Milton Babbitt (1916-2011) is the composer that many love to hate. He of course has his committed defenders, but they are a distinct minority. My opening statement is of course harsh, and indeed anyone who actually met the man was impressed by his great geniality, erudition, and wacky humor. He was the classic eccentric professor, and in many ways a true genius. Babbitt did have a vision of music that was both rooted in the circumstances of his era and deeply personal.

Fanfare Magazine Full review

Deeply drawn to the theater and to the theatrical, Lewis Spratlan (born 1940) is best known for his opera Life Is a Dream (it won the 2000 Pulitzer) and has written several other major works for stage production, though his interest in musical drama also extends to his purely instrumental compositions. My favorite of these is his clever, entertaining, sometimes hilarious 1986 sextet When Crows Gather, recorded, with three other very enjoyable (and also extravagantly uninhibited showpieces) on Albany 725 (July/Aug 2005).

American Record Guide Full review

MacArthur Fellow Anthony Davis (b. 1951) is probably best known for his explosive political operas (X: The Life and Times of Malcom X is the most notorious). His music has as its formative influences 60s avant-grade jazz figures like Charlie Haden (his Liberation Orchestra with Carla Bley) and Sun Ra, updated with more contemporary characteristics like minimalist repetition and non-Western ethnic techniques.

American Record Guide Full review

How did composers react to the violence of The First World War? In the last show in our series on the Great War, we’re listening to the sounds that emerged from its ashes. In Vienna concert halls and New York jazz clubs, from Maurice Ravel’s piano elegies to Igor Stravinsky’s explosive symphonies, we’re coursing through the composers who defined a modern era, reacting to the terrible violence of total warfare through art.

Open Source Full review

Spratlan’s musical version of A Summer’s Day (2008), commissioned and premiered by BMOP, has the instant nostalgia of a strongly evoked, specific time and place. His “Pre-Dawn Nightmare” includes fragments of the theme song to The Sopranos; “At the Computer” evokes the sounds of an already-obsolete desktop machine. And the connective tissue of the piece, the folk-like tune presented at the outset (“Hymn to the Summer Solstice”), is a memory of summer romanticized into an abstraction.

NewMusic Box Full review

...we have a fascinating dichotomy here, a piece composed by a white expatriate American premiered by an all-African-American orchestra in the composer's native land.
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American Record Guide Full review

Of all the contemporary jazz artists who have crossed-over to classical orchestral music and other large-scale forms, Anthony Davis is certainly among the most prominent, with multiple compositions, performances and albums going back decades. He also is one of the most original, with a style of his very own. I consider him among a small handful of the very best jazz composers working in classical configurations.

Gapplegate Classical-Modern Music Review Full review

Lee Hyla, an American composer whose work marries the formal rigor of classical music with the driving energy of rock and the improvisational abandon of jazz, died on June 6 in Chicago. He was 61.

His death, from complications of pneumonia, was announced by Northwestern University, where he held the Harry N. and Ruth F. Wyatt chair in music theory and composition.

The New York Times Full review

The American composer Lewis Spratlan, born in 1940, gained wide attention in 2000 when a concert version of Act II of his opera “Life Is a Dream,” which was completed in 1978 but had never been staged, won the Pulitzer Prize for Music. This welcome new recording from the impressive Boston Modern Orchestra Project offers three ingeniously written and distinctive Spratlan works. “A Summer’s Day” (2008) uses a simple, dreamy Celtic tune at the start as a jumping-off place for an elusive, complex suite that ruminates on the tensions below the surface of an inviting day.

The New York Times Full review

Anthony Davis is, in my opinion, one of America’s greatest and most unique composers. His music comes at you from a number of different, intriguing and artistically important perspectives. As a jazz pianist, himself, Davis often brings a sense of the improvised and the most progressive jazz harmonies and momentum to his work. There are not only direct references to some jazz greats, such as Duke Ellington, in his music; such as the captivating Notes from the Underground, but a sense of jazz orientation in a number of his works.

Audiophile Audition Full review

Irving Fine — born in East Boston a century ago this December, an anniversary celebrated by the Boston Modern Orchestra Project and conductor Gil Rose on Friday — was at the center of the Boston School of mid-20th-century classical composition.

The Boston Globe Full review

The Boston Modern Orchestra Project celebrated Irving Fine’s centennial at Jordan Hall Friday with performances of three of his works alongside pieces by Harold Shapero and Arthur Berger—two of Fine’s mid-20th-century “Third Boston School” colleagues. The event was part concert, part a collegiate bash for Brandeis University, and part family reunion. Eric Chasalow, the current Irving G. Fine Professor of Music at Brandeis, made some remarks and read a letter from the university’s president, Frederick Lawrence.

The Boston Musical Intelligencer Full review

While 1962′s Symphony owes a clear debt to Stravinsky and Britten (especially its last movement), it sounds like nobody but Irving Fine. This is a score that orchestras ought to be lining up to play.

The Arts Fuse Full review

In his short creative life Irving Fine secured a reputation for both populist and serious music. His chamber and choral works remain in the standard repertoire, but his little-played orchestral music is remarkable and memorable for its personal charm and lyricism even when the composer employed the most dissonant of material.

Boston Classical Review Full review

With this audacious release BMOP/sound is the first to give us a modern day hybrid, CD(2)/SACD(2/5.0), recording devoted to one of the most off the wall works ever composed by a twentieth century American. His name was George Antheil (1900-1959, see the newsletter of 8 June 2011), and the piece is his Ballet pour instruments mécaniques et percussion more commonly known as Ballet Mécanique (1925). Written while he was living in Paris, it was to accompany a Dadaist film of the same name, and is by today's standards a sonic happening.

Classical Lost and Found Full review

This is my first encounter with the Boston Modern Orchestra Project, and I am mightily impressed. The music on this admittedly brief disc is performed with such verve and evangelical intensity that it makes the visit to George Antheil’s sadly underrated or arguably overrated world supremely worthwhile.

MusicWeb International Full review

Snappy new recordings of the music of Milton Babbitt and George Antheil from the Boston Modern Orchestra Project, while cellist Christ Wild’s disc offers a fascinating journey through some richly diverse musical soundscapes.

The Arts Fuse Full review

This recording by the Boston Modern Orchestra Project captures several of Jacob Druckman (1928-1996)’s later works. While his Lamia, performed here by soprano Lucy Shelton, headlines the disc, the recording is structured as an all-Druckman concert that succeeds with aplomb. Mixing Druckman’s original works with arrangements of baroque pieces by Cavalli and Charpentier, the performance opens with That Quickening Pulse in its rightful place as a concert-opener.

I Care If You Listen Full review

Le Boston Modern Orchestra Project et son directeur musical Gil Rose frappent un grand coup avec cet enregistrement de la version originale (1924) du Ballet pour instruments mécaniques et percussion de l’Américain George Antheil pour seize pianos mécaniques (ici, huit Disklavier), huit percussionnistes et deux pianos réguliers (plus sirènes et moteurs d’avion!). Heavy metal avant la lettre, et pas qu’un peu!

Voir Full review

Boston Modern Orchestra Project’s 15th annual “Boston ConNECtion” concert at Jordan Hall on March 28th was, as you can adduce by reading BMInt’s interview with composer Donald Crockett here, is a bit of a stretch programmatically, as only two of the four composers whose works were presented (the two youngest, as it happened) have or had anything like a significant association with New England Conservatory, and only one of them currently resides in the area.

The Boston Musical Intelligencer Full review

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