Karl Paulnack's Welcome Address

A friend of mine recently passed this link on to me. I'm not sure when it's from, but it's a wonderful welcome address from Karl Paulnack, piano instructor at Boston Conservatory.

This address offers many compelling reminders of why music is a fundamental and necessary aspect of the human experience. Too often all of us (musicians included) fail to fully consider the importance of music in our lives.

One of my favorite quotes from the article is below:

"I have come to understand that music is not part of 'arts and entertainment' as the newspaper section would have us believe. It's not a luxury, a lavish thing that we fund from leftovers of our budgets, not a plaything or an amusement... Music is a basic need of human survival. Music is one of the ways we make sense of our lives, one of the ways in which we express feelings when we have no words, a way for us to understand things with our hearts when we can't with our minds."

To read the full address, click here. If you are a musician (and maybe even if you aren't) you will find it to be a therapeutic and empowering read!

Posted by Natalie

Melodramatic Musings

I'm currently working on a 10-15 minute chamber opera for a class at school. It's meant to be a learning experience, having the composer workshop an idea with the opera department over a period of only about six months (with the bulk of the writing happening in two to three months....ouch!). I can already say that I am learning a ton and am hugely enjoying the process, even if it is a bit stressful. But here's what I don't like: telling people about it.

Happy December Birthdays!

Happy birthday to Julia Wolfe, Elliott Carter (wow... 103!!!!), and Jennifer Higdon!

Julia Wolfe: Tell Me Everything

Elliott Carter: A Mirror on Which to Dwell

Jennifer Higdon: Violin Concerto No. 1 (1st movement)

Happy Holidays!

Happy Holidays from Alphabet Soup!

Whatever you're celebrating, we hope you have a wonderful holiday season. We will be taking a brief blogging break and will be back in January. Even though this clip has nothing to do with the holidays, or new music, it's musical and fun (and sorry about having to watch an ad first... this is the best quality video we could find). Enjoy!

Introducing our New Music Ensembles list!

Several months ago (partly inspired by feelings documented in Natalie's recent post about the New York music scene bubble) we began a project of trying to create a comprehensive list of American new music ensembles by state. This was a much larger project than we thought it would be, mainly because we realized that there are actually tons of new music ensembles out there of all shapes and sizes: large, small, established, unestablished, run by composers, run by performers, etc. (yay!).

Here's where we'd like your help. We have dedicated a page of our blog to listing these new music ensembles, festivals, and concert series by state, or at least the ones of which we are currently aware. Please check it out here. This will be an ongoing project, much like our Frugal Composer page, and we would certainly appreciate any additions that you can think of. Our goal is to someday have a comprehensive list of American new music ensembles. For now, it's a reminder that there are great new music ensembles all over the country and the national new music scene continues to grow!

Please don't hesitate to send us any information you have. The page that's up right now is very much a work-in-progress, so check it out (again, here) and if you see things to add, please send us an email or leave a comment!

Art Versus Entertainment

In the new music world we hear lots of chatter about how things are constantly improving in terms of musical open-mindedness. Generally, I think this is true, which is a wonderfully positive thing. To take the oft-cited example, as students we usually don’t feel forced to write in a specific style the way many of our teachers once did. Unfortunately, though, academia is academia and the art-music world is the art-music world, which tends to mean that many prejudices still remain.

One of the most common elitist statements that I hear on a regular basis is an insistent delineation between “art” music and “entertainment” music. This distinction persists, despite the rampant amount of crossover music, the skill and artistry that may go into a Broadway show (not to mention the lack of craft that can sometimes be apparent in a new music piece…), etc. I guess what I’m trying to say is that good music is good music and just because something is labeled as falling more into the “entertainment” category shouldn’t preclude it from being called “art.” Likewise, music labeled as “art” can still be entertaining.

Why New Music? A Performer Speaks

Please give a warm welcome to Alphabet Soup’s first guest blogger, saxophonist Jack Kinsey. Please see below for his bio!

Hello everyone. First off, I would like to thank Sarah and Natalie for inviting me to write for their blog. I am a performer, and have gotten to see new music from a different angle than their backgrounds as composers generally allow, so hopefully I will be able to add some new perspectives on new music, what it is, how it’s generated, etc.

For starters, I am going to ask a very simple question with a very complex answer: Why new music? Performers get asked this a lot (especially by their families. A few weeks ago my grandmother asked me when I was going to start playing music people like. Sorry Gram, don’t hold your breath on that one).