“It has been said that a society can be judged by the way it treats its animals,” composer David T. Little says in the program notes for his chamber opera, Dog Days. Based on a short story by Judy Budnitz, the opera is set in a war-torn future that’s not too far away from our own time.
Born in Damascus, Syria, clarinetist Kinan Azmeh’s home country has undergone years of political strife, violence, and a refugee crisis. Azmeh has looked to his own craft in order to draw attention to these ongoing struggles in the form of a concerto by Syrian composer Kareem Roustom.
“I would not consider myself a composer at all,” says Kian Soltani, shortly after playing a piece of music that he composed called Persian Fire Dance. “I’m really a cellist first and foremost, but I try to be creative also.”
“There are very few places, it seems to me, where people go to reflect as a community… The opera house, or the concert hall, is one of those sacred spaces…” reflected composer Jake Heggie during a panel about his opera, Dead Man Walking, at Lyric Opera of Chicago.
“Maybe we’re getting used to being misunderstood… Hopefully, [through] music, we can be more open,” reflects Wang Lu. Her work, Code Switch, will have its world premiere to open the first MusicNOW concert of the CSO season.
In the eyes of tenor Nicholas Phan, living composers and the classical music genre of art song both face a similar obstacle: they’re often overlooked when it comes to programming and promoting classical music.
Hailing from Chicago’s South Side, flutist Demarre McGill and clarinetist Anthony McGill return home this weekend to make their Grant Park Music Festival debuts performing the works of Saint-Saëns and Joel Puckett. That’s not to say that Demarre, the principal flutist for the Seattle Symphony, and Anthony, the principal clarinetist for the New York Philharmonic, don’t get back to their …
In February, soprano Tamara Wilson joined WFMT to perform a celestial song cycle composed for her by Chicago composer James Kallembach. The works draw from the experience of women astronauts, including Sally Ride, Sunita Williams, and Peggy Whitson. We’re bringing this video back in honor of the 50th anniversary of the moon landing.
Classical and jazz composer-pianist Anthony Davis is known for writing operas based on historical figures, notably X, The Life and Times of Malcolm X. His latest opera, The Central Park Five, with a libretto by Richard Wesley, premiered in June 2019. We spoke with the composer and members of the creative team about bringing the opera to life.
Using his violin and virtuosic whistle, Andrew Bird genre-jumps from indie rock to jazz, and from folk to classical. Born in Lake Forest, Bird began learning classical violin from the Suzuki Method at the age of four and recalls, “My mom would have WFMT on all the time… My dad listened to Merle Haggard.”
“I wanted to encourage young emerging LGBTQ+ composers to write pieces that tell their story in an authentic way… This concert series is both a celebration of how far we have come and how far we still have to go.”
The father, Sergio, is a guitarist, composer, arranger, educator, and the daughter, Clarice, is a bold and highly innovative vocalist, composer, orchestrator, videographer, and mentor.
Over the span of just 9 months, Philadelphia Orchestra went from being one of the least representative orchestras of women composers to being the most.
CHICAGO (AP) — A music composition professor in Illinois has learned he was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in Music . Western Illinois University notes that finalists aren’t known until after a winner is announced. A Friday statement from the school says one of its professors, James Romig, found out he’d been up for the award after Los Angeles composer Ellen Reid was …
More than two decades after the tragedy which catalyzed a generation of LGBTQ activists and inspired national hate-crime legislation, Matthew Shepard’s story is being shared with a new generation through music.
Known for composing in styles ranging from melody to dissonance, he earned the Pulitzer in 1975 for From the Diary of Virginia Woolf, a composition for voice and piano.
“I believe that Karenina is a magical moment of looking at our beautiful art form and taking it a step forward,” says Ashley Wheater, Joffrey Ballet’s artistic director. One of the cornerstones of the production is 35-year-old composer Ilya Demutsky’s brand new, full-length orchestral score, the first such commission in Joffrey’s 62-year history.
Keegan Morris and Hannah Schiller | February 15, 2019
Renée Baker’s interest in Baldwin began when she first heard recordings of his voice. “The person that I’d only accessed from books became quite real once I was able to actually hear and listen to him speak.” She notes.
With pianist Justina Lee, Wilson shared a selection from Strauss’s Ariadne auf Naxos and Weightless Dreams, a song cycle composed for Wilson based on the writings and experiences of women astronauts.
