#harold-meltzer

#harold-meltzer

I connected a lot with his music and I had no idea that years later we would be collaborating! It was a total surprise that we started chatting on the internet about collaborating! We bounced ideas back and forth, all starting with a series of guitar solo stuff that Bill sent me.

People all saw that there is something new is being attempted here that you've just got to see. I think that is its own reward. In an era where New York's storied Met Opera has faced layoffs, pay cuts, postponed productions, and a controversial financial agreement with Saudi Arabia, forward-thinking artistic direction becomes essential for survival.

Built in 2000, the two-story house on a corner lot has plenty of curb appeal. A black-hued gable roof creates visual contrast against crisp white siding and shutters. A white picket fence wraps around the front of the property.

We began in the world that was-in the humid atmosphere of fin-de-siècle Vienna, from which Zemlinsky, Schreker, and Schoenberg emerged. In a program note, Blier wrote that the "Fugitives" concept was inspired by Zemlinsky's "Meeraugen," or "Sea Eyes," which tells of a "person staring into the roiling abyss of the ocean." You had the feeling, as the evening went on, that the crushing realities of twentieth-century history-war, revolution, inflation, the Depression, Fascism-made such refined aestheticism untenable and forced composers onto other paths.

In a dimly lit, dusty church basement, eight people meet and place their cellphones into a wooden box. Each member of the octet struggles with a dependency upon the very tool that enables us all to enjoy a level of historically unprecedented convenience - the internet. Like the characters, audiences are called to unplug and immerse themselves in the world of Studio Theatre's production of Dave Malloy's unique a capella musical, Octet.

Any composer's relationship to music is intense, but Sarah Kirkland Snider, whose debut opera, Hildegard, receives its world premiere at the LA Opera this week, ratchets that intensity up to a higher, more metaphysical level. When Snider hears music, she says, she sometimes wants to eat it that's how deep the desire goes. She's not traditionally religious, but she has come to see music as a mysterious, divine force within her.

Pulitzer Prize-winning composer Michael Abels, best known for his scores for films by director Jordan Peele, will visit campus March 6-7 for two days of public events and concerts. The visit is part of the College of Arts and Sciences' Arts Unplugged series, in partnership with the Department of Music and the Barbara & Richard T. Silver Wind Symphony. Abels won the 2023 Pulitzer Prize for the opera "Omar," co-composed with Grammy-winning artist Rhiannon Giddens, and he earned Emmy and Grammy nominations for his scores for the Peele films "Get Out," "Us" and "Nope." His many concert works include the choral song cycle "At War With Ourselves" for the Kronos Quartet, and the Grammy-nominated "Isolation Variation" for violinist Hilary Hahn.