July 6, 2012
Summer Festival Spotlight: Steven Stucky
Guest composers play an important part at the Mizzou New Music Summer Festival, teaching and mentoring the resident composers, and we are most fortunate to have Steven Stucky as one of our guest composers for the 2012 MNMSF. Called by BMI “a towering figure in contemporary classical music,” Stucky (pictured) perhaps is best known for his Second Concerto for Orchestra, which was commissioned and premiered in 2004 by the Los Angeles Philharmonic and won the Pulitzer Prize for music in 2005. He is a professor of music at Cornell University, where he has taught since 1980, and…
July 3, 2012
Patrick Clark YES Academy Iraq Report
Patrick David Clark teaching music students at American Voices' YES Academy in Iraq Day Three: Tuesday, July 3 – Duhok University, Iraq Today in composition class, my ten students and I listened to Claude Debussy’s Voiles from the first book of Préludes. “What is the scale that Debussy is using in the first part of this piece?” I asked. A general perplexity prevailed until I explained Debussy’s trademark whole-tone scale and played it up and down the piano like a harp and the generally reticent Jumaah declared it to be “magic.” Indeed every analysis we make in class…
July 2, 2012
Patrick David Clark reporting from Iraq
Orientation: Friday, June 29 – Duhok, Iraq It is hot and dry in Duhok. I am in the Hotel Mondeal and a wedding celebration is taking place in the lobby below my room. Sounds and smells subtly spice the night air in northern Iraq. I had the pleasure of meeting two veteran students of the American Voices annual summer program in Iraq this evening: clarinetist Dilan Muhammed, 21, 5th year, and cellist Bashdar Karim, 19, also in his 5th year. Both of these students receive the instruction available in the country through the Institute of Fine Arts, Department of Music…
June 25, 2012
Patrick David Clark traveling to Iraq to teach composition
Patrick David ClarkComposer and Mizzou graduate Patrick David Clark (pictured) will bring new music to an ancient city when he goes to Iraq at the end of this month. His mission: to teach composition to students in the northern Iraqi town of Erbil. “It’s a kind of cultural diplomacy,” said Clark, who will be traveling under the auspices of the organization American Voices. He will leave for Iraq this Wednesday, June 27 and stay until July 15. “We bring American music and teachers to places where the education system is not its best, due to the country…
June 15, 2012
2012 Missouri Summer Composition Institute
to conclude with concert on Saturday, June 23
The Mizzou New Music Initiative’s Missouri Summer Composition Institute will wrap up this year’s session with a concert at 11:00 a.m., Saturday, June 23. The concert will take place at Whitmore Recital Hall in the Fine Arts Building on the University of Missouri campus in Columbia, and is free and open to the public. The concert will feature two resident ensembles giving world premiere performances of sixteen new works created by student composers participating in the Institute. The students will be on campus beginning next Monday, July 18. They will spend the week receiving composition lessons from MU…
June 7, 2012
Tickets now on sale for 2012 Mizzou New Music Summer Festival
Tickets are now on sale for the 2012 Mizzou New Music Summer Festival’s concerts on Thursday, July 26; Friday, July 27; and Saturday, July 28. Now in its third year, the Mizzou New Music Summer Festival will take place starting Monday, July 23 through Saturday, July 28 in Columbia, MO. The MNMSF already is established as one of the most noteworthy contemporary music events in the Midwest, attracting attention from composers, musicians, music educators and media around the world. This year’s grand finale will feature the world premieres of eight new works written by the festival’s…
May 1, 2012
Contemporary Art Museum St. Louis to host
“New Music, New Works” on Saturday, May 19
Inspired by the Great Rivers Biennial 2012 exhibition, the Contemporary Art Museum St. Louis (CAM) and the Mizzou New Music Initiative will present “New Music, New Works” at 2:00 p.m. Saturday, May 19. The event at CAM, 3750 Washington Blvd in St. Louis’ Grand Center district, is free and open to the public. The concert will feature the world premiere of original compositions by University of Missouri students Grant Fonda, Joe Hills, and Joseph Weidinger, each of whom has created a new piece that attempts to capture the aural essence of one of the three…
April 20, 2012
C.O.M.P. Winners on TV in St. Louis
Three of the winners in this year’s Creating Original Music Project (C.O.M.P.) competition had the opportunity this week to perform their winning compositions on local TV in St. Louis. Lily Ibur of Wydown Middle School played her song “Nothing Boy” on Wednesday for the 9:00 a.m. edition of FOX 2 News. You can see that performance in the embedded video window below: Later that same day, Menea Vladi Kefalov and Ande Celeste Siegel of Reed Elementary Schol could be seen performing their song “War” for a feature story on local NBC affiliate KSDK’s program Show Me St.