal we had was better than the Mexican food we get at home, and that includes the ones we scarfed down at Mexico City airport. At the best restaurant in town (so we were told), Los Danzantes, we had mezcal margaritas and wine, fantastic mole entrees, and as appetizer I had one of my favorite foods, octopus - not rings of calamari, … [Read more...]
Mole and Tequila
A few months ago, I was supposed to be in Italy this week for a totalism festival at Bari Conservatory. That got canceled or postponed due to massive administrative changes at the Conservatory, so maybe it will happen later, or not. So instead I accepted an offer to lecture at Coloquio PAC in Oaxaca, Mexico, a symposium on contemporary artistic production. Paul Griffiths, José Wolffer, and I will be the speakers on music, and I am supposed to talk for 45 minutes about (clear throat) The State of Music - something I feel I currently know … [Read more...]