David Del Tredici

The New York Philharmonic has appointed David Del Tredici to be its new composer in residence for this season and next. Del Tredici, who will aid the Philharmonic's music director, Zubin Mehta, joins the orchestra as part of the nationwide composer in residence program administered by Meet the Composer, an advocacy foundation for new music. The American composer is expected to compose a major work for the Philharmonic's 1989-90 season and another for 1992.

Ever since minimalism appeared on the music scene 25 years ago, academic composers have decried the trashing of their complex music language and the acceptance, in its place, of a highly simplified--some say simplistic--one. Their charge: a sellout to commercialism. The minimalists say the scholars adhere to an "old-boy network" whose in-bred, practically impenetrable scores alienate everyone except each other. With growing alarm and resentment, the old guard watched while these upstarts basked in the spotlight and took the prizes: audiences, publicity, career opportunities.

Ever since minimalism appeared on the music scene 25 years ago, academic composers have decried the trashing of their complex music language and the acceptance, in its place, of a highly simplified--some say simplistic--one. Their charge: a sellout to commercialism. The minimalists say the scholars adhere to an "old-boy network" whose in-bred, practically impenetrable scores alienate everyone except each other. With growing alarm and resentment, the old guard watched while these upstarts basked in the spotlight and took the prizes: audiences, publicity, career opportunities.

The New York Philharmonic has appointed David Del Tredici to be its new composer in residence for this season and next. Del Tredici, who will aid the Philharmonic's music director, Zubin Mehta, joins the orchestra as part of the nationwide composer in residence program administered by Meet the Composer, an advocacy foundation for new music. The American composer is expected to compose a major work for the Philharmonic's 1989-90 season and another for 1992.

Who says atonality is dead? It's just reared its head in Philip Glass' minimalist brain, but Glass is too flip to recognize the populist craving for 12-tone arpeggios. At least, that's the impression one gets from Perlmutter's interviews with composers Charles Wuorinen, John Adams, George Perle and David del Tredici, who lay the blame on Arnold Schoenberg, for the fall of music as Beethoven understood it. I guess one thing really needed in music is humor, and perhaps, at last, minimalism has answered our prayers.

Trained in California in the pianistic generation of John Browning, Marilyn Neeley, Daniel Pollack and David del Tredici, the San Francisco-based Roy Bogas has performed in the southern part of the state only infrequently in recent years. Saturday, he returned in recital to Campus Theater at El Camino College in a one-sided program of works by Schumann, Rachmaninoff and Chopin, leaving an incomplete impression. Bogas' technique, facile and reliable, remains solid, if non-kaleidoscopic.

Far from being a children's ballet, Glen Tetley's "Alice" shapes a psycho-sexual nightmare from the familiar characters and events of Lewis Carroll's Wonderland. Danced magnificently by National Ballet of Canada, it comes to U.S. television twice today (4 and 11 p.m.) on Bravo cable. Tetley depicts the relationship between Carroll (Rex Harrington) and the little girl he calls Child Alice (Kimberly Glasco) as remembered years later by the mature Alice (Karen Kain), now a wife and mother.

Pacific Chorale winds up its spring series of American music with a bang in "Revelations, Revolutions" on Saturday at the Orange County Performing Artscenter. The program pairs the West Coast premiere of Pulitzer Prize-winning composer David Del Tredici's pyrotechnic "Paul Revere's Ride" with "Hora Novissima," American composer Horatio Parker's rarely performed, redemptive Victorian-era masterwork. Performed with the Pacific Symphony and conducted by chorale artistic director John Alexander, it features Lori Stinson (amplified soprano)

Louise M. Davies, the philanthropist whose name graces San Francisco's symphony hall, has died. She was 98. Davies, who with her late husband contributed millions to Bay Area cultural arts projects and charities, died Monday at a retirement home, family members said. The philanthropist gave San Francisco the $5-million down payment for its symphony hall, later contributing $3 million more to attract visiting conductors to the Louise M. Davies Symphony Hall.

The Paris Opera Ballet will make its West Coast debut in June, 1988, at the Orange County Performing Arts Center in Costa Mesa. The company, directed by Rudolf Nureyev, will appear June 14-19 as part of the center-sponsored "Classic Dance Series," center officials announced Wednesday. The series will also include American Ballet Theatre, the Joffrey Ballet and National Ballet of Canada.

More than 100 years and a gulf of history separated the two big-thinking American works on Pacific Chorale conductor John Alexander's agenda at Renee and Henry Segerstrom Concert Hall on Saturday night. First, he gave the West Coast premiere -- and only the second performance anywhere -- of a recent piece by David Del Tredici, whom some call a "conservative."

The National Ballet of Canada happily includes so many beautiful and accomplished dancers that it boasts not one but two casts eminently qualified to carry Glen Tetley's "Alice," which had its Los Angeles-area premiere Saturday at Pasadena Civic Auditorium. One week ago in San Diego, the Canadians introduced this ballet to California with its second cast (reviewed last Monday). But when Tetley's first-chosen took the stage, it was no surprise to find perfection.