Like most com­posers, I absorbed cer­tain widely accepted musi­cal axioms from my uni­ver­sity stud­ies, but they’ve never been entirely sat­is­fy­ing. As a con­se­quence, I con­stantly search for bet­ter expla­na­tions, in the process hope­fully becom­ing a bet­ter artist. One of the issues I’m increas­ingly focus­ing on is how music his­tory is inter­preted. Although I have pre­vi­ously argued for an enhanced role for music his­tory in com­poser edu­ca­tion, I also think we need to re-examine how we use (and abuse) that his­tory. In my own prac­tice, let­ting go of false history-based causative asso­ci­a­tions, what I see as a kind of com­po­si­tional his­tori­cism, has paid cre­ative div­i­dends. Con­tinue read­ing “Let­ting Go of 20th-Century Historicism” »

A photo from the pre­mière in late May, at the annual Dag in de Brand­ing fes­ti­val; click for a larger ver­sion. More per­for­mances in the Nether­lands are sched­uled for later this year, and I will post details as soon as they are available.

I hope even­tu­ally to have video footage to post as well, so con­sider this a teaser for now.

Photo by Dani­jel Miha­jlivoc. You can also check out addi­tional pho­tos from the con­cert on the photographer’s Web gallery.