Thomas McCauley rounds out the program with Husa's Smetana Fanfare . In a Flash Awards seem to follow Dave Brubeck wherever he goes. Brubeck previously received the National Medal of Arts and a Lifetime Achievement Award from the National Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences. On 7 October Dave Brubeck, and his wife and collaborator, librettist Iola Brubeck, accepted their first joint honor from Northwood University, for its 1996 Achievement in the Arts Award, at the Players Club in New York City. These splendid new arrangements by Jeff Tyzik are now in the G. Schirmer Rental Library, waiting to please your audiences.
Shuttlecocks is fun and funny.
The program began with the premiere of Peter Lieberson's five-minute work, Fire . The music, steeped in the 12-tone idiom yet harmonically grounded, flickers and crackles. For all its density and rigor, the piece is playful, with wind machines and creeping bass lines. The power of The Consul is in the way its score and taut, compelling libretto mesh, expressing contemporary life as powerfully as screaming dissonance or chaotic rhythms. Mr. Sheng's work has lost none of its lapel-grabbing quality.