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Alvin Singleton Celebrates 70!

Jul. 08, 2009

Alvin Singleton celebrates his 70th birthday in 2010, and we invite you to join the festivities by programming works from his celebrated catalogue of orchestral, chamber, choral and solo works. Singleton has been described as a composer who effortlessly melds improvisatory techniques and rhythmic inventiveness into classical structures, often addressing in his works a wide range of contemporary issues of topical importance. Singleton's oeuvre includes varying and exciting orchestral selections from the stark fanfare of After Fallen Crumbs, to the plangent and relentless Shadows to the sparse, gestural text setting of Say You Have This Ball of Meaning. In March, 2009 Robert Spano led the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra and Chorus through performances of Singleton's PraiseMaker, and the performance was recorded for a future Telarc release. On April 26, 2010, Mark Shapiro conducts Singleton's Brooklyn Bones at Carnegie Hall's Zankel Hall in New York, which premiered last fall in Brooklyn in honor of Fort Greene Park's Prison Ship Martyrs Monument. In addition, Schott NY has just produced Alvin Singleton: Orchestral Sampler - a comprehensive collection of highlights and excerpts from the orchestral music of Alvin Singleton.

Music critic and composer Kyle Gann of Chamber Music magazine, in an intimate composer portrait for the publication, had this to say about the composer:

[Singleton's] music is soulful, with an understated simplicity that I particularly prize. I want him to be ignored and underrated so I can knowingly laud him as far better than the current run of orchestral race horses. But somehow, despite his music's poignant subtlety, his reputation needs no help from the likes of me. He's doing just fine.

Despite the studied economy of his means and the set character of his images, the music is never cold ... nor abstract. It glows with warmth, it hovers in the air, it paces itself with a glacial but palpably intuitive momentum. It refuses to pander to either academicism or populism, but is so honest and self-assured that listeners flock to it anyway.

Alvin Singleton's new work for string orchestra After Choice was premiered by the Orchestra of the League of Composers under the direction of Louis Karchin last month and garnered significant critical acclaim. Anthony Tommasini writes in the New York Times:

Alvin Singleton's After Choice, one of two commissioned premieres on the program, was an engaging work for string orchestra in which mysterious yet playful plucked lines are juxtaposed with fitful, spiraling yet oddly calm legato lines.

For more on the music of Alvin Singleton, visit www.alvinsingleton.com and www.schott-music.com.

To purchase the Nonesuch recording of the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra performing the music of Alvin Singleton, recently reissued by First Edition, click here.

To obtain a copy of Alvin Singleton: Orchestral Sampler, please contact James Albright at james.albright@schott-music.com or (212) 461-6942.

Alvin Singleton
After Fallen Crumbs (1987)
for orchestra
3.2.ca.3.2(cbsn)-4.3.3.1-timp-str
7'

A Yellow Rose Petal (1982)
for orchestra
2(pic).2(ca).2(bcl).2(cbsn)-2.2.1.0-2perc.cel-str
17'

Shadows (1987)
for orchestra
3(pic, afl).3(3.ca).3(2.Ebcl, 3.bcl).3(3.cbsn)-4.3.3.1-2timp.2perc-hp-str
21'

Say You Have This Ball of Meaning (2005)
for baritone and orchestra
text by Patricia Hampl
2perc(mar, chimes, sus cym, tri, gong, tom-t, vib, med sus cym, bell plate, s.d, b.d)-hp.acc-str
15'

Blueskonzert (1995)
for piano and orchestra
2.2.2.2-2.2.2.0-str
17'

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