I only just today discovered that in his blog entry of May 29, 2009, It's Pretty and It's Easy, Sibelius' Product Manager Daniel Spreadbury wrote about how Sibelius has since addressed all the issues I discussed in my article, It Isn't Pretty Being Easy, which raked Sibelius over the coals. Daniel was gracious beyond all reason in his communication with me back then, and he remained so in this blog entry.

Unfortunately the blog entry is now closed to comments, as I would have like to post my congratulations to Daniel and the Sibelius team for their hard work and dedication to what is undoubtedly one of the most difficult challenges to software developers: creating a robust and yet intuitive application to create musical notation.

Best wishes, Daniel, and while I don't need to say it, keep up the good work!

Last night the Manitoba Chamber Orchestra and guest conductor Scott Yoo performed my Suite from Pyramus and Thisbe here in Winnipeg at the Westminster Church. It was only the second performance of the work in the nearly 20 years since I first began sketching it.

And a terrific performance it was! The group only began rehearsing the piece the day before, but in spite of the typical first rehearsal rough edges, I could tell this was going to be a great concert.

My heartfelt thanks to concertmaster Karl Stobbe, principal cellist Yuri Hooker and principal violist Daniel Scholz for beautiful, shimmering solo work (of which there is a LOT in this piece).

Here is a very lovely review of the performance from the Winnipeg Free Press.

Gads, was I REALLY that full of myself?

I just came across a Letter to the Editor I wrote in 1987, in response to an article in Commentary Magazine entitled "Atonal Music and Its Limits" by Neil M. Ribe (who is a not a music theorist, but a geophysicist). The magazine — a weird, right-wing rag that I should have ignored — has published the letter in their on-line archive.

I remember Mr. Ribe's article well. It's full of the most laughable bullshit I'd ever come across, posing as scientific, acoustical proof that atonal music is bad for you. The worst of it is, he didn't even get the science right, so left me with one of those I-don't-even-know-where-to-start dilemmas.

I responded with a hugely long letter, which Commentary published nearly in its entirety. It opens with "As one who tries to discuss music in intelligent and informative ways, I was most distressed to read..." And then I get really nasty.

You can read my letter here (3rd one down on the page). You'll get the gist of Ribe's article from my letter, but if you're knowledgeable about music theory and want a good laugh, you can read the whole thing here.

The Seattle Chamber Music Festival has commissioned Jeffery Cotton to compose a new work for flute, viola and harp, to be premiered during the Festival's 2008 summer season.

The venerable American Academy of Arts and Letters has awarded Jeffery Cotton the Walter Hinrichsen Award for the publication of a work by C.F. Peters.

You can read the press release here.

The Cypress String Quartet has released their new recording of Jeffery Cotton's String Quartet No. 1, which the ensemble commissioned in 2003 as part of their Call and Response program.

You find more information about the recording here, and can purchase it from amazon.com.

I hope they had fun thinking this one up.

Go to the following link, read the instructions on the Submission Guidelines, and then click the icon.

www.presser.com/composers

Yehudi Wyner

Just yesterday I was listening to NPR, and heard the announcement that Yehudi Wyner, a wonderful composer and good friend, has been awarded the 2006 Pulizter Prize in Music.

Congratulations, Yehudi!

The Denision New Music Festival, at Denison University in Granville, Ohio, programmed my Symphony for Strings — well, half of it, anyway — and then pulled the piece when I said I couldn't be there.

Given that they weren't going to cover travel or hotel expenses, never mind pay an honorarium, their requirement that all composers attend the festival or have their works pulled is difficult to justify. I think it's time composers started speaking up about this kind of treatment. I'm first! Click here to read it.

Yes, I will be at the Atlantic Center... as an attendee, not as a Master Artist (not that this should surprise anyone, but I am old, you know).

I'll be working with Yehudi Wyner, a composer who has been very supportive of me in the past and from whom I'm looking forward to learning a thing or two about writing art song.

If you’re looking for my article raking Sibelius over the coals — that’s Sibelius the software program, not the composer — you'll find it here. I say that if you care about what comes out of your printer at the end of the day, you’d better look elsewhere.

How Rude!

My new duo for violin and percussion, Meditation, Rhapsody and Bacchanal, was premiered in Tucson, Arizona on March 11th, and it went brilliantly. The Arizona Daily Star quoted me earlier in the week as saying that “audiences will love this,” and that I think it’s a “a wonderful piece.” Let me set the record straight on that one, please!

Jeffery Cotton's latest article rejects the idea that we have to lure young people back into the classical music hall with gadgets and sex (yes, gadgets!). Click here to read it.

Jeffery is now keeping a blog (God help us) while he's at the Camargo Foundation in Cassis, France, through the end of May. It's just getting started, but please click through and take a look.

Jeffery Cotton's essay The Agony of Modern (German) Music is now available on this website in German. One reader describes the article as hitting the “bull's eye concerning the common style of composing in Germany nowadays.”

• The English Version

• Die Deutsche Version

San Francisco based Composers, Inc. is presenting the Cypress String Quartet in Jeffery Cotton's String Quartet No. 1 on November 23rd, 2004 in the Green Room (Verterans Building). The work was commissioned and premiered by the Cypress Quartet earlier this year. The San Jose Mercury News describes Cotton's work as music that "pops like a champagne cork and then summons the mood of empty city streets at midnight."

This is Composers, Inc.'s twenty-first season of presenting new American music. Also on the program are Daniel Asia's String Quartet No. 2 and Jennifer Higdon's Impressions.

The Cypress String Quartet

The San Francisco based Cypress String Quartet premiered Jeffery Cotton's String Quartet No. 1 on March 19, 2004, at the Yerba Buena Center in San Francisco, and followed with three more performances around the Bay area over the following week. The new work was commissioned as part of the ensemble's Call and Response program, and was programmed together with the Haydn op. 33 no. 5 and the Mozart K. 421.

In the Mercury News, reviewer Richard Scheinin says the new quartet "charmed, frightened and rang out with song." Click here to read the entire review.

The Composer's Studio at Camargo, Cassis, France

The Camargo Foundation of Cassis, France has awarded Jeffery Cotton a 2004 Fellowship. Jeffery will be composer-in-residence at the Foundation facilities in Cassis, France, from mid-January through the end of May, 2005.

The project Jeffery submitted to the Foundation is a new sonata-cycle. The three works, one each for violin and piano, viola and piano, and cello and piano, will be called Three Sonatas to Bulgakov's "The Master and Margarita", and will be composed simultaneously.

The Metamorphosen Chamber Orchestra, under the direction of music director Scott Yoo, offered two brilliant premiere performances of Jeffery Cotton's Symphony for Strings on Friday, January 23rd in Troy, New York, at the Troy Savings Bank Music Hall, and on Saturday, January 24th in Boston at Jordan Hall. On Monday (1/26) Boston Globe music critic Richard Dyer described the Symphony as "a lively, attractive, and intelligent piece with some nifty surprises to reward close attention." Click here to read the full review.

The Tucson-based Arizona Friends of Chamber Music have commissioned Jeffery Cotton to write a new work for violin and percussion, to be premiered during their 2005 Festival (March 6 through 13, 2005). Cotton will compose the work specifically for violinist Joseph Lin and percussionist Svetoslav Stoyanov.

The Cypress String Quartet

The San Francisco based Cypress String Quartet has commissioned a new work from Jeffery Cotton, which will be premiered in March 2004, and performed on tour through California. The new work, String Quartet No. 1, is part of the ensemble's Call and Response commissioning program, and will be programmed together with the Haydn op. 33 no. 5 and the Mozart K. 421. Cotton's work is to reflect, in a manner of the composer's choosing, the relationship between the two extant works.

Jeffery hard at work on his balcony at the Villa Orbiana overlooking Bogliasco.

The Boliasco Foundation awarded Jeffery Cotton a fellowship for work at the Liguria Study Center in Bogliasco, Italy, just outside of Genova. Jeffery worked at the center from November 15th through December 16th, where he enjoyed spectacular views, the wonderful mild temeratures of the Golfo Paradiso, and even managed to put the finishing touches on his new Symphony for Strings for the Metamorphosen Chamber Orchestra. The work will be performed in Troy, New York at the Troy Savings Bank Music Hall on January 23rd, 2004, and at Jordan Hall in Boston on January 24th.

An annual festival of new music in Darmstadt, Germany, the Tage für Neue Musik, administered by the Akademie für Tonkunst, featured the music of Jeffery Cotton on a so-called "Portraitkonzert," or "Portrait Concert," Saturday, March 8, 2003 at the Akademie. The evening included an interview with Jeffery, and the performance of five of his works: Serenade for cello and chamber orchestra, Trio for clarinet, cello and harp, Seven Runic Songs, for viola, guitar and harp, Aria notturna, for alto flute and piano (performed by Jeffery Cotton's former mentor, Daniel Kessner, and his wife Dolly Kessner). Also on the program was a new work written especially for the concert, Night Music, for trumpet, piano and bass.

The concert was very well attended and well received, especially Night Music, which openly spoofs the current American administration. And the Darmstadter Echo described Cotton's Serenade as "an intensely expressive piece of music... an intricate web of formal cross-references."