Music Monday: Archer: Piano Concerto

As Kimberly Archer (b 1973) notes in her program note for today's piece, composing a piano concerto is “one of those nearly obligatory ‘composer benchmarks’” that almost all of us wind up tackling at some point or other in our careers. To be sure, there are times where this kind of expectation can feel stifling — most of us want to be individuals, not cookie-cutouts — but by the same token, seeing how a new person works in a familiar genre can be a quick and powerful way to get a handle on what they're about. The sheer number of pre-existing piano concerti gives a rich field for comparison without having to dive into the treacherous waters of comparing radically different kinds of works. Here's a form with a long and storied tradition; let's see what you make from it!

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Music Monday: Chin: Piano Concerto

Close readers of my tumblr will know that at the end of February, I caught the West Coast (possibly American?) première of Unsuk Chin and David Henry Hwang's Alice in Wonderland and had rather mixed feelings about it. Most of the negative ones were associated with the words, however, so I tracked down some of Chin's non-operatic writing and I am so glad I did, because she is a fantastic composer when not dealing with a deliberately nonsensical libretto. (I am also very late to this party; she has been positively showered with awards, up to and including the Grawemeyer in 2004, and her works are performed regularly by top ensembles around the world.) 

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