The Boston Musical Intelligencer has a pair of interviews with John Harbison - in his capacity as acting music director at Emmanuel Church - and the Rev. Pamela Werntz, who is to be installed as the new rector at Emmanuel this Sunday. As I wrote about earlier, my motet Spiraling Ecstatically will be done at both the morning prayer service and the installation service/Eucharist in the afternoon. Spiraling sets a poem of E. E. Cummings, and is a revision of a piece I wrote for the choir of the Catholic Campus Ministry during my student days in the Columbia University doctoral composition program.
Month: March 2010
Academy Award (not that one)
Today the American Academy of Arts and Letters announced the 2010 winners of its various awards in music, and I will be present at the award ceremony in May as the recipient of one of four Academy Awards in Music. A link to the press release here. Curiously, all four winners of the Academy Award are published by Theodore Presser Co. - Daniel Asia, David Felder, Pierre Jalbert being the other three.
Spiralling
Emmanuel Music will sing my Cummings motet, Spiralling Ecstatically this coming Sunday, March 7. The piece will be heard at a 10:00 Morning Prayer service at Emmanuel Church on Newbury St. in Boston, as well as at the 3:00 installation service for Emmanuel’s new rector, Rev. Pamela L. Werntz. The afternoon service will include the celebration of the Eucharist. Bach cantata #163, Nur jedem das Seine!, will also be heard at the morning service. If you don’t know about Emmanuel, this is a place where a Bach cantata is heard every week in its proper liturgical context, a practice begun under the leadership of the late conductor Craig Smith that has continued now for decades. (It is Craig who conducts Emmanuel on Lorraine Hunt Lieberson’s sublime CD of Bach solo cantatas.) Emmanuel is a lively and welcoming worshipping community that has an unusual commitment to the highest musical standards. I am very happy to be, in a small way, a part of that community through the motets I have written for Emmanuel over the years. You can hear one of those motets here (scroll down to “choral”), and see a sample of a score for that piece here. I will be there for both services, and also for the BMOP concert on Saturday night - Ball, Wheeler, Hartke, Babbitt, Olivero, Bartók. (At left: the “Pilgrim’s Progress” window at Emmanuel Church.)
Made in USA
Anthony Tommasini’s piece in today’s Times about the NY Phil’s programming of American music touches on a tricky subject. I’m glad, of course, to see the Philharmonic doing new music at all, and particularly glad to see American composers Marsalis, Rouse and Kernis on the bill for next season. And it does seem reasonable of Alan Gilbert to say that a longer view of the programming over a couple of seasons is necessary to get an accurate sense of his priorities. (Of course that point cuts both ways - he can’t exactly take credit for programming the Kernis which has been in the pipeline for some time.) The Philharmonic is a global citizen, and has a responsibility to bring the work of top composers like Adés and Lindberg from other countries to New York. That is an important service that nourishes our cultural life.
And yet - the Philharmonic also has a responsibility to be a cultural leader in this country and in New York City. Consistently commissioning and presenting a substantial amount of music by American composers is an essential part of that leadership. Here’s hoping that the next composer-in-residence with the Philharmonic will be an American, someone who can give an American face to American music at the Philharmonic.
