#new music
George E. Lewis on the Decolonizing of Classical Music
An important step in decolonizing classical music, as George Lewis recently opined, is encouraging ensembles to commission new music from a diverse array of composers. In its 2022-23 season, the Bent Frequency Duo (Jan Berry Baker, saxophone and Stuart Gerber, percussion) have featured new commissions by Lewis, African American composer Alvin Singleton, and Singaporean+ composer emily koh.
Honoring Kurtág
It was 2004 and Movses Pogossian was preparing the legendary Hungarian composer György Kurtág’s famously intricate Kafka Fragments with soprano Tony Arnold. On a whim, they contacted the composer to see if he might consider rehearsing with them. To their surprise, Kurtág invited them to Budapest to participate in a four-day masterclass. “We knew he
Celebrating William Kraft, Los Angeles New Music Legend
On Saturday, October 1, The UCLA Herb Alpert School of Music will host a celebration of William Kraft. Kraft, who taught composition at UCLA in the 1980s after a thirty-year career in the Los Angeles Philharmonic, was an indispensable feature of Los Angeles’s vibrant new music scene in the post-World War II era. “Bill was