In Thursday’s (6/3) Detroit Free Press, Mark Stryker writes, “The Detroit Symphony Orchestra closes its season with a shot of the new as music director Leonard Slatkin leads the world premiere of Cindy McTee’s ‘Double Play.’ McTee, 57, is the winner of the DSO’s third annual Elaine Lebenbom Memorial Award for women composers, which also includes a $10,000 prize.” Of her new work, McTee comments, “I decided to make a piece with two sections, one slow and one fast, and then I started to think of two separate pieces that could be played individually or continuously. Part of the inspiration came from Charles Ives’ ‘The Unanswered Question’ and its companion piece, ‘Central Park in the Dark.’ ‘The Unanswered Question’ provides a wonderful example of how to put disparate musical ideas against one another. I think of counterpoint in small and large ways. You can have note against note, melody against melody and, in the Ives piece, musical idea against musical idea. … The shapes, treatment of textures and the counterpoint of ideas are from Ives. It starts on ‘D’ for Detroit.”
Posted June 4, 2010
