July 12, 2012

Summer Festival Spotlight: Stephanie Berg

Today, let’s get acquainted with one of the resident composers for the 2012 Mizzou New Music Summer Festival, Stephanie Berg. She’s one of eight individuals to earn that designation this year, chosen from nearly 150 applicants from countries around the world, including Israel, France, Ireland, Spain, South Africa, Russia, England, Thailand, Canada and China. As a Missouri native and Mizzou graduate, Berg (pictured) is something of a local favorite at this year’s Festival. She grew up in the Kansas City suburb of Parkville, graduating from Park Hill South High School, and earned her Bachelor of Music degree…

July 12, 2012

Summer Festival Spotlight: Alarm Will Sound

Continuing with our series of posts focusing on various participants in the 2012 Mizzou New Music Summer Festival, today we shine out spotlight on Alarm Will Sound. As the resident ensemble for the Festival, AWS plays an essential role in bringing to life the new works created by the resident composers. Not many groups would be willing or able to take on the challenge of premiering eight new pieces in one night with limited rehearsal time, but Alarm Will Sound has accomplished the task each year of the MNMSF with consummate skill and panache. Former in 2001 by…

July 9, 2012

Patrick Clark – Day Eight: The Finish Line

The Finish Line: 9 July, 2012; Day Eight; Duhok, Iraq I am at the end of the eighth day of teaching composition, theory and music history with the American Voices YES Academy in Duhok, Iraq. I am most proud to report that seven of my ten composition students have crossed the finish line with completed short pieces for anywhere from four to seven players. The proof is on camera and digital audio as several volunteers for the program recorded our first reading and rehearsal session for these pieces. The generous string faculty allowed no fewer than three compositions to be…

July 8, 2012

Patrick Clark on Day Seven in Duhok, Iraq

Day Seven, American Voices YES Academy, Duhok, Iraq My composers have been moved by the spirit. Following yesterday’s reading of two student works by the String Orchestra, four of the remaining eight composers arrived in this morning’s class with beautifully finished scores and parts. I was caught off guard not expecting such a furious commitment overnight. I scrambled to assemble two student string quartets and some added auxiliaries (clarinets and piano) and arrange a reading and rehearsal session from 7:30 to 10:00 pm tomorrow night. I am expecting a similar phenomenon of productivity to swamp me with newly-completed works tomorrow…

July 7, 2012

Patrick Clark’s Observations & Fruit of Effort

Observations: 5 July, 2012; Day Five; Duhok, Iraq I’m in a mosaic of Turkish and Kurdish music, most of which I hear in the back of taxis. It would be terribly awful pop music to me if it didn’t sound so exotic. Iraqi music videos are hysterically bad and remind me of American shampoo commercials. The students are really unbelievably appreciative of every single thing I say or do — its weird! They thank me at the end of every sentence I speak, and even in between if I happen to pause momentarily. Their appetite for information is fierce, especially…

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…