Music in Trains

Electroacoustic composers have a long way to go before they can become friends with audiences and performers (and this is coming from a composer with some success in this medium). Last week, I guest-lectured to college sophomore music majors and found out that only two of them knew any electroacoustic music (one was a composer, the other recently heard my Eastern Pinnacle for Clarinet and CD). This is even more surprising considering they had just had a unit in electroacoustic music in their Music History/Literature course.

Clearly, there is a disconnect between audiences when college music students have troubles naming one piece.

The short answer to this question: I do.

I recently had a reading of my piano piece The Fall, written for and performed by James Praznik. He decided to perform from memory and drew criticism from another colleague who believed that playing from memory put yet one more barrier between the transmission from composer to audience.