“Everyone may be a critic in theory. But at ‘Avant-Garde Idol,’ an upcoming event at the Museum of Contemporary Art Cleveland, the expression will hold true literally,” writes Zachary Lewis in Sunday’s (4/6) Plain Dealer (Cleveland, Ohio). “ ‘If you’ve seen ‘American Idol,’ you pretty much know how it works,’ said Chris Auerbach-Brown, MOCA’s media program manager and organizer of the event … a live contest pitting nine composers from Baldwin Wallace and Cleveland State universities against one another…. Each artist had to … compose and prepare a piece on deadline for … the Ars Futura ensemble,” a Cleveland-based quintet led by pianist Shuai Wang. “All nine works will be played at least once, on the first half. Then, during intermission, the audience will choose the top three. On the second half, those three works will be performed once more, at which point the audience and the judges … will select their favorites.… Auerbach-Brown said, ‘The audience won’t just be a receptor of information. We’re going to have people standing up and talking right after the music is played. It’s not the type of feedback composers are used to.’ ”
Posted April 8, 2014
