COMPOSER NEWSEtude For Squeaky Toy, Other CompositionsJuly 24, 2008 Today's young composers are often quite different from the stereotype of tuxedoed men adored in concert halls or immortalized on marble busts. Consider the young composers who work at the Yaddo colony for artists and writers in Saratoga Springs, N.Y.
Lost tapes of the Dr Who composer July 18, 2008 A hidden hoard of recordings made by the electronic music pioneer behind the Doctor Who theme has been revealed - including a dance track 20 years ahead of its time.
Coming to an orchestra near you: That is, if aspiring classical-music composer Samn Johnson gets his wish July 16, 2008 For many teens, music class is enough. But for Samn Johnson, it doesn't come close. At 17, Johnson is determined to become a classical-music composer. Specifically, he'd love to be a "composer-in-residence" for a symphony orchestra or a composer of film scores.
BBC Composer of the Week: Johann Sebastian Bach (1685-1750) July 15, 2008 Donald Macleod explores five decades of Bach's music, revealing a picture of the composer's evolving style.
Heaney to stage an opera at the Globe July 13, 2008 
The poet Seamus Heaney is to collaborate with his old friend and fellow Nobel laureate, Derek Walcott, on a new opera for the Globe Theatre in London this autumn.
The opera will be the first to be fully staged at the open-air Shakespearean venue and is being composed by the Trinidad-born composer Dominique Le Gendre. It will be based on Heaney's critically acclaimed work, The Burial at Thebes billed as an 'inspired partnership' between 'two giants of literature', the project will set the story in an ailing South American republic.
The Hard Sell Of New Music July 12, 2008 You would think that writing a symphony and getting it recorded would be enough work in itself. But for composer Kenneth Fuchs, it's just half the battle.
GLAST mission inspires classical music composer July 09, 2008 
We're used to scientists finding inspiration in classical music. Albert Einstein said Mozart's music "was so pure that it seemed to have been ever-present in the universe, waiting to be discovered by the master." But it's rare for the cerebral stuff to inspire tunes.
But that was the case for composer Nolan Gasser, who has created a new work specifically for NASA's GLAST (Gamma-ray Large Area Space Telescope) mission.
BBC Composer of the Week: Nikolay Andreyevich Rimsky-Korsakov (1844-1908) July 06, 2008 Donald Macleod explores Rimsky-Korsakov's early years. As a teenager, the composer was nicknamed 'beautiful child' by his colleagues in the loose collective of composers known as 'The Mighty Handful' and was seen by many of them as the brightest hope for the future of Russian music.
Composer sets new tone in move from modernism July 03, 2008 Not all contemporary composers aspire to write "beautiful things," but Paul Moravec does. For much of the 20th century, many composers were suspicious of the call for beautiful music because they though it was pandering to the audience and limiting to their self-expression. Moravec is one of the "new tonalists," following a path away from 12-tone or atonal music. It has brought him great success, including the 2004 Pulitzer Prize for music.
Chilly Passion, Politically Correct Twaddle Surface at Aix July 02, 2008 Opera is traditionally a battlefield of passions: love, jealousy, hatred, despair. French composer Pascal Dusapin must have had something else in mind with his new opera, ``Passion,'' which had its world premiere at the Festival d'Aix-en-Provence on June 29. The piece lacks a coherent plot, and comes over as more of a psychological treatise than a dramatic project.
Philip Glass's new opera score June 30, 2008 A novel written by the Nobel prize winner, JM Coetzee, is being given new life in operatic form. The composer of the opera, the American Philip Glass, says he now sees parallels in the work with the recent Iraq war.
Fat Man Sings! La Scala Commissions an Opera Based on Gore's "Inconvenient Truth" June 26, 2008 At his May 28 Milan press conference to announce the 2008-09 opera season, La Scala's director Stephane Lissner announced the opera house has commissioned an opera based on Al Gore's movie "An Inconvenient Truth" set to music by Italian composer Giorgio Battistelli, reported Paris' daily Le Monde on June 3.
Robert Schumann Reconsidered at Carnegie Hall June 19, 2008 One of the cliché criticisms of Robert Schumann is that he lacked talent for writing orchestral music. Critics and musicians still nitpick over muddy textures in his symphonies and awkward solo writing in his concertos.
Joan Tower: a first among women June 18, 2008 Joan Tower has run into a string of bad luck recently, which is unusual for her. She's the remarkably successful composer whose distinctions include the $200,000 Grawemeyer Award in Composition in 1990 (the first woman to receive that honor), and a Grammy this year for Best Classical Contemporary Composition - Made in America, on a Naxos recording that also took Grammys for Best Classical Album and Best Orchestral Performance. But Tower, due in town this week for the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra's performance of her Concerto for Orchestra, has been battling the flu, a knee injury and even tick-borne Lyme disease.
Birtwistle's Punch and Judy June 17, 2008 In an ENO production from London's Young Vic Theatre, Edward Gardner conducts a performance of Harrison Birtwistle's controversial modernist opera, featuring bass Andrew Shore and mezzo-soprano Lucy Schaufer in the title roles.
Gabriel Prokofiev's Nonclassical club night breaks with tradition June 12, 2008 
The girl taking tickets on the door is wearing odd stockings. It’s the middle of June, but one of the bar staff is sporting a woolly hat, complete with a strategically draped bobble. It’s 9.30pm on a Wednesday night at the Macbeth on Hoxton Street, and this is exactly the kind of crowd you’d expect to find in this terrifyingly trendy corner of East London. It’s not what you’d expect at a classical music concert, though.
But this is no ordinary classical music concert. Nonclassical, run by Gabriel Prokofiev, DJ, producer, composer and grandson of the great Sergei, is a monthly classical club night that mixes live performances from instrumentalists and singers with sets from electronica DJs. Talking during the performances is not frowned upon – in fact, it’s positively encouraged – and drinks are served at the bar throughout the night.
Guitarists Discover Timelessness of Erik Satie June 11, 2008
Brokeback Mountain, The Opera June 10, 2008 American composer Charles Wuorinen...has been commissioned by New York City Opera to write a work based on Annie Proulx’s Brokeback Mountain, the company announced. Obviously it's early in the game for firm answers, but we prodded the 70-year-old composer Monday for a few clues to what will be heard when the work arrives on stage in the spring of 2013.
Brokeback Mountain set for opera June 09, 2008 
Brokeback Mountain, the story by Annie Proulx that became the basis for an Oscar-winning film, is to be made into an opera.
The Joy and Pain in Beethoven's Big Fugue June 04, 2008
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