A long lost review

Post by David Gaines, composer.

Check out Expedition Audio

Just discovered a new classical music/jazz website called Expedition Audio, which is run by HBDirect, a really great site for purchasing all kinds of classical music (including mine). Expedition Audio focuses on more obscure stuff you probably haven't heard of and wouldn't be likely to come across elsewhere. I applaud what they're doing and recommend you take a look and poke around. Enjoy.

DG now @ GrammyAmplifier.com - #TheWorldIsListening

You can hear the new virtual orchestra recording of my Elegy for string orchestra at GrammyAmplifier.com, part of The Recording Academy's #TheWorldIsListening project......please "amplify" the link on your Facebook page, Twitter feed, Tumblr blog, Google+ page, or other website. This recording, by the way, will be a bonus track included at the end of the newly remastered version of my orchestral CD, The Music Of David Gaines, originally issued by MMC Recordings in 2001 and to be released on my own Verda Stelo Music label in 2013. Stay tuned, and repost widely. Thanks much......Happy New Year.  :)

A competition for 20-second film scores

A website that awards 30 euros a month to the winner of a competition for film scores lasting twenty seconds. Interesting.

Now part of the aUtopia roster at ReverbNation

I'm the first American musician to be invited to join the artist roster of aUtopia, a very interesting Spain-based music collective over at ReverbNation. Take a listen to their other artists, representing a range of experimental, progressive, electronic, and contemporary classical music.

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.

If you can help spread the word,click the "Copy" button on the widget below to create a widget for your own website or blog!

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

A rare and fascinating website devoted to composition

I recently stumbled upon this website, which is run coincidentally by a fellow who is a new faculty member at the Peabody Conservatory of Music in Baltimore, where I got my doctorate. Composition:Today is one of the handful of sites I've encountered that deals with the nuts and bolts of composing classical music in this day and age. Although it is aimed at, and probably mainly of interest to, composers, it is a very valuable place to look in on now and then for listeners and contemporary music aficionados as well. I would also put the Naxos record label's blog and Sequenza 21 in this category. Bookmark all three of these if you want to take a detour away from the dead German and Austrian guys, or mass pop culture, or both, and keep up on current trends in what my more famous colleagues are up to.

Help us finish up the production costs for the new David Gaines CD!

The new chamber music CD/digital download will be released in early 2010 on the Navona Records label (and distributed by Naxos). You'll finally get to hear:

• ...and dispel the miseries of the world (2008) for baritone saxophone and chamber orchestra (written for and recorded by the Seattle baritone saxophone hero James DeJoie, with members of the Slovak Radio Symphony Orchestra conducted by Kirk Trevor)
• Suite Of Changes (1993) for viola and mallet percussion (featuring the amazing young Japanese marimba virtuoso Fumito Nunoya)
• the delightful little Jubilee (2005) for euphonium and piano, featuring the Czech Philharmonic Orchestra's principal trombonist, Robert Kozanek, for whom I wrote my new trombone concerto (which we will hopefully record for Navona next year....more about that later).

However, we need a little bit of help to zero out the production costs, so we've started a $500 fundraising campaign with ChipIn.com. Click on the widget below to contribute via PayPal......you can use a credit card if you don't have a PayPal account. Any amount....$1, $5, $10, $100, or anything in between....is welcome, and everyone who contributes $25 or more will receive a compact disc signed by the composer and a mention in the album's liner notes. If you choose to contribute at this level, make sure to leave your mailing address in the comments box at PayPal.

And thank you!

Trombone Concerto premieres in Czech Republic

Robert Kozánek gave virtuoso performances of my new trombone concerto last week in Kroměříž, Czech Republic in the beautiful Assembly Hall of the archbishop's castle (a UNESCO world heritage site). He was ably assisted by his father, Viktor Kozánek, conducting the P. J. Vejvanovský Conservatory Orchestra. Robert asked me to write the concerto in honor of the conservatory's 60th anniversary when we met in Slovakia last year.

Click here to see videos on YouTube of each of the four movements from the premiere performance on 9/25/09 (there was an additional performance for conservatory alumni and family members the following afternoon).

DG nominated for 2009 Just Plain Folks Award in Contemporary Classical category

The first movement of Duo (1993) for flute and tuba from the Music For Winds album is nominated in the Contemporary Classical category at the 2009 Just Plain Folks Awards, which will be broadcast live on the web on Saturday, August 29th at 3pm PDT/6pm EDT at www.justplainfolks.org.