Interchanging Idioms

GameSoundCon 2011 San Francisco is a two day seminar for composers, sound designers, recording professionals and others who want to learn what it takes to be successful in the growing video game industry. Learn the technical and creative challenges of music and sound for games that they don't teach in music school. New for 2011 Hands-on training in FMOD, one of the top game audio creation tools. Bring your laptop and learn from expert Stephan Schutze, host of FMODTV's tutorial series. Feeling ambitious? Bring your own music and let Stephan show you how to create an interactive version of it! Demo Derby. Bring your best 60 second demo for open critique and evaluation by some of the top names in game audio. Plus Game Audio Sessions, Panels and Masterclasses Topics Include: How Creating Music and Sound for Games Differs from Traditional Media Essential Game Audio Tech Game Music and Sound DesignTools Working on a Game Team How to Write and Implement ...

Susanna Phillips, winner of the Metropolitan Opera’s 2010 Beverly Sills Artist Award, has launched the 2011-12 season with a bang, winning glowing reviews for her “beautiful, velvety tone and dignified, carefully shaped phrasing” ( New York Times ) in the New York premiere of Juraj Filas’s 9/11-themed requiem Oratio Spei , and, at Lyric Opera of Chicago’s annual outdoor concert, proving herself a “full-fledged international star” (Chicago Tribune) with her “passion and elegant singing” as Donizetti’s Lucia ( Chicago Classical Review ). Having given Chicago audiences this sneak preview, the Alabama-born soprano returns to Lyric Opera of Chicago to undertake the title role of Lucia di Lammermoor in earnest this month, before reprising it with Minnesota Opera in March 2012. Other highlights of her new season include Musetta in La bohème at New York’s Metropolitan Opera in November; Pamina in Die Zauberflöte at the Gran Teatro del Liceu Barcelona in April; and the Countess in Le nozze di...

Shaham’s ongoing “Violin Concertos of the 1930s” project was conceived when, as the Los Angeles Times describes, “one of the era’s star fiddlers, Shaham began musing about his favorite 20th-century violin concertos at the turn of the millennium. He found to his surprise that most were written in the 1930s.” In an in-depth feature on the enterprise, the Wall Street Journal explains, “In the 1930s, horrific developments in Europe ultimately swept more than 50 countries into the most destructive global conflict ever known. Coincidentally during that decade, at least 14 significant composers wrote violin concertos, many for the first time.” In some cases the tumultuous political events of the 1930s directly impacted the concertos’ composition, most notably that of Germany’s Karl Amadeus Hartmann, an idealist socialist whose Concerto funèbre was written in 1939 to protest Hitler’s occupation of Prague. According to the Aspen Times, the work is “an anguished cry from the depth of [the com...

The “Cadillac of Countertenors” Returns to His Roots with the Sublime Vocal Music of J. S. Bach Andreas Scholl first sang the music of J. S. Bach as a boy chorister. Now the German countertenor returns to his musical roots with his own selection of arias from Bach’s Cantatas on an album to be released on Decca on October 11th, 2011. The countertenor of reference follows up his much-praised Purcell collection O Solitude with a project perfectly matched to his artistry and musical heritage. The Kammerorchester Basel led by Julia Schröder joins Scholl. Included on the album is Cantata BWV 82, “Ich habe genug,” composed for the Feast of the Purification in 1727 for bass soloist, and subsequently performed by mezzo soprano in the same key and by soprano in E minor. It is scored for strings and oboe, whose plaintive tone matches the somber tone of the text: The infant Jesus is brought to the Temple for blessing and the aged Simeon pronounces the text that survives 2000 years later in Ca...

Championing music seldom heard, but masterfully performed by Chris McGovern On Hilary Hahn's new album (13th overall, 7th for DG) the vitruoso offers up the 4 completed violin sonatas of Charles Ives, pieces that she'd been performing live in concert for several years with pianist Valentina Lisitsa, who appears on both her first studio recording with Hahn as well as her first on DG. As one goes through the 4 sonatas, it is evident throughout that Ives "painted" what he saw. The sonatas all contain themes from early-American songs, hymns and spirituals and seem to be inspired by contemporary life and activities in New England. Ives made a very interesting blend of his Americana with the sounds of a movement towards changing tonality in classical music. The four sonatas are all presented here in their final editions, the first 3 having been revised and re-thought by Ives in later years following the publication of the 4th and last piece "Children's Day...

The London Symphony Orchestra is joined by The Monteverdi Choir and conducted by Sir John Eliot Gardiner for a performance of Beethoven’s Symphony No 9 on 15 December at the Barbican. The performance features soloists Rebecca Evans (soprano), Wilke te Brummelstroete (mezzo-soprano), Michael Spyres (tenor) and Vuyani Mlinde (bass-baritone), and follows the LSO’s performance of the work at the BeethovenFest in Bonn on 15 September. Beethoven’s Symphony No. 1 completes the programme. At 1.15pm on Thursday 15 December Sir John Eliot Gardiner will be joined in the Barbican Hall by David Alberman, LSO Principal Second Violin and Rinat Ibragimov, LSO Principal Double Bass, for an Artist Conversation. Following the performance at the Barbican, the London Symphony Orchestra and Sir John Eliot Gardiner will perform this programme in Birmingham on December 16, Hamburg (December 18), Hannover (December 19) and Munich (December 20). Sir John Eliot Gardiner is a leading authority on Bee...

Jerome H. Kern and Mary Rossick Kern elected Colorado Symphony Board of Trustees co-chairs The Colorado Symphony Board of Trustees today announced revisions to the fall concert schedule of the 2011/12 season. During October and November, the orchestra will perform a schedule designed to control costs and restore financial stability. The musicians of the Colorado Symphony have agreed that in order to facilitate the new schedule, they will accept a further reduction in weekly pay during this period. No changes are planned for Colorado Symphony education programs such as Youth Concerts and Petite Musique. All December 2011 holiday concerts will also proceed as planned. In addition, the Colorado Symphony announced that Jerome H. Kern and his wife, Mary Rossick Kern, have been elected to serve as co-chairs of the Colorado Symphony Association board of trustees. The Kerns served as past co-chairs of the board of trustees. The Colorado Symphony board of trustees is a volunteer board ...