Lee Hoiby, Master of Opera and Song, Dies at 85

[excerpted from European American Music Distributors]
It is with the deepest sadness that we report the death of composer Lee Hoiby, one of the greatest masters of opera and song of our time. Mr. Hoiby died on March 28, 2011 at Montefiore Hospital in New York City, following a short illness.

Lee Hoiby's gift for musical fantasy was a constant throughout a long life of boundless creative output. His rich catalog of works encompasses operas, oratorios, choral works, concerti, chamber works, song cycles, and more than 100 songs, many of them championed by such singers as Leontyne Price, Frederica von Stade, and Marilyn Horne, among many others. Hoiby's commitment to tonality remained steadfast throughout his compositional life, even when such an allegiance was considered unfashionable. His music uniquely combines joyous melodic invention with structural rigor and it was in the seclusion of the Catskill mountain countryside where he made his home that he found the peaceful balance of art and life he so cherished.  Read more

The Blödes ('Stupid”) Orchester Debut

[excerpted from Musical America]

It took him eight years, but German composer and conductor Michael Petermann has put together an orchestra comprised of over 200 household appliances made between 1912 and 1975. Hair dryers, a washing machine, electric carving knives, mixers, Braun razors, a telephone, electric fans – they’re all included in the Blödes (translated as “Stupid”) Orchester, on display at Hamburg’s Museum Für Kunst Und Gewerbe. Petermann composed a 30-minute piece for it, transmitted via a midi interface.  Watch an excerpt on YouTube

Sarah Palin trashes National Endowment for the Arts

Television commentator and half-term Alaska governor Sarah Palin trashed the National Endowment for the Arts recently, describing the agency as "frivolous" in a Thursday interview on Fox News.

"NPR, National Endowment for the Arts, National Endowment for the Humanities, all those kind of frivolous things that government shouldn't be in the business of funding with tax dollars -- those should all be on the chopping block as we talk about the $14-trillion debt that we're going to hand to our kids and our grandkids," Palin told right-wing host Sean Hannity. "Yes, those are the type of things that for more than one reason need to be cut."  Read More

(Information on this story is also available on campus via MusicalAmerica.)

Music Treasures Consortium

The Library of Congress has launched a Music Consortium Treasures website that gives online access to some of the world's most valued music manuscript and print materials from six esteemed institutions HERE.

The aim of the site is to further music scholarship and research by providing access in one place to digital images of primary sources for performance and study of music.

The Music Treasures Consortium website is the creation of the music libraries and archives in both the United States and the United Kingdom. Joining the Library are The Juilliard School’s Lila Acheson Wallace Library, the British Library, the Eda Kuhn Loeb Music Library at Harvard University, the Morgan Library and Museum and the New York Public Library.

Items digitized include manuscript scores and first and early editions of a work. Seminal composers such as Johann Sebastian Bach, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, Richard Wagner, Claude Debussy, Georges Bizet, Arnold Schoenberg and Igor Stravinsky, among others, are represented on the site through their original handwritten manuscripts and first editions. The online items range from the 16th century to the 20th century in this initial launch.

Researchers can search or browse materials, access bibliographic information about each item and view digital images of the treasure via each custodial archive's website. The site will continue to grow as consortium members add more items.

Koussevitzky Foundation Announces Eight New Commission Winners

The Serge Koussevitzky Music Foundation in the Library of Congress and the Koussevitzky Music Foundation, Inc., have awarded commissions for new musical works to eight composers. Jointly granting the commissions are the foundations and the performing organizations that will present the newly composed works.

Award winners and the groups co-sponsoring their commissions are John Corigliano and the New York Philharmonic; Justin Dello Joio and Bargemusic of Brooklyn, NY; Fang Man and Dolce Suono Ensemble of Philadelphia, PA; David Felder and SIGNAL of Rochester, NY; Eric Moe and Talujon of Sea Cliff, NY; Augusta Read Thomas and the Orpheus Chamber Orchestra of NY; Bright Sheng and the PRISM Quartet of Philadelphia; and Jukka Tiensuu and New Paths in Music of Staten Island, NY.

Read More

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