by Daniel Hathaway
After a year’s hiatus, Timothy Weiss and his Oberlin Contemporary Music Ensemble returned to Gartner Auditorium on Saturday afternoon, November 5, for the first of four performances this season. Literary texts and visual imagery gave the audience engaging handles on works by Oberlin faculty composers Elizabeth Ogonek and Stephen Hartke and Scottish composer James MacMillan. [Read more…]
by Daniel Hathaway
“Too frequently, new music gets performed without enough preparation. These meticulously rehearsed performances were confident and settled, yet sounded completely fresh. Any composer would be thrilled to have their music treated with the level of care that Timothy Weiss and the CME lavished on the four pieces we heard on Saturday.”
That’s what ClevelandClassical.com wrote about the first of five performances by the Oberlin Contemporary Music Ensemble at the Cleveland Museum of Art during the 2014-2015 season. After a year’s absence from the Museum’s Performing Arts Series, Weiss and his young players will return to Gartner Auditorium on Saturday, November 5 at 2:00 pm for the first of four weekend concerts this season. [Read more…]
by Mike Telin
New music concerts aren’t what they used to be — in a good way. Today’s composers are writing in a myriad of musical styles, and the continuously evolving technical demands their compositions place on players are no longer insurmountable. Undistracted by technical flaws during performances, listeners are free to engage with the music itself. [Read more…]
by Daniel Hathaway
Last Friday morning, Canadian composer Tawnie Olson of the Hartt School of Music faculty in West Hartford, Connecticut — along with her four colleagues in the 2015 Iron Composer Competition at Baldwin Wallace Conservatory — accepted the challenge of writing an “instant” composition for recorders, celesta, and an overturned grand piano, to include this year’s “secret ingredient” of a board game. After five hours of creation and a brief rehearsal, Olson’s piece, called Subbeteo after the 1947 tabletop soccer game invented by Peter Adolph and published by Borras Plana SA, was declared the first prize winner during an evening concert in Gamble Auditorium. [Read more…]
by Mike Telin
On Friday, September 4 at Baldwin Wallace Conservatory, the creativity of five composers will be tested when they have five hours to write a brand new piece of music in order to win the coveted titled of Iron Composer. Competition director Joe Drew said that this years contestants are all accomplished composers and college-level teachers whose musical styles are quite varied. “We try to select as diverse a group as possible. We are putting on a show, and it wouldn’t work if we had a group of composers who all write in similar styles, or who would all have a similar response to the stimulus of the challenge.”
What is that challenge? On Friday at 9:00 am in the Chamber Hall, the five finalists will be assigned an instrumentation and a secret musical ingredient that must be incorporated into their work. Past challenges have paired piano trio with a Monet painting, pipe organ with 19th-century music boxes, and brass trio with audience participation. After five hours, the composers must submit a score and parts for their finished piece. Their work will be performed and judged during a free public concert at 8 pm in Gamble Auditorium. Following the performance, prizes will be awarded, and the title of Iron Composer will be bestowed.
Stephen Hartke will become Professor of Composition and Chair of the Composition Department at the Oberlin Conservatory of Music on July 1, 2015. Hartke, who draws his inspiration from sources ranging from medieval music to the blues, comes to Ohio after serving as Distinguished Professor of Composition at the Thornton School of Music at the University of Southern California, where he has taught since 1987.
Read the complete release from the Oberlin Conservatory here.