As we all know, the cost of orchestral recordings is a major factor for record companies. This has forced record labels’ owners to pull up their sleeves and tackle the economic effort of the recordings: as evidenced with the New Amsterdam Brittelle composers, Snider and Greenstein or with the orchestras of the St. Louis Symphony Orchestra or Louisville who have elevated their organizational standards while keeping in mind the precariousness of the old system.
In this rut of auto-management also fits the Boston Modern Orchestra Project (not to be confused with with the Boston Symphony orchestra) that has a principal which I consider fundamental in classical music: work on sponsored committees and for the most part on world premieres by composers more or less important related in any way to the city's musical ride. In March 2008,the conductor Gil Rose, having rented his directions to major labels such as Innova, New World, Naxos, etc., decided to produce his own through the appropriate
BMOP/sound. His first cd was the orchestral ballet of ' Ulysses ' by John Harbison followed by others at an average rate of four/five CDs a year. In this way, Rose set important orchestral works of modern authors. Among these splendid performances by popular composers are Alan Hovhaness ' Symphony in Exile,” Louis Andriessen '”Passion ,” Gunther Schuller's “Journey into Jazz,” John Cage “Sixteen dances ,” Steven Mackey “Dreamhouse ,” etc. and other equally valid younger and lesser known ones: Derek Bermel ' Voices ', Michel Gabriel ' Y2K Compliant ', David Rakowski ' Winged Contraption ', Lisa Bielawa ' ras ' In medias, etc. What differentiates BMOP/sound is its willingness to present a modernity that is not Vanguard or nightmarish but, rather a fairly philosophical acceptance of reality in which still looks for cues in the space created by the large jerseys of 20th-century modernism, serialism, and minimalism.
It is a choice that is the consensus of many specialized press and all followers of classical music buyers loyal to the past. Among the recordings of 2012 I would point out that the composer Anthony Paul De Ritis: ' Devolution ' collects three orchestral works that married the principle of interdisciplinary themes.Fleming shares the composer's passion for French spettralisti (attended classes of Manoury and Murail in France) with a natural propensity for descriptive use of orchestral plant. “Chord of dust ' and ' Legerdamain ' have suspenseful effective plots. The orchestra collects all the possible dynamics by tools. But the highlight of the set is the controversial ' Devolution ', commissioned bravely by the musical director of the Phoebe East Bay Symphony, Michael Morgan, who wanted an orchestral concert piece with DJ by choosing the famous Paul d. Miller aka DJ Spooky (that is the natural point of reference for these experiments) - an orchestral theme of De Ritis with two turntables and a laptop in Max/Mps perfomance. On the basis of the indications of De Ritis, DJ Spooky fits with its ' cuts ' which consist of pre-recorded bases in remix style consisting in very short samples of Ravel's Bolero, the Allegretto of Beethoven's Seventh Symphony or some ideas ' mentioned ' the musician itself (e.g., a brief background of hip-hop, a Berlin electronics). The orchestra of the counter is increased by an electric guitar Santana style designed and played by Jude Gold and a percussion set.
You create in substance a derogation ' composition ' that gives room for Miller to work in real time regardless of the results: a replacement species that creates an unexpected contrast between the samples of Dj Spooky and the reality of orchestral instruments, a kind of struggle between the depths of the orchestra and the remix. The result is a powerful musical reconstruction. May be these are significant steps to bring classical music to large audiences?