In Sunday’s (4/7) Los Angeles Times, Mike Boehm writes, “It wasn’t B.J. Thomas, exactly, but musical raindrops seemed to be falling in a white-walled rehearsal room next to Walt Disney Concert Hall, courtesy of Milo Talwani, one of the L.A. composers least likely to write melody, let alone ear candy, into a piece of music. At 16, he’s one of four area high school students taking the royal road to composing careers, at least at the outset, via the Los Angeles Philharmonic. … [Talwani’s piece] was being given its first test run by the Calder Quartet, a string ensemble that over the past 15 years has gone from USC undergraduate beginnings to international acclaim. … For the current crop of L.A. Phil Composer Fellows, it’s part of the curriculum. Their two-year apprenticeships will peak the coming two Saturdays when the full Los Angeles Philharmonic, conducted by Christopher Lees, will play their short orchestral pieces in Disney Hall alongside Mussorgsky’s ‘Pictures at an Exhibition,’ as part of the Toyota Symphonies for Youth series. … Early in odd-numbered years, the Phil puts out a call for teenage applicants in the L.A. area who can demonstrate an aptitude for putting music on paper. The chosen four, picked for sparks of originality, embark the following fall on a cost-free two-year regimen of writing for wind instruments, percussion, strings, brass—the whole panoply.”
Posted April 8, 2013
