The League of American Orchestras has given $15,000 each to composers Stacy Garrop, Robin Holcomb, and Andrea Reinkemeyer.
Reinkemeyer’s work will be premiered by the Louisiana Philharmonic, Garrop’s by the St. Louis Symphony Orchestra and Holcomb’s by the Portland Symphony Orchestra of Maine.
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Ms Holcomb is not serious composition but entertainment:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Axc16CNkNS0
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QkX91zhCk6Y
……. and Ms Reinkemeyer probably misunderstood a couple of things she had heard:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BD9OWZvWegk
…. which leaves as the only serious composer, Ms Garrop:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=URG9KMV5c5c
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T2h0cktnw7Q
Is this all the league could think of? One serious composer? How embarrassing.
As a musician who loves new music, I sometimes wonder if Mr. Borstlap realizes how much damage he does in regards to potential performances of his own music with his comments on this site, which are often condescending, judgmental, and dismissive of any opinion that is not his own.
Seriously. And Heaven forbid a musical composition should be entertaining and not serious.
Nonsense….. people are merely afraid to be seen as ‘conservative’ if they don’t treat anything with wet ink with enthusiasm. For people who don’t live in a Soviet Union, but like to create one on their own accord, being aesthetically critical is a sin because of the danger to be found-out to be telling the truth, but for more culturally-alert people the idea that aesthetic opinions should be adapted to career chances, is anathema.
This is a website dedicated to classical music and frequented by music lovers, but it is astonishing to see so many of them entirely ignorant about the disaster of sound art claiming to be music, which has damaged the musical tradition so seriously and which has influenced audience reception of new music so negatively, in times when the art form needs to be invigorated, not treated with anaesthetizing convention.
Especially in the USA, there are many truly gifted composers, who apparently have been ‘overlooked’ by the League:
Daniel Asia
Jonathan Leshnoff
Stephen Albert (alas, died 1992)
Aaron Jay Kernis
Jennifer Higdon
Pierre Jalbert
Daniel Gilliam
Jake Heggie
Paul Moravec (one of the very best)
Lera Auerbach
Richard Danielpour
Jeremy Cavaterra
And these are not some kind of home-bred conservative silly hobbyists but fully mature, fully-fledged and successful modern composers – i.e. being performed and capable of connecting with classical music audiences. And their music shows great variety, many different idioms, but they are united in their rejection of using sound purely for sonic effect: they have something to say. And thus, they are diligently working on a renaissance of music.
Readers with a better sense of perception will have noticed that I am only critical about really clearly nonsensical things….. and if people want to read something more ‘positive’ they can find me on the website of the Future Symphony Institute:
http://www.futuresymphony.com