In Monday’s (6/8) Wall Street Journal, Allan Kozinn writes that Buffalo, New York “holds an important place in the hearts of new-music fans. Part of its reputation can be ascribed to the Buffalo Philharmonic, which has championed recent works ever since the composer Lukas Foss directed it, in the 1960s…. The University at Buffalo’s annual June in Buffalo festival, a roughly weeklong flowering of concerts, lectures and composition master classes [founded by] the experimentalist composer Morton Feldman … is celebrating the 40th anniversary of its founding.” Composer David Felder, the festival’s current director, “has … expanded its goals. Last year, he added a performance institute, directed by the pianist Eric Huebner, in which expert new-music players teach young instrumentalists not only the niceties of modern performing techniques, but how to deal with thorny scores scheduled for performance while their ink is still wet—for instance, the works of the festival’s composition students. The faculty and students join forces to perform this music…. Feldman’s On Time and the Instrumental Factor opened the festival’s final concert—a performance by the Buffalo Philharmonic, conducted by Stefan Sanders.” Among composers spotlighted at the festival this June 1-7 were Texu Kim, Ying-Ting Lin, Ryan Jesperson, Steve Reich, Augusta Read Thomas, and Bernard Rands.
In photo: At the 2012 edition of the June in Buffalo festival, Brad Lubman leads Signal in Julia Wolfe’s “Impatience,” an accompaniment to a 1920s film.
Photo: Irene Haupt.
Posted June 10, 2015
