Monday, February 27, 2006

Concert in New York with Steven Stucky as host


If you are near New York city on tuesday, you can catch this great concert which will feature John Harbison's new piece with Dawn Upshaw singing and Steven Stucky hosting the Q and A. I really love Steven's bio on the NYphil's website.
CK
Also check out his new website.
http://www.stevenstucky.com

STEVEN STUCKY (b. 1949 in Hutchinson, Kansas)
Not everyone in the pantheon of today’s composer can claim to have spent time on a farm in Pretty Prairie, Kansas. But Steven Stucky can. It’s also on the prairie that he took up the viola as a boy of 10. Now he’s a music professor at Cornell, his alma mater, and has other prestigious appointments in the music world. At the Los Angeles Philharmonic, for example, where he is Consulting Composer for New Music, one responsibility is to study scores of other living composers who are hoping to have their works performed. His credentials make him the perfect choice for the New York Philharmonic’s newest concert series, Hear and Now, where he leads adventurous music lovers into explorations of new works by fellow American composers—in the company of those composers—followed by the Philharmonic’s performances of the works. Steven Stucky knows each of the composers featured on Hear and Now: John Corigliano, John Harbison, and Peter Lieberson and thinks of them as “dedicated communicators, whose music is about human subjects.” He’ll get ready by studying the score of each piece; he’ll talk to the composers in advance; and he’ll be at every rehearsal. He believes the secret to opening up fearlessly to new music is to make a human connection between audience and composer—as will happen at Hear and Now. “The fact that someone is talking to you about the music is almost more important than what the person says. The barriers are taken down when the composer and the audience think of themselves as allies. Call it ‘rooting for the home team.’ That way everybody wins.”

No comments: