Mark Olson, Director of Harvard University Band and Wind Ensemble, has announced his support for multiple performances of Steve Lebetkin’s Symphony For Band and Concerto for Piano and Winds. Maestro Olson’s announcement came in the form of letter support of a large national consortium composer’s commission to the membership of the College Band Directors National Association.

Lebetkin’s two works for the concert band community are a shift in focus for this symphonic composer to address the requests from the concert band community to make a meaningful contribution to the wind repertoire for major serious musical works.

The Symphony For Band is Lebetkin’s first work for this instrumental combination. The Piano Concerto, originally scored for symphony orchestra and premiered in 2018 in South America, is being re-scored for an approximate 24 piece chamber wind ensemble. The wind repertoire needs more works for this combination whose leading work is the Stravinsky Piano Concerto of 1924.

Performances of both works nationwide are being scheduled for calendar 2019.

Recordings of both works can be found on Lebetkin’s YouTube channel.

 

Symphony For Band

Piano Concerto -Orchestral Version

 

 

 

 

I’ve been composing and studying music for a long time. It strikes me that although there are more composers in the world than ever before, the effort and corresponding access by composers for further compositional study is non-existent. Professionals in all walks of life and at any level proudly continue their advanced studies; many states even mandate this in order to maintain the privilege of licensure.

Composition instruction at conservatories and universities is quite lumpy, to say the least. And therefore the work of many talented (and some not so talented) composers follows. Technique often falls wayside to technology, sound design, and the unfounded commercial message that somehow learning more about craft can interfere with the creative spirit.

Many of us believe that quality and craft trump volume and technology. The more you know, the better the music, and the joy of great music we wish to share with the world.

I’m doing my share to give back. Not only to compose the very best music that I can, but to pass down to others the advanced compositional techniques I was privileged to learn from great masters of the twentieth century that learned from others that preceded them.

Perpetuum Immobile is the title track to my solo album.

In this album I am combining the elements of New Age, minimalism, and classical music in the expansion of music that is accessible to a wide listener audience.

This new approach I call New Age Chamber Music.

Composed and performed by Steven R. Lebetkin

 

 

Composer’s Tools For Discriminating Conductors – Programming New Music

Conductor’s Guild Conference

Ft Worth, Texas

January 13, 2018

 

Falcon Symphony Orchestra

Coro, Venezuela

Ruben Capriles, Conductor

Isdari Lugo, Piano

June 8, 2018