Fifth Annual Composers Competition Winner Announced

The New York Composers Circle has just announced the winner of its Fifth Annual Composers Competition. He is MAX GITECK DUYKERS, and the name of his winning entry is "Glass Blue Cleft," a string quartet in three movements.

Mr. Duykers is a doctoral student at Stony Brook University.  His winning piece has been recorded by the Escher Quartet and issued last year on the Bridge Records label. It will receive its world premiere performance at the final New York Composers Circle concert of next season, on June 2, 2012, at the Symphony Space Thalia.

A second entry was awarded an honorable mention: "Song in Mistranslation," for flute, clarinet, and cello, by LEMBIT BEECHER.

In The Loop | June 19, 2011

Our final SUNDAY SALON of the 2010-2011 season is June 26 at 2pm at RICHARD BROOKS's house in Brooklyn, 252 DeKalb Avenue. Assuming nice weather, this will be a year-end picnic with food and drink available. Please RSVP to 718-398-3579 or capstonerecords@earthlink.net 

As for directions, Richard writes, "252 DeKalb Avenue is between Vanderbilt Avenue and Clinton Avenue in Clinton Hill. The closest subway stop is Clinton-Washington on the G line. Take the A train (or C) to Hoyt-Schermerhorn (3rd stop in Brooklyn), cross the platform for the G to Queens and go 2 stops to Clinton-Washington. When you exit the train turn right, go to the last staircase up to the mezzanine level. Go through the turnstile and turn right for the stairs to the street. You will end up at the corner of Lafayette and Clinton. Turn left, crossing Lafayette and walk one block on Clinton (notice the nice architecture, too!) and turn left onto Dekalb. The house is the next to the last on the left hand side of Dekalb. Go up the stoop and ring the bottom bell (press hard as it sometimes doesn't ring clearly).

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You might have already received this email from JACOB GOODMAN, but in case you didn't, he writes: "I don't know whether you saw the op-ed piece in the Sunday (June 12) NY Times editorial section by someone complaining that the Vanderbilt University radio station has been sold to public radio, and that the rock music he was used to hearing has been replaced by

classical music. My rejoinder appears in today's (June 14) Times, in the Letters to the Editor column.  If you want to look at it and don't have the print edition, you can find it on the Web, at http://www.nytimes.com/pages/opinion/index.html.

Just scroll to the bottom and click on "Letter: Classical Music Radio."

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Peri Mauer writes: "I'll be performing my new work, "Blogarhythm on the Rocks", in Central Park on Tuesday, June 21st, 3:00-4:00 pm in the Central Park Dairy Lawn (5th Ave. and 64th St) as part of Make Music New York 2011. Hope you can stop by! It's a lovely spot in the park, and should be a pleasant way to spend some time in Central Park on the first day of summer." 

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Oboist Keve Wilson and her trio (Florian Höfner, Mat Fieldes) will perform DAVID PICTON's piece "Adirondack Nostalgia", a song which David wrote the music and text for, and set it in a few different arrangements. This one is an instrumental arrangement for piano, oboe, and english horn. The event is a Free CD Release Party for Composers Concordance Records/NAXOS. Special guest joining in is Kathy Halvorson. There will also be music by Cole Porter, Henry Mancini, and Astor Piazzola. Thursday, June 23 · 7:00pm - 8:00pm at Cafe Vivaldi, 32 Jones Street in Manhattan.

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Here's a mini-press release from JACOB GOODMAN: The New York Composers Circle has just announced the winner of its Fifth Annual Composers Competition. He is MAX GITECK DUYKERS, and the name of his winning entry is "Glass Blue Cleft," a string quartet in three movements.

Mr. Duykers is a doctoral student at Stony Brook University.  His winning piece has been recorded by the Escher Quartet and issued last year on the Bridge Records label. It will receive its world premiere performance at the final New York Composers Circle concert of next season, on June 2, 2012, at the Symphony Space Thalia.

A second entry was awarded an honorable mention: "Song in Mistranslation," for flute, clarinet, and cello, by LEMBIT BEECHER.

In The Loop | May 17, 2011

The next SUNDAY SALON is this Sunday, May 22 at 2pm. We will be meeting in JACOB GOODMAN's apartment, 310 West 72 Street (#16A). There will be a special presentation by LEONARD HINDELL, a bassoonist with the New York Philharmonic for 33 years, a frequent performer with new music groups, and a performer member of the NYCC, will give a talk/demonstration entitled "The Versatile Voice of the Bassoon." He writes: "Long considered the Character Actor of Music with few notable examples of concerti and sonatas, the bassoon has been evolving into an interesting vehicle for more prominent exposure." He promises to bring some interesting examples, including a rehearsal with Igor Stravinsky making comments about the Rite of Spring.

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The fourth and final (but not least!) concert of the NYCC 2010-2011 season is just around the corner: Saturday June 4 at 7:30pm (note the earlier start time!). The venue is the Symphony Space Thalia, Broadway and 95^th Street. Tickets are $20 payable at the door. This concert promises to be quite eclectic and varied—the sundry pieces are scored for everything from harp to mandolin, guitar to marimba, and even an electric cello (to name a few). Composers include ROGER BLANC, JOHN EATON, HUBERT HOWE, RICHARD McCANDLESS, JOSEPH PEHRSON, and ROBERT S. COHEN.

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PERI MAUER will be conducting and playing cello with her new piece, "Scene 3: Blogarhythm on the Rocks," for chamber ensemble on June 21st, 3 pm, in Central Park (64th and 5th), as part of Make Music New York 2011.

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The musicologist, scholar, and composer Lawrence Kramer asked me to share the following opportunities: one if a call for papers and the other is a call for piano compositions.

Here's the announcement:

Counterpoints: Nineteenth-Century Music and Literature

19th-Century Music is sponsoring this one-day interdisciplinary conference at Fordham University's Lincoln Center campus on Saturday, October 22, 2011. Graduate students, part-time and junior faculty are invited to submit abstracts (maximum: 500 words) to the editor, Lawrence Kramer, lek791@gmail.com, by June 30, 2011 (extended from April 30). Papers selected for presentation will be considered for publication in a special issue of the journal.

The topics may range as widely as the contributors' imagination can compass. Possibilities include, but are by no means limited to, portrayals of music or musicians in nineteenth-century literary works, musical representations in nineteenth-century music of literary genres, characters, or texts, literary opera, incidental music, aesthetic theories, models of performance, treatments of nineteenth-century music in twentieth- and twenty-first-century literature and film, treatments of nineteenth-century literature in twentieth-and twenty-first-century music, including opera and film music, and the list goes on. As always, we define the chronological borders of the nineteenth century very loosely.

We are also considering a piano recital combining old and new compositions inspired by literary works and would like to feature a group of younger pianists from the same pool of applicants as the CFP. If you would like to be considered for a spot on the program, please include a resume and performance sample. If the file size of the latter exceeds 10mb, please use a file delivery service such as Dropbox or YouSendIt.

In The Loop | Apr 3, 2011

Our NEXT NYCC CONCERT is this Tuesday, April 5, at 8pm. The venue is Saint Peters Church at Citigroup Center, Lexington & 54th Street. A $20 suggested donation is payable at the door, but as always, students are admitted free. The concert lineup is as follows:

Brian Fennelly's Sock Monkeys, for two clarinets

Debra Kaye's Finding Accord, for piano trio

Eugene Marlow's Three Pieces for Woodwind Trio (fl, cl, alto sax)

Peri Mauer's Rhapsodance, for clarinet and piano 

Gayther Myers's Sonata Solo, for unaccompanied bassoon 

David Picton's Music for the Birds, for woodwind quintet 

Richard D. Russell's Fast Tides, Slow Tides, for flute and piano 

Cesar Vuksic's Tango Variations, for clarinet and piano

Our many performers include Michael Laderman, flute; Keve Wilson, oboe; Lis Rubard, horn, Adam Berkowitz & Vasko Dukovski, clarinet; Timothy Emerson & Edward Zeigman, bassoon, Javier Oviedo, saxophone, Cesar Vuksic & Nina Yenik, piano, Amy Kimball, violin; Arthur Cook, cello.

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Our next SUNDAY SALON Salon is Sunday, April 17, at 2:00 pm, at Eugene McBride's apartment, 484 West 43rd St., Apt. 14M.

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Soprano SOFIA DIMITROVA will perform two pieces by Mannes College composers on April 10th at 4:30PM at Mannes Concert Hall, 150 West 85^th Street, second floor. The concert is free and open to the public, and is the Masters graduation recital for both composers. The pieces are Tomer Adaddi's "Green Eggs and Ham", a witty and fun piece, and Avner Finberg's "Anfractuous Songs", a set of songs on the poetry of Updike. Both works are scored for voice, flute, clarinet, violin,  'cello, percussion and piano.

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BRIAN FENNELLY's The Other Side of Time, a 15-minute piece for 30 winds, brass, and percussion, will receive its  European premiere on April 12, in Zagreb, Croatia, as part of the annual World Music Days festival of the International Society for Contemporary Music, held this year in conjunction with the Zagreb Biennale. Chosen for performance by the ISCM International Jury, it will be part of a full program by the Croatian Army Symphony Wind Orchestra conducted by Tomislav Fačini. This is the fifth time Brian's music has been chosen for performance at the World Music Days, previously in Reykjavik, Jerusalem, Brussels, and Toronto.

 

The Other Side of Time (2009), music intended to convey an unspecified kind of spiritual journey, was commissioned by the New England Conservatory Wind Ensemble and its director Charles Peltz. It was premiered at Jordan Hall, Boston, in February 2010. Their performance has been recorded for release on Albany Records.

 

The full score can be viewed at Brian's American Music Center webpage:

http://amc.net/files/13991/THE%20OTHER%20SIDE%20OF%20TIME%20final%20score.1.29.10%20pdf1.pdf 

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DEBRA KAYE's The North Wind & the Sun (1998), a cantata for young voices based on the fable by La Fontaine, will be performed May 31 & June 2 at 6pm. Performed by children of the Greenwich House Music School, Mimi Hsu will direct with Debra at the piano. The venue is the Greenwich House Music School, Renee Weiler Concert Hall (2nd floor), at 46 Barrow St.

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Last week CESAR VUKSIC performed a solo recital, "Night Music"  with pieces by Debussy, Bartok, Piazzolla, Ginastera, and a premiere, "Wild Vocalise" written by Cesar. The venue was the Consulate General of Argentina, and special guest was contralto Christina Ascher.  

Also last week ROGER BLANC's piano piece "Sixty Second Man" was performed at the Jan Hus Church, on East 74th Street as part of a Vox Novus "Composer's Voice" series concert. The pianist was virtuoso Shiau-uen Ding.

Congrats, Cesar and Roger!