In Sunday’s (12/11) New York Times, Allan Kozinn writes about the tension that arises when orchestras present new music while maintaining the canon of great works. “Even a model in which orchestras, chamber groups and opera companies present themselves as museums with substantial contemporary wings has almost insurmountable limitations circumscribing the possibility of hearing much new music. … Instead of waiting for established ensembles to give [young, inventive composers] a hearing, they have built an alternative musical universe. … It thrives in concert spaces that make a point of informality. Some, like Le Poisson Rouge and the Cornelia Street Café in Greenwich Village and Galapagos in Brooklyn, are like jazz clubs: you can nurse a drink while listening to a performance, but the atmosphere is quiet and focused. … It would be wrong to suggest that the young composers who have created this burgeoning alternative world have no interest in the big institutions. … But they have other models too. They attended conservatories and went through the same rigorous training as their predecessors, but they have not inherited their teachers’ battles. For them serialism and Minimalism are equally useful tools in a gestural language that draws on rock, jazz, hip-hop, world music and every reconfiguration of classical language from medieval times through Romanticism.”
Posted December 14, 2011
