Marcus Maroney - Sounds Like New

Brassy Critique of Kaplan's Technique

This is refreshing - an orchestral musician publicly airing qualms with Gilbert Kaplan's "technique" of conducting Mahler's Resurrection symphony.  That ineffective provocateur Norman Lebrecht responds.  I personally think Kaplan should be relegated to conducting only Richard Nanes' compositions. 

Carter's 100th

Happy 100th birthday to the provocative, ebullient, prolific,sometimes maddening, always intriguing composer Elliott Carter. 

2009 Grawemeyer to Brett Dean

The University of Louisville's 2009 Grawemeyer award has gone to Australian composer Brett Dean for his violin concerto The Lost Art of Letter Writing.  Press releases here and here.  Dean plans on using some of the money in an attempt to save the Australian National Academy of Music.

I know precious little of Dean's music, but what I have heard - the wind quintet Winter Songs and the fabulous Ariel's Music - lead me to believe that he is one of the most interesting composers working today.  Hopefully a recording of the award-winning concerto will make its way to us soon.  For now, a sound-clip is available via Dean's publisher, Boosey & Hawkes.   Interestingly, as of 7:33pm CST, only 281 people have listened - I'm curious to see if this number goes up drastically in the coming days.