The Rivers School Conservatory presents its 39th Annual Seminar on Contemporary Music for the Young on Friday, April 7th through Sunday, April 9th in Weston, Massachusetts.
The Contemporary Seminar was founded in 1978 to address the need of young performers and general audiences to hear, play, and learn the music of their time. Each seminar’s programming is truly unique. Pieces are performed only once, so that repertoire composed within the last 25 years is constantly being explored. To date, the seminar has presented 2,771 new pieces from more than 1,601 composers, 599 premieres, and 164 commissioned works.
This year’s featured composer is Matthew Aucoin, an alumni of The Rivers School Conservatory. Aucoin is currently Artist-in-Residence at the Los Angeles Opera as both a conductor and composer. His works have been performed by Yo-Yo Ma, Boston’s A Far Cry, American Repertory Theater, Lyric Opera of Chicago, Metropolitan Opera, Alabama Symphony, LA Chamber Orchestra, New York Philharmonic, and more. Aucoin is a graduate of Harvard College and studied piano, theory, and composition at The Rivers School Conservatory.
For this special occasion he composed “Finery Forge,” a work for two pianists, which will receive its world premiere on Sunday, April 9th by two RSC piano students. Aucoin commented on his inspiration for this composition:
“A finery forge is a massive hearth in which iron is refined … I see the piano as a kind of forge for music: the modern concert grand is an industrial-strength machine, a crucible-like behemoth of interlocking parts, filled with hammers intended to strike musical sparks out of their strings. In short, it’s a finery forge. This shiny black wood-and-metal monster is capable of astonishing refinement when it’s in good hands. But those “good hands” must themselves undergo a crucible of musical training if they want to wrest refined sounds out of the forge.”
The weekend of concerts, composition workshops, informal receptions, and composer meet-and-greets, takes place at The Rivers School Conservatory, 333 Winter Street, Weston, MA. Nearly 75 composers will be featured; many local composers attend and offer remarks about their music before the performances.
Tickets and complete schedule information available at www.riversschoolconservatory.org.
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