Creativity and Performance Workshops at The Hartt School

June 26th, 2011

Participants at last year's workshops relax and improve their communication skills by dancing.

In July I’ll be conducting creativity and performance workshops at The Hartt School with conductor Glen Adsit, and you’re welcome to join us.

Here’s a workshop summary borrowed brazenly from The Hartt School’s terrific website:

Participants in this active workshop will learn to create music, teach students to compose music and conduct music using graphic notation. In addition, Michael’s mastery of Neuro Linguistic Programming techniques will help you gain confidence and excellence in performance.

CREATIVITY

Writing your own music using graphic notation will enable you to:

Create original pieces
Conduct them with the group
Analyze new works
Teach children and adults how to write music

CONDUCTING

Develop your personal conducting skills through graphic and traditional notation. Students will explore ways to become more expressive conductors.

Learn to create descriptive musical gestures
Develop independence between left and right hands
Learn how to conduct outside the beat pattern

PERFORMANCE

Learn techniques from NLP (Neuro Linguistic Programming), mime and self-hypnosis to effectively:

Deal with stage fright
Concentrate under pressure
Perform with comfort and ease
Align your life with your art
Coach your own performance

PROFESSIONAL BENEFITS

Develop new methods of teaching, conducting and performing music
Learn by experiencing the ‘discovery method’
Learn more creative ways to fulfill the national standards for teaching creativity

JULY 18-22, 2011

$735 (+$45 registration fee)
3 Graduate Credits
On-Campus housing and registration information available at: www.hartford.edu/hartt/summerterm.

Go here to see photos from last year’s workshops at The Hartt School (click on ‘Recent Workshops’).

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Leonard Slatkin Conducts ‘As Quiet As’ in Toronto

April 28th, 2011

Leonard Slatkin and me during rehearsals of my As Quiet As with the Toronto Symphony on 27-28 April. Slatkin is a tireless champion of new music and has conducted, toured and recorded my music over the years.

John Terauds wrote a review in the Toronto Star, saying “the piece came off as fresh as if it were newly created.” It was written in 1966.

Here you can sample Leonard Slatkin doing a terrific job of conducting another piece mine, Deja vu, with the St. Louis Symphony Orchestra.

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At the Midwest Clinic: Teaching Children to Compose

December 3rd, 2010

I’m going to Chicago this month to show music teachers how children can compose using graphic notation. My talks will be at “The Midwest Clinic: An International Band and Orchestra Conference” on Dec. 16th and 17th.

I’ve already taught middle and high school children how to use lines, dots and scribbles of all kinds to compose music. Often they take turns at the blackboard, jointly writing a piece section by section, and then sing it together on the spot. Sometimes they go off on their own and compose entire pieces, or conduct their pieces themselves with their school band.

Recently I helped 12-year-olds at Thorncliffe Middle School in Toronto write a 5-minute piece, “Les Sauvages,” which was premiered by the Esprit Orchestra the following week. What a moment for those students to hear their music played by professional musicians!

And last year I helped students at Middleton Regional High School in Nova Scotia write and conduct their own pieces at a public concert, with the help of band director Richard Bennett. After some inspired lobbying by fine arts consultant Ardith Haley, graphic notation has become part of Nova Scotia’s junior high school curriculum.

Here’s a short video compilation of Middleton students conducting excerpts of their own pieces, played by the school band. Bravo!

Graphic Notation Video at Middleton High School

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Joanne Kong Gives ‘Alert, Crisply Detailed’ Performance of ‘Side by Side’

October 27th, 2010

Steven Smith conducted my Side by Side with the Richmond Symphony and soloist Joanne Kong on prepared piano and harpsichord, Oct. 22 at the University of Richmond.

By Clarke Bustard, “Letter V”

Composer Michael Colgrass likes to tailor his music to the sound and personality of an individual musician. In Joanne Kong he found an unusually versatile subject, equally adept at piano and harpsichord. The work that Colgrass wrote for her, a quasi-concerto called “Side by Side,” is believed to be the first for a single soloist playing both keyboards, at times simultaneously.

Kong’s performance of “Side by Side” with the Richmond Symphony was the last of three that she has given with the groups that commissioned the piece. (She previously played it with the Esprit Orchestra of Toronto and Boston Modern Orchestra Project, both in 2007.) She may be the work’s sole exponent for a while, simply because there aren’t many professional pianist-harpsichordists around – and probably fewer who are inclined toward contemporary music. Once more musicians cross the keyboard and chronology divides, though, they are likely to dote on this piece.

A compact work, about the length of a Bach or Haydn concerto, “Side by Side” explores two themes, one lyrical, the other reminiscent of baroque music in its skittish ornamentation, as if through a prism, or perhaps a conversation of exclamations and interrupted phrases.

The piano is prepared, à la John Cage, with mutes and objects such as screws on its strings, to produce what the composer calls a “barroom piano” sound, and to bring its sound presence and texture closer to those of a French-style two-manual harpsichord. Amplification is also employed to bring their sounds into parity.

The expected roles of the instruments are reversed: The piano sounds more percussive, the harpsichord more tuneful (if not lyrical). The keyboards’ duets are echoed by pairs of instruments – flute and viola, oboe and cello, trombone and double-bass, violin and the combined tones of harp and celesta – throughout the orchestration.

“Side by Side” is unusual not just in its double-barreled soloist, but also in its combination of busy playfulness and luminous sound; the glow, emanating largely from a big percussion section, warms up music that otherwise might strike many listeners as spiky or chilly.

Kong, conductor Steven Smith and the orchestra delivered an alert, crisply detailed and generally cheerful account of a piece that deserves, and will prove rewarding in, repeated hearings.

(Read the rest of Clarke Bustard’s review here.)

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Terauds Includes Me on His ‘Thanksgiving List’

October 11th, 2010

Toronto Star music writer John Terauds, who wrote about my autobiography in February, kindly put me on his list of reasons to be thankful this Canadian Thanksgiving (Oct. 11, for those who don’t know about our parallel universe of holidays). He called me a gift that keeps on giving, a compliment I’ve never received before—now if only my wife would read this…

“For me, Thanksgiving is about appreciating the gifts that keep on giving, like the apple orchards near Castleton or the soybean fields of southwestern Ontario. I’ve added Toronto composer Michael Colgrass to my mental scrapbook of special gifts this year. He has inspired me in many ways: physically, as a spry 77-year-old who can still stand on his head; intellectually, as someone who has never encountered a work obstacle that he couldn’t surmount or knock down in some way; creatively, as a tireless crusader in connecting children and teens with the power and beauty of creating and making music; and emotionally, in how his twinkling eyes continue to embrace the world with earnest curiosity. I wouldn’t blame you for thinking that this Colgrass dude sounds too good to be true, so I urge you to experience him for yourself. I’d heard his music before, but my true initiation came from his engrossing year-old memoir,Michael Colgrass: Adventures of an American Composer (Meredith Music). Also, check out his not-so-everyday blog posts, at www.colgrassadventures.com.”

John Terauds

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WASBE Reviews My Memoir

September 2nd, 2010

I’ve been lucky enough to get another good review of my memoir, “Adventures of an American Composer.” This one appeared in the June issue of a monthly magazine produced by WASBE (the World Association of Symphonic Bands and Ensembles):

And here are excerpts from a few more reviews:

“The 89 anecdotes that make up this 222-page volume are compelling reading. This is no mere laundry list of dates, places, names and events. Once he establishes his Irish and Italian heritage – his father’s surname was Colagrossi – the author turns storyteller, using a keen narrative instinct that applies equally to music and prose. Colgrass goes into fascinating detail about nurturing creativity – personally and in the workshops he continues to offer for both adults and children. Along the way, we gradually get to know a smart, headstrong and fearless man possessed with a wicked sense of humour.”
—John Terauds, Toronto Star (full review)

“Colgrass’s exploits are bizarre, emotional, humorous, heartbreaking, ironic: a stripper indirectly lands Colgrass a gig in Broadway’s West Side Story orchestra; he composes a score overnight for the Joffery Ballet; he catches a NYC bank robber. His wondrous stories seem quasi-mythical: Colgrass seduces a Rumanian spy; his father is courted by friends in Al Capone’s gang; hidden back-stage, he witnesses Miles Davis play a private tribute over the dead body of drummer Sid Catlett. This tone of ‘magical realism’ is set right from
the beginning with his ‘magical conception’ predicted by a psychic.”
—Crystal Chan, La Scena Musicale (full review)

“Colgrass has written a collection of 89 anecdotes that collectively give the reader insight into just what a fascinating mind and creative spirit Colgrass has. Few of those little stories will leave the reader unmoved. Some border on the incredible: recording The Rite of Spring for Columbia Records with an inebriated Igor Stravinsky conducting; saving Leonard Bernstein from assault by an angered percussionist; and being accused of spying in East Germany. Right from the first sentence one is hooked: ‘I was conceived on the kitchen floor of a brown brick bungalow in Brookfield, Illinois.’”
—Robert Markow, Fanfare (full review)

Those who are interested can find my book on Amazon, B&N, Chapters and other online retailers.

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