Talea Ensemble in the PSNY Greenroom

by Ted Gordon on June 10, 2014, 6:32 p.m.

The PSNY Greenroom is where cutting-edge music ensembles share their excitement about new compositions, highlighting their picks from our ever-expanding catalogue of chamber works and more. Our last installment featured Kevin Stalheim of Present Music, who shared his love of works by Andrew Norman, Christopher Cerrone, Kamran Ince, Timothy Andres, and Marcos Balter.

For our most recent installment, Alex Lipowski of New York's powerhouse Talea Ensemble explores his taste in chamber music, with composers from around the world. The Talea Ensemble is one of the most innovative ensembles on the scene today, and one of the largest, with twenty members filling out their ranks. Co-founded by Lipowski and our very own Anthony Cheung, the ensemble commissions composers both local and abroad and is committed to performing vital pieces from the expanding landscape of contemporary music, a cosmopolitanism that is reflected in Lipowski's picks from our catalogue. Check out recordings of his selections below and visit Talea's Greenroom to read more about Alex's Picks. 

Announcing Two New PSNY Composers

by Ted Gordon on Sept. 27, 2012, 12:08 p.m.

We're back with some very exciting news-- did you miss us? Today, PSNY announces the publication of works by two new composers, Ann Cleare and Erin Gee!

Ann Cleare hails from county Offaly in Ireland, where she attained a B. Mus and M. Phil from University College Cork, and has been in America studying with Chaya Czernowin and Hans Tutschku at Harvard towards a PhD in Composition. (That is, of course, by way of the Akademie Schloss Solitude in 2007 and IRCAM from 2008 to 2009.) Ann's music for instruments and electronics is singularly powerful, and we're extremely honored to publish several of her works on PSNY, complimenting our growing catalogue of chamber and electro-acoustic compositions. 

For a taste of what Ann's music is like, here's a sample from her 2009 work, I am not a clockmaker either, for accordion and electronics. 

Ann gave a great interview with the Contemporary Music Centre in Ireland, talking about the work and its recording, made available through the CMC: 

Erin Gee is an American composer and vocalist who recieved her BA and MA in Music at the University of Iowa in 2002, where she studied with Réne Lecuona, Lawrence Fritts, and Jeremy Dale Roberts. From there, she went on to study with Chaya Czernowin, Beat Furrer, Richard Barrett, Steve Takasugi, and others in Germany and Austria, earning her PhD in Music Theory from the Universität für Musik in Graz, Austria in 2007. Like Ann, Erin also studied at the Akadmie Schloss Solitude, and like our composers Andrew Norman and Anthony Cheung, she recieved the Rome Prize, in 2007. 

But unlike any of our other composers, Erin writes music that has an incredibly unique sense of vocal performativity, even in her instrumental works. Listen to the vocal qualities of the wind instuments in her PSNY work, Mouthpiece: Segment of the 4th Letter:

We're extremely excited to have Erin join our roster of composers- in addition to Mouthpiece: Segment of the 4th Letter, be sure to listen to Mouthpiece VI, also newly available, and be on the lookout for more of her works soon!

Coming up in October: the Deadalus Quartet performs the complete string quartets of Fred Lerdahl, all available on PSNY, at the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum in Boston! The JACK Quartet performs Alex Mincek's String Quartet No. 3 "lift-tilt-filter-split" on Sept. 30th at the Festival Music ain Strasbourg, France! And, last but not least, check out our other new works by PSNY composers: Adrian Knight's Bon Voyage, Chris Cerrone's The Night Mare, Alex Mincek's Flutter, Pierre Jalbert's Dual Velocity, and Hannah Lash's Three Movements for Horn Trio.

Also, if you haven't noticed yet, you can now subscribe to our PSNY blog via our new RSS Feed. Click on the RSS icon on the upper right corner of this page to subscribe!

Anthony Cheung Shares Award from the Inaugural Marie-Josee Kravis Prize

by Ted Gordon on July 10, 2012, 3:03 p.m.

PSNY composer Anthony Cheung has been chosen to share in the inaugural Marie-Josee Kravis Prize for New Music at the New York Philharmonic, at the request of legendary composer Henri Dutilleux.

The Kravis Prize for New Music is bestowed every two years for extraordinary artistic endeavor in the field of new music, and was awarded to Henri Dutilleux in 2011. At the award ceremony, Dutilleux announced that he would share the $200,000 award with three composers, each of whom would write a work to be performed by the Orchestra in his honor. 

On June 26, 2012, the New York Philharmonic announced that Anthony Cheung, along with Franck Krawczyk and Peter Eötvös, had been chosen to share the award and to compose a new work for the orchestra.

Congrats to Anthony from all of us at Schott!

(And belated congratulations to Schott composer Henri Dutilleux! Read our newsletter story about his award here.)