“Why won’t big American orchestras improvise?” writes Seth Colter Walls in Tuesday’s (8/25) New York Times. “Improvisation has largely been left to the very occasional special guest, like the pianist Aaron Diehl, who … sometimes improvises during a Gershwin concerto. In their orchestral works, [composers George Lewis, Anthony Braxton, and Roscoe Mitchell] sometimes ask the musicians to improvise, too. The improvising composer-performers Henry Threadgill and Anthony Davis have [won] the Pulitzer Prize for music…. The trumpeter Wadada Leo Smith was a finalist for the Pulitzer in 2013…. All six of these composers have written large-ensemble or orchestral music, most of which has rarely if ever been played by major American orchestras…. All of these musicians are Black. Beginning to program their orchestral music … would be one way to address larger patterns of racial exclusion in classical music. The American Composers Orchestra … has performed works by Mr. Threadgill and Mr. Lewis … [The BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra] has also performed work by Mr. Mitchell, Mr. Braxton and Mr. Lewis…. The Spektral Quartet’s new double album, ‘Experiments in Living,’ juxtaposes works from the Germanic canon with … the fully improvised ‘Spinals,’ which the group conceived with the improvising vocalist Charmaine Lee.”
Change font size