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” »

This is a reprint of the first edi­tion of my e-mail newslet­ter.

For some time I’ve had a newslet­ter signup form on my web­site but this is the first time I’m actu­ally send­ing a newslet­ter out!

I plan on doing this 2–3 times per year. For more fre­quent info, see my web­site or Twit­ter. Unsub­scribe link at the bottom.

Con­tents

• Upcom­ing Con­cert: Halo Bal­let Pre­mière – 24 Oct 2010 – Toronto
• Upcom­ing Con­cert: Hockey Story – 20 Jan 2011 – San Diego
• Oksana G. Opera Devel­op­ment Workshop
• Results of Exper­i­ment: Can I Avoid Choos­ing the Music I Lis­ten to?
• Help Me Help You: Col­lab­o­ra­tive Audi­ence Building

Con­tinue read­ing “Newslet­ter: News, Con­certs, Events, <span class=“amp”>&</span> Crit­i­cal Thought” »

A long-term pro­ject of mine is mov­ing for­ward this year. Tapes­try New Opera applied for and received fund­ing from Opera​.ca to pro­duce the first act of the opera I have been devel­op­ing with libret­tist, Colleen Mur­phy. We’ll be involved in round­table dis­cus­sions on the opera in Toronto this spring, and I will be com­pos­ing the music for one act of the opera, to be work­shopped at the Banff Cen­tre in August of this year. The act will then be fully pro­duced in the first part of 2010. More details to fol­low as they become available.

Things have been very busy, and I haven’t had the chance to do any site updates between teach­ing, tak­ing classes, and trav­el­ling for workshops/performances. I was recently in Mon­tréal for the Ensem­ble contemporain’s work­shop, and I leave next week for the pre­mière of The Enslave­ment and Lib­er­a­tion of Oksana G. with Tapes­try New Opera in Toronto. See the Per­for­mances sec­tion for details.

In addi­tion, one excit­ing piece of news: my first jury piece from UCSD was selected to com­pete in the 2006 Gaudea­mus Music Week in the cham­ber music cat­e­gory. So I’ll be in Ams­ter­dam in early Sep for that.