Where does musical creativity come from? In the case of Le rossignol, Stravinsky claims his opera was inspired by an early childhood memory: Igor was strolling down a Saint Petersburg boulevard one day when a giant songbird, a nightingale, suddenly dropped from the sky and commenced attacking him, peck, peck, peck! The be-wildered lad fled, but the bird followed. Down the winding streets of the city they raced until the winged fiend finally cornered Igor in a courtyard. Through a series of avian gestures, Stravinsky was made to sit in a chair. Then the nightingale whipped out a camera, photographed him, and promptly vanished! No matter it was an awful memory, it did inspire a fine tune. Only decades later, following dream analysis with Roy Harris, did Stravinsky discover that the creature wasn’t a nightingale after all. But he opted not to revise his work, for who would want to see an opera about some damn panda?
COMPOSER’S VOICE BEGINS ITS FALL SEASON WITH TITANIA (QUEEN OF THE FAIRIES)
Sunday, September 15, 2013 1:00 PM (NEW YORK, NEW YORK) Composer’s Voice starts its fall season with a Fifteen Minutes of Fame using text from Shakespeare’s character Titania. Fifteen Minutes of Fame is 15 one-minute works written specifically for this performance. These 15 works will feature the talents of mezzo-soprano Katherine Crawford from Kansas and flutist Rebecca Ashe from South Carolina.
Crawford and Ashe are traveling to New York to perform the world premiere this Fifteen Minutes of Fame: Titania (Queen of the Fairies).
The international roster of composers selected for this project are:
Michele Abondano,
Brad Baumgardner,
Erik Branch,
Sabrina Clarke,
Anthony Donofrio-Awake,
Joseph Eidson,
Paul Gelsing,
Fermino Gomes,
Kevin Holland,
Jason F. Rinehart,
Jana Skarecky,
Jose Jesus de Azevedo Souza,
Thommy Wahlstrom,
Andrew Walters, and
Christopher M. Wicks
Katherine Crawford sings with the Grammy Award-winning Kansas City Chorale, the Kansas City Symphony Chorus, and is the lead vocalist in The Digital Honk Box Revival, an improvisational electroacoustic music group.
Flutist Rebecca Ashe was the first American flautist to perform a recital at the Academy of Music in Latvia. She is a founding member of Dark Matter, a collective of composers, performers and scientists.
This concert will also feature longer works by composers Douglas DaSilva, Mike McFerron, David Morneau, Jorge Sosa and choreography by Erin Bomboy and Andrea Skurr danced by Jessica Mego and Brittany Testone.
Composer’s Voice Concert Series is an opportunity for contemporary composers to express their musical aesthetic and personal “voice” created in their compositions. Started in 2001, the “Composer’s Voice” concert series has presented over 100 concerts throughout the world premiering the works of thousands of living composers.
Composers selected for this Fifteen Minutes of Fame include:
Inna Buganina,
Douglas DaSilva,
Ulf Grahn,
Colin Holter,
Eva Ingolf,
Holly Aliyah Kinsey,
Michael Lukaszuk,
Steven H. Markowitz,
Josh Newton,
Lefteris Papadimitriou,
Bettie Ross,
Juan Maria Solare,
Oana Tinu,
David Tomasacci, and
Ryan Woodhouse
Daniel Mihai is premiering this Fifteen Minutes of Fame on September 15, 2013, 1.00 p.m. in "Mihail Jora" Concert Hall of the Romanian Radio Society for the The George Enescu Festival in Bucharest, Romania.
More can be found here: http://festivalenescu.ro/en/calendar/events/nuova-musica-consonante
Fifteen-Minutes-of-Fame: andPlay Maya Bennardo violin and Hannah Levinson, viola
Deadline: September 26, 2013
Vox Novus is calling for one-minute pieces composed for Fifteen-Minutes-of-Fame: andPlay, with Maya Bennardo, violin & Hannah Levinson, viola to be premiered on January 26, 2014 for the Composer’s Voice concert series at the Jan Hus Church in New York City.
andPlay is committed to expanding the existing violin/viola duo repertoire through performing rarely heard works and commissioning emerging composers. This New York City based duo of Maya Bennardo, violin, and Hannah Levinson, viola, first played to an eager crowd on Fire Island in the summer of 2012, and can be seen performing this season at Caffe Vivaldi, 109 Gallery, and the Concerts on the Slope series. Maya and Hannah met while studying at Oberlin Conservatory, and continued their educations at New York University and the Manhattan School of Music, respectively. Despite living on opposite sides of the city, the members of andPlay enjoy taking the subway to meet for rehearsals and delicious baked goods.
