Dr. Colin Eatock, composer
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New Music I Like (No. 12): Lawrence Dillon

12/31/2013

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PictureComposer and blogger Lawarence Dillon.

I’d heard the name “Lawrence Dillon” a few times. And I was aware that he was an American composer of some reputation, located somewhere within the tonal camp. But what made me want to find out more about him and his music was a blog he posted a couple of weeks ago.

In the first sentence, Dillon gently drops a bombshell: “There are gobs of composers who style themselves postmodernists as a cover for lazy composing,” he calmly asserts. (You can read his blog here.)

He prefaces the declaration with the warning that his opinion may “raise some hackles” – and indeed it may. But he’ll get no argument from me, as I’ve often thought exactly the same thing.



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New Music for Christmas Time

12/22/2013

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PictureThe arrestingly simple David Lang.
Contemporary classical music and the Yuletide Season make awkward bedfellows. The tradition-laden season doesn’t fit well with the forward-looking nature of much new music – it’s a time for the affirmation of cultural values, not a time for pulling them apart. So it seems only prudent to put the dissonant tone-clusters and complex aleatoric structures back in the closet for a few weeks, and to deck the halls with Handel’s Messiah.

Yet on Friday evening, Toronto’s Music Gallery successfully put together a (mostly) contemporary program that also had a warm, fuzzy, Christmassy feel to it.


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Stokowski's Houston Symphony on Everest

12/9/2013

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PictureStokowski conducted in Houston from 1955 to 1962.
Here’s something I wrote for the Houston Chronicle about a set of re-issued Everest CDs featuring Leopold Stokowski and the Houston Symphony Orchestra.

“All passes – art alone endures,” the sobering old saying goes.

But sometimes, art has strange ways of enduring. It can lie dormant for years, as if waiting for the right moment to emerge. Then, when least expected, a forgotten masterpiece can leap into the world reborn.



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Rufus Wainwright Arrives at the COC

12/2/2013

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PictureWainwright looks sincere, but does the COC?
Alexander Neef, the Canadian Opera Company’s General Director, has surely stirred the pot with his most recent decision.

Today, the Globe and Mail announced that the COC has commissioned Canadian singer-songwriter Rufus Wainwright to compose a new opera about the Emperor Hadrian. And because the wheels of the operatic world turn slowly, the new work won’t be seen until 2018.



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    Eatock Daily

    I'm a composer based in Toronto – and this is my classical music blog, Eatock Daily.

    When I first started blogging, Eatock Daily was a place to re-post the articles I wrote for Toronto’s Globe and Mail and National Post newspapers, the Houston Chronicle, the Kansas City Star and other publications.

    But now I have stepped back from professional music journalism, and I'm spending more time composing.

    These days, my blog posts are infrequent, and are mostly concerned with my own music. However, I do still occasionally post comments on musical topics, including works I've discovered, enjoyed, and wish to share with others.


    – CE

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