Category: interviews

  • Interview with Caroline Shaw

    New Music Box just posted a fabulous conversation with Pulitzer Prize winning composer Caroline Shaw.  At the time she won the Pulitzer much was made about her age (she was only 30 – the youngest ever person to win) and her training, or lack thereof.  You can listen to the award winning piece, Partita for 8…

  • Happy Birthday Vivian Fine

    This past Sunday (September 28) would have been Vivian Fine’s 101st birthday.  Born in Chicago in 1913, Fine was a piano prodigy who went on to study with Ruth Crawford Seeger and achieve acclaim for her compositions at a young age.  She composed continuously for her 70 year career.  Fine’s works explored various instrumentations and genres,…

  • Hilary Hahn and Gillian Whitehead

    As I mentioned last year, violinist Hilary Hahn has commissioned 27 new works to use as encore pieces. You can read about the project in an article from the Wall Street Journal here. Hilary has hand-picked 26 composers and is having a contest for the 27th piece(and there’s still time to enter!) Hilary, ever the…

  • Maria Schneider and Spring for Music

    I’m late in posting this, but the Spring For Music series (which I mentioned earlier), teamed with NPR to make the performance the St. Paul Chamber Orchestra available to stream online. One of the pieces heard in this performance is a relatively newly commissioned work – requested from Maria Schneider (known primarily, if not exclusively…