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Published annually by the Philadelphia Music Project

Feature articles from 2008
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Jazz Horizons: A Diverse Lineage in Context
By David R. Adler

Anthony Braxton (photo by Emiliano Neri)

The term “jazz” covers a vast and contentious aesthetic terrain, pushing musicians to new frontiers of technical excellence and creative depth. This season, the Philadelphia Music Project funds performances that highlight the music’s idiomatic range and expansive potential. The slate includes a tribute to the late trumpet master Clifford Brown; accounts of the experimental yet wholly distinct languages of Anthony Braxton, Julius Hemphill and Andrew Hill; and a residency involving Brooklyn composer-bandleader John Hollenbeck with 12 handpicked musicians representing the cream of today’s Philadelphia improvising circuit. While these offerings may suggest a chronological timeline, they do not propound a view of music as a linear progression. Rather, in jostling together the most “traditional” swing-oriented work with the most “avant-garde” outpourings, from the ’60s to the ever-unfolding present, these programs seem to say: We can have it all.

Penderecki’s Journey
By Dan Webster

Krzysztof Penderecki (photo by Donald Lee)

Birthday honors may range from a pat on the back to the touch of a jeweled sword on the shoulders of the kneeling hero. But how to classify the near-Olympic celebration preceding the 75th birthday of Polish composer Krzysztof Penderecki? Has any composer—ever—been swept into such a tidal flow of honors, performances, tributes and world travel on the occasion of a 75th birthday?

Richard Stone, Emlyn Ngai and Gwyn Roberts of Tempesta di Mare (photo by Bill Cramer)

Orchestras, opera companies and ensembles that play music written in the 18th century or later can usually look to commercial sources for their performance materials—scores, parts, and the like. But historical performance groups, many of which specialize in seeking out music that has not been heard for centuries, have a tougher job.

Their sources are not publishers or music libraries, but microfilm, rare book collections, and scholars, and their finds often require considerable work before the parts can be placed on the music stands. The Philadelphia Music Project has been a regular partner to Philadelphia-based ensembles in helping to finance the research that makes such programs unique. And three such ensembles—Tempesta di Mare, Piffaro, and Philomel—have found that the wonders of modern technology, specifically the Internet and music notation computer software, can now make the research piece of the historical performance equation a lot easier to tackle.

Eastern State Penitentiary interior (photo © Mark Perrott 1992)

Among the many projects that PMP will support this season, three invite composers to base new works on specific objects and places, including paintings, quilts, and the historic Eastern State Penitentiary. The Philadelphia Museum of Art has commissioned pianist Jason Moran to create a work inspired by the upcoming exhibition, “Gee’s Bend: The Architecture of the Quilt,” and Chamber Music Now will produce a concert of thematic commissions inside the penitentiary’s dramatic Cellblock Seven. Network for New Music will present a full season of concerts with commissions responding both to visual artwork and historic locations, from 19th-century oil paintings in the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts to a remote kingdom in northern Nepal.

Keeril Makan (photo by Scott Irvine)

Nearly three centuries ago, Swedish botanist Carl Linnaeus devised a system for neatly classifying living organisms, a well-defined, hierarchical system based on shared physical characteristics. A mere two decades after his death, European scientists were confronted with the platypus, a creature whose bizarre mixture of mammalian and birdlike features challenged the Linnaean system.

Feature articles from 2007
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Improvisation: Charting the Unknown
By David R. Adler

Pianist and composer Uri Caine It’s easy to agree with Nietzsche’s maxim from Twilight of the Idols: “Without music life would be a mistake.” But what would music be without improvisation? Though today it is chiefly associated with jazz, improvisation crosses all boundaries, informing many of the world’s musical traditions. The Philadelphia Music Project’s 2007 grantees include artists working in a range of disciplines, employing improvisation in various proportions and with vastly different results. Peruse the season’s offerings and one will find big bands, jazz encounters with classical orchestra, avant-garde experimentalists, virtuosi of Carnatic (South Indian) music, keepers of the klezmer heritage, and interpreters of Renaissance and Baroque masterworks. These performers would seem to share little in common. But a close look at some of the skills and practices involved can reveal striking commonalities. Improvisation is something that bridges oceans, cultures, aesthetic temperaments and even historical periods.

Around Philadelphia, The World Beckons
By Anastasia Tsioulcas

Gypsy jazz guitarist Kruno Spisic Musicians and dancers from all over the world have found a home in Philadelphia, and it’s no wonder—the city has welcomed a diverse array of new arrivals ever since its founding.

According to research published by the Balch Institute for Ethnic Studies at the Historical Society of Philadelphia and the Fels Institute of Government at the University of Pennsylvania, the city has experienced a decline in immigration in the 20th century and into the 21st; it’s a pattern unlike other major American cities, which have seen continued immigrant growth. Nonetheless, many vibrant ethnic communities have made the Philadelphia area their new home, including Central Europeans in the period immediately following World War II, Cubans, Greeks, Vietnamese, Filipinos, and Koreans. Today, the communities in Philadelphia with the largest number of foreign-born members are from Vietnam, Ukraine, China, India, and Jamaica, while groups from other nations such as Mexico are becoming larger and having an ever-increasing presence in the city.

George Crumb’s Autobiography
By Dan Webster

George Crumb and Orchestra 2001 Artistic Director James Freeman George Crumb is finishing his autobiography. Not in so many words, but in “American Songbook,” the six books of folk song settings he finished, after five years’ work, in summer 2007. The final two books, “Voices from a Forgotten World,” and Book VI will be premiered over the next two seasons by Orchestra 2001. It’s a complicated undertaking, for the 78-year-old composer finds deeply personal meaning and reference is almost every note of the songs he has so carefully set. He is equally enthralled by the vast field of percussion instruments with which he has surrounded the pristine songs.

Michael Brecker: A Tribute
By Tom Moon

In the middle of “Hijera” on her 1980 live album Shadows And Light, Joni Mitchell asks her audience to listen for “shades of Michael Brecker coming through the snow and the pinewood trees.” On cue, the Philadelphia-born saxophonist saunters in, and in just a few measures, his soprano saxophone steers Mitchell’s restless ode in a new direction. There’s nothing unusual about the break—Brecker, who died in January 2007 after a struggle with a rare blood disorder, routinely laced apt and idiomatically astute magic into the tiniest crevices of pop tunes. What’s unusual is Mitchell’s name-dropping. It’s like she’s lifting the curtain on what she once famously termed the “star-maker machinery behind the popular song” long enough to reveal one of her secret weapons—Brecker’s fiery saxophonistics, which was also an X-factor on records by James Taylor, Paul Simon, Funkadelic, John Lennon and countless others.

“I Dwell in Possibility”: Emerging Composers on Composing
By Willa Rohrer

Richard Belcastro This year, PMP grantees paid particular attention to the emerging composer. Alongside world premieres by giants such as George Crumb, Terry Riley, Sir John Tavener, and Christian Wolff were commissioned pieces by their lesser-known counterparts. But when I set out to interview emerging composers Richard Belcastro, Stratis Minakakis, Mike Holober, and Yevgeniy Sharlat about their work and careers, a peculiar problem presented itself: it is difficult to say what, exactly, the term “emerging composer” means. There are a few common assumptions: emerging composers are talented, full of promise, on their way to bigger and better things. But on the whole, we seem to define the phrase through a process of negation—it’s much easier to say what an emerging composer isn’t (rich, famous, dead, Beethoven) than what an emerging composer is.

Music as Memory: Composing American Life
By Alyssa Timin

Wynton Marsalis, photo by Clay Patrick McBride Among the many reasons that people make music, one is to remember a social experience. This year, the Philadelphia Music Project provides support for four programs that commemorate collective moments in very different ways. At the Mann Center for the Performing Arts, Wynton Marsalis and the Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra, in collaboration with Yacub Addy and Odadaa!, celebrated one of the birth sites of American music; Mendelssohn Club of Philadelphia performed John Adams’ “On the Transmigration of Souls,” composed in memory of September 11th; the Kimmel Center will host Phil Kline’s “Zippo Songs,” which honor American soldiers in Vietnam, and Orchestra 2001 premiered the fifth volume of George Crumb’s “American Songbook,” in which he re-envisions turn-of-the-century popular music. Spanning several centuries of political misdeeds, cultural contestation, and artistic invention, these projects highlight the role of memory itself in social change.

Feature articles from 2006
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A Celebration of Traditions in Philadelphia
By Frank J. Oteri
Nineteenth Century band leader Francis Johnson will be honored this season by the West Philadelphia Cultural Alliance. "A substantial percentage of the activities funded by the Philadelphia Music Project has always involved the commissioning and premiering of new work, music which hopefully will one day enter the repertoire and become part of our tradition. But there have also always been projects nurtured by PMP that keep important pre-existing musical traditions alive and in the ears of the people of Philadelphia. Notable among the many fascinating endeavors funded in 2006 are several projects involving major contributions to our shared musical heritage that have been heretofore largely unknown and in some cases unheard."

Choir Crazy
By Daniel Webster
The Wilmington Chester Mass Choir "Singing City, the name Elaine Brown chose when she founded her chorus 60 years ago, encapsulated her vision of music’s cohesive social power but also reflected a cultural tradition that antedated Europeans’ landing in America. Her shared vision was of a city held close by groups singing in clubs, in churches, in concert halls, in schools, in cellars, singing in many languages, singing everywhere. "

21st Century Presenters:
The Changing Face of Philadelphia’s Music Scene
By Alyssa Timin
Richard Belcastro, executive director of Chamber Music Now "A few years ago, I was on a plane chatting with the woman next to me. I told her I lived in Philadelphia. “Great music town,” she replied. I smiled. Philadelphia’s reputation as a destination for music has existed for over a hundred years, and it keeps getting better. Since 2000, new presenting organizations have cropped up across the region, including Lifeline Music Coalition, Ars Nova Workshop, Sound Field, Bowerbird, Chamber Music Now, and Peregrine Arts. These emerging presenters are offering an unprecedented breadth of jazz, experimental music, contemporary chamber music, and genre-melding multimedia productions this season and beyond. These organizations not only present daring concerts, but also innovate on the very idea of what it means to present music, making now a great time to be listening in on Philadelphia."

To Honor a Legend: The John Coltrane Legacy in Philadelphia
By Vic Schermer
John Coltrane - photo by Ray Gibson "What does John Coltrane have to do with Philadelphia music? The answer is: “not less than everything.” “Trane,” as he has been affectionately called, came up in Philadelphia, where he studied theory with the legendary Dennis Sandole, performed with then up and coming local musicians Benny Golson, Trudy Pitts, McCoy Tyner, and many others, and was first inspired by hearing the likes of Dizzy Gillespie and Charlie Parker at the Academy of Music. So it is appropriate that Philadelphia honor Coltrane’s 80th Birthday through the music itself, which was his passion, and which he pursued to its outer limits."

Remembering György Ligeti
By Peter Burwasser
György Ligeti - photo by Kimmo Mántylá "György Ligeti is one of those artists who, while hardly a household name, has amassed an enormous influence in the musical community, and in subtle ways, the cultural sphere as a whole. He has become a great source of inspiration to a generation of composers, but there are also obvious references in pop culture, most famously, the inclusion of his music in the landmark Stanley Kubrick film, 2001, A Space Odyssey. Ligeti’s Lux aeterna became, at the time of the movie’s release in 1968, the voice of the future, brashly devoid of conventional technical parameters, but very direct, and certainly emotional. Almost paradoxically, this voice of the future was far more accessible than what was then the paradigm for new music, namely, a strictly serialist approach which was alienating listeners in droves. By the time of the composer’s death, in the spring of this year, Ligeti’s style had become even more inclusive, even as it retained a highly individual profile."

Resonating Space
By Thaddeus Squire
The second floor gallery at Ryerss Mansion, a site of composer Phil Kline's Locus Solus project "No art, whether monumental or ephemeral, can avoid the imprint of space. The idea that there exists “neutral” or “sterile” space for art—space that allows the art to speak for itself without regard to its spatial context—is a highly questionable notion today. Yet this presumption about the severability of art and space, drawn largely from classical artistic practices, has maintained a curiously high degree of purchase within the fine and performing arts, as evidenced by the frequent lack of consideration given to space in many artistic and curatorial processes. To situate a performance or artwork outside the proscenium theater or gallery no longer reads as sharply critical or carries the avant-garde tenor that it might have had twenty-odd years ago. But in this “post-political” era in the relationship between space and art, there is much more at stake."

Feature articles from Fall 2005
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Philadelphia: A Brave New (Old) World
By Daniel Felsenfeld

“Since 1912, when a daring, wild-eyed maestro cum musical mountebank named Leopold Stokowski took command of the Philadelphia Orchestra, one of America’s most dynamic musical treasures, Philly has been one of the few cities allowing for the safe passage from thought to deed of The New—and this coming season will be no exception.”

Orchestras Rising
By Daniel Webster
"The orchestra does not live in airless glass jars. It is a social figure, an economic engine, a civic emblem, an icon of its culture with all the warts and beauties that implies. Its skin-shedding evolution is never better seen than in Philadelphiawhere orchestras – for nearly 200 years – have pulled on the robes and held the orbs of healers, educators, entertainers, champions, conservators and iconoclasts."

Saving the Day: The Music Education Explosion
By Alyssa Timin
"Music education has boomed into a major catalyst for cultural literacy over the past fifty years, largely in response to the continued threat of extinction by restricted government spending. In light of this perceived crisis, a vast array of organizations have taken up the torch, linking great performances with communities and schools and building another generation of passionate listeners and performers"

Feature articles from Fall 2004
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PMP Awards Mine Philadelphia’s Treasures of Jazz, Blues and Improvisation
By Larry Blumenfeld
"Inspired by imaginary pasts and fictional futures as well as real-life roots and contemporary sounds, the constellation of projects funded by this lastest round of PMP grants will take elements of blues, swing and improvisation and carry them into new territory – all of which speaks of and to the city of Philadelphia, where so much innovative music has been birthed."

The String Quartet and Beyond: Chamber Music Flourishes in Philly
By Peter Burwasser
"The chamber music scene in Philadelphia runs the gamut from the world renowned offerings of the Philadelphia Chamber Music Society and the Kimmel Center to informal gatherings of musician friends playing for small audiences in neighborhood parks. The remarkable and completely wonderful reality of this situation if that the range in quality and inspiration within this world is very narrow."

Musical Borderlands: Exploring Interdisciplinary Art in Philadelphia
By Alyssa Timin
"Amidst the wide array of music being made in Philadelphia, from jazz to folk to classical, some groups are looking beyond music itself for adventurous programming. Several regional music organizations, among them PMP grantees Mendelssohn Club, Network for New Music, Relache, and the Prince Music Theater, are planning performances for the 2004-2005 season that cross disciplinary borders, integrating elements from other artistic arenas into their concerts."

Symposium Brings Interactive Technology to the Forefront in Music Education

Branding and Publicity Conference Draws a Crowd: Music Groups Gather to Talk Business

A World of Music in the City of New York: Blackbirds and Barbers on PMP’s Fourth Professional Development Trip

Group Visits Tanglewood Music Center’s Festival of Contemporary Music