Category: Uncategorized

In Texas, More Orchestra Labor Trouble

The Richardson Symphony Orchestra in Texas has filed a complaint with the National Labor Relations Board against the musicians’ union, which put the band on its unfair list.

As Scott Cantrell reported last week, the orchestra has missed payments to musicians in the past and is trying to get them to sign a contract without union representation. That was the last straw for American Federation of Musicians local president, Ray Hair.

Being on the unfair list means that AFM musicians can face huge fines for doing work for the orchestra. The orchestra, led by executive director George Landis, is complaining that the AFM is acting arbitrarily and with malice by penalizing players and their organization.

But I Liked Self Portrait

“Bollywood” is ridiculous, and it’s been the standard by which a lot of blogging types have measured the new group of songs that Liz Phair released as Funstyle on her website.

That was the first song she streamed on her website, but there’s a new one up there now. I think you’ll like it.

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You can find the entire album on YouTube. You’ll see why a lot of people echo Pitchfork and compare it with Bob Dylan’s Self Portrait.

Busy in Brevard: Music Stuff

A couple of weeks ago, Bob Aldridge gave his Brevard Music Institute composition students the same assignment, to set Walt Whitman’s “When the Dazzle of Day is Gone.” Last Thursday, he hosted an afternoon concert of the results.

If there was a time when young composers were afraid to write a triad, that time is long gone. In fact, I get the distinct impression that these Brevardians were deliberately avoiding anything that would mark them as “inaccessible.” I heard some Barber, some Broadway, and some Blue.

On Saturday night, the college students joined up with their teachers for a bang-up Heldenleben. WDAV broadcast this last Sunday, plugging Kalichstein’s Schumann Concerto. But that was a real disappointment. The orchestra was great, but the pianist just wasn’t prepared. If you can, skip it and listen to the Strauss online.

The high school students at Brevard showed their stuff Sunday afternoon, starting their concert with Joan Tower‘s Made in America. Someone at the festival called this a “dark depiction” of our country, but this performance was full of optimistic energy.

Joe Schwantner wrote the second piece in the Ford Made in America program, and took it around the country the last two seasons. Let’s hope Keith Lockhart brings this piece to Brevard as well soon.

Busy in Brevard: The Cradle of Forestry

A couple of days ago, the children, Vanessa, and I spent over two hours at the Cradle of Forestry historic site in the Pisgah National Forest.

The highlight of the trip for Alex and Caitlin was, as it is for many the old steam engine. You’ll find this late 19th-century relic on the outdoor path, but there are some fun displays in the visitors center as well.

The Pisgah National Forest was once private land owned by the Vanderbilts. Carl A. Schenck, a German charged with maintaining the forest, founded the first forestry school there in 1898. Today, the Pisgah Forest is owned and maintained by the federal government.

Search “Cradle of Forestry” on YouTube for some videos of the steam engine (apparently, it’s a hit with a lot of kids). We’ve got some videos and pictures, which we’ll post later.

Hear Brevard on the Radio

You owe it to yourself to take a listen to at least one of the concerts from the Brevard Music Festival that classical stations WDAV (in Charlotte) and WCQS (in Brevard). The show is called Open Air Brevard, and it’s on Sundays at 3 PM.  The orchestra is made up of students and faculty. The quality of the performances from the kids is really high, and the faculty is really committed.

Here’s a video a scenes from the Fourth of July band concert. It’s not the most exciting clip you’ve ever seen, but it’ll give you an idea of what it’s like here. You can see my in-laws at 1:14. People really like the cannons in the 1812 Overture here, by the way.

Rochberg’s Big Break

The announcement that Jennifer Higdon won the Pulitzer Prize for her Violin Concerto gave David Patrick Stearns a chance to look back on notable Philadelphia composers of the past and identify some, including Higdon, that are coming into their own.
George Rochberg was one of the older generation that Stearns discussed. Like Higdon, Rochberg taught at the Curtis Institute–he was also a student there, continuing a music career suspended when he went overseas to fight in World War II. 
But it was in 1958, after Rochberg left Curtis to work for the music publisher Presser, that a chance meeting on Chestnut Street with an old mentor set in motion a series of events that would bring him to national prominence. 
The composer remembers hearing someone call his name: “Roschbergh, Roschbergh.” It was George Szell. The Hungarian conductor taught Rochberg in New York at the Mannes School, shortly before he was drafted in 1942. Szell was an aloof teacher, and Rochberg was taken aback by the informality of the greeting. He was even more shocked when Szell called him a few weeks later to say, “Roschbergh, I am going to do your Second Symphony.” 

http://www.youtube.com/p/3569FADC2D403A76&hl=en_US&fs=1

And he did. The world premiere with the Cleveland Orchestra was a huge success. In February 1960, Szell reprised the work at Carnegie Hall; in 1961, the piece won a Naumberg award, leading to a performance and recording on Columbia with the New York Philharmonic. 
Although Rochberg thought the recording was poor, it, along with the high-profile performances of his Symphony No. 2 by Cleveland and Szell, solidified his position as a leading American composer. 

Rock Albums Should Win Pulitzers

When John Adams’s On the Transmigration of Souls won in 2003, some people grumbled that it won because it was written to commemorate 9/11. The real shame was that there was so much better rock music from that year that deserved consideration.

Wilco released Yankee Hotel Foxtrot in 2002, and the Flaming Lips put out Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots.

A lot of people have complain that the Pulitzer jury ignores jazz and rock, and there is a history there. But they can only judge what is nominated. This year, let’s call their hand. Why not nominate The Hold Steady for Heaven is Whenever? Or The National. People seem to like them.

Steve Smith likes the Slow Six. He should nominate them.

I’d nominate Broken Social Scene for their new album (their truly awesome You Forgot It in People came out in 2002) but the Pulitzer winner has to be written by an American.

Barber Update: Violin Concerto

Barber’s 100th birthday is coming up in just over a week, making it the perfect time to hear what is maybe the composer’s second most famous piece.

Tomorrow at 2 PM, and again at 8 PM, Gil Shaham will play Barber’s Violin Concerto with David Robertson and the New York Philharmonic. Barber wrote the Violin Concerto in 1939, in the wake of Toscanini’s broadcast of the Adagio for Strings (his best known music by a long shot) with the NBC Symphony Orchestra, and the violinist who it was commissioned for originally rejected the piece. It wasn’t premiered until 1941with the Philadelphia Orchestra and Arthur Spalding. (The New York Phil’s online program notes can tell you more.)

WQXR will broadcast the concert on Thursday, March 11.

If you want more Barber, look to the Baltimore Symphony in June, when they’ll present both his opera A Hand of Bridge and his Knoxville: Summer of 1915.