Composers Now, a new consortium of New York arts organizations, is sponsoring a weeklong festival highlighting the contributions composers make to the cultural fabric of society. During the week of February 22-28, the festival will present an intensive schedule of concerts and discussions at a wide range of venues, such as Symphony Space, the Morgan Library and Museum, the Manhattan School of Music, Merkin Concert Hall, Miller Theatre at Columbia University, the Jazz Gallery, Harlem Stage, and El Museo del Barrio. It’s being sponsored by an impressive consortium of organizations, including ASCAP, BMI, and Meet the Composer’s Metlife Creative Connections Program.
 
Tania León
The festival is the brainchild of New York-based composers Tania León and Laura Kaminsky. León draws an analogy with National Poetry Month. “We need to find a way to raise awareness and appreciation of this important community of creators. I would love to see composers as visible as poets.” She and Kaminsky enlisted grassroots support among New York arts organizations to sponsor events that would bring living composers and their work to the attention of broader audiences. Kaminsky, who serves as the group’s coordinator, calls the formation of Composers Now a demonstration of the goodwill and shared vision of the city’s music community. The plan is for the festival to become an annual event in New York, and Kaminsky envisions it expanding across the country, giving audiences in many communities exposure to living composers, not only in concert halls, but in schools, community centers, and retirement communities.

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One of the most dynamic and popular pianists in America’s classical music scene, Christopher O’Riley is the host of NPR’s From the Top, a program that provides a platform for the youngest generations of classical music performers to show their stuff. It is one of the top shows on public radio in America. Its television offspring, From the Top at Carnegie Hall, is set to resume taping in 2010. Although these projects are demanding in their own respect, O’Riley maintains an extraordinary amount of personal creativity as well. He made his conducting debut with the Columbus Symphony (in Ohio) in May and has just released Out of My Hands on the White Tie/Mesa Bluemoon label, an occasion celebrated by a concert to a packed house at the Highline Ballroom in New York City.

O’Riley is pursuing the much maligned, but more often honored, art of transcribing for the piano works not written for it. Nineteenth century composers such as Franz Liszt once transcribed at the pace of a one-man industry. And like Liszt, O’Riley transforms the music of his contemporaries, but O’Riley considers among his contemporaries musicians such as the rock bands Radiohead, Nirvana, and Portishead, something that has sent shock waves throughout the classical industry — can this really be classical music? Rather than taking a trite, easy listening track as was common in the 1960s when classical musicians played The Beatles, O’Riley’s conceptions are wholly serious and easily pass muster as “classical,” and the new album seems his best effort in this endeavor yet. We were intrigued, and when AMG’s Uncle Dave Lewis got hold of Christopher O’Riley he was en route to a From the Top taping in Wolfeboro, New Hampshire.

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Pianist Jeffrey Biegel is young, ambitious, and brimming with enthusiasm. That alone would not make him automatically eligible for inclusion on the All Music Blog, however Jeffrey has an angle, multiple angles, in fact, on revitalizing the standard repertoire, cultivating new music, and utilizing new media to promote the cause of classical music in our time. Besides, Biegel has two — count ‘em, two — new classical releases this summer, all the more reason to lend him an ear — it should be well worth your time.

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Although only a few years have elapsed since Chinese pianist Xiayin Wang first made her mark in the U.S., interest in her artistry has been swiftly growing since her first Marquis disc, Introducing Xiayin Wang, appeared in 2007. With the release of her third disc and debut on the prestigious Naxos label it seemed like a good time to catch up with Xiayin Wang. When one listens to Wang, one is not thinking about questions of technique, interpretation or performance tradition — she dedicates her pianism to feelings and emotions alone. It’s deeply affecting playing and difficult to describe in words; perhaps it is best to allow Xiayin Wang the opportunity to speak for herself.

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Soyeon Lee is a new face on the classical music scene, and has been making quite a stir with her environmentally conscious CD package Re!nvented. What would normally have been a mixed recital of transcriptions, standard concert fare and one new work has been rendered into a unique product by virtue of it’s cover, molded together out of recycled potato chip bags; Lee’s interest in recycling has even extended to her concert attire. Needless to say, we were interested, and AMG’s Uncle Dave Lewis spoke to Lee by telephone to her home in New Jersey.

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The great German composer, conductor, and violist Paul Hindemith died at age 68, a little over a month after John F. Kennedy was assassinated, so the very idea of Hindemith producing “new music” in 2009 seems a little counter-intuitive. Admittedly, the gradual trickling out of bottom drawer content — sketches, unpublished and forgotten early works, etc. — by major classical composers is nothing new. It seems these days as though Jean Sibelius has a half dozen new things come out every few months or so. However, instances where a large score, such as a previously unknown full-scale concerto, from a composer of Hindemith’s stature are relatively rare. That’s what Finnish label Ondine is offering for the first time in their release, Hindemith: Klaviermusik mit Orchester.

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There have been many who’ve made great fun of oh-so-serious Classical music. Past masters of this were Victor Borge, Anna Russell, and Flanders and Swann. There’s also Peter Schickele, still going for the yucks 55 years after first discovering the music of Bach’s least son, P.D.Q.

Take a look at the newest Classical jesters: the team of Igudesman and Joo. Their 2004 “A Little Nightmare Music” concert at the Vienna Musikverein resulted in several viral YouTube videos, which in turn led to world tours and appearances with high-profile artists such as Gidon Kremer, Janine Jansen, and at the 2008 “Night of the Proms” in Belgium, appearing on the same stage with Robin Gibb, Sinéad O’Connor, and Tears for Fears, among other luminaries. The most popular excerpts from the Vienna concert are “Rachmaninov Had Big Hands” and “I Will Survive,” but all of the videos are now on one DVD, which is available at their website. The trailer for it will give you a good idea of why these guys are the latest clown princes of Classical comedy.

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Ace fiddler Mark O’Connor has made a name for himself as champion traditional fiddler, country music sideman and in jazz, but for about 20 years he has also composed classical music as a sideline. In 2009, O’Connor is rolling out his Americana Symphony, his first full-fledged orchestral work with no part for him to play as soloist. This is a reversal of the usual formula; more often it is the classical musician that turns to popular styles to let their long hair down, not the other way ’round. In an interview with AMG’s Uncle Dave Lewis, Mark O’Connor shares his thinking on this symphony and some notion of what it’s like to experience his own music from the other side of the proscenium arch.

AMG: Greetings, Mark, from Ann Arbor; this is Uncle Dave Lewis.

Mark O’Connor: A pleasure to hear from you, how are you?

AMG: A little under the weather, sorry to say, but I wasn’t about to miss this opportunity to speak with you. I understand you are touring a lot these days, where are you calling from now?

MOC: Actually, I’m calling from home in New York City. I tour quite a bit on the weekends and just come back to New York through the week. Sometimes I take off for a bit longer, a week or two at a time, but generally I go out to where I need to be over the weekend, and then come home.

AMG: In your work, there’s a gradual shift from being a champion traditional fiddler — which is a world in which you still function — to being a classical composer. What do you find are the common and uncommon elements between fiddling and classical music making, besides the fiddle itself?

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