Composer Jennifer Higdon is on a roll. Her new Piano Concerto was premiered last month by Yuja Wang and the National Symphony Orchestra. Her Percussion Concerto is up for a Grammy Award. She’s writing a concerto for the new music ensemble Eighth Blackbird to be premiered in June with the Atlanta Symphony, and she’s working on a San Francisco Opera commission with a due date of 2013.
This month alone, according to the 47-year-old composer’s Web site, nine of her works are receiving a combined 20 performances. Hearing the young virtuoso Hilary Hahn roar through Higdon’s flashy Violin Concerto on Thursday with music director Leonard Slatkin and the Detroit Symphony Orchestra offered a primer on why Higdon’s music has become catnip for so many performers and audiences.
Do you think Classical music is broadly accessible today? And if not what would you do to encourage more people to listen, watch, and get involved in it and understand it better?
I think it’s not classical music, but its image which drives people away, particularly young people. What people need to understand is that music should be taken as music, judged for whether it is good or bad, not whether it’s classical or pop or rock or jazz! I think people have just been bitten by stereo-types, and that is ALWAYS a mistake.
People often ask me what tracks I would suggest for people to listen to who have doubts about classical music, or who have not discovered it yet. I would suggest;
- Anything by Sibelius (but particularly the 5th, 6th and 7th Symphonies). His music is full of some of the most awesome melodies I’ve ever come across.
- Wagner – small doses are great for a new-comer to music. They are highly melodic, and contain such incredible energy!
- Thomas Tallis’s ‘Spem In Alium’, and ‘If Ye Love me’.
- Vaughn Williams’s “The Lark ascending”, “Norfolk Rhapsody” and the 3rd and 5th symphonies. That is as English as you get in music.
- Aaron Copland’s “Appalachian Spring”, “Rodeo”, “The Tender Land” and more than anything his 3rd symphony.
- John Adams – my favourite living composer, and one of the greatest composers ever. I would Advise his ‘Harmonium’, ‘Harmonielehre’, ‘Grand Pianola Music’, ‘Nixon in China’, ‘The Chairman Dances’, ‘Hallelujah Junction’, ‘Short Ride in a Fast Machine’, and EVERYTHING else he’s written! I would also advise his amazing auto-biography “Hallelujah Junction” – a huge insight into American music and his compositional process, as well as full of romantic, beautiful and Rustic Americana scenes.
Seattle Symphony is pleased to welcome 17-year-old conductor Alexander Prior to an unprecedented Chairman’s Fellow position, Assistant to the Guest Conductors.
And if you think maybe he doesn’t know what he’s doing, check out the video! (To add insult to injury, check out the young soloists too):
I may have mentioned this before, but in case I forgot, the composer also has his very own blog. Check it out. (Warning: I have great difficulty reading it, as it’s white lettering on dark background. It just KILLS my eyes. Sigh.)
So often dance seems to rely on music. Duh. But it’s interesting to see this one video that uses no music at all …
… and I think a lot of women can relate to the “huge day” thing. I also have “ugly days” and “pretty days” and it is fully in my head, I’m sure, but if we feel a certain way I do believe we also come across that way to others. Thus, I’m working on the “perfect oboe reed day”. :-)
But, as I said, most dance does use music. I just landed on the video below because I was checking out a new friend’s blog and website. (Hi Darin … hope you don’t mind me being as presumptuous as I am by calling you “friend”!) We “met” on twitter and the met live at the Ravel Symphony Silicon Valley concert. Here is his music with the above choreographer’s work:
I think the sound is a very interesting phenomenon … why the people like and are so influenced with music. They don’t know how strong the music influences us, good and bad … you can kill people with sound. And if you can kill, then you can — maybe there is also the sound which is something opposite of killing. And the distance between these two points is very big and you are free — you can choose. In art everything is possible, but everything what is made is not necessary.