From mashable.com:

“Wanna make a hit song? The ’standard’ way of doing it is learning to play an instrument, finding a couple more musicians, practice, create some songs, find a publisher…

…or you can scrap all that and let the YouTube (YouTube) community do the entire work for you. I’ve Got Nothing is a song that’s been entirely crowdsourced. A youngster called Charlie McDonnell, together with three other teenagers, have created the project as part of BBC’s ChartJackers, an attempt to break into the UK music charts without…well, pretty much everything: money, producer, studio, even musicians.”

Here’s the official description of how the song was created:

“The lyrics of the song are made up of YouTube comments, compiled into a song by another YouTuber. The lyrics were released and then YouTubers wrote a melody for the lyrics, and we picked our favourite. We held YouTube auditions via video response to pick the band, found the producer of the song through YouTube, and the music video is made up of literal interpretations of the lyrics, clapping and singing along, by YouTubers!

Very, very exciting to see this technology evolve. Let’s get our next Virtual Choir project crackin’!

The extraordinary Los Angeles Master Chorale, under the direction of Grant Gershon, will present “Composers From the Left Coast,” a concert featuring four west coast composers. Here’s the program:

Morten Lauridsen | Mid-Winter Songs
Ingram Marshall | Savage Alters (LA Premiere)
David O | A Map of Los Angeles
Eric Whitacre | Cloudburst

Those of you who came to the National Youth Choir of Great Britain concert in August and heard me conduct Cloudburst know that Disney Hall truly rocks the free world. And the other pieces on the program are just stunning – Lauridsen’s Mid-Winter Songs are among my favorite pieces ever for mixed choir, and David O’s A Map of Los Angeles brought down the house when it was premiered here two years ago. I’m so honored to be part of this program.

The Master Chorale has just let me know that I can offer a 25% discount to my friends, so if you will be in the area, and you are my friend (if you’re reading this, you’re my friend) then click it here for tickets:

Composers From the Left Coast; tickets for friends of EW

The concert begins at 7:00, but Grant Gershon, David O, Morten Lauridsen and I will all give a pre-concert talk beginning at 6:00. Hope to see you there!

Here’s a re-post of me conducting Cloudburst last March:

And here is the official press description from the Master Chorale:

Composers from the Left Coast

Los Angeles Master Chorale
Sunday, November 22 at 7 pm
Walt Disney Concert Hall

Part of the West Coast, Left Coast Festival, an LA Phil Festival at Walt Disney Concert Hall in November- December 2009, this concert spotlights four Left Coast composers. Mid-Winter Songs by our beloved Morten Lauridsen (premiered by the USC Chamber Singers with Grant Gershon in the chorus), based on Robert Graves’ passionate poetry, is rhythmically and harmonically propulsive. A Map of Los Angeles will be reprised after its stunning success two seasons ago. Originally part of the LA is the World commissioning project, Map celebrates the diversity of Los Angeles in an exuberant, yet intimate, snapshot. Ingram Marshall is a New Yorker who “found his voice” when he came to the West Coast in the 1970s. In Savage Altars he juxtaposes ancient texts for choir, violin, viola and prerecorded sounds to achieve a beautiful and wistful tapestry of sound. Eric Whitacre’s extraordinarily evocative Cloudburst is, in the composer’s words, “a celebration of the unleashed kinetic energy in all things.”

Have you ever started laughing with your best friend and simply could not stop? Not sure if these two are best friends, or sisters, but this has to be one of the most infectious videos I’ve seen in a long, long time. I was smiling the entire way through.

Does anyone know who this is? I love love love how committed she is to singing it, and the looks her friend/sister is giving her. Seriously made my day.

Ah, composition competitions; there are hundreds, maybe thousands, every year, all over the world. Should you enter? Should you not? I’ve entered a lot of them over the years, and based on my personal experience the answer is yes. Competitions are a good thing, and offer a number of benefits to the emerging composer, as long as you know what those benefits are. To wit:

Exposure. Most of the time the judges in these contests are prominent conductors, or administrators, or publishers, and these are exactly the kinds of people you want to hear your music. Even if you don’t win (you won’t win – more on that later) you might leave a terrific impression on a single judge or the entire panel, and they may begin to follow your work more closely. Several times I’ve lost a competition and had the judges call me to ask if they could program my ‘loser’ score.

You’ll finish the piece. I don’t think I’ve ever seen a competition that is looking for “sketches” of a piece; they all want a finished product, ready to perform. This is great for you, because the application date  becomes a concrete deadline to motivate you to complete your masterpiece. Then when you don’t win (seriously, you won’t win) you’ll have a finished work ready to shop around.

It will steel your will and prepare you for a career filled with rejection. Did I mention that you won’t win? In the last 18 years I’ve probably entered a hundred competitions and I have never won anything. Nothing. I lost the ASCAP Young Composers award three times (in three different years I entered When David Heard, Lux Aurumque, and Cloudburst, lost with all three). I lost the Dale Warland Singers competition, where I entered a never-performed piece called Water Night (although Dale decided to publish Water Night in his choral series, and the ‘winning’ piece from that year remains unpublished). Just last week I received a very nice letter from the good people at United States Artists, informing me that while my application was well received (all that interesting music you’ve written!), it didn’t merit an award.

But here’s the thing: I’m glad I’ve never won. It makes me feel like an outsider, makes me feel misunderstood, keeps me hungry, all the things that are essential tools for being a composer. You’ll be better for losing, because in your heart you’ll know you should have won, and the injustice will help drive you forward.

That’s an important point to remember: it is injustice. Composition competitions are hopelessly biased. The juries do their best, but they are just human beings looking at a lot of scores, all through their own personal opinion of what constitutes a ‘good’ piece. (Years after a student competition at Juilliard I was told by a jury member that they had rejected the score to my string transcription of Water Night – without even listening to the recording – because it looked too ’simple’ to be a sophisticated piece. I remember thinking, “but the simplicity is the whole frickin’ point!”).

Don’t worry about winning. As a composer you are going to get turned down a lot, by conductors, by music publishers, by critics; it’s all just part of the gig. Entering competitions and not winning is a great way to get used to the lifestyle, the drive to just keep writing, forging ahead. For me, it’s been a way to develop an ‘inner-compass’, a sort of quiet confidence that it doesn’t really matter if I win or lose; the work alone is it’s own reward.

Finally, and this is a big point: I never enter a competition that requires me to submit my application with a fee. Fran Richards, the extraordinary Vice President & Director of Concert Music at ASCAP, passionately advances this philosophy, and I couldn’t agree with her more. Don’t ever pay to be a part of one of these competitions; they are lucky to be getting an application from you.

So go out there and apply, dear friends, with head held high. Send them your very best work and prepare for rejection. You never know who might hear it, or how it might influence your career, now or ten years from now. And just think: at the very least you’ll have a beautifully engraved piece that you can turn around and send to the next reject… er, competition.

So it’s official: on October 24th, 2010, I’ll be conducting the premiere of a new piece for the London Symphony Orchestra and Chorus. The concert will be in the Barbican, a gorgeous performance space in London and permanent home to the LSO. In case you’re wondering, the excitement has already caused my head to explode. Several times.

Equally exciting is that they have asked me to conduct the rest of the concert, and this is where I need your help. Please post for me your favorite pieces from the chorus/orchestra repertoire – they can be from any time period and by composers of any nationality. I’m just brainstorming at this point, and would love to hear your suggestions.

I’ve already decided that I’ll do Vaughan Williams’ haunting An Oxford Elegy, which is scored for a smallish orchestra, chorus, and narrator. It runs about 22 minutes. My commissioned piece (which will be probably for larger orchestra and chorus, double winds and strings) will be 15-20 minutes. Not sure which text I’ll use yet.

That leaves a good 45 minutes of music to program. When posting your pieces, make sure the orchestra isn’t too big (I can’t use something massive, no triple winds for example), but really, no suggestion is too crazy. I’m just looking for ideas.

And will any of you be in London for the premiere? Should be quite a party!

Following the same formula of the successful Paris je t’aime, New York, I Love You is a series of vignettes from several different writers and directors.

You can hear Hila on the chapter made by director Shekhar Kapur, singing an original, beautiful French art song by composer Paul Cantelon. Hila hasn’t seen it yet (she recorded the song without picture), but apparently, Shekhar Kapur’s contribution is gorgeous, with Julie Christie stars as a retired opera singer, and Shia LeBouef as (I think) a bellhop. The script was written by writer/director Anthony Minghella just before he died.

Hila and I will probably have to wait for video to see it (babysitter issues), but if anyone out there catches it this weekend, please post here and let us know what you think.

Here’s a still from the film, Julie Christie and Shia LeBeouf:

And here’s the trailer:

Here they are, beautifully engraved by Jonathan Mott. Three cheers for Jonathan!

Lux Aurumque: Soprano I + solo

Lux Aurumque: Sopranos II & III

Lux Aurumque: Altos I & II

Lux Aurumque: Tenors I & II

Lux Aurumque: Basses I & II

Now you truly have no excuses. BE COOL! UPLOAD YOUR VIDEO! CHOIR GEEKS OF THE WORLD UNITE!

Woo hoo! There’s already a few videos up on YouTube, including THREE bass II’s. That’s just a serious amount of testosterone. You can already tell how terrific it’s going to sound…

Just a reminder: try to keep any white noise to a minimum, especially the sound of your computer fan. You can hear some of that background noise on these videos, and you can imagine how loud that will be once we get a couple of hundred singers.

Let’s keep ‘em coming, and bravo to these brave leaders!

I am truly proud to announce the Eric Whitacre Scholarship, graciously sponsored by DCINY.

It’s all pretty simple: DCINY and I will choose four singers (one from each voice part, SATB) to sing with me in the Carnegie Hall performance of my Paradise Lost: Shadows and Wings. (June 15th, 2010).

Those four singers will have their entire performance fee ($590.00) waived.  In addition, all four will join me at my table for dinner at the post-concert gala, which will take place at a swanky New York restaurant immediately following the performance.

The only application you will need will be your Virtual Choir Lux Aurumque video. Once you’ve uploaded it to YouTube, just put the word “scholarship” in the description and in the tags. That way we will know that you would like to be considered.

If you’ve already posted your video, just add the word “scholarship” now. And if you’ve already signed up for the trip and paid your money to perform, that money will be refunded in full if you are awarded the scholarship.

The criteria is simple as well: we’re looking for strong, pure singing; musicality; and passion. I know that all of you have all those qualities in abundance, so it’s going to be a tough call picking just four singers.

Here is a video that DCINY and MK8 media made to accompany the announcement, and I think it nicely encapsulates the reason I wanted to establish a scholarship: Once, long ago, a single teacher took a chance on me, believed in me, and changed my life forever. I’d love nothing more than to do the same for four outstanding singers.

Good luck!

I’ve watched this video a dozen times over the past week, and each time the experience seems richer and deeper and more moving than the last.

I’m going to try to get the rights to some of Carl Sagan’s ‘poetry’ and set it to music, maybe a big piece for chorus and orchestra. God, I just love the internet.