http://www.aboutthecomposer.com/blog Career info and weblog of composer Michael Kaulkin Tue, 16 Jun 2009 17:33:28 +0000 http://backend.userland.com/rss092 en Composer John Corigliano has just launched a strikingly beautiful new web site. Check it out of course for it's complete information on performances and recordings, etc., but stick around for the pictures from his amazing art collection. http://www.aboutthecomposer.com/blog/archives/601 I'm thrilled to have just stumbled across this picture montage and interview excerpt of my former S.F. Conservatory composition teacher Conrad Susa discussing his beautiful orchestral work The Blue Hour. It was prepared by music journalist and long-time Conservatory faculty member Scott Foglesong for this article about a concert of ... http://www.aboutthecomposer.com/blog/archives/560 American Standard was premiered in Shrewsbury, England in 1993, but the U.S. premiere was given the following year as part of the New Music Delaware Festival at the University of Delaware. Last week pianist Julie Nishimura, who participated in that 1994 performance, gave me the honor of including the piece in ... http://www.aboutthecomposer.com/blog/archives/542 I've posted the recording of last week's premiere of my new string quartet piece City Walks.  Please visit this page to hear excerpts or the entire piece. http://www.aboutthecomposer.com/blog/archives/538 The following is a program note for my new string quartet work City Walks, which receives its premiere this weekend in Berkeley, California. I began composing City Walks at the end of 2008 after finding a few pages of music for string quartet deep in the caverns of my computer's file ... http://www.aboutthecomposer.com/blog/archives/509 My new piece, City Walks for string quartet, will be premiered by the Eidolon Quartet next month in Berkeley, California.  If you're in the Bay Area, please come and check it out!  The concert also features new works by my very talented colleagues Alexis Alrich, Clark Suprynowicz and Clare Twohy. The ... http://www.aboutthecomposer.com/blog/archives/493 Against my better judgment, I'm jumping into the fray regarding methods used in the teaching of sight singing. Normally I try to stay away from such conflicts, but I can only take so much disparagement of my beloved Movable Do system.  The last straw is the discovery of this web ... http://www.aboutthecomposer.com/blog/archives/460 San Francisco Opera has announced plans to commission a new work by Mark Adamo for a scheduled premiere in 2013. The Gospel of Mary Magdalene, in Mark's words, “draws on the Gnostic gospels, the canonical gospels and fifty years of new Biblical scholarship to reimagine the loves and conflicts ... http://www.aboutthecomposer.com/blog/archives/450 OK, this may not be on par with finding the score of an unknown Beethoven symphony sewn into the lining of an 18th-Century Tyrolian overcoat, but I think this is kind of cool. I have on my shelf what seems to be an original copy of the first full score of ... http://www.aboutthecomposer.com/blog/archives/423 My first (and only) composition teacher at the University of the Arts, where I received my bachelor's degree in the '80s, was Joseph Castaldo, whose music is shockingly unknown today.   If you do a Google search on "Joseph Castaldo composer", you'll find an inexplicable number of resulting pages ... http://www.aboutthecomposer.com/blog/archives/381