Brand new DG holiday arrangement: "Carol Of The Bells (for Leo)"

A brand new DG holiday arrangement, Carol Of The Bells (for Leo), an entirely digital production featuring metallic percussion instruments (chimes, celesta, glockenspiel, music box, crotales, and triangle), is available for downloading exclusively at InstantEncore.com. You can also listen to it online at ReverbNation.com.

Miles Zuniga - Great Songwriter In Search of $$$

Miles Zuniga, best known as 1/3 of the Austin, Texas-based pop/rock group Fastball, is setting out on the weird and wonderful journey known as "fundraising" in order to get his first solo record off the ground. Similar to what I did earlier this year with Chipin.com (but he's looking to gather up a lot more money), he's holding his hat out to fans and strangers alike over at Kickstarter.com. I love Fastball and I think Miles is a terrific songwriter. He's trying to gather $20,000 in production costs in 30 days. Click here to help him out.

Review of the CONVERSATIONS album from Italy

From an Italian music review site called Kathodik (www.kathodik.it)...translated by DG from the orginal Italian:

As the title says, this new Navona CD is a kind of conversation at a distance between two contemporary American composers, David Gaines and John Bilotta, by whom there are presented short works for organic chamber groups limited to a few instruments. The metaphor of a conversation is actually appropriate, not only because the two composers' pieces are wisely divided up, but also because they share a common ground that renders the dialogue possible and practical. This terrain is the rhythm that underpins all the pieces on the CD, which nicely flow one after the other. The brevity of the tracks and the lack of particularly accentuated and incisive melodic contours supports a second interpretation that, staying with the metaphor of conversation, what counts for them is not so much what you discuss, but how it's discussed; which might seem that the musical discourse is generally insubstantial. But before this question is translated into certainty comes the final composition of the CD to prevent such an eventuality. This is a piece for baritone saxophone and orchestra divided into three movements, written by Gaines, who - thanks finally to an expressive use of melody, a more structured and less aphoristic construction of movements, and to a masterly blend of orchestral colors - gives content to the conversation, which finally acquires a sense of accomplishment.

Composer John Adams on pop culture & anti-intellectualism

John Adams has some interesting things to say about the relationship of pop and classical music in the United States in this interview from last year.

Great new documentary about the Louisville Orchestra

Strangely, the Louisville Orchestra in Kentucky led the way in the United States in terms of commissioning new music from the country's leading composers in the 1950s and 1960s. Click here to learn about this amazing story. The film premieres on May 20th.

Review of "Lyric Fanfare" for trombone and piano

Just discovered a review of Lyric Fanfare (1994) for trombone and piano that appeared in the October 2007 issue of the International Trombone Association Journal.

MuseScore | Free music composition & notation software

MuseScore is a free cross platform WYSIWYG music notation program, licenced under GNU GPL. It imports/exports MusicXML & Standard MIDI files and it's free - worth checking out if you can't afford or don't want to use Finale or Sibelius, the industry standard notation programs (both of which can save files in MusicXML format). I might check it out myself.

Happy Tails: Hansel and Gretel

Happy Tails: Hansel and Gretel

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Jubilee for euphonium and piano selected for Falcone International Competition

Jubilee for euphonium and piano (2005) was selected as one of the two required compositions for the student division semifinal round of the 25th Annual Leonard Falcone International Euphonium Competition, to be held on August 15th at the Blue Lake Fine Arts Camp in Michigan! The Falcone competition and festival is the most renowned in the euphonium world, sort of the equivalent of the Van Cliburn competition for euphoniumists. It is quite an honor to have a composition selected to be part of it.

Feature story on Jim DeJoie in Earshot Jazz magazine

Jim DeJoie, who was the soloist on my baritone saxophone concerto recording that will be coming out in a few months, is featured in the January 2010 issue of Seattle's EarShot Jazz magazine.

Help make the new CD a reality!

Bringing new chamber music to your ears by way of some of the best musicians in the world is very expensive.....click on the ChipIn widget below to help us succeed against the major record labels' lack of interest in promoting this kind of music. Everyone who contributes - whatever the amount - gets his or her name in the liner notes......contributors of $25 or more will have a signed copy of the new Navona Records CD of chamber music by David Gaines and John Bilotta mailed to them as soon as it's available this coming spring (it will also be available as a digital download). Your contribution (via credit card, debit card, or your checking account) is 100% encrypted and secure.

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Thank you very much for your generosity, interest, and support of living composers.