The concert is the annual New Music from Mannes Faculty and Alumni. Also on the concert are compositions from Carol Bevan, Wendy Griffiths, Faye Ellen Silverman, Jonathan Bell, and Andrij Legkij.

Rainer Maria Rilke

My Two Rilke Songs will be performed twice in the next few weeks by “Aria Plus Two,” an ensemble led by pianist Stephen Pierce of the University of Northern Colorado.

The first performance is Monday evening, January 30 at 8pm at the University of Mt. Union’s Presser Recital Hall. This school is in Alliance, Ohio.

The second performance is at the Milne Auditorium at the University of Northern Colorado at 8pm, February 24.

Richard D. Russell

In introducing my Adagio for String Quartet at the recent Dec. 20 NYCC performance, held at the Saint Peter’s Church at Citigroup Center, I explained that this is a movement from a larger string quartet which is yet to be completed.

I’ve written three movements, but the quartet seems somehow incomplete still, needing a final movement to wrap up the whole artistic statement. That said, I’m very fond of this Adagio and am anxious to bring it to a larger audience.

There was a very large crowd on hand as this concert sadly marked the recent passing of one of the New York Composers Circle’s most prominent and enthusiastic members, Dr. Dinu Ghezzo. He will be missed.

On a happier note, this concert marked the start of the NYCC’s 10th year.

I received some of the nicest, most enthusiastic comments yet for a performance of a piece of mine. I heartily thank the evening’s performers, Stanichka Dimitrova and Arthur Moeller on violin, Kim Mai Nguyen on viola, and Hamilton Berry on cello.

Stanichka Dimitrova & Arthur Moeller

And so I am delighted that the New York Composers Circle will be presenting this work on December 20 at 8pm. The venue is the Saint Peter’s Church at Citigroup Center, 54th Street and Lexington Avenue. One of the NYCC’s honorary members, Dinu Ghezzo, will be celebrated as his 70th birthday arrives, and there will also be a composition by no less than Elliott Carter on the bill. Other composers on the concert include Jacob E. Goodman, Martin Halpern, Eugene McBride, and Gayther Myers.

And a reception will follow. The suggested donation is $20 and as always the concert promises to be a great one. More information can be found by clicking the flier or by clicking here.

Beethoven looks on

Once again my frequent collaborator, Emily Thompson, asked me to lecture to her class of fourth-grade school children. This lecture was held at the East Hanover (NJ) Central School. My talk is about how interdisciplinary thinking can lead to more creativity. I present the example of mixing literature and music, drawing connections between hero mythology and Beethoven’s music. Here’s a picture of me introducing Beethoven.

I presented my lecture pretty much non-stop, six times in a row. I have to give credit to teachers everywhere who do this every day, day-in and day-out. I don’t know how they do it!

Richard D. Russell

On October 22, Dan Wang premiered my new piano solo, “Dantes Variations” at a two-day conference sponsored by the journal 19th-Century Music and hosted at Fordham University in New York City. It happened to be the 200th birthday of Franz Liszt, and many Liszt pieces were included in the concert.

The interdisciplinary conference was organized by the musicologist Lawrence Kramer, editor of the sponsoring journal, who asked me to compose a piece for the concluding concert. The topics of the two-day seminar “… range as widely as the contributors’ imagination can compass…” including…

“…portrayals of music or musicians in nineteenth-century literary works, musical representations in nineteenth-century music of literary genres, characters, or texts, literary opera, incidental music, aesthetic theories, models of performance, treatments of nineteenth-century music in twentieth– and twenty-first-century literature and film, treatments of nineteenth-century literature in twentieth-and twenty-first-century music, including opera and film music, and the list goes on.

My piece was a theme and variations based on Edmond Dantes from Alexander Dumas’s The Count of Monte Cristo. Here are pictures of Mr. Kramer, Mr. Wang, and me. (Click image for larger size.)

Lawrence Kramer opens the concert

Dan Wang performs “Dantes Variations.”

Sofia Dimitrova accompanied by Catherine Miller

Sofia Dim­itrova per­formed “Time is Not an Option” as part of the New York Com­posers Circle’s Out­reach Pro­gram last Octo­ber 21 at Stuyvesant High School. Sofia was accompanied by pianist Cather­one Miller, and they also per­formed Paul Moravec’s “The Rose and the Nightin­gale,” Kevin McCarter’s “3 Songs,” and Menotti’s “Monica’s Waltz.”

I was asked some very interesting questions: (1) Do I consider my music harmonic or atonal? (2) Can you give some examples of how composers draw upon different influences today? (3) What’s the hardest part about being a composer of classical music in these times?

That last question was particularly apt, since my answer was about finding audiences for new contemporary music, which was the very reason this outreach concert happened. Here are some pics, and I hope to post video soon.

[T]he two-day conference is Oct. 21–22, 2011, with a concert to conclude the festivities. This concluding concert will include my new composition, Dantes Variations, a theme and variations on an original theme which is intended to evoke Edmond Dantes, the hero of Dumas’s book, “The Count of Monte Cristo.” This concert will meet at 7:30pm, October 22 at Fordham University’s Lincoln Center campus, 113th West 60 Street at Columbus Avenue, 12th floor. (ADDRESS CORRECTED)

For more information about the whole concert, see: http://tiny.cc/yhd8u

Like most kids, I didn’t really care for doing homework. And so like many youngsters, I decided the best way to do homework was to listen to music while I studied.

I put on the album Rubber Soul, The Beatles 1965 album. I tried, but it was hard for me to concentrate on my homework! Not with all that great music going on. During the song “You Won’t See Me” I truly learned what was meant by active listening.

It wasn’t Paul McCartney’s lead vocal that was drawing me in. Instead, it was the background vocal harmonies. This was before I knew much about music theory, but I recognized the dissonance of the major second being sung in harmony, and the stepwise motion to resolving the dissonance. As you can see from the example attached, the voices lead naturally to the harmony of the piece.

I remember losing myself in the piece so much, of not paying much attention to the words, but only to listening to the harmony and its resolution.

Active listening indeed! Homework had no chance.