Tag: sjm

Joseph Horowitz: “The modernist view of Gershwin the gifted dilettante is no longer heard. Concomitantly, American music historians, for whom Gershwin once barely existed, have flocked to Porgy and Rhapsody in Blue. A burgeoning interest in the interwar fate of black classical music will surely promote new understandings of Gershwin as a necessary interloper between “classical” and “popular” genres severed by 20th-century aesthetic currents.” – American Scholar

With a dedication to diverse input, RoT seems less a performing ensemble and more a living organism. The group has studied yodeling, Tuvan throat singing, Korean p’ansori, Persian classical singing, Inuit throat singing, and, closer to home, belting and death metal. Collaborators include an illustrious list of contemporary composers. – San Francisco Classical Voice

The Open Youth Orchestra of Ireland “is preparing for its inaugural performance, which will showcase adaptive instruments, virtual reality music and revolutionary ‘conductology’. (includes video) – Irish Independent

By the time Welser-Möst’s extension runs out in 2027, he will have been the orchestra’s music director for 25 years, one year longer than George Szell. Early in 2020, the orchestra will begin issuing a series of recordings (CD and digital) of concert performances, and the new fellowship program, called Nurturing Diverse Talent, aims to give young Black and Latinx musicians “people a chance to rise to the level of the Cleveland Orchestra.” – The Plain Dealer (Cleveland)

Is it a sensitive portrait of a segregated Black community? Or is it a parade of stereotypes performed in embarrassing dialect? Is it a triumph of the American melting pot, with the sons of Russian Jews teaming with white Southern WASPs to tell an African-American story? Or is it a very model of cultural appropriation? Has it given Black singers valuable and (too) rare opportunities? Or has it caused them to be pigeonholed? Or is the answer to all these questions yes? – The New York Times

“Recently I was asked to present a lecture on composer Julius Eastman and his work at the OBEY Convention, a music and sound festival in Halifax, Nova Scotia. But rather than a fruitful discussion of Eastman’s probing, piercing minimalist music and legacy as an overlooked composer only now getting his due, the situation turned into a referendum on complicated questions: who gets to hold forth on artists of different identities, and on whose terms?” – ARTnews

There was a point at which a number of African-American composers were writing serious, important work, writes Joseph Horowitz. “Racial prejudice, personal and institutional, obviously inhibited the potential success of a Dett, Dawson, Still, or Price. But a subtler prejudice was aesthetic.” – The American Scholar

Ryan Bancroft, a 29-year-old native of Long Beach who studied at CalArts, discovered classical music through a one-minute clip of Beethoven pre-loaded on his family’s first computer, and he cites as a chief influence Ghanaian dancing. – The Telegraph (UK)