Buffalo, although one of the smaller big cities in the U.S. is still quite an important city for the arts. In the mid 1900′s it stood at the center of the New Music Scene and the University of Buffalo was an important training ground for cutting edge composers. This changed, for the worse, as the new millennium approached, but that doesn’t mean that great things aren’t happening there.
The director of the Buffalo Philharmonic Orchestra, JoAnn Falletta, one of the leading conductors in the country and one of the only female conductors, not to mention the first, of a major American Orchestra, hosts an annual International Guitar Concerto Competition. Excitement in the area is high as the finals are set for tomorrow. Information can be found here.
This is an important event for guitarists that are just beginning their careers and I feel that Western New York is lucky to be host to a unique event such as this. If you are in the area I would suggest checking it out, or at the very least listening to the finals tomorrow on WNED, the Buffalo classical music station. You can also listen to the performances of all the semi-finalists here.
About quartertonality
A graduate of the Masters program in Classical Guitar Performance as well as Music Theory/Composition at the State University of New York at Fredonia Adam is active as a performer, composer, educator and copyist. He is currently working on research concerning the guitar works of Leo Brouwer and Anton Webern, has recently completed a new edition of Webern's Op. 18 and is working as an assistant of a colleague that is researching works of Arnold Schoenberg. Adam is currently a PhD candidate in Music Theory at the University of Oregon.
Formerly a member of the Ethos New Music Society which is responsible for the promotion of new music on the Fredonia Campus and elsewhere in Upstate New York (and beyond) through the production of student concerts of newly composed music, guest lecturers, symposia and concerts by new music ensembles like "eighth blackbird", "Auros" and "Continuum".
I write reviews for groovemine.com as well as tympanogram.com. This site will collect everything that I write for those sites, as well as posts that are exclusive. Mostly reviews of albums and EPs of new independent music with sample songs and a few links to help you purchase the albums that are reviewed. Album reviews typically delve pretty deep and can range anywhere from 700 to 2,500 words depending on how much there really is to say about the album. I try to analyze the music in as many ways as I can before writing and typically will listen to anything that is reviewed at the very least 10 times before committing anything to writing.
I'm a bit insane.
