Alexandra Gardner | Building Noises

This is turning into a deliciously summery summer, with plenty of exercise (jogging and tennis are my favorites!), fresh vegetables and fruit, spontaneous friend gatherings, sunsets watched from the roof deck.
I am heading out once more to North Carolina, this time for a little beach romp at Blackbeard’s home. Having spent nearly every summer of [...]

Has anyone read this article in The Atlantic?? I thought I was just becoming really scattered; turns out my brain is being reformatted, and it is totally catching!
Truthfully, since entering into a more “webby” existence, my book reading habit has slowed to a crawl…measures are being put in place to fix that. After all, I [...]

Today I’m packing for a trip to Denver, CO, to attend the National Performing Arts Convention 2008. It’s quite a thing - performing arts organizations and artists of all shapes and sizes are gathering together to figure out how we can work more cohesively to create a sustainable future for the performing arts in the [...]

Tomorrow night the group Barcelona Modern Project will play my piece Crows at Auditorio SGAE (Sociedad General De Autores Y Editores is the Spanish equivalent of ASCAP), in a program of otherwise all-Catalan composers. I’ve never met the BMP folks in person - they started up around the time I returned to the US at [...]

Hi! Another quick note to say that there are some new recordings posted… for those of you who haven’t found it yet, you can hear The Way of Ideas here (and here as well), and Mythimna Twilight is here.
Many thanks to Flawn Williams (who does not have a web site, but hopefully will soon!) for [...]

There are so many guitar and saxophone duos in the world! Who even knew?! I think that most (if not all) of them were in North Carolina for the festival at UNC Wilmington, and it was a huge treat to hear them play. They have wonderful elegant names too, like Ryoanji, Sygyzy, Degre 21, [...]

First of all, what is going on with all these website hits from Arizona? This tends to happen in spring. It is college/university final paper crunch time, and I’m guessing that somewhere out there in the desert is a list of living, breathing composers that require research and documentation. I’m certain it was originally David’s [...]

Just a quick note to say HOO-RAY for David Lang!!! SO happy he won the Pulitzer. I love his music. Love it! Now about that photo.
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Off to North Carolina to find out how Spanish guitars and saxophone reeds are affected by humidity….back in a few days!
I leave you with a photo of a friend from [...]

Rather than photograph the usual pile of loose, scribbly manuscript paper, here is a page of finished score, which the musicians will actually use in performance. The music changed so much inside the computer that my pencil and paper musings don’t even seem relevant anymore.
Mythimna Twilight is for my wonderful friends, guitarist Enrique Lop [...]

Well that’s just not my thing. I’m a serious composer.
This was a colleague’s comment following a performance by Kronos Quartet of Terry Riley’s The Cusp of Magic. Although I haven’t heard much of Riley’s music in recent years, this is definitely my favorite piece so far. So many elements that could go terribly wrong in [...]