New Members! Please Introduce Yourself!

[Jeff Harrington]

Hi, please check in here and describe yourself and your musical interests. Favorite all time recordings, please! I see a lot of musicians, pro and semi-pro, a few composers, and a lot of folks that are apparently classical music fanaddicts! We'd love to hear what makes you tick musically...

[Rose Marie James]

Hello, All! I'm Rose Marie James, a classically trained pianist and entrepreneur in the music industry. I hold a Bachelor of Arts degree in Piano Performance and am currently studying Media Production and Engineering at the Institute of Production and Recording in Minneapolis, Minnesota. I have begun my first attempt to record my first CD of classical music that I may sell on iTunes and to other distribution centers within a year. I'm very new to the recording side of the industry yet I have been practicing and performing the piano for years. I enjoy classical music very much and hope it can be a large part of my career going forward.

I also am pleased to find such a fun network of people sharing an appreciation and pursuit for classical music.

You can get to know me a little better by checking out my blog at http://theclassicalpianist.wordpress.com/
and my YouTube performances:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h3cR737UBgc
and
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fO_tl1cAvwE

[Christianne Weaver]

Hi Jeff and fellow members. I am the Vice President of the Green Bay Commission Club and this is my first time joining an online classical music group. We just commissioned our first work, Zhou Tian and it will be premiering in October. Thanks for creating the site, I look forward to getting acquainted with your group.

[Rose Marie James]

Wow, Christianne, I briefly looked over your site and it looks like a fantastic organization. I hope to keep following the Green Bay Commission Club online. Do you ever post performances online? Especially for those of us out of state who would love to see what you all do?

[Christianne Weaver]

Hi Rose Marie! Thanks for the encouragement. We have not posted performances online but are very interested in moving into that realm. We are premiering our first piece, Zhou Tian's, A Thousand Years of Good Prayers, tomorrow night. We are looking to expand our horizons with our next commission. If you think you would like to join us, out on the cutting edge of creating new music, we're always looking for energetic members. The GB Commission Club is going to look different in the next year, my email is [e-mail] if you would like further inside scoop.

Rose Marie James said:

Wow, Christianne, I briefly looked over your site and it looks like a fantastic organization. I hope to keep following the Green Bay Commission Club online. Do you ever post performances online? Especially for those of us out of state who would love to see what you all do?

[Miss Vesuvia]

My taste in classical music is eclectic: from early, sacred music to John Cage.

In between, I'm very fond of Palestrina, Albinoni, Bach (of course!), and Handel (Water Music and Fireworks). Sorry to say, I'm not particularly fond of Mozart but I do like some Beethoven. I'm not at all fond of the Romantics, except for the Russians, Mussorgsky's "Pictures ..." and Tchaikovsky (almost everything!)

I can stand a little Debussy (if I'm in the mood) but I really love Holst's "Planets." Just can't live without Barber's "Adagio ..." and William Walton's score for "Henry V." And I count Gershwin and Copeland among the giants of 20th Century classical music.

I'm crazy about Spanish classical music, although I can't name one composer. I just love it and am always moved by it!

I have been fortunate to attend intimate performances by The Wister Quartet, based in Philadelphia, PA. They are brilliant! Among my favorite choral ensembles are the King's Singers ... I love everything they do!

[Anna Sargent]

Yesterday I, hopefully, got the bargain of a lifetime on Ebay: Karajan and the Berliner Philharmonik, 38 CDs, conducting Beethoven, Bruckner, Mozart, etc. I can't wait for the mailman to arrive and get to the task of uploading these to the iPod.

Other than this maestro, I am a huge fan of Virgil Fox playing Bach - my all-time favorite of his presentations is "Oh come Sweet Death".

Albeit not classical, Karunesh comes in third with his new age music on "Sky's Beyond" which I first heard in 1992 at the Nepenthe Gift Store in Big Sur, CA.

Good listening, everyone !

[PamRus]

Hello. While I do enjoy classical music and opera, today I have a different agenda for joining.

My Mother was classically trained on the piano. She played piano, organ, hamonica, guitar, mandolin, banjo (5-string and tenor) and up until about three months before her death almost two years ago at age 86 could still get a room full of people up and dancing. She played such an amazing range of music with such rhythm and style...

There was one particular piece that I loved. It was her recital piece at age 17, which would have been about 1938. She couldn't remember the composer, but said the name of it was "Meditation".

I read piano music well enough to be able to recognize it within three or four bars, because it is such a distinctive and simple melody. I have looked all over the web for any piano music where the name contains that word, but it just is not there.

So, my 'agenda'... can anyone tell me of a place where I could submit a greatly simplified reindition of this melody to maybe get an identification of it, either a sound file or a jpg of the notes? I want very deeply to have this for myself. I heard it once on WRR, the classical music station in Dallas. But I was on the highway driving to work and had to leave the car before they announced the composer and name. It didn't occur to me until much later that I could have looked it up on their web page.

Please help.

Pam

[Russell Telfer]

Hi Pam
I posted an answer last night but it didn't "take".

This shouldn't be too difficult. If the piece was called Meditation, then there are a number of suspects to eliminate. I'm thinking particularly of music popular in the 1930s. Try: Meditation from Thais by Massenet. You could hear it on YouTube.
Other possibilities: Germaine Tailleferre, Messaien. This isn't my preferred range of music but I can suggest other lines to explore if you're interested.

Russell

[Leslie Crabtree]

Do you like to sing? Maybe you will be interested in a new website dedicated to a contemporary Canadian composer Leslie Crabtree who writes mostly music for voice and piano in a classical style. From the web site you can download scores and listen to samples of his works. If you would like to perform any of his songs, record and send them to us then you’ll get a signed copy of his book of Vocal Works in Russian for Voice and Piano free.

Please, visit his web site:
www.crabtree.narod.ru

Do not hesitate to write to us:
e-mail: [e-mail]

Leslie Crabtree is a Canadian composer, now living in the USA, in Florida.

Leslie writes mostly vocal music, for voice and piano; however he has also composed several pieces for piano solo. He has written many songs in several different languages (English, Russian, German, French, Spanish, etc.) on texts by world famous poets, such as William Shakespeare, Alexander Pushkin, Heinrich Heine, Reiner Maria Rilke, and others.

Leslie Crabtree has written one opera, Washington Square, based on the short novel by Henry James. Now he is working on a second opera, Measure for Measure, based on the play by William Shakespeare.

He has also written two song cycles: 9 Lieder, on the collection of poems by Heinrich Heine, from his Buch der Lieder; and a longer cycle, “Mains de Sable” (“Hands of Sand”), which is a set of 30 poems by the French-Canadian poet, Cécile Cloutier.

[Joseph Dillon Ford]

Hello, Jyothish.

I just discovered your post on classicalmusicnow today--many months after it was written! Sorry about the delay in replying! Thank you for your kind words and your charming Schubert sequence! You might enjoy my latest traditional pieces (a mix of "impressionistic and romantic elements) for the piano at Ye New Music Fayre:

http://www.deliansociety.org/ford_ynmf_2009.html

My colleagues in the Delian Society also offer some new tonal music you may enjoy:

http://deliansociety.org/ynmf_2009.html

So sorry again to have missed your earlier post!

Cordially,

Joe

Joseph Dillon Ford
Gainesville, Florida USA

Jyothish Babu said:

Hi
It is great to have a personnality like yours next to me atleast in this web page. It is really encouraging that we still have masters like you promoting serious and tonal music around. Enjoyed some of your works thru Delian Society - great. We do not have many around here too who takes this subject seriously - to preserve good old tonal music and to follow as it demands hard working. Even our beutiful and melodious Indian classsical music also is getting killed here in the name of fusion and modernisation. I was fortunate to get introduced to western classical music from my childhood and is trying to propagate the beuty and goodness of it as I can understanding all my limitations.(I believe that every one cannot be 'Sun' but a candle also can spread light) . I use Electronic and Digital Keyboards to re-create symphonies live. I'm dedicating Franz Schubert's Serenade performed (&sequeced) by me on my Roland Juno-G http://www.4shared.com/file/93367900/e48f07fb/Serenade-Jyothish.html to you as I'm sure you are going to wish me 'Good luck' on what I'm doing. With Symphonic regards
Jyothish

Joseph Dillon Ford said:

Hi, Jeff and our CMN colleagues.

There's a little bio about me on Wikipedia for anyone who might be interested ...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joseph_Dillon_Ford

so I'll keep this introduction brief. :-)

My interests are very broad, but my main focus today is on new tonal art music in all styles, from the most traditional to the newly emergent. I think modernism has pretty much run its course, and the death knell for tonality was sounded prematurely. Still, I'm keenly interested in exploring unfamiliar ground--anywhere and anywhen I discover it.

Current projects include a setting of my poem "Mythus" for SATB chorus and orchestra (about seven movements); the Variations concertantes sur le nom "Paul Verlaine" (with members of the Delian Society) for French bassonist Franck Leblois and string orchestra (first performance expected at Metz next March); and a barcarolle for wind quartet and strings. If all goes well, pianist Valentin Bogolubov will be premiering my suite Christopher's Closet (2007) in Canada some time in the foreseeable future (last year he introduced my Three Chromicons in Montreal).

Otherwise, I stay very busy with the Delian Society, doing what I can to promote professional and non-professional composers and musicians around the world through various Web-based activities, including several virtual music festivals. I recently joined NetNewMusic at the kind invitation of Mary Jane Leach, a musical friend I got to know through composer Christos Hatzis' old "Music and Spirituality" group.

When I'm not doing music and the usual practical chores, I enjoy writing, the visual arts, and reading (Shakespeare, Hemingway, and A. C. Doyle are at my bedside just now).

In case anybody finds it's relevant, I'm supporting Obama for president. At least the Democrats included the arts in their official platform! ;-) However, I've never been big on chasing down government grants; getting cozy with corporate musical entities (like the AMC); carrerism; or status-quo capitalism. I'm not a Buddhist, but find that Buddhist thinking resonates with my own.

Frankly, I think the world is in pretty lousy shape right now, and we "serious" musicians are an endangered species. If I were a multimillionnaire, I'd start a musicians colony in some balmy valley "over the hills and far away." But family and fiduciary circumstances keep me here in Gainesville, Florida.

I hope all this wasn't too dull!

Best,

:-)

Joe

[Nick]

Dear All,

I am new to this forum, however not new to classical music (although I am not a pro, I don’t even play an instrument, it's embarrassing). I love classical music, and I always found it a pity that only few people have found access to classical music and the great joy it can bring to our lives.
That's why I have recently written an article on how to enable "newbies" an easy access to it. I posted it on my blog and would very much appreciate your comments and ideas on how to make it even easier for beginners to get to know classical music.

A Guide to Enjoy Classical Music

Would be great to hear from you!

Thank you,
Nick

[Caryl Forrest]

Hello
Coming from a very musical family, music was always destined to play a vital part of my life.
I started off as a pianist and later took on the organ. And I sing.
I have been an accompanist for most of my life and have held a number of appointments as a church organist and choir director, and am a former member of Wellington Anglican Cathedral Choir.
I have a particular fondness for early music and was, for a time, president of a local early music group. I'm an occasional harpsichordist. And I love improvisation.

Caryl