Barry Drogin
720 Greenwich Street #5T
New York, NY 10014
barry@notnicemusic.com
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Awards (A), Grants (G) & Commissions (C):
- 2001 - NewOp honor (A)
- 1989 - "J.J. Comes to Cooper" for Oboe & Piano (C)
- 1985 - Tau Beta Pi Laureate Award for Diverse Achievements (A)
- 1985 - "Love Poems from the Hebrew" for Sop. & Piano (C)
- 1983 - "The Clean Platter", Meet the Composer (G)
- 1982 - "Duet for Flute & Trombone" (C)
- 1981 - "Butterfly Dream" for Chamber Orchestra (C)
Reviews/Praise:
- Emil Adler (October Project): "Your songs are absolutely magnificent. They are simply terrific and completely irresistable. I love them!"
- Michael Dellaira: "Quite entertaining, and moving as well."
- Joshua Fried: "The combo of your more rock-folk vocals with the more scored, 'classical' material was disarming and refreshing. By doing it a cappella you really throw this contrast in our faces - er, ears - and I liked that a lot."
- Dennis Bathory-Kitz, We Are All Mozart blogger: "Composers must give more time to creating utility [theatre and dance] music. Composers such as Barry Drogin [and others] evidence a rebirth of theatrical thinking, and act upon it to create skilled, well-conceived utility music."
- Butterfly Dream, Stephen Sondheim: "Dear Barry - I decided over the weekend that I was sick of my own stuff and therefore turned yours on. It's terrific, especially the instrumentals from Butterfly Dream. Thanks for letting me listen. Yours, Steve"
- 21st Century Music, Mark Alburger (Editor/Publisher): "Barry Drogin is an authority on contemporary opera and music theatre."
- John Luther Adams (President, American Music Center): "Your words are as eloquent and succinct a description of our current musical culture as ever I've read. I admire the clarity of your language and thought."
- John Palmer (Director, Electroacoustic Festival of British Contemporary Music): "The first to bring some insight. What is needed are ideas for new forms now and for the future. Your words will stay with me for a long time."
- Marianne Tobias (Author, "Classical Music Without Fear"): "A remarkable writer with compelling ideas."
- Elodie Lauten, Sequenza21 Music Underground blogger: "I very much enjoy your style of writing and wit."
- Dennis Bathory-Kitz, We Are All Mozart blogger: "Barry Drogin reeks of fast-talking New York humor that only the sidewalks can understand. It's said that humans are the only critters that can laugh. Our horses pointedly wandered to the other side of the paddock when Barry Drogin started singing his love songs to them."
- Michael Dellaira: I sent a quick note to Barry Cohen yesterday saying that while I don't normally read reviews on-line, I did read and very much enjoy your review of Mark Grant's book. You are a very thoughtful, sometimes provocative, almost always articulate writer. In short, I wish there were more of you writing for NMC!!"
- Love Poems from the Sanskrit, Dennis Bathory-Kitz, Kalvos & Damian's New Music Bazaar: "Barry Drogin and a number of other composers we've spoken to, like Michael Sahl, Boudewijn Buckinx, Beth Anderson, even Eric Salzman, are kind of a neo-neo-neo-Romantic school of composition in some respects, tonality, simplicity, a very, very subtle melodic form. It's been said that when Western Music started to develop harmony that the subtlety of melody, particularly microtonal aspects of it and the individual relationship between the notes and where they're going, began to be lost, to the point that when we get to the era of Mozart we have essentially stripped melody of it's subtle role and given it only a role as a kind of musical star and nothing more than that. In Love Poems from the Sanskrit, Barry Drogin has taken the risk of writing a piece of entirely and completely unadorned melody."
- Yisroayl B'Mitzroyim, Michael Sahl: "Barry Drogin has created a style of two strands twisted together. The first is the oldest tradition in opera, the monodic writing of Peri and Caccini at the time of the Florentine Camerata, and the other is the Modern Operatic semi-recitative of Schoenberg, Hindemith, and their English and American followers, but without the instrumental ensemble. He does this with the clear intention of re-purifying the musical theatre, taking away the "licks" and the accompaniment, and putting the attention uniquely on the voice. Even though the text is sometimes quite conversational, the setting gives it a certain almost archaic formality. (It is only fair to say that Drogin himself sees Hebraic roots in all this, harking back to cantorial tradition.)
"Even in those works, like Yisroayl B'Mitzroyim, which are not monophonic, the music is made up totally of LINES, representing a departure from musical theatre as well as from opera. Such work requires really superior singer-actors, since they must carry everything in their own parts. This is potentially a great tour de force for the right performers. At a time, when nothing is radical, this work is remarkably so, and requires and deserves attention and some ingenuity of presentation as well as the singing talent to realize it."
- Alamo!, Erling Wold: "A particularly poignant moment occurs when Alamo's polemical rant against the Catholic Church suddenly becomes personal, and we suddenly see through a window to his soul, consumed by a deep and pervasive sadness, a frantic desperation of a man trapped and scared and alone, wondering why God has forsaken him."
- Typhoid Mary, Andrew Yarrow, The New York Times: "Charged with having caused thousands of cases, although responsible for only three deaths, her infamy as Typhoid Mary has endured. Her tragic, gruesome story has been turned into a dramatic dance work."
- Typhoid Mary, Gus Solomons, The Village Voice: "To a voice and piano score by Barry Drogin, a la Brecht/Weill's Dreigroschenoper, using textual excerpts from contemporaneous German medical writings on fighting the typhoid epidemic, the choreographer mounts the piece in a homespun version of German Expressionist theatre.... Intriguing because it puts us in mind of threats of quarantine in connection with the AIDS crisis."
- Typhoid Mary, Julinda Lewis, Dance Magazine: "We ate the pasta, salad, bread and fruit somewhat warily as dancers were rapidly overcome by disease and dropped dead to the accompaniment of composer Barry Drogin's melancholy piano score and an aria comprised of writings from German medical texts....The resulting product is a rather ghoulish yet intriguing dramatization [that] effectively illustrates the fear that drives the public."
- The Clean Platter, Jim Theobald, The Villager: "There are hints of Baroque music, hidden show tunes and all sorts of general nuttiness, including a surprise ending. A very savory piece. Drogin is a lot of fun."
- Butterfly Dream, Jim Theobald, WBAI-FM: "This is sort of innocent, nice, friendly, wonderful-to-listen-to music. Barry Drogin is a lot of fun, and I think you're going to like this music."
- Cassandra's Curse, Carol Jochnowitz, Jewish Currents editor: "I am simply blown away by how smart you are. You write precisely because you are capable of thinking precisely. Your work demonstrates to me once again that perhaps intelligence, seriousness, morality and reality are all four faces of the one and the same thing."
Private Study:
- Orchestration: Gil Robbins
- Electronic Music: Laurie Spiegel
- Counterpoint & Melody: Elie Siegmeister
- Music Theory: Mark Kroll, Scott Wheeler
Other:
- Interviewed, 2003, 2005: Kalvos & Damian's New Music Bazaar
- Moderator, 2000-2008: C-OPERA listserv
- Board of Advisors, 2000-2006: New Music Connoisseur
- Manager, 1999-2002: NewOp Web Ring
- Formed Not Nice Music, 1988-2008 : "Das ist doch nicht nett, du idiot! Das ist doch Kunst, und nicht nett." ("That's not nice, you idiot! That's art, and not nice.") --- Bertolt Brecht, Die Dreigroschenoper.
- Tutored private orchestration student, 1988
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Last Updated: May 24, 2009
