Recording Musical Performances of the Finest Artists in Central New York:
Renegade Classics
A Brief History of the Society for
New Music
Founded in 1971, the Society's purpose is to act as a catalyst for the continued
growth of the central New York musical community by commissioning new works,
through advocacy (e.g. Society News and Fresh Ink on WCNY-FM and its Watertown
and Utica affiliates), by featuring regional composers alongside guest
composers, by providing regional musicians an opportunity to perform the music
of their peers in order to gain new skills and techniques which they then share
with their students, and by bringing new music to as broad an audience as
possible through performances, broadcasts and cable TV.
The Society provides a format for living composers in the same way art galleries
provide a format for visual artists, and is the only year-round new music
organization in New York State outside of Manhattan. The Society annually awards
the Brian M. Israel Prize to a composer 30 years of age or younger. The winner
receives $500 and a performance. Honorable Mentions are also performed. Several
winners have been women and minorities, most recently Evan Johnson, Huang Ruo,
Winnie Cheung, Mark McConnell, Rob Paterson, and Derek Bermel.
The Society funds four composers in inner-city schools to work with 4th - 12th
graders in writing new works for chorus, orchestra, and band, which are
premiered by the students with professionals. This several-month project has
students writing texts (language arts program), and setting them to music
working in "composer teams" with the composer-in-residence. This program is so
successful that composers and schools ask to be involved. Each year some problem
students are re-labeled "gifted". The local media provides excellent coverage.
To attract an audience, the Society aims for a wide diversity of styles of
recent music. The Society's vision is to provide enough opportunities in various
contexts so people of all ages are conversant with the music of their own time.
This translates into modest ticket prices, free concerts in extended-care
facilities, libraries, galleries, and schools, plus programs with dance,
theatre, poetry, film and/or art exhibits. The Society's Cazenovia Summer Series
has expanded into a festival titled Cazenovia Counterpoint and spread over three
weekends. In 2003, there were 20 events, 15 of which were free - all featuring
new work by regional artists.
With over thirty years
of contemporary music experience, the Society for New Music has produced
this definitive collection of intriguing works as a 5 CD box set. It
is impossible to capture in words the unique talents of over 20 composers who are
represented in this collection - each thoroughly captivating and
launching the listener clearly into the 21st century. This collection
is a true tribute
to the composers and to the many performers of the Society for New Music who
have made these works come alive.
Released on Innova
label in 2004.
The number of
tracks are too numerous to all be included in on this site. Below are
only selected tracks from each of the five CDs.
The music of Iannis
Xenakis often strikes listeners as direct, energetic, intense and
distinctive. Yet this fact is hardly compatible with Xenakis's
extensive compositional employment of mathematical principles and models.
Society for New Music is proud to be a contributor to this fine collection
of piano works by Iannis Xenakis.
The late Howard Boatwright
was inspired and mentored by Paul Hindemith at Yale University during the
1940's. Widely traveled and greatly respected he was asked to become the Dean of the School of Music
at Syracuse University in 1964. In his words: "A change from
New Haven to Syracuse brought a change also in the motivations for
composing....A result of this change of environment was that I
decided I had to come to grips with fully chromatic music not relying on
tonal functions for its clarity of form and expression."
This CD includes some of his most profoundly beautiful pieces, reflecting the influences of Hindemith
and Alban Berg. The String Quartet No. 2 was commissioned by the Society for New Music in 1975 and was
first performed at the Everson Museum in Syracuse on April 20, 1975 by the Manhattan String Quartet.
This CD
features works by composer Barton McLean. Mr. McLean pioneered
the first large-scale commercially available digital sequencer and
sampler in the USA as director of the electronic/computer music
studios at the Univeristy of Texas-Austin and Indiana University-South
Bend. Originally an Upstate New York resident, he returned to
Petersburgh, NY where he together with his wife Priscilla McLean focus
on composition and performance. Ritual of the Dawn was
recorded by members of the Society of New Music in the fall of 1998.
American Record Guide: "
...this disc is highly recommended."
Hear the 1999 Pulitzer Prize
winner - Melinda Wagner's Sextet, a Society commissioned
work! The recording also includes David Liptak Rhapsodies,
Jim Willey Society Music, Ron Caltabiano Torched Liberty,
Harris Lindenfeld from the Grotte des Combarelle.
Performed by Walden Bass, Ron
Caltabiano, Ed Castilano, George Coble, Kit Dodd, John Friedrichs,
Dmitri Gerikh, Dan Godfrey, Linda Greene, Eric Gustafson, Bill Harris,
Steven Heyman, Larry Luttinger, George Macero, Edward Murray, Neva
Pilgrim, Vladimir Pritsker, Barbara Rabin, Donna Resue and Kevin
Schempf.
Composer
Richard Wernick said of Neva Pilgrim, soprano: " Neva
has performed with dozens of groups and dozens of conductors at a huge
number of venues and recorded for a large array of record
labels. She has commissioned a remarkable amount of music of
every possible stylistic persuasion, and has been a staunch supporter
of young and unknown composers....She helped to found the Syracuse
Society for New Music, without a question one of the most active
contemporary scenes in the country. The Society is now more than
a quarter of a century old, and Neva has been the driving force of
that organization for most of that time. Bravissima,
Neva!"
Released on a CRi
label in 1999.
Ernst Krenek: Trois
Chansons (Three Verhaeren Songs), Op. 30a (1924)
Pinocchio's
Adventure in Funland, composed by Michael Gandolfi, is a retelling, for
chamber orchestra and narrator, of a few of the many adventures of Carlo
Collodi's manic marionette. The piece consists of 15 short scenes
that are designed to entertain and educate young audiences by introducing
them to the riches of concert music. It was commissioned by
the Elaine Kaufman Cultural Center for its Musicmakers Telling Tales
series, and had its premiere at the Merkin Hall in NYC in April 1999.
Beauty and the
Beast, an opera for solo voice, masks and string quartet, was written in
1979 to a libretto by the composer, R. Murray Schafer, and intended
for incorporation into Partita 3, which consists of a large number of
short works. Partita 3 was created for presentation in an open-air
environment as a kind of carnival or fair, with the audience free to move
among the attractions.
