Stirling Newberry wrote:

>Benjamin is a hack.  He doesn't need worries about accessibility to
>trip him up, he does that quite well on his own.  It is true there are
>hacks that think they are better compsoers because they make music with
>a particular kind of pleasing sonic surface.  But the over riding
>problem is that they are hacks, and would be whether writing complex
>poly-tuning/poly-rhythm/multi-ethinic serial music or I-IV-V rehashes.

Having the pleasure to work with Benjamin this summer at Tanglewood,
I have problems with this extremely off-base and generalized remark.
Simply put, Benjamin is one of the most ingenious, genuine musicians I have
ever gotten to work with.  Hearing him talk about and conduct several of
his pieces (Sometime Voices, Viola Viola, Upon Silence, A Mind in Winter,
At First Light) confirms their ingenuity---he knows what he is doing.  His
music is not serial and does not use 'poly-tuning' and I would not say it
is multi-ethnic either (whatever those last two mean).  Poly-rhythms yes,
but very intrically worked out.  Hearing him talk about other composers'
music (he gave two lectures---one on Messiaen's Catalogue d'oiseaux and
one on Debussy's Pelleas) and conduct other people's music (Donatoni) and
perform other people's music (Messiaen) and improvise brilliantly to the
film _Metropolis_ was all extremely enlightening and I think the 150 or
so musicians at Tanglewood, all who came in contact with Benjamin in some
way or another, would easily be able to cite many reasons why Stirling's
observation is way off-base.

Marcus Maroney
[log in to unmask]