A New Canon

12/07/2021

Following the success of 'Fire Shut Up in My Bones', which reopened the The Metropolitan Opera and played to sold out houses, the company announced today that it will present my first opera, 'Champion', with libretto by Michael Cristofer, in April 2023.

With a production directed by James Robinson, Champion, based on the life of African American boxer Emile Griffith, will be conducted by Met Music Director Yannick Nezet-Seguin, featuring a cast starring Ryan Speedo Green as the young Griffith, and Eric Owens as the retired boxer later in life. The opera originally premiered at Opera Theatre of St. Louis in 2013. For the Met, I plan to revise portions of the score, and Cristofer will be fine-tuning the libretto. Robinson will be expanding and revamping the production. Other cast and production team members will be announced at a later date.

https://www.nytimes.com/2021/12/07/arts/music/met-opera-terence-blanchard-champion.html

12/03/2021

Happy Friday y’all!! A little extra happy, even, because it is Bandcamp Friday. Support your favorite artist today as the music service waves their share and passes 💯 of the proceeds to help support the artist. What a friggin concept (though they’re pretty generous year round too)! For more - click on it:

FEATURES Ethan Diamond On the first Friday of every month since March of 2020, we’ve waived our revenue share to help support the many artists who have seen their livelihoods disrupted by the pandemic. Over the course of these 15 days, fans paid artists and labels $61 million dollars, helping cove...

06/28/2020

Majel Connery is about to go live!! Still time to check it out!!

Register now for Mondo Jazz's event on Crowdcast, scheduled to go live on Sunday June 28, 2020 at 3:30 pm EDT.

05/11/2020

What better way to start a new week than with a new playlist?! It includes a tribute to Florian Schneider, co-founder of techno-pop icons Kraftwerk. Schneider died last month at 73. There are a couple of tracks off the new album "Dawn Chorus" from the virtuosic Grand Valley State New Music Ensemble as well as music from Natalie Joachim, Kronos Quartet, Olafur Arnalds and MORE! Check it out!

A playlist featuring Ola Szmidt, Nathalie Joachim, Dumisani Maraire, and others

05/07/2020

Florian Schneider, a co-founder of the electro-art-pop pioneers Kraftwerk, influenced and emboldened generations of musicians to use a new kind of musical language. V2 Schneider, a track on David Bowie's 1977 album Heroes is an homage to the German musician who died last week from cancer at 73. Philip Glass later used V2 Schneider as the final movement of his Fourth Symphony also entitled Heroes.

05/05/2020

“The Pulitzer jury cited The Central Park Five as ‘a courageous operatic work, marked by powerful vocal writing and sensitive orchestration, that skillfully transforms a notorious example of contemporary injustice into something empathetic and hopeful.’”

This year’s Pulitzer Prize in Music winner: “The Central Park Five” by Anthony Davis

The Central Park Five is an operatic narrative retelling the true story of the five African-American and Latino teenagers wrongly convicted of ra**ng and assaulting a white woman in 1989.

04/27/2020

VIDEO: Protect Yourself From Infection by David Lang

Bang on a Can composer David Lang, doesn’t purport to be a prophet. At least not so far as I know, but you gotta hand it to him, the piece he wrote for the Philadelphia-based choral ensemble …

04/23/2020

Happy Earth Day. Third Coast Percussion goes live with Paddle to the Sea!

"Doors" open at 7:00 PM CT. Performance begins at 7:30 PM CT. Third Coast Percussion at DePauw University is funded in part by the Aaron Copland Fund for Mus...