On 1/31/06 5:30 AM, Ray Horton wrote: > Including crap. We (Louisville Orchestra) played the Kenji Bunch piece > with the Ahn trio last year, on our classical series, not our pops > series. It is pure pop crap, just one bad rock cliche after another. > The Ahn trio itself is a hoax - three attractive young Asian sisters > (including one pair of twins) who play at barely above a good high > school level, but amplify their mediocre playing so loud, and have their > moves down so pat, (not to mention their necklines so low and their > skirts so loose - not that there's anything WRONG with that), that they > have have developed somewhat of a following. (I still can't get that > god-awful cat-screech of an amplified violin sound out of my ear, now > that you've reminded me of them!) > > Don't get me wrong - I am in favor of any sincere attempt at what you > describe. <snip>
Ray, I'm glad you wrote that follow-on sentence. And I'm glad you went on to describe fruitful collaborations. The River Concert Series here in Maryland had a great collaboration with Vonda Shepard last summer (I got to write the arrangements -- first time for me to venture into the arranging world, since I'm a straight-up classical composer, and it was a lot more fun than I thought it would be). She was paired with Bartok's Concerto for Orchestra -- a surprising and effective combination -- which, we discovered later, is one of her bass player's favorite pieces. The point of this series is to take chances, knowing it has a generous audience. Bunch is a serious composer with a solid background. I've heard respectable pieces by him in other contexts. He was suggested to the series by the Ahn trio, who, under the right circumstances, play a bit better than you suggest -- at least on their recordings. We do agree that they are VERY nice to look at! If history is any judge, most new works will have a very short life, as we all know. And we know you have to make room for the crap so some good stuff can come through. That's the big problem with premieres. And, whatever else you say about the Bunch -- in the context of a conversation that has included slinging arrows at composers who are accused of ignoring their audience -- he is clearly someone who knows what some in the audience want to hear (maybe, in some cases, to the extent of pandering? Or maybe he likes what he does? I prefer to hope for the latter). > (David, do you remember our giant of a > principal horn and his big sound? You should have heard him sing Ray > Charles and David Clayton Thomas back then!) Are you referring to when you guys played a piece of mine? Yes, I do remember how great the horn solos sounded. Sounds like I should have included a singing part for him. Carl Dersham wrote: > Sounds like a fun series! Does Don Patterson play with you guys? I don't know everyone in the orchestra. I am not officially affiliated with the series, but I am close to the main folks. Tell me about him. John Howell wrote: > Is that Maryland series a Green Sheet gig? (If you don't know what > I'm talking about, you won't know the answer!) The report said union > scale, but didn't say union contract or union musicians. I know it is union scale. I'm virtually certain it is not Green Sheet. I know about Green Sheet because when I was a grad student at Columbia, we used Green Sheet to get players to do our new music at grad student concerts. I don't know if it is union contract. I do know that it is free-lance -- but since so many of the musicians choose this as their gig of choice, the membership of the orchestra (The Chesapeake Orchestra) has become pretty stable. David Froom _______________________________________________ Finale mailing list Finale@shsu.edu http://lists.shsu.edu/mailman/listinfo/finale
