Tag Archive | "20 (Plus) Questions"
20 Questions with…composer and violinist Mark O’Connor
Mark O’Connor is a composer and violinist whose fluency with both classical and American traditions has made him one of the most acclaimed figures in contemporary music. In October 2008, O’Connor began a year as the first Artist in Residence at the Herb Alpert School of Music at UCLA, and in November, gave a two-day residency at Philadelphia’s Curtis School of Music. O’Connor takes educating the next generation of musicians seriously – his annual String Camps provide hundreds of students with intensive training from O’Connor and some of the world's finest performers and teachers. His Americana Symphony, “Variations on Appalachia Waltz,” was recently recorded by the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra, Marin Alsop conducting, and will be released March 10, 2009 by OMAC Records.
Continue reading...20 Questions with…eighth blackbird
Monday, September 22, 2008
Described by the New Yorker as “friendly, unpretentious, idealistic, and highly skilled,” the new-music sextet eighth blackbird promises – and delivers – provocative and engaging performances to its ever-growing audiences. Combining bracing virtuosity with a fresh and alluring sense of irreverence and panache, the sextet debunks the myth that contemporary music is only for [...]
Continue reading...20 (Plus) Questions with…composer and pianist Jake Heggie
Friday, September 12, 2008
Jake Heggie’s opera Dead Man Walking, a collaboration with librettist Terrance McNally, is a milestone in contemporary opera. Since its premiere in 2000, the work has become one of the opera world’s most performed new works. In addition to his other operas, the San Francisco-based Heggie is a prolific songwriter whose works have been performed and recorded by some of the most beloved singers of our time, most notably Frederica von Stade, Susan Graham, Audra McDonald, Patti LuPone and Joyce DiDonato. As a pianist he has accompanied several of these same singers in recital. Though best known for his richly nuanced and emotionally resonant vocal works, he has also composed many chamber and orchestral works. He is currently at work with librettist Gene Scheer on a truly epic project: an opera based on Melville’s Moby Dick, commissioned by Dallas Opera for its inaugural season in the Winspear Opera House in April 2010. The great Canadian tenor Ben Heppner will star as the obsessed whale hunter Captain Ahab.
Continue reading...20 (Plus) Questions with…composer Ricky Ian Gordon
Thursday, July 31, 2008
Ricky Ian Gordon’s Green Sneakersrecently premiered at Bravo! Vail Valley Music Festival to enthusiastic acclaim. His “Orpheus and Euridice”(OBIE Award) has been touring the country, and his hugely successful opera of Steinbeck’s The Grapes Of Wrath, (written with librettist Michael Korie) is touring the country with stops in Pittsburgh in November, and Opera Pacific in [...]
Continue reading...20 (Plus) Questions with…pianist David Greilsammer
Monday, June 23, 2008
The Jerusalem-born pianist David Greilsammer will be living with Mozart in Summer 2008, playing all 18 of the composer’s piano sonatas in an all-day marathon in Paris (July 5) and in six-concerts at the Verbier Festival in Switzerland (July 19 – 31). He records exclusively for the naïve label, which will re-issue his acclaimed recording of Mozart’s three earliest piano concerts in July (France on July 8; Europe soon after; August or September in the US). Admired for his innovative, sometimes startling recital programs, Greilsammer was named the “Revelation of the Year” at France’s “Victoires de la Musique Classique.” His debut release for naïve, “fantasie_fantasme,” was named Record of the Year” by the London Times.
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Wednesday, October 29, 2008
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