Our March Salon returns to a Sunday: March 28, at 3:30 pm in our new location at the rehearsal studio of Symphony Space, 95th street and Broadway. While you have your calendars out, you can note we’ll have Salons also on April 24 (Saturday), May 30 (Sunday) and June 27 (Sunday). I’ll keep folks posted via In The Loop, and this information is also now posted at the NYCC website: nycomposerscircle.org  

All are invited; hope to see you in our new time and space!

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Our SECOND CONCERT of our 2009-2010 season is fast approaching: March 30, 2010 at 7:30 pm. This concert will be at Symphony Space Thalia, and is billed as a 75th Birthday celebration for Honorary Member, JOHN EATON. The NYCC celebrates its collaboration with the a special guest ensemble, the No Borders Quartet ensemble from Italy, on its first concert tour in the USA, which will feature in many of the evening’s performances.  

John Eaton’s music will be joined by compositions from Honorary Member DINU GHEZZO, PATRICIA LEONARD, DANA RICHARDSON, RICHARD BROOKS, BRIAN FENNELLY, JOHN DE CLEF PIÑEIRO, and guest composer Mauro Porro. 

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RICHARD McCANDLESS‘s “Voyager,” a work for solo percussion with electronic playback, will be performed as part of the 2010 New York City Electronic Music Festival. Mr. Jude Traxler of the Manhattan School of Music will be performing. Voyager has been performed at two other national new music festivals, and is working its way into the percussion repertoire. It has always been tremendously well received by performers and audiences. Regarding his music, the Washington Post has stated that, “Mr. McCandless clearly places a high priority on communication as well as innovation.”

The composer states, “This work takes its name from the Voyager 1 spacecraft, the first human-made object to leave our solar system. Voyager’s journey is immense. Traveling about 1,000,000 miles a day, it will take 20,000 years to leave the gravitational field of our Sun, where it will enter deep space and travel for billions of years. At some point during this journey, human beings will no longer exist, and Earth will be no more than a charred cinder. But Voyager will be traveling on.”

The concert is free and open to the public, March 27, 2010 (Saturday), 3:45 pm. No tickets are required. More information is available at www.nycemf.org

City University of New York (CUNY) Graduate Center

Elebash Hall

365 Fifth Avenue

New York, NY 10016-4309

212-817-7000

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Our Executive Director JOHN DE CLEF PIÑEIRO reports on another of the NYCC’s outreach concerts: “The NYCC presented a successful/very well received Community Encores series recital on March 6 at the Lenox Hill Neighborhood House Senior Center at Saint Peter’s Church. 

We were very particularly fortunate to have Composer Member GENE MARLOW present to introduce three character pieces from his Les Sentiments d’Amour. He was also very gracious in bringing half a dozen copies of his CD of that work, which were enthusiastically raffled at the end of the concert as a fun conclusion to NATALIYA MEDVEDOVSKAYA‘s fine performance, which included, among other works, Scriabin’s broodingly atmospheric and complex Sonata No. 9 (the so-called “Black Mass” sonata) — which she performed admirably.

We had an audience of approximately 40 Lenox Hill senior members who stayed on to ask questions at the end and who came up to say how this experience with new music was the best they had ever had. 

Three members of the audience made a point of citing to me our explanations and introductions as a good way to make this new music experience more meaningful and enjoyable. In fact, Nataliya’s program lent itself quite well to my drawing the contrast between program music and absolute music from piece to piece as an educational theme of today’s recital.

At the end, I asked our attendees “would you come again to another recital of the NYCC?” and there was an enthusiastic “yes” from most, if not all, of those in attendance. Looking quite pleased, Miss Stephanie Prince from Lenox Hill approached me and said that she would definitely like to see us come back for another recital soon.”

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Our friend NANCY GARNIEZ presents “The Acoustical Kaleidoscope: Imagining the Piano as a Place in Play” in three informal Sunday afternoons of music and talk. Playing representative works of three centuries, pianist and innovative musical thinker Nancy Garniez invites you to imagine the piano in the hands of the mostly young people who “made up” up the instrument as it evolved – much the way young people play their way into mastery of modern-day technology. She proposes an instrument free of its association with right notes and wrong notes, restoring the novelty it never lost during the lifetimes of Haydn, Mozart, Chopin, and of Bartok and other 20th century composers as they adjusted to equal temperament. In this spirit she will introduce improvisatory games that anyone can play at the piano to experience anew its marvelous acoustics—sounds which defy electronic synthesis.

Nancy Garniez has been performing solo and chamber recitals here and abroad for many years. She has taught piano and chamber music at Mannes College since 1972. She is the author of What Might It Mean: An Uncommon Glossary of Musical Terms and Concepts for the Stuck, Bored and Curious (1999) and of numerous articles on the musical life. She is the creator of Tonal Refraction®, a method that objectifies subjective aspects of tone perception.

The talks will be held three Sundays at 4pm: March 21, April 25, May 16, at the TENRI Institute 43a W. 13th St. in Manhattan

Tickets, available at the door, are $20 ($55 for the series); $10 for students and seniors; $5 for children under 12.

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Daniel Stedman, President and Co-founder of The L Magazine, would like to hire a composer and performer (strings or brass) to help with an art project. He’s looking for a student or junior-level composer. You can see his work at www.danielstedman.com. This is a pay project, but low budget. If interested, send a resume and sample to: danielstedmanfilm@gmail.com