a thousand flowers

Is this one flower or two? Beats me. At any rate, we need at least 998 more.

Thanks to the good offices of Will Robin, 21st century orchestra music has taken over Facebook and Twitter, under the hashtag #21cOrch. I've listened to a good bit of this music over the last few weeks, and I have to say that I've been impressed with both the wide stylistic diversity of the music and with its quality. Whether I like a given piece or not (which is one of the least important aspects of writing about music), it's great to take note of the vitality in the field.

When I was in school the last thing anyone would do is write an orchestra piece on spec--American orchestras didn't play new music, at least not if you weren't a big name. (I wrote a piece in the 80s and one in the 90s, both for specific occasions and they both got performed once.)

The recent increase in performance of new music by American orchestras is a good thing. I look forward to hearing more.