On a cold Monday morning, the German composer Sarah Nemtsov met up with me in our Berlin office for an interview. Yesterday, Ricordi Berlin formally announced the three winners of its composition competition RicordiLab: Nemtsov, Shiori Usui, and Steffen Wick. (The advisory board consisted of Liza Lim, Kristjan Järvi, Gillian Moore, and Dr. Clemens Trautmann.) […]
Tag: Composers
Posted inInterview
I Am The Wound
It took me a long time to even think about translating this interview. Helmut Lachenmann, the German master of a music often referred to as musique concrète instrumentale, a noisy, raw, gorgeous music, is almost as noted for his words as for his sounds. These words can seem inextricable from the language that he says […]
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Into The Sky
Dylan Mattingly co-artistically directs and plays cello in the New York-based ensemble Contemporaneous, and he has played a considerable number of instruments in countless other groups specializing in everything from folk to funk. Last year I attended the premiere of his “Seasickness and Being (in love)” at the LA Philharmonic, a work that poignantly captures […]
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The Yellow Suitcases
When the filmmaker Ingmar Bergman died, on July 30 2007, I was at the Universidad del Cine in Buenos Aires. It was a cold day, and strange: we had lost the director Michelangelo Antonioni, too. Some of my fellow students and I smoked cigarettes outside. I thought of the character of the Knight in Bergman’s […]
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Detail and Plasticity
Piyawat Louillarpprasert’s composition “Tremble” unfolded as an almost literal translation of its title. The strings tapped col legno battuto, the woodwinds played rapid hairpin swells, single notes were articulated repeatedly and passed throughout the ensemble. At one point, the conductor compared a section to a “rainforest in Thailand.” It was August 25, a sunny morning. […]
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Synthesis
You are as likely to hear electroacoustic composer Carl Stone’s works performed through an octophonic diffusion system in a fancy academic hall as you are to find him performing in a small club, set up on the requisite rickety noise table. A new three-LP set on the Unseen Worlds label, “Electronic Music of the Seventies […]
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Beauty is a Process
Miami-based composer and saxophonist Matthew Evan Taylor’s career has formed an impressive arc—from playing jazz and blues in Mississippi, to being signed with rock band Moses Mayfield to major label Epic Records, to receiving his doctorate in composition. These days he is engaged in composing and performing new music and opera, and is an active […]
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Head On
Composer, percussionist, improviser, and UC Irvine professor Lukas Ligeti spoke with me from his home in Bushwick, New York, for nearly two hours coming off the heels of an evening showcasing his works at National Sawdust in Brooklyn. As the only son of György Ligeti, one of the most innovative and influential composers in the […]
Posted inHistory
Scores on the Sidewalk
In late 1981 or early 1982, the composer and vocalist Julius Eastman was evicted from his apartment in New York City. City marshals placed his belongings on the sidewalk, including all of his scores, and Eastman walked away, leaving everything behind. After years of drifting in and out of homeless shelters and bumming money from […]
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Timelapse
For Intro, we speak with the musicians who don’t show up in press releases. We hope to portray a diversity of background and experience in classical music. This is the third interview in an ongoing series.When I thought of who I would Intro, Natalie Draper immediately came to mind. I spent the summer of 2015 […]