Jammin', Old School

Among the musical premières announced by Boosey & Hawkes for this season is the (please agree with me!) ghastly-named TroyJam, composed by Michael Daugherty, "inspired by the Trojan War battle between Achilles and Hector" - to be performed in May at the Kennedy Center (Washington, D.C.) by the National Symphony Orchestra in their Family Series.  Family Series?!  This, I assume by the way, would be the "DAUGHERTY - to be announced" at the NSO's website.

Comments

[Michael Daugherty]

Troyjam is the title of a new work for narrator and orchestra that was penned by the brilliant award winning poet Anne Carson who also wrote the text for the narration. Anne Carson (June 21, 1950) is a internationally reknowned Canadian poet, essayist, and translator, as well as a professor of Classics and comparative literature at the University of Michigan The text and the work is an "anti-war" piece. Instead of fighting, the Trojans and the Greeks play music together (thus the use of the word "jam" which means to make music). Whoever maintains this website should correct and remove this insulting and foolish posting asap!

Michael Daugherty
Professor of Composition
University of Michigan

[Yopie Prins]

Here is a more complete description of TROYJAM:

For his last Family Concert as National Symphony Orchestra Music Director, Leonard Slatkin conducts a thrilling program on May 18, 2008 that spotlights the different families of instruments in the orchestra. The concert features the world premiere of a special NSO commission for narrator and orchestra by Michael Daugherty, one of Amercia's most performed and admired composers. The premiere of Daugherty's TROYJAM with a libretto by Anne Carson, the renowned poet and MacArthur Fellow, sweeps you away to Ancient Greece, using the instruments of the orchestra to re-create the battle between brave warrior Achilles and his arch-nemesis Hektor during the Trojan War.