Marcelo Lehninger Named Artistic Director of Bellingham Festival of Music
Tag: Festivals
California Festival Puts New Music in the Foreground: 33 World Premieres, 188 Works, 140 Composers, 100 Organizations
California Festival Celebrates the State’s Hyperactive New Music Scene
San Diego Symphony Crosses Borders to Perform in Tijuana for the First Time
Santa Fe Chamber Music Festival Names David Kitto as Executive Director
Opinion: What Do Lincoln Center’s Shifting Artistic Priorities Mean for Classical Music?
Review: Boston Symphony at Tanglewood, with Recent Works, Classics, Renée Fleming Stepping In
Mostly Mozart Festival Orchestra and Its Music Director Take a Final Bow
Tanglewood’s 2023 Festival of Contemporary Music Curated by Reena Esmail, Gabriela Frank, Tebogo Monnakgotla, and Anna Thorvaldsdottir
In Tuesday’s (7/25) Berkshire Edge (Massachusetts), David Noel Edwards writes, “One of the world’s premier showcases for new concert music, Tanglewood’s annual Festival of Contemporary Music, highlights works of pathbreaking young composers as well as respected pieces from the 20th century’s new music vanguard. The festival gives Tanglewood Music Center fellows a chance to collaborate directly with living composers and to experience the rewards and challenges of engaging with their latest compositions. Curators of this year’s festival are Reena Esmail, Gabriela Lena Frank, Tebogo Monnakgotla, and Anna Thorvaldsdottir. Kicking off the festival … on Thursday, July 27 at 1 p.m., Tanglewood Music Center’s Head of Composition Program Michael Gandolfi interviews the composers about how they curated the festival, with each program representative of their sound worlds…. Since its inception in 1964, the Festival of Contemporary Music has encouraged composers and their audiences to push limits and challenge conventions…. [It was] conceived as a means of rejuvenating the Boston Symphony Orchestra’s repertoire and that of other American ensembles.” The article discusses each of this year’s composers and the works they selected. Tanglewood’s Festival of Contemporary Music runs July 27-31.
Review: Anna Clyne’s “This Moment” Gets World Premiere by Philadelphia Orchestra at Bravo! Vail Music Festival
In Thursday’s (7/20) I Care If You Listen, Esteban Meneses writes, “From July 12 to 14, I attended the last three concerts of the Philadelphia Orchestra’s 16th Bravo! [Vail Music Festival] residency … I gravitated toward the contemporary offerings … the highlight of which was the world premiere of Anna Clyne’s ‘This Moment.’… ‘This Moment’ was commissioned by a multi-orchestra consortium led by the League of American Orchestras, and created to celebrate women composers. Five orchestras will perform the piece during the 2023–24 season…. It quotes themes from [Mozart’s] Requiem … and also takes inspiration from a line by the Vietnamese Buddhist monk Thich Nhat Hanh … ‘When you meditate on death, you love life more, you cherish life more.’… ‘This Moment’ emerges from glacial strings, with a lightly brushed ominous gong and a bowed vibraphone. A long, anguished theme starts taking shape in the strings, with languid responses from the woodwinds. Suddenly, the music gets much louder, with tuba and trombones blasting sustained tones; when the theme for strings returns, it is transmogrified … shaken up by loud gong crashes…. The music ends in quiet weightiness, suggesting not resignation but acceptance…. Yannick Nézet-Séguin conducted with expressive attentiveness.” Learn more about the League of American Orchestras’ Virginia B. Toulmin Foundation Orchestral Commissions Program.