John Corigliano – Music Review Cult Pick

Administrator — Mon, 07 Dec 2009 20:34:01 +0000

Oftentimes we don’t say enough about the magic of modern-day classical in these columns, so let’s do that. You might already be familiar with Corigliano’s work in films like Ken Russell’s cult classic, Altered States, and the indie favorite, The Red Violin. These are only peeks into Corigliano’s impressive creations; he’s written many a symphony and often employs a wide variety of styles within each single work, as they weave from nightmare to meditation. He was awarded the Grawemeyer Award for his Symphony No. 1 (1991), a work inspired by the AIDS crisis, and he went on to win the freaking Pulitzer in 2001 for his Symphony No. 2. That’s right.
An Italian-American born in 1938 and raised in Brooklyn by a concertmaster and a pianist, Corigliano has gone on to create some amazing fantastical classical jaunts, a lot of which seems to play best as the soundtrack to other-worldly dreams, not all of them nightmares. The scary stuff is damn good: It’s not Penderecki, but better in some way, it has more subtlety and variation, and might be just the thing to make David Lynch leave the nightlight on while he thinks about the objects in his house performing a shadowy ballet.

Check out Phantasmagoria or Creations, or if you really want to have some dreams you’re scared to remember, the Altered States soundtrack.

words by Devoe Yates

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John Corigliano – Music Review Cult Pick