Jazz without Boundaries

This chapter looks at the spread of jazz—both geographically and institutionally. Almost from the start, jazz seemed destined to travel beyond its birthplace in New Orleans, but the pace of that expansion has accelerated in recent decades. Europe, which once looked to the United States for jazz role models, is increasingly self-sufficient, and other regions are also developing strong, homegrown jazz scenes. At the same time, jazz has broken down other barriers, entering schools and universities, and enjoying the support of influential nonprofit organizations such as Jazz at Lincoln Center. This shift has led to the rise of a new generation of musicians who have learned their craft in formal jazz education programs, and in many instances also teach at them, but also operate with fluency in the world of commercial music and popular culture. Artists discussed in this chapter include Brad Mehldau, Regina Carter, Esbjörn Svensson (and his band e.s.t.), and Joshua Redman.

Lincoln Center

When Bang on a Can first hosted their marathon concert and All-Stars recitals at Lincoln Center in 1994, critics and observers wrote about them with hyperbolic rhetoric, emphasizing how different the upstart festival was from the hallowed grounds of the Manhattan presenter. But under the direction of curator Jane Moss, Lincoln Center had begun to embrace contemporary music, representing a moment in which some of classical music’s most mainstream organizations looked to new work in the hopes of reaching new audiences. Bang on a Can, too, found new audiences at Lincoln Center; in partnering with the major institution, the organization prioritized their marketplace aims—their desire for expanding its reach—over the anti-establishment image that they had previously cultivated.

Industry

Amidst the heated fray of the Culture Wars emerged a scrappy festival in downtown New York City called Bang on a Can. Presenting eclectic, irreverent marathons of experimental music in crumbling venues on the Lower East Side, Bang on a Can sold out concerts for a genre that had been long considered box office poison. Through the 1980s and 1990s, three young, visionary composers—David Lang, Michael Gordon, and Julia Wolfe—nurtured Bang on a Can into a multifaceted organization with a major record deal, a virtuoso in-house ensemble, and a seat at the table at Lincoln Center, and in the process changed the landscape of avant-garde music in the United States. Bang on a Can captured a new public for new music. But they did not do so alone. As the twentieth century came to a close, the world of American composition pivoted away from the insular academy and toward the broader marketplace. In the wake of the unexpected popularity of Steve Reich and Philip Glass, classical presenters looked to contemporary music for relevance and record labels scrambled to reap its potential profits, all while government funding was imperilled by the evangelical right. Other institutions faltered amidst the vagaries of late capitalism, but the renegade Bang on a Can survived—and thrived—in a tumultuous and idealistic moment that made new music what it is today.

Somaticist in the dance archives: Exploring Jerome Robbins’ diaries through somatics

In this short piece, I highlight the question of how to bring somatics skills acquired in a somatics class to bear upon other life contexts. I use the example of scholarly work: I show how I use somatic methods as I conduct research in the archives of the choreographer Jerome Robbins (1918–98), housed at the Jerome Robbins Dance Division of the New York Public Library for the Performing Arts at Lincoln Center. I suggest that we need to pay more attention to the question of how students and practitioners could bring physical awareness into their various life scenarios and tasks. I propose that if we learn how to transfer our somatic knowledge into different life contexts, our lives can become more embodied and we can tap into the knowledge that emanates from the physical self.

"Callas in Concert: sobre el holograma, el recuerdo y la presencia

El artículo se propone una reflexión crítica sobre el fenómeno del holograma en concierto, a través del “Callas in Concert”, del Rose Theater at Lincoln Center. Para ello, se diserta sobre la imagen, la reproducción y la condición de imitación del holograma con relación al original, y la calidad de esa experiencia estética. Asimismo, se analiza su función de pharmakon para la memoria humana, las profundas diferencias que guarda con el recuerdo, y lo que puede afectar nuestras relaciones con el pasado. Finalmente, si fenómenos como el holograma en concierto, son muestras de la condición ‹‹irreemplazable›› –como sostiene Gadamer- de la experiencia en directo.

Lincoln Center Commissions

For the opening week of the new Philharmonic Hall at New York’s Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts in 1962, Barber composed a piano concerto in honor of the 100th anniversary of his publisher. The concerto was tailored to the technical prowess and individual style of John Browning, reflecting the Russian influence of his piano teacher Rosina Lhévinne. The second movement was a reworking of an earlier piece, Elegy, written for Manfred Ibel, a young art student and amateur flute player, to whom Barber dedicated his piano concerto. This chapter details Barber’s compositional process and influences for each movement of the concerto and describes the enthusiastic reception of the debut performance. Nearing completion of the concerto, Barber was invited to Russia as the first American composer ever to attend the biennial Congress of Soviet Composers, where he freely discussed his compositional philosophy and methods. For the concerto, Barber won his second Pulitzer Prize and the Annual Award of the Music Critics Circle of New York. His second composition for the opening season of Lincoln Center was Andromache’s Farewell, for soprano and orchestra. Based on a scene from Euripides’s The Trojan Women, the piece displayed deep emotional expression and striking imagery. With a superior opera singer, Martina Arroyo, singing the solo part, the success of Andromache’s Farewell presaged Barber’s opera Antony and Cleopatra.

Samuel Barber

Samuel Barber (1910–1981) was one of the most important and honored American composers of the twentieth century. Writing in a great variety of musical forms—symphonies, concertos, operas, vocal music, chamber music—he infused his works with poetic lyricism and gave tonal language and forms new vitality. His rich legacy includes such famous compositions as the Adagio for Strings, the orchestral song Knoxville: Summer of 1915, three concertos, and his two operas, the Pulitzer Prize–winning Vanessa and Antony and Cleopatra, a commissioned work that opened the new Metropolitan Opera House at Lincoln Center in New York. Generously documented by letters, sketchbooks, original musical manuscripts, and interviews with friends, colleagues, and performers with whom he worked, this book covers Barber’s entire career and all of his compositions. The biographical material on Barber is closely interspersed with a discussion of his music, displaying Barber’s creative processes at work from his early student compositions to his mature masterpieces. The book also provides the social context in which this major composer grew: his education; how he built his career; the evolving musical tastes of American audiences; his relationship with Gian Carlo Menotti and such musical giants as Serge Koussevitzky, Arturo Toscanini, Vladimir Horowitz; and the role of radio in the promotion of his music. A testament to the significance of neo-Romanticism, Samuel Barber stands as a model biography of an important American musical figure.

A New Opera House

The commission that was one of the greatest tributes to Barber’s career turned out to be his nemesis. Antony and Cleopatra, written for the opening of the new Metropolitan Opera House at Lincoln Center in New York, was handicapped by the inflated Franco Zeffirelli production, with its problematic paraphernalia, including camels and goats and a malfunctioning pyramid, which eclipsed serious evaluation of the music. This chapter narrates how the opera based on Barber’s favorite Shakespeare play came to life, how he handpicked the major characters ̶—Leontyne Price for Cleopatra and Justino Díaz for Antony ̶—and how these artists devoted themselves to the literature and history of their roles. Although Barber’s work here was no less brilliant, the critics felt that the failure of the opera was due to overproduction, with an infusion of mechanical and technical failures. After the premiere, Barber boarded the SS Constitution for Europe. Over the next decade, he devoted his energies intermittently toward a revision of the opera in collaboration with Menotti. In 1975, four performances of the more intimate version with increased lyric meditation were presented at the Juilliard School. Critical reviews of a production at the Spoleto Festival in Italy after Barber died gave much attention to the musical strengths of the opera, with uniform appreciation of Barber as a master of orchestra and choral writing. Performances followed in Chicago, New York, and Philadelphia.