Four Hours: ‘A Small Part Of The Repertoire’ You could do worse than play a 1710 cello made by the Venetian luthier Matteo Goffriller, but what Matt Haimover now is doing on that instrument can come very close to explaining what we mean by an author’s “voice” in writing. He can stroll up on you… Read More
#MusicForWriters: Philip Glass’ ‘Not-Ninth’ Symphony
‘An Uncommonly Crowd-Pleasing Piece Of Music’ So maybe the new weekly blog post coming to PhilipGlass.com on Mondays won’t be the first stop every author makes on his or her read-in for the day. But you could do worse. Richard Guerin has begun editing “Glass Notes” each week, and the very first thing we read there… Read More
#MusicForWriters: Tristan Perich's Percussionists, Human And Not
‘Blur And Back Again’ When composer Tristan Perich puts his work Parallels on its feet, one of the results is something that Q2 Music’s Hannis Brown correctly identifies as familiar to distance runners: the play of endorphins in an athlete’s sensory fields. Brown writes: It’s music to which any runner can relate. Parallels‘s architecture melts from distinct texture… Read More
#MusicForWriters: Laura Karpman ’s ‘Your Mama’
‘A Conversation Between Black And White America’ In one of the most effective instances of a difficult form to pull off, composer Laura Karpman lets you know from the first moment that she’s got this under control. Her full-album 12-part treatment opens with the unadorned sound of an archival recording of Hughes introducing his 1961… Read More
#MusicForWriters: Lisa Bielawa’s Emotional Economy
‘Communion With Music And Audience’ When I last spoke with composer Lisa Bielawa, she was working up to theAirfield Broadcasts. These were huge events staged in October 2013. In each, as many as 1,000 musicians were involved in what Bielawa calls “spatialized symphonies.” The events were created for two airport-born parks. One is in Germany, the… Read More
#MusicForWriters: Michel van der Aa’s ‘Hovering’ Flight
‘The Darker Aspects Of Life’ This week’s #MusicForWriters column: Like one of my favorite artists and friends, the music-theater virtuoso Martha Clarke, Michel van der Aa trades deliberately in what you’ll see him call in our interview “the darker aspects of life.” As a kid, we learn, he got into music on a psychologist’s advice, to… Read More
Get Porter Alerts: Publishing Coverage On The Fly
Know When The Tweets Take Off Publishing’s conference and trade-show events stack up like the cities of Troy, one atop the other, right? It’s always springtime for publishing somewhere, and who can keep up? Now, you can: Let my boarding passes be your guide. Sign up at my site for my free newsletter, Porter Alerts! By having these notices… Read More
#MusicForWriters: John Supko and ‘Rest’ For Musicians, Human And Otherwise
‘The Algebraic Picture Of My Self And Soul’ In last week’s Music for Writers interview with Bryce Dessner (for his Music For Wood and Strings), the composer told us: I think there’s something counter-intuitive about a lot of innovation in music in the last 20 years, in that so much of it has been driven… Read More
#MusicForWriters: Bryce Dessner Strikes A New Chord Stick
‘Dreaming Of Music For There Wasn’t An Instrument’ When you listen to Bryce Dessner’s newly released recording of Music For Wood And Strings, you’re hearing sounds unprecedented in our experience. The “chord stick” is an instrument created by Aron Sanchez, half the team of Buke and Gase. While you might not think that Dessner, widely known… Read More
#MusicForWriters: Joby Talbot On The ‘Path Of Miracles’
‘Translated To Heaven And Spain’ For most of us, it would be a miracle that a single element of aboriginal music survived in our memories from youth to adulthood. For composer Joby Talbot, however, retrieving his teenage hearing on BBC Radio 3 of the Taiwanese Bunan tribe’s Pasiputput seems to have been an easy stop on… Read More