Symposium: New Frontiers in Music 2: Composers' Voices

Frank J. Oteri (moderator)
Robert Ashley
Fred Ho
Tania León
Mikel Rouse
Bright Sheng

Friday, May 13, 2005
Curtis Institute of Music
1726 Locust Street, Philadelphia

“I’m trying to create a living comic book. I deal with fantasy, action, adventure and mythic stories. And I’m not afraid of dealing with conflict, assassins and warfare.”–Fred Ho

“I’ve been propagandizing for opera for TV for the past twenty years. Musically, I’m mainly interested in trying to find some new way to put American language to music, which has been called everything from ‘it’s not singing, it’s just talking’ to the first rap.”–Robert Ashley

PMP’s second panel discussion in the New Frontiers in Music series, Composers’ Voices: Crossing Disciplines and Cultures, brought together five significant composers known for their innovative, boundary-blurring projects. Moderated by Frank J. Oteri, composer and Editor of the American Music Center’s web magazine NewMusicBox, the event featured Robert Ashley, Fred Ho, Tania León, Mikel Rouse, and Bright Sheng.

Each panelist was able to take a substantial portion of time to present audio-visual samples of their work, from Ashley’s 1980s opera for television, Perfect Lives (he described a future marriage between the two as “the most natural thing there is”), to Sheng’s mythological Silver River, a music theater work performed by an actress, a Chinese opera singer, a Western baritone, dancers and instrumentalists, including a pipa player. León shared a section of her cross-cultural percussion piece, Drummin’, and Ho presented his comic-book inspired “martial arts ballet” epic, Journey Beyond the West: The New Adventures of Monkey. Rouse acknowledged that Ashley’s work, including Perfect Lives, had been a direct influence on his own composition and offered video from Dennis Cleveland, perhaps the first and only talk show opera.

These extraordinarily inventive composers spoke freely about their aims and visions, often returning to the matter of place, the myth of America. Things heated up during the question and answer session over matters of fighting and dancing, but the group settled down again for a nice lunch in the Bok Room.