Last night at Alice Tully Hall, the violinist and composer William Harvey gave an intense and persuasive performance of Behzad Ranjbaran's Violin Concerto, with the Juilliard Orchestra under Gerard Schwarz. Harvey is remarkable not only for his considerable technical gifts but also for his ambitious projects in international music education. This summer he is teaching composition to AIDS orphans in Zimbabwe. Read here about his travels last summer to Moldova and Tunisia.... UCLA's Roger Bourland has a nice analysis of Rufus Wainwright's insanely beautiful song "The Art Teacher."... The results of Make Microtonal Music Day 2006 are available at Microtonal Podcast. The blog-borne festival describes itself, not too seriously, as "Black History Month for Microtonality." A few highlights: Yahya Abdal-Aziz's Bunga Seroja, Jeff Harrington's Spirale d'Arco, and Gene Ward Smith's Dreyfus (inspired by Chief Inspector Dreyfus's mad organ performance at the climax of The Pink Panther Strikes Again). If you're hungry for more, go to Prent Rodgers's site for an excerpt from Opera: The War on Terror, or to Smith's site for Threnody for the Victims of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart. O dem composers.
