A contemporary composer is very lucky ....

Let's play out the old year with a really positive story.

Vanessa Lann (right) graduated from Harvard, and now lives and composes in the Netherlands, check out her excellent web site for a full biography. (Why are there so many exciting women composers around? - I have also written recently about Judith Weir, Jane O'Leary, and Odaline de la Martinez).

Vanessa's compositions include elements of ritual, ceremony or contemplation. She experiments with breaking from the conventional concert-hall approach to the performance and programming of music, and explores alternative ways of sharing sound, media and time with audiences, with the end objective of blurring the boundary between art and daily experience.

Earlier this month I previewed the December performances in the Netherlands of Vanessa's new composition for cantor, choir and instrumental ensemble 'Illuminating Aleph'. So I was delighted to receive today this wonderfully positive and appreciative update from Vanessa on the concerts:

Dear Pliable,

The concerts went really well! I was quite fortunate to work with a fantastic choir (Cappella Amsterdam), as well as an extraordinary cantor from Chicago (Alberto Mizrahi). I attended 5 out of the 7 performances, and it was also interesting to have a different acoustic in each hall, as well as a different atmosphere and expectation from the audiences (for instance, some audiences approached the event from a "new music" perspective, others from a "spiritual"/holiday one). The instrumentalists and conductor, David Porcelijn, were also totally heavenly! I was very, very lucky. These situations don't come around all that often for composers, as you know...

Thanks again for your posting of the info, and for your interest! I really do love reading your blog, by the way. And Happy Holidays!

All the best,

Vanessa Lann


..... let's hope 2006 is as productive and positive for other composers, musicians, fellow bloggers and readers.

Report broken links, missing images and other errors to - overgrownpath at hotmail dot co dot uk
Photo credit - Gerhard van Roon photographer via www.lann.dds.nl
Image owners - if you do not want your picture used in this article please contact me and it will be removed. If bandwidth is a problem with your permission I will host your image.
If you enjoyed this post take An Overgrown Path to Hildegard comes to Norwich via IRCAM and Darmstadt

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