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Sparr Houston Grand Opera Premiere

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On This Muddy Water: Voices from the Houston Ship Channel

Wednesday, December 10, 5:30 p.m.
Tudor Gallery, Julia Ideson Library
550 McKinney Street, Houston

HGOco presents the world premiere of On This Muddy Water: Voices from the Houston Ship Channel by D. J. Sparr and Janine Joseph—a 30-minute song cycle for voices and chamber ensemble commissioned to celebrate the Ship Channel’s centennial. Sparr and Joseph combed through hours of oral histories collected by the Houston Arts Alliance to create this compelling portrait of the men and women at the heart of one of Houston’s most vibrant centers of industry.

For more information, click here.

Mason Bates’ Orchestra Performances at All-time High

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The Baltimore Symphony surveyed the 2014/15 season and prepared some fascinating statistics on programming. Mason Bates soars to the top as the second most performed living composer. Among the information they collected is the news that works by living composers amount to 11.4% of all works performed.

You can view the complete statistics here.

Beethoven still gets more performances, but he’s had quite a head start.

Mark Grey’s THE SANDS OF TIME released by Other Minds

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Other Minds releases works by Joan Jeanrenaud & Mark Grey as a part of the Other Minds Live series

Other Minds Records is pleased to announce a new series of digital download releases, Other Minds Live. OM Live is a collection of live recordings from past Other Minds Festivals, released to coincide with the landmark 20th anniversary of the Other Minds Festival. Widely regarded among contemporary music fans as a worldly intersection for non-commercial, challenging, and beautiful music, Other Minds has unflinchingly championed the work of composers and musicians committed to advancing our understanding of what constitutes serious music. This collection spans the wide variety of work presented at Other Minds Festivals in the first decade of the 21st century. From lush classical to stark minimalism to the outer limits of free improvisation and all points between, the Other Minds Live series represents a culminating experience from 20 years of tireless musical pursuit.

In keeping with OM’s artistic vision, OM Live includes work from some of the most renowned composers to appear at the Festival and places them alongside under-recognized composers of equally venerable talent. Highlights include Alvin Curran’s piano solo, Inner Cities 8, during which performer Eve Egoyan lulls listeners with sparsely scattered and gauzy piano impressions only to flare up unexpectedly in flourishes of quick moving, continuous sound; an engaging improvisation from Fred Frith & Sudhu Tewari that roams a sprawling soundscape where lush electronic thickets devolve into thorny scrapes and stabs; and a rare performance of John Cage & Michael Bach Bachtischa’s meditation on F#, One13, a posthumous Cage “number piece” that weaves live cello into a tapestry of pre-recorded drones.

Today marks the release of the first two pieces in the series, Joan Jeanrenaud’s Hommage and Mark Grey’s The Sands of Time, performed by Jeanrenaud. The Other Minds Live series is distributed by Naxos and will be available for purchase on iTunes and Amazon, and can be heard streaming on Pandora and Spotify. Take a listen and be sure to keep an eye out for the rest of the series, to be released monthly.

Kahane’s THE AMBASSADOR released on Sony Masterworks

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From Die Hard to the architecture of Richard Neutra and R.M. Schindler, from Blade Runner to the fiction of James M. Cain and Raymond Chandler, and from fires, riots, and earthquakes to the lives of so many Americans who have looked to Southern California as a panacea, Gabriel Kahane’s The Ambassador draws its inspiration from a multitude of sources to tell intimate, human stories against the backdrop of Los Angeles architecture and popular culture.

Order the CD here.

London Philharmonic Recording: Boyer Works

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Naxos recently released the world-premiere recording of GRAMMY-nominated composer/conductor Peter Boyer’s Symphony No. 1. The recording, featuring the London Philharmonic Orchestra (LPO) under Boyer’s direction, also includes four additional works by the composer: Silver Fanfare, Festivities, Celebration Overture and Three Olympians. Watch the video trailer, below, and hear some samples of this exciting new recording:

“The five works included on this recording represent a cross-section of my orchestral music composed over a period of some 15 years, from one of my earliest commissions to my most recent,” said Boyer. “It was a thrilling experience to conduct my music with the superb London Philharmonic Orchestra at Abbey Road Studios, and it’s deeply gratifying to have Naxos release this recording worldwide.”

Boyer’s 24-minute, three-movement Symphony No. 1, the centerpiece of his LPO recording, was commissioned by the Pasadena Symphony, and premiered by them under his baton in April 2013. The work contains music both deeply lyrical and rhythmically driving, and concludes with a powerful sense of affirmation. Boyer’s musical language draws inspiration from such iconic American composers as Aaron Copland, Leonard Bernstein, and John Williams, and these influences can be heard in the symphony. Boyer dedicated the score of his symphony to the memory of Leonard Bernstein, and this dedication was accepted by Bernstein’s children.

MORE ABOUT THE ALBUM

Of the four additional works on the Naxos recording, three are short, exuberant pieces written for celebratory occasions, which demonstrate Boyer’s gifts for composing propulsive, colorful music for large orchestras. Silver Fanfare was composed as the first movement of the six-movement work On Music’s Wings, commissioned by the Pacific Symphony and its music director Carl St.Clair in celebration of its 25th anniversary in 2004. Festivities, here given its world-premiere recording, was commissioned and premiered by conductor Gerard Schwarz and the Eastern Music Festival, in celebration of its 50th anniversary in 2011. Celebration Overture was one of Boyer’s earliest commissions, composed in 1997 at the age of 27, for the inaugural season of the Henry Mancini Institute.

Reflecting the composer’s interest in mythology, Three Olympians for string orchestra was commissioned by the Conductors Institute at Bard College in 2000. Each of its movements was inspired by a Greek god of Olympus: Apollo, Aphrodite, and Ares.

Recorded at London’s historic Abbey Road Studio One, the Naxos recording was produced by Tim Handley, winner of the GRAMMY Award for Producer of the Year, Classical (2005). The recording engineer was Abbey Road’s Jonathan Allen, whose many credits include the recent film musical Les Miserables.

Detroit Symphony releases a new McTee CD

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Cindy McTee’s compositions embody the musical and cultural energy of modern-day America. Circuits, ‘a boisterously jazzy sprint’ (Detroit Free Press), is followed by, Symphony No. 1: Ballet for Orchestra, a smartly assembled work whose diverse ideas ‘seemed to unfold naturally within an orchestral fabric that used the ensemble’s full coloristic range’ (The New York Times). The use of computer music in Einstein’s Dream lends sonic complexity to a piece that celebrates the scientist’s work on quantum theory. Double Play, commissioned by the Detroit Symphony Orchestra, ‘hums with craftsmanship and a catholic array of influences across several centuries’ (The Washington Post).

For more information, please click here.

Moby-Dick National Telecast on PBS Great Performances

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Jake Heggie/Gene Scheer’s MOBY-DICK will be broadcast nationally on PBS Great Performances. This is San Francisco Opera‘s production from last year, with a cast featuring Jay Hunter Morris (Ahab), Stephen Costello (Greenhorn/Ishmael), Morgan Smith (Starbuck), Jonathan Lemalu (Queequeg), Talise Trevigne (Pip), Robert Orth (Stubb), Matthew O’Neill (Flask), and Joo Won Kang (Gardiner); conducted by Patrick Summers and directed by Leonard Foglia in the Robert Brill production with projections by Elaine McCarthy. The opera was commissioned by The Dallas Opera with San Francisco Opera, San Diego Opera, State Opera of South Australia, and Calgary Opera.