Imani Winds: Terra Incognita
9/1/2010

Imani Winds has made the unlikely combination of the wind quintet work through a combination of great performance chops, charismatic stage presence, fascinating projects, and a selection of repertoire that both calls attention to each of their personal strengths and pushes them to other places. What began as a wild and somewhat starry-eyed dream to form a new kind of ensemble reflecting its members' shared heritage is now entering its 14th season with all five of its original members and a brand new recording of premieres by jazz composers Wayne Shorter, Paquito D'Rivera, and Jason Moran.

Who Is Bunita Marcus?
8/1/2010

Many people will have heard Bunita Marcus's name without ever having heard a note of her music, since one of Morton Feldman's most widely performed solo piano pieces is a work titled For Bunita Marcus. Marcus's own music exhibits a rare symbiosis of mind and spirit; it's very intellectually stimulating as well as really engaging emotionally. But the story of Bunita Marcus has been one of new music's great mysteries.

Augusta Read Thomas: Perfect Clarity
7/1/2010

Descriptors like "extremely specific" and "incredibly nuanced" become touchstones when speaking with Augusta Read Thomas about her work. Like her music, Thomas speaks in clear, concise paragraphs that reveal her voracious appetite for sound, both consuming it and creating it. Perhaps most fascinating are the warring tensions inherent in her own work: she is prolific yet perfectionistic, a composer of carefully notated music but also one seeking the energy of spontaneous creation.

George E. Lewis—The Story's Being Told
6/1/2010

Lewis received his 2002 MacArthur fellowship with good reason. Since the beginning of his involvement with the AACM at the age of 19, he has engaged in a dizzying number of projects as a composer, improviser, software designer, educator, scholar, and writer. No interview is going to be able to come close to addressing everything that engages Lewis's prodigious intellect; but equally true is that any interview will be expansive and interesting. The two hours NewMusicBox spent with him is no exception.

John Kander: Passing Through Curtains
5/1/2010

Kander and Ebb sustained one of the longest lasting as well as one of the most successful of songwriting collaborations in the history of the American musical theater, yielding such classics of the Broadway canon as Cabaret, Zorba, Chicago (currently on stage at the Ambassador Theatre and the longest-running revival in Broadway history), Woman of the Year, and Kiss of the Spider Woman—all challenging shows which respectively deal with difficult atypical Broadway topics. Kander, now in his '80s, remains open to new projects.