Classical minimalist composer Philip Glass, who wrote music for both the 1984 Los Angeles Olympics and the 2004 Athens Games, isn’t looking forward to the competitions in Beijing.
“I think that we should pull out,” says Glass. “The Chinese are supposed to be taking care of human rights; they haven’t done it. The only reason we [...]

March 02: It’s free electronic music month at Synthtopia.
All month, we’re going to help you kick the RIAA habit by highlighting great electronic music that’s available for free on the Internet.
Jeff Harrington is a classically-trained composer, a programmer and an advocate of music technology.
He has dozens of musical works, ranging from piano pieces to complete [...]

 

 High Noon [2:53m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

If you’re a computer musician looking to learn more about orchestration, you may want to check out the latest release from Alexander Publishing.
They’ve teamed with Naxos Recordings, the world’s leading classical recording label, for How Ravel Orchestrated: Mother Goose Suite. The book includes a newly engraved score featuring the condensed Piano part at page bottom [...]

The demo section at the Vienna Symphonic Library site has dozens of examples of virtual orchestration, ranging from classical works by Bach and Beethoven to more modern works by Copland, Stravinsky and Williams.
The site provides information on the software used, along with the arrangement and programming.
An example of what can be found is the Firebird [...]

Garritan has posted its second album of free holiday music, A GPO Christmas 2. The album is a collaborative effort of the Garritan Personal Orchestra community.
A community of professional and amateur composers and arrangers from all over the world met on the Internet and agreed to submit their own recordings of holiday pieces, to be [...]

Alexander, the soundtrack to the Oliver Stone biopic, features Vangelis at his best. It’s a rousing score, a satisfying album, and a likely Oscar contender.
With this score, Vangelis delivers vivid orchestrations, lyrical themes, and his unique style of crowd-pleasing bombast. If you’re a Vangelis fan, click on over to Amazon and be done with it [...]

Users of the Garritan Personal Orchestra application have collaborated to create a free Christmas CD that showcases state-of-the-art virtual orchestration.
The Garritan Personal Orchestra Christmas CD is a collaborative effort of the GPO community, and is available for download in MP3 format.
The CD features orchestral arrangements of traditional holiday themes, realized using the Garritan Personal Orchestra.
Tracks:

Joy [...]

Reworking the classics with synthesizers has a long tradition, extending from Wendy Carlos’ Switched-On Bach to the Ferry Corsten/William Orbit take on Barber’s Adagio for Strings. Reinterpreting the classics is tough, though, and few electronic reinterpretations have proven to have much lasting interest.
Classics Regrooved is new compilation that features electronica arrangements of 15 themes from [...]

KOCH Records is releasing a compilation album, Classic Regrooved, that will feature 15 classical music themes, re-mixed and re-imagined by some of the top names in the emerging world of electronic music: Electric Skychurch, Skylab 2000, Holmes Ives, EROS and more.
The songs on Classics Regrooved use familiar melodies of some of the best-known classic tunes, [...]

Challenge your perception with this innovative ambient reinterpretation of one of the greatest works of Beethoven. 9 Beet Stretch is the Ninth Symphony stretched to last twenty-four hours. By slowing down the recording so dramatically, recognizable melodies are lost, and the ambient sound can be appreciated. You can download free MP3s of the music, and [...]