Pittsburgh New Music Net

In case you haven’t heard, Joan Tower will be the PSO’s Composer of the Year for the 2010–11 season which will also include David Del Tredici’s Final Alice and a new bassoon concerto by Alan Fletcher. Here’s a an excerpt from the PSO’s season announcement.

Joan Tower, as the PSO’s 2010-2011 Composer of the Year, will have six of her works performed in subscription programs, including the world-premiere of an orchestral work commissioned by the Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra and a clarinet concerto with Principal Clarinet Michael Rusinek as soloist. As Composer of the Year, Tower also participates in masterclasses with local university composition students, coachings, lectures, and other audience outreach. These activities are designed to familiarize listeners with her and her work, creating a connection between living composers and our audiences. The 2010-2011 BNY Mellon Grand Classics Season is the tenth year of the PSO’s Composer of the Year program.

In addition to the world-premiere of Tower’s new work, the Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra will perform the world-premiere of a new piece by Alan Fletcher. The composer’s Concerto for Bassoon and Orchestra features Principal Bassoon Nancy Goeres as soloist.    In total, there are eleven works this season that will receive a first performance by the Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra. This includes concerts in November 2010, when Principal Guest Conductor Leonard Slatkin conducts the Orchestra in an all-American program comprised of music the PSO has never before performed. The program includes Tower’s Clarinet Concerto, Copland’s full ballet, Appalachian Spring and Bernstein’s Symphonic Suite from On the Waterfront.

Looks like it’s gonna be a good season!

No surprise there as Pitt and CMU are both closed today. Stay tuned for information about when this concert will be rescheduled. With the premiere of a new work by Marilyn Taft Thomas, we’ll all be anxious to find out.

Assuming we thaw out eventually, there is a lot of new music on tap for the month of February and I’m still finding out about more events. I’ve also got some very cool interviews in the can that I’ll be posting imminently (i.e., as soon as I’ve finished editing them down): one with Emily Pinkerton and Patrick Burke about their collaborative composition for NOW and one with super flutist Lindsey J. Goodman about her upcoming recital with the MOTE. So keep checking in right here and in the meantime, stay warm.

Featuring all Carnegie Mellon School of Music ensembles and select student and faculty soloists, the 2010 Collage Concert will be a feast for the senses! This 90-minute non-stop concert will keep audience members at the edge of their seats as performers appear and disappear from various positions within the concert hall. In one concert, experience the dazzling array of music produced at Carnegie Mellon, including Baroque, Classical, Contemporary, Vocal, Jazz and more in a single performance. Faculty soloists include violinist Cyrus Forough, soprano Laura Knoop Very, pianist Enrique Graf and PSO principal clarinet Michael Rusinek. You won’t want to miss this one-night-only extravaganza of sound produced by Carnegie Mellon’s School of Music and staged by acclaimed director and professor of drama, Gregory Lehane.

When:
8 p.m. Friday, February 12, 2010

Where:
Soldiers & Sailors Auditorium
4141 Fifth Avenue (in Oakland)
Pittsburgh, PA 15213

Cost:
$15 general admission
$12 senior citizens
$10 students
Tickets can be purchased in advance via Web

Phone: 412.268.2383 (School of Music’s Concert Line)

Web: Buy tickets online with your credit card at http://music.cmu.edu. Click on ‘Box Office’ to start your order!

On-Site: Tickets will also be available (cash only) at Soldiers & Sailors one hour prior to the performance – at 7:00 p.m., February 12.

Questions? Contact Kristi Ries at kristi@cmu.edu.

Director Denis Colwell leads the Carnegie Mellon Wind Ensemble in a program that features Rorem’s Sinfornia (1957), Stravinsky’s Symphonies of Wind Instruments (1920) and Gordon Jacob’s Old Wine in New Bottles (1960). The concert begins at 8 pm. Monday, February 8 on CMU’s campus in the College of Fine Arts’ Kresge Theatre. This event is free and open to the public.

A highlight on the program is the world premiere of a newly transcribed Snapshots of a Great City (2008) by Marilyn Taft Thomas, a professor of composition and music theory at Carnegie Mellon.

Music on the Edge presents ICE (International Contemporary Ensemble) this Saturday night at the Warhol and the crack new music group’s program has attracted a lot of attention from local media. You can see Mark Kanny’s preview in today’s Pittsburgh Tribune Review and another by Aaron Jentzen in this week’s Pittsburgh City Paper.

ICE performs on Saturday, January 9 at The Andy Warhol Museum at 8 p.m. Tickets are available through ProArts and at the door. Find out more about the concert here.

Cross-posted at music.pitt.edu.

Happy New Year to all of you who faithfully read this blog!

If it seems as though the new music scene has been a little feast or famine this season, well then prepare to feast! 2010 gets underway in grand style starting this Saturday night at the Warhol when Music on the Edge hosts ICE (the International Contemporary Ensemble). And to make things just perfect, the high on Saturday is supposed to be a whopping 16º! (Is it too late for them to change their name to BALMY?)

The following week includes concerts by the Polish Cultural Council presenting Zygmunt Krauze at Frick Fine Arts Auditorium (January 13), Alia Musica Pittsburgh’s winter chamber music concert at Chatham University (January 14), and on January 18, the Emerson Quartet performing music by Ives, Janacek, Barber, and Shostokovich. While the Emerson concert isn’t new music per se, it’s hard for me to imagine anyone appreciating this program more than the new music community.

That’s what I know of for January; you can find more details at the Events Calendar. I’ll begin posting events for the rest of the winter and spring soon, so as always, if you have info about an upcoming performance, do tell.

Mark Kanny of the Tribune Review sums it up nicely here.

The Eclectic Laboratory Chamber Orchestra in rehearsal…we think…

So it’s shaped up to be a really interesting week for new music in the Burgh. Patrick Burke will make his debut as director of Duquesne’s Contemporary Ensemble this Thursday at PNC Recital Hall, The Outer Circle, a group formed by veterans of the local avant-garde improv scene, gives their debut concert on Friday at The Nerve, and Eclectic Laboratory Chamber Orchestra returns with another program that lives up to that band’s name on Sunday at Grey Box Theatre. Check out all the details on the Events Calendar, and as always, shoot me an e-mail if you have, or know of, something interesting going on.

The Carnegie Mellon Contemporary Ensemble concert this Friday, November 20th at 6:30 PM in Kresge featuring works by Lutoslawski, Martinu, Knussen, Vasquez, and Birtwistle. The guest conductors are Walter Morales and Tobias Volkmann.

Next week, catch the performance debut of Carnegie Mellon’s Repertoire Orchestra on Monday, November 23 at 5:25 PM in the College of Fine Arts’ Alumni Concert Hall. This first concert of the lab chamber orchestra features soloist Amaury Morales in Mozart’s Piano Concerto No. 23. The program also includes Mozart’s Symphony No. 39 under the direction of Walter Morales.