Attending the 2018 Congress of the International Viola D’amore Society was a pleasure – and I made some good friends while there. Since then, Gheorghe and Simona Balan have performed my Nocturnes for violin and viola, Marianne Ronez has asked me to set some haiku for soprano and viola d’amore, and Rachel Stott will perform Der Februar in London. Little by little….
Although the official release date isn’t until November, my new CD can now be purchased directly from Innova Recordings. Rustling Flights of Wings is an album of songs setting some of my favorite poets. Gorgeously sung by Nancy Allen Lundy, the album includes cycles of poems by the contemporary South African poet Charl Cilliers, Hart Crane and W.B. Yeats (accompanied by Stephen Gosling’s brilliant piano playing) and a set of songs by various poets passionately accompanied on violin by Ralph Farris.
https://www.innova.mu/albums/stanley-grill/rustling-flights-wings
On the return trip from Breckenridge yesterday, we stopped for a visit to Denver’s newest museum – the Kirkland Museum of Fine and Decorative Art. Thanks to Paul Hughes, a museum guide (and former New Yorker and art gallery owner) who gave Renee and I a personal tour of the museum. I had never heard of Vance Kirkland before, but loved his art work. Over the years, he moved through many different styles, creating distinctive and moving work in all of them. Most interesting to me was that he experienced synesthesia and listening to music at night (Mahler, Shostakovich, Bartok) filled his mind with colors which he employed in his painting the next day.
His larger works needed to be painted with the canvas flat on a table – and to reach the center, he floated above the table on a system of straps. In his “dot” paintings of the exploding stars and nebulae in the vast expanse of space, he floated like an astronaut, with no up or down to his paintings. We learned that periodically the museum displays those paintings in different positions, as the artist wanted them to convey the non-directionality of space.
As I stood in front of one of his “dot” paintings, Paul Hughes told me that it was estimated to contain about 75,000 dots. While he told me that to convey the immensity of the painter’s effort, it struck me that, as a composer, that wasn’t a huge number. I lay down thousands of dots all the time.
During these hot summer days, I’ve been hearing music while out walking. Making progress on a new “summer” symphony, having finished a second movement today. The sound of cicadas is in the air.
Thrilled to learn that radio host Marvin Rosen will be airing my string quartet At the Center of All Things on his Classical Discoveries program on Wednesday September 5, 2018.
——————————-
I hope you will join me for this week’s exciting edition of Classical Discoveries on Wednesday, September 05, 2018, from 5:00 until 11:00am. The program, now in its 22nd year, is a unique radio show that is devoted to rarely heard contemporary works as well as selections of music written before 1750. Most of the compositions heard on this program feature music you rarely hear, if ever, on other radio stations. Here is a list of some of the work which will be presented:
Concerto No. 1 for Piano and Orchestra by Canadian composer, Violet Archer (1913-2000)
Awakening by Russian composer, Vyacheslav Artyomov (1940- )
Energy Diamond by English composer, Lawrence Ball (1951- )
Chronique symphonique by Austrian composer, Theodore Berger (1905-1992)
Glacier (Concerto for Electric Guitar and Orchestra) by American composer, Kenneth Fuchs (1956-)
The Unchanging Sea by American composer, Michael Gordon (1956- )
At the Center of All things by American composer, Stanley Grill
Violin Concerto by Belgian composer, Robert Groslot (1951- )
Motet No. 6, Benedicite maria et flumina, Op. 337, No. 4 by English composer, Robert Hackbridge David Hackbridge Johnson (1963- )
Violin Concerto By Filipino composer, Lucrecia Kasilag (1918-2008)
plus music by: James Aikman, Arthur M. Bachmann, Alan Hovhaness, Sayo Kosugi, Claudio Scannavini, Erkki-Sven Tüür, and other works.
On WPRB 103.3 FM Princeton NJ, or on the Internet at: http://wprb.com/