#mod liszt

[musiciansagainstelitism]

mod liszt is back and ready to rumble!! i may have just mentioned this blog on two of my college essays

i’m gonna see if i can get some of the other mods to help me write musician spotlights again, but i honestly want to branch out the focus of this blog past only that kind of thing. that said, if you have any ideas for other kinds of posts we can make, PLEASE send them over!! 

i love y’all and i missed this blog so much 

[musiciansagainstelitism]

Musician Spotlight: Margaret Bonds

(Every month, Musicians Against Elitism will feature one lesser-known composer belonging to a minority demographic. If you have any ideas, please feel free to send them over! For further reading, here’s the rest of our musician spotlight series.)  

Margaret Bonds is an American pianist and composer. She is also one of the first black classical composers and performers to gain recognition. She is perhaps best known for her collaborations with Langston Hughes. 

Bonds was born in Chicago, Illinois to Dr. Monroe Majors and Estella C. Bonds. Her parents divorced when she was very young and so Margaret and her mother both assumed the lasts name Bonds. Margaret’s mother was a church organist who taught her to play piano at the age of 5. When she turned 13, she began to study composition with 2 African American composers named William Dawson and Florence Price (who we’ve done a spotlight of!). She also studied piano with Price. 

Bonds enrolled at Northwestern University in 1929 at the age of 16. She was awarded the Wanamaker prize in 1932 for her composition “Sea Ghost”, acheiving national recognition. As a  pianist, she made her debut at New York’s Town Hall in 1932. She was the pianist with the Chicago Women’s Orchestra the next year when they played the D minor Piano Concertino written by Florence Price. It was conducted by Ebba Sundstrom and broadcast on CBS.

Margaret Bonds’s most acclaimed piece is “Troubled Water”. Maya Angelou has been quoted calling it a “masterpiece”. She also frequently collaborated with Langston Hughes, a well-known poet, playwright, novelist, and columnist. Some of her best known works are with Hughes, including the musical “Shakespeare in Harlem” and the cantata “Ballad of the Brown King”.

Here are some of our favorites of Margaret Bonds’ compositions: 

Stopping By Woods

To A Brown Girl, Dead (TW for very sad/dark themes)

Troubled Water

Sources https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Margaret_Bonds http://www.blackpast.org/aah/bonds-margaret-1913-1972 http://chevalierdesaintgeorges.homestead.com/bonds.html

Written by Mod Holst, edited by Mod Liszt 

[musiciansagainstelitism]

I just saw someone call a bass guitar "not a real instrument". Bassists are musicians just as classical violinists are musicians and their instruments are real and take dedication. Tired of the elitism against musicians who play popular music and their instruments! So glad blogs like this exist though to combat ideas like these <3

some asshole on music tumblr: basses aren’t real instruments!! oh but cannons and hammers most certainly are 

[musiciansagainstelitism]

Hello. I'm a girl that wants to play the tuba but don't really know where to start. Thoughts? Suggestions? Snide remarks?

just go for it! if you’re in school and there’s a band, ask how you can join and where you can get lessons. if not, your local music store probably has instruments and books for you to learn from if you can’t get lessons.

either way, don’t let anyone tell you the tuba isn’t a “girl’s instrument”. best of luck!!

[musiciansagainstelitism]

Musician Spotlight: Jennifer Higdon

(Every month, Musicians Against Elitism will feature one lesser-known composer belonging to a minority demographic. If you have any ideas, please feel free to send them over! For further reading, here’s the rest of our musician spotlight series.)  

Jennifer Higdon is an American composer of vocal, choral, orchestral, and wind ensemble music, as well as a recipient of both the Pulitzer Prize and a Grammy Award for two of her concerti. She currently lives with her wife in Philadelphia. 

Higdon was born in Brooklyn, New York, but moved to Atlanta, Georgia and then Seymour, Tennessee. Her father, a freelance artist, helped expose her to avant-garde art at an early age, which still influences her compositional style today. She got her start in music playing flute and percussion for her high school marching and concert bands, despite being mostly self-taught. While in high school, she met her wife Cheryl Lawson, who she married in 2010 with conductor Marin Alsop officiating. Higdon went on to major in flute performance at Bowling Green State University, where she first began to consider composition as a career option.

The most popular work by Higdon is blue cathedral, a tribute to her brother who passed away due to cancer. According to the League of American Orchestras, it was the most frequently performed modern work during the 2007-2008 season, with more than 400 performances and appearances on over four dozen CDs. She also wrote an opera, Cold Mountain, set during the American Civil War. It was premiered in 2016 by the Santa Fe Opera. 

Higdon’s musical style has been described as “authentic,” “accessible,” and “very strong rhythmically”. Her Concerto for Orchestra received incredible critical acclaim. As one journalist wrote, "it [was] rare to witness a big new orchestral piece being acclaimed as Jennifer Higdon's Concerto for Orchestra was cheered on”. Higdon is also known for her violin concerto which received the 2010 Pulitzer Prize in Music, as well as her percussion concerto which won the 2009 Grammy Award for contemporary classical composition. 

Here are some of our favorites of Jennifer Higdon’s compositions:

Percussion Concerto 

blue cathedral (for orchestra) 

Viola Sonata 

Sources:  http://www.nytimes.com/2010/04/22/arts/music/22higdon.html?_r=1& http://jenniferhigdon.com/biography.html https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jennifer_Higdon#Reception http://www.classicalite.com/articles/11142/20140906/white-cathedral-curtis-composer-jennifer-higdon-marries-cheryl-lawson-baltimore-symphony-music-director-marin-alsop-officiates-ceremony.htm

Written by Mod Liszt

[musiciansagainstelitism]

Hello! I know a guy who is a HUGE classical music snob and I showed him your blog and he just sorta sat there speechless for a bit... Thank you for everything that you are doing, you are helping to eliminate the elitists one by one!

no problem!! we love what we do, and it’s stories like this that make the work worth it.

~mod liszt 

[musiciansagainstelitism]

These iconic female artists are proving that age is just a number

Here are ten amazing women who are still commanding the stage, and the big fees.

@classicfm​ i found this article on my facebook feed, and because it’s women’s history month, we thought it’d be appropriate to post it on our blog as well. thank you so much for taking the time to write it!! 

~mod liszt 

[musiciansagainstelitism]

Musician Spotlight: Gustavo Mon-Dieu Porquoi

(My naem is MAE,

an i leik song

its trooly fun

to plae a long

but wen its nyte 

i tipe with feer

to see spotlight

please click the here)

Gustavo Mon-Dieu Porquoi is an American composer with a wide range of compositions under his belt. He has been nominated for 30 Grammys and is widely considered to be the father of modern avant-garde composing. He is also gay as fucking hell and has like 9 whole husbands shit is lit my dude.

Porquoi was born and raised in Hellville, Ohio to his parents Julia and Ricardo Porquoi. His house was very musical, his mother was a professional jazz oboe and octavin player and his older brother Jeremy went on to physically evolve into John Cage somehow. He began composing at 11 years old, starting with his famous “Vivace for 13 Oboes and a Scarecrow”. He was always a lover of the avant-garde and out of the ordinary, and continued to almost exclusively write in this style, until he hit the age of 35, when he wrote his “Concerto for Sopranino Recorder and Piccolo”, in which he chose to use the 2 most annoying instruments he could think of and use them beautifully. (Author’s note: I actually high key love recorders.)

He studied music education and composition at the Sniggledap Conservatory in New York, there his friend and future 5th husband Amadeus Housuer, let him try his cello. Porquoi immediately fell in love with the instrument and began to learn all the string instruments he could. Which later evolved to woodwinds and percussion too. Around the time he began to pick up all these instruments was when he composed his first Orchestral Suite: “Tabatha and the City of Rainbows” which was critically acclaimed.

Here are some of our favorites of Gustavo Mon-Dieu Porquoi’s compositions:

Concerto for Sopranino Recorder and Piccolo

Isle of the Damned (For Choir)

Over the Sunset (For Percussion Ensemble)

Sources:

https://www.google.com/search?rlz=1C1CHBF_enUS731US731&espv=2&biw=1366&bih=662&tbm=isch&sa=1&q=a+nice+doggo&oq=a+nice+doggo&gs_l=img.3...7978.9675.0.9766.0.0.0.0.0.0.0.0..0.0....0...1c.1.64.img..0.0.0.vqRsSGAPaOI#imgrc=hA1GO8DMBdoGIM:

Written by Mod Holst, edited by Mod Liszt and Mod Chopin 

Special thanks to our friend Ian @lieutenant-jupiter for composing the music for us!

HAPPY APRIL FOOL’S DAY EVERYONE! The real spotlight for April will be here soon!