The OPERA America Songbook is Here!

by Ted Gordon on Sept. 14, 2012, 12:10 p.m.

Good news for opera lovers across America: the OPERA America Songbook is here! The Songbook is a new publication by Schott Music, co-edited by Scott Wollschleger and fellow PSNY composer Christopher Cerrone, to commemorate the launch of OPERA America's National Opera Center. The Songbook is now available for sale, in advance of the opening of the Center, and contains songs by PSNY composers Christopher Cerrone, David T. Little, Gregory Spears, and Stewart Wallace, as well as other prominent composers such as David Lang, Nico Muhly, Tod Machover, Howard Shore, Derek Bermel, and many more.

And if you'd like a taste of what kind of music the Songbook contains, American Public Media has featured one of the songs on their weekly program, Performance Today: That Night With The Green Sky, by Christopher Cerrone. That Night is a setting of text by Tao Lin, featuring soprano Melissa Hughes with pianist Thomas Bagwell. (Yes, that Tao Lin.) Check out the archived recording here.

For those of you in the NYC area, be sure to check out Loadbang performing Cerrone's How to Breathe Underwater, as well as a work by Adrian Knight, at (Le) Poission Rouge on September 18th, 2012. Stick around for The Respect Sextet performing works by Rahsaan Roland Kirk! 

Two Weeks, Four Concerts

by Ted Gordon on May 18, 2012, 3:04 p.m.

As the '11-12 season comes to a close, late May sees four terrific events in New York, featuring PSNY composers from around the country. 

First up: Red Light New Music presents their season-closing concert on May 21st at Symphony Space in New York. Music in Layers features both new and newly arranged chamber music works, written by John Cage and Red Light New Music composers Christopher Cerrone, Adrian Knight, Vincent Raikhel, Liam Robertson and Scott Wollschleger, performed by the core Red Light New Music Ensemble. The program includes the NYC Premeire of Adrian Knight's Trio, available on PSNY:

On the heels of that Monday night concert is a Wednesday night with Wet Ink with the Peter Evans Quintet at Roulette, performing Alex Mincek's "Pendulum VII," forthcoming from PSNY. (We're working as fast as we can to get everything ready for publication!)

The next day, May 24th, sees the premiere of Histories, by the composer collective Sleeping Giant, which includes our composers Andrew Norman, Christopher Cerrone and Timo Andres, along with Ted Hearne, Jacob Cooper, and Robert Honstein. Premiering the work will be the Deviant Septet, formed around the core instrumentation of Stravinsky's L'HIstoire du Soldat, here performing a work described as a "companion piece" to that great masterwork of the early 20th century. The performance will take place at Brooklyn's Issue Project Room.

And, finishing out the month of May, Bang on a Can pianist Vicky Chow performs Christopher Cerrone's Hoyt-Schemerhorn at The Stone on May 29th. (If you haven't been to The Stone yet, now's your chance!)   

Sleeping Giant on WQXR

by Ted Gordon on Jan. 11, 2012, 4:52 p.m.

In case any of you missed it, the members of the illustrious Sleeping Giant collective took over "Hammered!" on WQXR's Q2 for the entire month of December. (And if you're not familiar with these gentle giants, they are: Timothy Andres, Robert Honstein, Jacob Cooper, Chris Cerrone, Andrew Norman, and Ted Hearne.) Timothy Andres hosted and performed his own music, as well as music by the other Sleepy G's, and the show was hosted by each composer in turn during the week.

Much of the music featured was by the Sleeping Giant composers, including PSNY composers Timo Andres and Chris Cerrone. But the programming also ran the gamut of contemporary piano composers: Arvo Paert, Thomas Ades, Morton Feldman, Gyorgy Ligeti, Ryuichi Sakamoto, Alex Mincek, Adrian Knight, Scott Wollschleger, and Beat Furrer. Phew!

You can stream all episodes from WQXR's website. Here's the full recording of Alex Mincek's "Stems", which aired on the December 15th episode: