Impact on orchestra: Benoit, Daugherty, Turnage
(August 2008)
Three new works by Boosey & Hawkes composers David Benoit, Michael Daugherty, and Mark Anthony Turnage recently debuted across the country. Composer, director and conductor David Benoit, premiered his own Dolores Del Carmen with the Asian America Symphony on June 6 at the Japan America Theatre in Los Angeles. Written for Spanish guitar and orchestra, Dolores “pays tribute to Benoit’s late aunt, one of the flamenco great José Greco’s dancers, who became a quadriplegic later in life,” says the Los Angeles Times.
Benoit described his aunt as “strikingly beautiful” and having a “magnetic personality”. “She never lost her spirit for life and her beautiful touching smile” he recalled. “I will never forget her.”
Michael Daugherty’s TROYJAM for narrator and orchestra received its world premiere on May 18 with the National Symphony Orchestra under the baton of Leonard Slatkin at the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts. Originally commissioned for a children’s concert series, TROYJAM retells the mythological story of Homer’s The Illiad.
The Washington Post describes the piece which is scored for narrator and orchestra as “a piece of quality work, with strong music and beautiful language. Daugherty’s music sets lines equally clear and strong, delivered in small doses that leave you wanting more, highlighting the different sections of the orchestra without being for a moment didactic... It is not an inconsiderable feat to create small fragments of music that are catchy and illustrative without smacking of a cartoon soundtrack.”
Mark-Anthony Turnage’s collection of orchestral miniatures, Three Asteroids, was presented in its entirety for the first time on June 5 by the San Francisco Symphony under the baton of Benjamin Shwartz.
Reports The San Francisco Chronicle: "Three Asteroids" grew out of a commission from Simon Rattle to extend Holst's orchestral classic "The Planets" to include musical portraits of other celestial bodies. Turnage's response was "Ceres," a brash, brawny orchestral showpiece that depicts the asteroid in a lumbering dance before it concludes things by smashing into the Earth. The composer then extended the theme with two companion pieces to form a 20-minute triptych. ...the central piece, "Juno," is a gem, a slow-moving swirl of redolent, cloudy harmonies that gradually coalesce."
Inspired by “the doomsday aspect of asteroids and the idea that the earth could be destroyed by one any day,” Turnage translated this dismal concept into three movements, The Torino Scale, Juno, and Ceres.
Of the work’s Boston performance The Boston Herald said, “Three Asteroids is a work that “takes a trip to the dark side of celestial classicism. …” callling the third movement, Ceres, a “fascinating and decidedly dark curtain-raiser (that) succeeds in conjuring a mounting sense of anarchy by pitting large swaths of music against each other.”
> Further information on Work: Three Asteroids
> Further information on Work: TROYJAM
> Further information on Work: Dolores Del Carmen
Photo credit clockwise from top left: Hanya Chala Arena PAL, Carl Studna, Grant Leighton
> News Search
Mailing List
Sign up for news updates and offers via email
SIGN UPFeatured Publication
Britten: War Requiem
Britten's pacifist masterwork, combining war poetry by Wilfred Owen with the Latin Requiem Mass, is included in the Masterworks Library of full scores, ideal for conductors, students and music lovers.
READ MORECompetitions
