Stories » How 'Youth' Composer David Lang Snuck Classical Music Into Oscar Race / The Wrap

Stories for May 22, 2019

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    On this episode of Performance Today, harpist Yolanda Kondonassis and the Rochester Philharmonic play Jennifer Higdon's Harp Concerto
     
    Posted At : May 22, 2019 4:28 PM

    American composer Jennifer Higdon won the 2010 Pulitzer Prize for her Violin Concerto. Now she's written a new piece for solo harp and orchestra. On this episode ( MAY 22, 2019 ) of Performance Today, harpist Yolanda Kondonassis and the Rochester Philharmonic play Jennifer Higdon's Harp Concerto. The Higdon's Harp Concerto is the centerpiece to the Azica Records release; American Rapture and was written for and dedicated to Yolanda Kondonassis. Featuring the Rochester Philharmonic Orchestra, conducted by Music Director Ward Stare, the album also includes; Samuel Barber's Symphony No. 1 in One Movement, Op. 9; and the world premiere recording of Patrick Harlin's Rapture. The album is designed to highlight three generations of American composition and, as defined by Harlin in the context of his work, to depict rapture not as a religious event, but as an experience of extreme human emotion.

  • Ten reasons why you shouldn't miss Yo-Yo Ma's Athens Festival concert / tornosNews
     
    Posted At : May 22, 2019 12:00 AM

    Athens is but one of 36 cities in Yo-Yo Ma's Bach Project world tour. The internationally acclaimed cellist will perform The 6 Unaccompanied Cello Suites at the Odeon for a single spellbinding evening on 30 June, in his first ever appearance in Greece. Why is this concert one of the unmissable music events of the summer? Read here everything you should know about Yo-Yo Ma, and his rich body of work as an artist and an activist.  "Bach's cello suites have been my constant musical companions," says Yo-Yo. "For almost six decades, they have given me sustenance, comfort, and joy during times of stress, celebration, and loss. What power does this music possess that even today, after three hundred years, it continues to help us navigate through troubled times?" The Athens Festival audiences will have the chance to answer this question in a single, spellbinding, unforgettable evening. p.p1 {margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px 'Helvetica Neue'; color: #4d4d4d} SEE THE 10 REASONS via tornosNews

  • Bach and The Beatles go hand-in-hand on Janoska Ensemble's 'Revolution' / New Classical Tracks
     
    Posted At : May 22, 2019 12:00 AM

    "Where is your personality inside the piece? Can I create my own music? And yes you can, of course you can. Every human being is a unique one. Everybody has another fingerprint. And you have to show the world who you are and where you come from." Sage advice from Julius Darvas, double bassist of the four-member Janoska Ensemble. Ondrej and Roman Janoska are the group's violinists, and Frantisek Janoska is the pianist. Here's how Frantisek and Julius describe the Janoska style, which is imprinted on their new recording, Revolution. Frantisek: "You know, before in Baroque times, but also later, big musicians like Bach, Mozart, Paganini and Liszt, they can all improvise, and this is, I think, lost in classical music, and we want to bring it back. In the same time, we make all our arrangements by ourselves, and we compose also new pieces." Julius: "And it's of course based on classical music, but we play every genre of music. There is Latin American music. There is tango music. Pop, rock, jazz - everything." LISTEN TO New Classical Tracks SEGMENT New Classical Tracks is a Syndicated feature that airs nationally on Classical 24 and statewide on Minnesota Public Radio

  • Crouch End Festival Chorus helps fuel soundtrack to Elton John 'Rocketman' biopic / itv
     
    Posted At : May 22, 2019 12:00 AM

    p.p1 {margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px 'Helvetica Neue'; color: #4d4d4d} p.p2 {margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px 'Helvetica Neue'; color: #4d4d4d; min-height: 14.0px} Rocketman is a 2019 biographical musical film based on the life of musician Elton John. Directed by Dexter Fletcher and written by Lee Hall, it stars Taron Egerton as John, with Jamie Bell, Richard Madden, and Bryce Dallas Howard. The film follows John's early days as a prodigy at the Royal Academy of Music up to his eventual musical partnership with Bernie Taupin. The film is titled after John's 1972 song "Rocket Man". The film premiered at the Cannes Film Festival on 16 May, released in the United Kingdom on 22 May and is set to open in the United States on 31 May 2019, by Paramount Pictures.  But, Sir Elton John is not the only musician to feature in the film. The Crouch End Festival Chorus have a part to play too. Their backing vocals are fuelling the the soundtrack. Coincidentally, director Dexter Fletcher went to Fortismere School where they rehearse. SEE THE itv PAGE & WATCH THE VIDEO

  • Terry Riley, Laurie Anderson, and John Zorn hit it off at the chapel on Valencia Street / San Francisco Classical Voice
     
    Posted At : May 22, 2019 12:00 AM

    Terry Riley, Laurie Anderson, and John Zorn - three towering figures in U.S. experimentalism - don't immediately spark an association among them. Before their latest two-night, four-shows residency of a sort at the Chapel on Valencia Street. they had collaborated exactly once, coming together on the occasion of Zorn's 65th-birthday celebrations at the same venue in September 2018. The trio hit it off, and if the opening set from their current revival is any indication, we may not have heard the last from them. The atmosphere at the Chapel - a hip venue, both intimate and airy with its vaulted ceilings - was one of vibrant expectancy as the sold-out audience assembled, a terse spring evening light lingering outside.  And then it was music. The trio took the small stage, Zorn's horn in the middle, flanked by electronic setups for Riley and Anderson on either side. Riley set things off on synth, carving out an idiomatically ambiguous space somewhere between a bolero and a prelude, highlighting his exploratory runs with sly smiles aimed at his conspirators. He was soon joined by Zorn's plaintive saxophone lines, with Anderson providing textural support on electric violin. The smiling persisted, and as the group warmed up they began traversing a vast musical landscape, skirting around the edges rather than fully embracing any particular style or tradition. Commenting on their return to the stage as a trio, Zorn mentioned their enjoyment of the Chapel as a setting, and their desire to blow the roof off the place. As the three locked into the occasional groove, relentlessly attacking it with ever-increasing intensity, the swelling sound mass threatened to make good on the promise. I looked around to a crowd of ecstatic stares and swaying abandon. I wasn't sure when we were or where, anymore, but one thing I can say: it was good.  PHOTO: Geoffrey Smith II READ THE FULL San Francisco Classical Voice REVIEW

  • WSHU 'classical music highlight' presents summer in a different way
     
    Posted At : May 21, 2019 12:00 AM

    Today Max Richter gives us another way to hear Summer from Vivaldi's Four Seasons with his "recomposed" version, featuring violinist Daniel Hope.  Composer, musician, producer, remixer and collaborator extraordinaire, Max Richter has struck a different sort of chord on his highly acclaimed Vivaldi Recomposed. A unique reworking of The Four Seasons for violin, chamber orchestra and moog synthesizer, these remixes include Spring 1 – Max Richter Remix, Summer 3 – Robot Koch Remix, Autumn 3 – Fear of Tigers Remix and Winter 3 – NYPC Remix, along with five newly-composed electronic soundscapes, dubbed "shadows," by Richter, which were constructed for a live performance of the work.  SEE WSHU: CT - E. Long Island NY PAGE p.p1 {margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px 'Helvetica Neue'; color: #4d4d4d} p.p2 {margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px 'Helvetica Neue'; color: #4d4d4d; min-height: 14.0px}

  • Beethoven Unbound: Complete sonatas featuring Llŷr Williams is All Classical Portland featured CD
     
    Posted At : May 21, 2019 12:00 AM

    Any time that a pianist undertakes to record a complete set of anything in classical music, it's bound to be an endeavor taking considerable time and effort.  Take on the 32 piano sonatas of Beethoven, plus all the other solo piano pieces by one of music's giants, and I imagine that it must be daunting.  Enter Llŷr Williams, who has been lauded for his interpretations of the great man's music, who took a different approach than the many who have come before:  rather than arrange them in published order, the Welsh-born pianist paired pieces together by their relative character, and how well they sound together.  As a programmer of a radio station, this is something I can relate to (although for me, the work of performing has already been done!). Williams shares his experiences recording late into the night with a live audience in London's Wigmore Hall, and insight into the composer, who as his deafness increased, retreated into his own world.  As a result, we received the gift of some of the most sublime music for piano ever written. LISTEN TO All Classical Portland SEGMENT

Top 10 for May

  • Angelique Kidjo :

    Celia

     On April 19, Angélique Kidjo will release Celia (Verve/Universal Music France), an album that honors Celia Cruz, widely known as "the Queen of Salsa" and the most popular Latin artist of the 20thcentury.
  • Luciano Pavarotti :

    PAVAROTTI OMP

     From the filmmaking team behind the highly-acclaimed documentary The Beatles: Eight Days A Week - The Touring Years, PAVAROTTI is a riveting film that lifts the curtain on the icon who brought opera to the people.
  • Seth MacFarlane :

    Once In A While

     Seth MacFarlane will release his fifth album Once In A While (Verve and Republic) digitally, and the physical CD will be available on April 26th.
  • Radical Face :

    Therapy

     "Hello, Hope, it's been a while," go the opening lines of "Dead Ends", the centerpiece of Ben Cooper's latest EP as Radical Face.
  • Philip Bailey :

    Billy Jack from 'Love Will Find A Way'

     For over 50 years, Earth Wind and Fire provided the soundtrack to the lives of many.
  • The Stan Getz Quartet :

    Getz at The Gate

     On November 26, 1961, saxophonist Stan Getz and his relatively new quartet of Steve Kuhn, John Neves, and Roy Haynes performed at New York's Village Gate.
  • Sarah McKenzie :

    Secrets of My Heart

     After the great success of Sarah McKenzie's 2017 disc, Paris in the Rain(Impulse! Records), the 31-year-old pianist, singer, and composer returns with the poignant, Secrets of My Heart, reuniting with noted Australian composer, arranger, and events music director, Chong Lim, who produced her first two discs – Don't Tempt Me and Close Your Eyes.
  • Vikingur Olafsson :

    Bach - Reworks

     Following his critically-acclaimed Johann Sebastian Bach album, pianist Vikingur Ólafsson releases a double LP of Bach Reworks, featuring new arrangements of his Bach transcriptions from electronic artists such as Valgeir Sigurðsson and Ben Frost (Prelude BWV 855a), Peter Gregson (Above and Below, B Minor), and Ryuichi Sakamoto (BWV 974 – II Adagio – Rework).
  • Ilan Eshkeri :

    The White Crow OMPS w/Lisa Batiashvili

     Half-hearted concessions to freedom of expression were not enough to hold Rudolf Nureyev in the Soviet Union.
  • Ludovico Einaudi :

    Seven Days Walking - Day 1

     Ludovico Einaudi has played piano on an Arctic glacier, performed at huge pop music festivals, and become the most-streamed classical artist in the world, but the composer and pianist's new album may be his most ambitious project yet.

How 'Youth' Composer David Lang Snuck Classical Music Into Oscar Race / The Wrap

Posted: January 9, 2016 12:00 AM | By: Admin
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Like Frank Zappa, Yale professor David Lang is a highbrow composer with a taste for the bizarre, and an artist who has smuggled difficult work into mass culture. "Paradoxically, people are willing to hear stranger things in film than in the real world - film audiences are more open to music than a music audience is," said Lang, whose art song "Simple Song #3" in Paolo Sorrentino's "Youth" is a contender for the Best Original Song Oscar.

Instead of coming in at the end of filming, like most composers, Lang wrote the tune beforehand. The idea was to define the entire life's arc of Michael Caine‘s character, himself a composer, from lovestruck youth to rueful age. "The movie is saying the song is a character, almost, like a time capsule for him," said Lang, 58, who projected himself into the 80-something character as passionately as any Method actor.

READ THE FULL Wrap INTERVIEW 

Crossover Media Projects with Soundtracks

  • Soundtracks

    Valley of the Boom

    Valley of the Boom explores the dot-com era during Silicon Valley's unprecedented tech boom of the 1990s and subsequent bust. The six-part limited series tells the wildly true stories of the epic browser wars and the companies that shaped the internet.  Starring Bradley Whitford, Steve Zahn, Lamorne Morris, John Karna, Dakota Shapiro, Oliver Cooper and John Murphy, Valley of the Boom makes its debut on National Geographic Sunday, January 13.  

    Created, directed and executive produced by Matthew Carnahan, Valley of the Boom is National Geographic's newest American docudrama. 

  • Soundtracks

    Roma

    Sony Music, Netflix, Participant Media, and Esperanto Filmoj present the Motion Picture Soundtrack of ROMA, which is available through all digital platforms, on the same day that the film premieres on Netflix.

    Curated by the director Alfonso Cuarón and the soundtrack producers Lynn Fainchtein and Randall Poster, the soundtrack of ROMA brings us back to the sonic Mexico of the 1970s, when the famous XEW, a reference of Mexican radio, transmitted English pop and rock, while gradually introducing the new Mexican pop, through performers like José José, Juan Gabriel, and Rigo Tovar, musical icons that in the present, have remained as references of Mexican and Latin American music.

  • Soundtracks

    Jesus Christ Superstar Live in Concert

    Drawing nearly 10 million viewers, NBC's highly anticipated special event "Jesus Christ Superstar Live in Concert" received rave reviews for its production, calling it "genuinely thrilling" (The New York Times), "truly transcendent" (Hollywood Reporter) and "the best live TV musical yet" (The Daily Beast). Today, Masterworks Broadway is excited to release the Jesus Christ Superstar Live in Concert – Original Soundtrack of the NBC Television Event, which features lyrics by Tim Rice and music by Andrew Lloyd Webber, via all digital service providers. 

  • Soundtracks

    Call Me By Your Name

    Madison Gate Records and Sony Classical proudly announce the release of CALL ME BY YOUR NAME (Original Motion Picture Soundtrack), a mix of 80s pop, classical compositions & songs by singer-songwriter Sufjan Stevens, including two new songs written specifically for the film. The soundtrack to the new film by Luca Guadagnino will be released on CD on November 17. The film will be released in the U.S. on November 24.

    54 TOTAL
    SYND:     The Score, Afropop Worldwide, The Romantic Hours
    Direct: MOOD, Stingray
    Markets include: New York, Chicago, Philadelphia, Detroit, Portland, St. Louis, Tucson, Barcelona MI(Statewide)
    INTER: Canada, UK, Spain Romania
    Online: Vogue, New York Times, The New Yorker, Music To Heal the Heart, Bustle, Jezebel, Out, Pitchfork, Jazz From Gallery 41, Vulture, theguardian, independent

  • Soundtracks

    A Bad Mom's Christmas

    A Bad Moms Christmas follows our three under-appreciated and over-burdened women as they rebel against the challenges and expectations of the Super Bowl for moms: Christmas. And if creating a more perfect holiday for their families wasn't hard enough, they have to do all of that while hosting and entertaining their own mothers. By the end of the journey, our moms will redefine how to make the holidays special for all and discover a closer relationship with their mothers.

    15 TOTAL
    SYND:     The Score
    Direct: SiriusXM, MOOD
    Markets include: Wash DC, St. Louis, Portland, Claremont, Cupertino CA, Marquette, Astoria OR, Abilene TX, Fairbanks AK
    INTER: Canada, Romania
    Online: Music To Heal the Heart

  • Soundtracks

    The Breadwinner

    Sony Classical proudly announces the release of THE BREADWINNER (Original Motion Picture Soundtrack) with an original score by Academy Award®-winning composer Mychael Danna and Emmy nominated composer Jeff Danna. The soundtrack will available digitally and on CD November 17. The film will also be released in the U.S. on November 17th. The Breadwinner tells the story of Parvana, an 11-year-old girl growing up under the Taliban in Afghanistan in 2001. When her father is wrongfully arrested, Parvana disguises herself as a boy in order to support her family. With dauntless perseverance, Parvana draws strength from the stories her father told her, and ultimately risks her life to discover if he is still alive. Equal parts thrilling and enchanting, The Breadwinner is a timely and inspiring tale about the transcendent power of stories, and their potential to unite and heal us all.

    27 TOTAL
    Markets include: New York, Los Angeles, Cleveland, Louisville, Sacramento, Reno, Honolulu, CA(Statewide), Canada
    Online: CalmRadio, Musicas Imaginadas, Global Roots and Culture, Soundtrack Geek  

  • Soundtracks

    Murder on the Orient Express

    Sony Music proudly announces the release of MURDER ON THE ORIENT EXPRESS (Original Motion Picture Soundtrack) with an original score by Academy Award®-nominated composer Patrick Doyle, including a song performed by Michelle Pfeiffer with lyrics by Kenneth Branagh. What starts out as a lavish train ride through Europe quickly unfolds into one of the most stylish, suspenseful and thrilling mysteries ever told. From the novel by best-selling author Agatha Christie, Murder on the Orient Express tells the tale of thirteen strangers stranded on a train, where everyone's a suspect. One man must race against time to solve the puzzle before the murderer strikes again.

    18 TOTAL
    SYND:     The Score
    Direct: SiriusXM, MOOD, Stingray
    Markets include: New York, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Cleveland, Portland, Detroit, Albuquerque, San Antonio, El Paso, MI(Statewide), AL(Statewide), Canada
    Online: GURU