Emperor Under Glass for solo piano

New publication Emperor Under Glass for solo piano. Get your FREE PDF here.

I wrote Emperor Under Glass in a single day on Monday December 7, 2009 as a response to an open invitation from Australia’s Aurora Festival to create a new work for solo piano on the theme of “Momentary Pleasures.” Beethoven's Emperor concerto played every week on our turntable while I was growing up. I loved the opening energetic arpeggios and was always disappointed when the main theme came in. Thus, these arpeggios were a momentary pleasure that I wished could go on forever. Now I understand it is the resonance to which I was attracted, and which quietly becomes the subject in my short piece.

On closing music programs and Programs of Choice in the Vancouver Public School System and province-wide

Today I wrote an Op Ed piece that I posted on the Decimating the Arts in Canada blog. Click on the title to read the entire article.

The Collaborative Piano Blog: John Oliver's Fantasie #1 from the Hot Tempered Clavier

The Collaborative Piano Blog: John Oliver's Fantasie #1 from the Hot Tempered Clavier

Chris Foley introduces his readers to my warped Bach music.

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Concept and Idiom: composition and guitar

Recently, at the Northwest Guitar Festival, I gave a lecture on my music, tracing my beginnings as a young guitarist, through my discovery and passion for avant-garde and experimental music, whose force – along with the encouragement of my then-teacher, the American composer John Adams – propelled me into full-time composition studies culminating in multiple prizes and a full-time freelance career, that, in 1999 led me back to composing for guitar (after an opera, several symphonies and lots of chamber music & electronic music). During that lecture, I played excerpts from Guacamayo's 11,000th Polemic (No. 1) and showed parallels with passages from my award-winning composition El Reposo del Fuego (for DX7II/TX802 synths & tape) and the guitar quartet PRISMOPHONY which the audience was to hear that same evening. A great deal of interest was generated in this piece, and so I decided to recopy the music and prepare it for publication.

A NEW ONLINE PRESENTATION
I also realized the educational value of the presentation and so have now published it online. You can access it here.

A NEW PUBLICATION
I wrote Guacamayo's 11,000th Polemic (No. 1) in 1985.  This revolutionary work uses the slide ("bottleneck") on the classical guitar in a way that no piece of music ever had. The music is a mixture of driving rhythm and sliding effects that takes the listener into a sound world that becomes unrecognizable as "guitar." Musique concrète (French electroacoustic music from the mid-20th century that used transformed recorded sounds mixed together in a studio to create life-experience-based poetic music) is a clear influence, along with visitations by the specters of post-spectralism and Nancarrowesque imitation. You can listen to an excerpt here. Watch for an announcement in this space when the publication becomes available for purchase.

Listen to an excerpt from the opening to Guacamayo's 11,000th Polemic (No. 1)

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MINIMUSICA: 15 Concert Studies for Classical Guitar GROUP BUY

In conjunction with John Oliver's participation in the Northwest Guitar Festival, johnolivermusic.com is offering a GROUP BUY of the score for "Minimusica: 15 Concert Studies for Classical Guitar" until May 31. Sign up now to also receive a free copy of the new publication "Sarabandas."

http://earsay.com/johnolivermusic/store/groupbuy/groupbuy.php

Northwest Guitar Festival 2010 – Conclusion

Northwest Guitar Festival 2010 – Conclusion

A post from Bradford Werner, a member of the Victoria Guitar Trio, who, together with Victoria Conservatory of Music guitar department head Alexander Dunn, performed my guitar quartet PRISMOPHONY on Friday night.

The Northwest Guitar Festival performance of PRISMOPHONY guitar quartet

The Northwest Guitar Festival has been a real pleasure. Taking place in Victoria, BC, Canada from April 9 - 11, the festival features a guitar competition, concerts, and master classes. I have been Guest Composer at this edition. Here's a brief report from the first two days.

My presentation "The Music of John Oliver" was a success and I think prepared the participants in the festival (and audience) not only for the appearance of my music on the program, but also other contemporary works. I was glad to hear from audience that they were fascinated by my story of a life in music that begins with classical guitar, moves to electronic music, operas and symphonies, and then back to classical guitar, with the influence of all of these filtering back into some of the new guitar music.

The performance of my guitar quartet PRISMOPHONY by Alex Dunn and friends on Friday night was excellent. The audience appreciated my spectral canon technique that is featured in three of the work's four movements. It's wonderful to create musical structures that take the listener on a journey to a rarified sonic place that might be called "avant-garde," but to do so in a sonic context that baths the listener in resonant sound that is soothing, yet in constant motion.

Last night featured great performances by two outstanding guitarists: Stephen Lochbaum and Janet Grohovac, playing beautifully programs of challenging favourites of the guitar repertoire. Both former Alex Dunn students, their tone and approach to phrasing show the power and strength we might expect from his best students.

2 pm concerts by Continuum Consort, Victoria Guitar Trio, Oberon Trio and Duo Verdejo all offered varied and mixed programming, with a lot of new music. No time for a "review" but suffice to say that there were no real disappointments in any of these concerts.

Must run. More activities today.

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