New Classical Music

September 24, 2009
Stacey Mason

The Boston Modern Orchestra Project is dedicated to the recording and performing of new orchestral music from the 20th and 21st centuries.

Often even the experienced concert-goer will complain that these pieces are strange, experimental, disjointed, or hard-to-understand—many of the same complaints that plague new media. What struck me about the project was the unusual critical and commercial success the group seems to be enjoying from playing these pieces. In a time when music CDs are tough to sell, and the enterprise of classical recording seems almost at an end, BMOP has launched an ambitious, award-winning (and apparently profitable) catalog of new works on CD (some downloadable from their site for $0.99), including John Harbison's ballet Ulysses and Gunther Schuller’s Journey in Jazz.

.