Gunther Schuller: Multiple Streams
7/1/2009

Gunther Schuller has had profound importance as a jazz arranger and historian as well as a twelve-tone composer, conductor, publisher, and record producer, and at 83 years young he's still going strong. The morning after he received the American Music Center's Founders Award, we met up with him in his room at the Hotel Pennsylvania. Turns out that hotel was a frequent destination for him back in the 1940s—he'd go listen to all the big bands play there every night as soon as he was done playing in the pit orchestra for the Metropolitan Opera—so being back there again served as a trigger for tons of memories.

Guillermo Scott Herren: Cut Through the Noise
6/1/2009

Multifaceted composer/musician Guillermo Scott Herren has spent years wrestling with the musical characteristics attributed to him by others—particularly those related to his most commercially successful project, Prefuse 73—as compared to those he is exploring for himself as his music evolves. These days, however, he is often just too busy to digest what people are saying about his last venture. He's already moved on to the next.

NewMusicBox: A Decade in Sound (Bites)
5/1/2009

In ten years of NewMusicBox, we have found an incredible amount of common ground in the world of new American music despite its astounding diversity. While most of the people creating this music are still not household names, as Philip Glass (who is a household name) has said: "The main thing is to love the work that you do, because you may get no other reward." And in the final analysis, that reward has been constantly refreshing and invigorating for all of us.

Native Composer: Jerod Impichchaachaaha' Tate
4/1/2009

To Jerod Impichchaachaaha' Tate, it seems perfectly natural to compose orchestral works which combine traditional musical material from the Chickasaw and other Native American tribes with such old-fashioned formal devices as fugues and sonata form. The Native American part comes from being taken to pow-wows and other Native American gatherings by his Chickasaw father. But his father is also a concert pianist, and hearing his father play the classical literature while growing up also explains Tate's affinity for the machinations of the standard repertoire.

Willie Colón: Salsa is an Open Concept
3/1/2009

For Willie Colón, any style can be incorporated into salsa, and putting all these genres together is a way of making a statement that is as much sociopolitical as it is musical. Over the years, his albums have incorporated traditional West African drumming, progressive rock, allusions to Weill and Brecht, and some really crazy chromaticism. On his latest release, El Malo, Volume II, some of the new songs incorporate reggaeton and one track could best be described as musique concrète.