We kick things off with a group interview on the collaborative process with filmmaker Stephen Taylor, librettist Royce Vavrek, and composers Missy Mazzoli, who each have new operas being premiered at the end of the month at Bard Conservatory in New York. The conversation covers questions of influence, style, gender, narrative, technique, process and more.

Enjoy!

Digital Composer-In-Residence Video Blog #1 from digitalcomposerinresidence on Vimeo.

Though Zinn is best known for his seminal A People’s History of The United States, it is his 1970 book The Politics of History that has had the most profound effect on me. In this book he notes “Historical writings always have some effect on us. It may reinforce our passivity; it may activate us. In any case, the historian cannot choose to be neutral; he writes on a moving train.”

Zinn’s work is one of the things that activated me, and led me to conclude that, as an artist, I too write on a moving train.

Back in 1996, when I was still a high schooler, The Vandals released a Christmas record called “Oi To The World.” I happened to randomly pick it up, and fell instantly in love with it. It’s been a holiday tradition for me ever since.

This year, I’m in Australia for the holidays, and completely forgot to pack it! Lucky for me, the whole record seems to have been uploaded in gloriously poor quality to YouTube in one of those weird I’m-really-an-audio-file-in-disguise-since-there’s-no-real-video-to-see-here files. Regardless I’m glad to have found it, and I thought I’d post a track or two here.

You might already know this song. No Doubt covered this track a number of years ago, skanking it up as they do, but I definitely prefer this original. And if you like this, the whole record seems to be up. My favorites: “Nothing’s Going To Ruin My Holiday,”"Thanx for Nothing,” and “Hang Myself From The Tree,” which totally has a Tuba solo! Their cover of “Here I Am, Lord” is also pretty amazing. (The easily offended might want to stay far away from C-H-R-I-S-T-M-A-S, and some others, which should be clear from the titles.)

But what sort of lefty curmudgeon would I be if I didn’t post the delightful rant against commercialism, “I Don’t Believe in Santa Claus”?

Happy Holidays All!

As part of the competition, the London Sinfonietta has recorded my submitted piece, 1986, and starting on October 20th, the polls will be open for the people (that’s you!) to choose the 2010 Digital Composer-in-Residence. The polls will be closed and the winners announced on November 5th, culminating in a live performance of all of the works by the London Sin­foni­etta that night at Wilton’s Music Hall in London. Check out the event listing here, and keep an eye on the Dilet­tante blog for more information.

This morning, there was a feature on the competition on BBC3′s Music Matters, which you can listen to here for the next seven days. It includes clips of all three finalist’s works—all very different—as well as (earlier in the show) very interesting interviews with the Bang On A Can composers, Steve Martland, and a feature on In C.

Watch this space for more updates on interviews, podcasts, etc., as well as information on how you can vote!

Kicking off the season was the launch party of The Coterie, a new opera company founded by my wonderful Librettist Royce, and a stellar performance of Speak Softly by Line C3 as part of the New Amsterdam Records new Archipelago series at Galapagos. Here’s the video:

Aren’t they great?!

Anyway, I will try harder to stay on top of this blog, but please be patient if every now and then I clearly phone it in by posting an “interesting quote” that I clearly dug up while doing dissertation research. (Anyone up for some Clement Greenberg?) Seriously, though, there are some (as yet unannounced) things that will definitely make appearances in this space, so I promise to only phone it in on occasion.

Happy Autumn!