Recording With Anna Kislitsyna April 19, 2021

 

Shalin Liu Performance Center in Rockport, MA.

The piece was composed specifically for she solo album from Navona, to be followed by a Weill Hall at Carnegie Hall solo recital.

Click the photo to go to Anna's web site

"Be Still" News - December 9, 2020

  Casey Cook, Founder and Artistic Director at Artifice, Operations Coordinator at Chorus America and Musician in Residence at American University, and one of the American Prize judges, had some very complimentary words to say about "Be Still," recorded by The Crossing on the Navona label. "Be Still" earned 2nd place in The American Prize in the 2020 Composition competition, Choral Music Division.

Classical Discoveries on WPRB 103.3 December 02, 2020

Happy to be a part of Classical Discoveries Wednesday morning, December 02, 2020 from 7:00 till 10:00 am.

Watcher of the Sky for string quartet (2018) by American composer, Bruce Babcock

On WPRB 103.3 FM Princeton NJ, or on the Internet at: www.wprb.com.

If you need more information, please go to my website at www.classicaldiscoveries.org

 

Dear Friends, Family, and Colleagues,
 

Watcher of the Sky,
a string quartet commissioned
by the Mount Wilson Institute 
in celebration of the
2018 sesquicentennial
of the birth of astronomer
George Ellery Hale has been released
on an album recorded by
the Sirius Quartet. 

Playing on the Edge 2 was released
on the Navona label on October 23
(nv6315)

We have created a YouTube video 

commemorating the life of
George Ellery Hale 

to accompany the recording.

The YouTube video may be found here:

The album can be purchased here:

 The concert audience inside the 100-inch dome

People have been asking me (well, one person has), why were you chosen to compose a piece in celebration of the sesquicentennial of the birth of astronomer George Ellery Hale? And who was Hale? George Hale, born in 1868, founded Kenwood, Yerkes, Mount Wilson and Mount Palomar Observatories. He also built the largest telescope in the world four times – the 40-inch refractor at Yerkes, the 60-inch and 100-inch at Mount Wilson, and the 200-inch at Mount Palomar, among many other achievements.

(To learn more, check out the documentary film The Journey to Palomar by Todd and Robin Mason.)
 
My family has been connected to George Hale and his legacy since 1893. In 1893, at age eleven, my grandfather Harold Delos Babcock attended the Columbian Exposition of 1893, also known as the Chicago World's Fair. There he saw the then world's largest telescope, the 40-inch refractor, built by Hale, then 25. In 1909, Harold was hired by Hale to join the staff at Mount Wilson Observatory near Pasadena, which was founded in 1904. Harold remained on the staff for 40 years. He then continued his observations of the sun at the Hale Solar Lab, Hale's private solar observatory in San Marino, for another 15 years. During World War One, Harold performed defense work for the National Research Council, for which Hale served as chairman of the organizing committee and first chairman of the council itself.
 
My father, Horace Welcome Babcock, graduated from Caltech (founded by Hale) and earned his doctorate at UC Berkley. My parents met while Horace was working at Yerkes Observatory, the home of the 40-inch refractor Harold had first seen in 1893. Horace joined the staff of Mount Wilson in 1946. He became Director of the Carnegie Observatories in 1964 and remained so until his retirement in 1978. As early as 1903 Hale had begun to anticipate the creation of a major observatory in the Southern hemisphere. Under my father's direction, the Carnegie Observatories established the Las Campanas Observatory in the southern Atacama Desert of Chile in 1969.

GRAMMY VOTING - September 30 - October 12

For Your Grammy Consideration

"Alternative Facts," from the Navona album 

"Through Glass"

for solo piano

performed by Gloria Cheng

This composition is submitted in the following categories:

BEST CONTEMPORARY CLASSICAL COMPOSITION

BEST MUSIC VIDEO

To view/hear Alternative Facts:

"Could not be timelier and more brilliantly performed.

Unremittingly edgy, American composer Bruce Babcock's

"Alternative Facts" captures, through pianistic devices of 

virtuosic clarity and torturous rhythmic schizophrenia, American angst since Donald Trump's surprising ascension to the 

presidency in 2016. Performed by Gloria Cheng, Babcock captures the nerve-shredding yin and yang of a democracy on the edge."

Daniel Kepl / Performing Arts Review

_______________________________

"I loved the piece when I first heard it, and I love the piece with the fabulous video. Just perfect, all around." Alex Shapiro, composer, Symphonic & Concert writer member on the Board of Directors of ASCAP

 

"Great Piece! Great Performance! Riveting video! Congratulations! Really special!" Mike Lang, jazz pianist and composer and legendary Hollywood session musician

 

"Very nice combo or off-kilter rhythms and imaginative polytonality." Todd Mason, Juilliard grad, Los Angeles-based composer

 

"Stunning performance of a gripping piece." Paul Gibson, Los Angeles-based composer

 

"Seriously, inventive, inspiring composition, 

and Gloria played the hell out of it." 

Bruce Miller, veteran Hollywood 

composer & arranger                       

September 24, 2020 

Playing on the Edge 2, from The Sirius Quartet, will be released on the Navona label (NV6315) on October 23, 2020. It includes my quartet WATCHER OF THE SKY, commissioned for the sesquicentennial of the birth of astronomer George Ellery Hale in 2018.

To Pre-Order

 Wow! Great news from the Altius Quartet. They will be performing my piece "The Present Moment" on Sept 20 at 6 p.m. MDT. 

Thanks, Altius!

Join us on Sunday, September 20 at 6pm MDT for our premier concert with the new AQ! We’re excited to be debuting new members Allyson Stibbards and Hannah Kennedy with an eclectic program of tunes new and old. Music by Bruce Babcock, Shostakovich, and Libby Larsen 🎶

Eric Whitacre's Virtual Choir 6: Sing Gently

With Marvin Rosen July 8, 2020

On July 8 I'm on Classical Discoveries with Marvin Rosen. WPRB-Princeton NJ. He'll be playing my piano piece Alternative Facts, performed by Gloria Cheng from the album Through Glass on the Navona label.

Buy the album on Amazon

‎Marvin Rosen‎ to CLASSICAL DISCOVERIES

3 hrs

I hope you will join Classical Discoveries for the weekly program this Wednesday morning, July 8, 2020 from 7:00 till 10:00am and will feature:

Just released, world premiere recording (on the Polish Dux label) of Sanctus Adalbertus, Op. 71 (1997) by Polish composer, Henryk Gorecki (1933-2010). This oratorio for soprano, baritone, mixed choir and orchestra and was not premiered until after the composer’s death.

Other features on this Wednesday’s program include:

Alternative Facts for piano (2019) by American composer, Bruce Babcock

As I Crossed a Bridge of Dreams by Australian composer, Anne Boyd (1946- )

Music 1957 by American composer, Henry Cowell (1897-1965)

Prayer for Virtual Flute Orchestra (2020) by American composer, Amanda Harberg (1973- )

The work, inspired by the effects of the Coronavirus, includes 94 musicians (mostly Flutists) from 17 different countries.

Magnificat by Italian composer, Giovanni Priuli (ca. 1580-1626)

Kyrie for String Quintet (2004) by American composer, Marga Richter (1926-2020). Played in memory of the composer who passed away on June 25.

Balletto a cavallo by Austrian composer, Johann Heinrich Schmelzer (1623-1680)

Industrial Sinfonia by Polish composer, Adam Wesolowski (1980- )

and others

On WPRB 103.3 FM Princeton NJ, or on the Internet at: www.wprb.com.

www.classicaldiscoveries.org

Alternative Facts Released Today June 12, 2020

Released today. Alternative Facts, for solo piano,

composed for & recorded by Gloria Cheng, on the Navona label. The piece (6:26) reflects the times we are living in. Discombobulating, annoying, loud, repetitive, confounding, crazy-making, tiresome, frenetic, all of the above.

To purchase THROUGH GLASS

THROUGH GLASS 

Release Date 

June 12, 2020

featuring

ALTERNATIVE FACTS for piano

by Bruce Babcock

Composed for and performed by Gloria Cheng

on the Navona label

Alternative Facts was composed as a reaction to the 2016 presidential campaign, election, and subsequent inauguration of our current president. Ever since he announced his candidacy we have, as a nation, endured a profound attack on reality, not to mention democracy, diplomacy, civility, and honesty.

We now know first-hand the experience of passing "Through the Looking-Glass, and What Alice Found There," Lewis Carroll's 1871 novel. We are also living in George Orwell's "1984" and the 1944 MGM film "Gaslight." This is now our exhausting "alternative facts" daily life.

Alternative Facts was composed for my long-time friend and colleague, the brilliant Emmy and Grammy winning pianist Gloria Cheng. It was recorded at the Evelyn and Mo Ostin Music Center Recording Studio, UCLA Herb Alpert School of Music by multiple Grammy-winning engineer Rich Breen.

for more information and purchase links:

The American Prize - Honorable Mention, Instrumental Chamber Music

June 10, 2020

So here is some more good news, announced yesterday. I was awarded Honorable Mention, out of 29 finalists, in The American Prize competition, Instrumental Chamber Music category for my string quartet "The Present Moment."

"The Present Moment" was recorded by the Altius Quartet for their Navona album Quadrants Vol. 3.

Thank you, Altius Quartet! Zack Reaves, Joshua Ulrich, Andrew Giordano, Andrew Krimm

The American Prize 2020 - June 9, 2020

The American Prize, Shorter Choral Works Category

So here is some news. I was awarded second place in The American Prize competition, Shorter Choral Works category for my a cappella piece "Be Still." "Be Still" was composed for and premiered by James Walker and Coventry Choir, All Saints Church, Pasadena, and recorded by the multiple Emmy-winning choir The Crossing, under the direction of Donald Nally, for the Navona label.

Thanks, Donald Nally & The Crossing, the Parma/Navona label, James Walker, Coventry Choir, & All Saints Church, Pasadena, & everyone at The American Prize.

THROUGH GLASS 

Release Date 

June 12, 2020

featuring

ALTERNATIVE FACTS for piano

by Bruce Babcock

Composed for and performed by Gloria Cheng

on the Navona label

Alternative Facts was composed as a reaction to the 2016 presidential campaign, election, and subsequent inauguration of our current president. Ever since he announced his candidacy we have, as a nation, endured a profound attack on reality, not to mention democracy, diplomacy, civility, and honesty.

We now know first-hand the experience of passing "Through the Looking-Glass, and What Alice Found There," Lewis Carroll's 1871 novel. We are also living in George Orwell's "1984" and the 1944 MGM film "Gaslight." This is now our exhausting "alternative facts" daily life.

Alternative Facts was composed for my long-time friend and colleague, the brilliant Emmy and Grammy winning pianist Gloria Cheng. It was recorded at the Evelyn and Mo Ostin Music Center Recording Studio, UCLA Herb Alpert School of Music by multiple Grammy-winning engineer Rich Breen.

for more information and purchase links:

Promethean Fire on YouTube - With Hila Plitmann

Promethean Fire Text by Alfred Noyes

I sing of those who caught the pure Promethean fire

One from another, each crying as he went down


To one that waited, crowned with youth and joy. 

Take thou the splendour, carry it out of sight


Into the great new age I must not know

Into the great new realm I must not tread.

Promethean Fire - Program Notes

The piece was composed for the July 7, 2019, Mount Wilson Sunday Afternoon Concerts in the Dome series, curated by cellist and artistic director Cécilia Tsan.

Mount Wilson Observatory founder George Ellery Hale invited his friend, the English poet Alfred Noyes, on a night when no members of the press were invited, to commemorate the night of first light at the 100-inch telescope dome in 1917. The text of Promethean Fire comes from this poem. Hale’s colleague, my grandfather, Harold D. Babcock, used the text in his obituary of Hale in 1938, wherein he also describes an evening open house held at the observatory in 1919, with music supplied by a strolling harpist.

Promethean Fire is essentially a short tribute to Hale. He  had previously built Yerkes Observatory in Wisconsin, but Mount Wilson was Hale's first mountain-top observatory, which involved multiple logistical difficulties. It eventually included three solar telescopes and two large reflector telescopes for night-time work. Andrew Carnegie and others helped make the success of Hale's observatory possible, Edwin Hubble and others helped make it internationally known, and scientists such as Albert Einstein came to visit. But Hale had the original vision for the mountain.

Discoveries made at Mount Wilson include the size of the Milky Way Galaxy and our position in it, proof that we are not the only galaxy in the universe, and proof that the universe itself is expanding.

Hale did not live to see the completion of his dream for Mount Palomar, the 200-inch telescope, in 1948. He could only imagine the images that this elegant machine would collect. Nor could he have foreseen the progress brought by the Hubble Space Telescope, nor can any of us know what the still-under-construction Giant Magellan Telescope (GMT) in Las Campanas, Chile will reveal about our universe. But each successive generation of observers has built on the foundation of the last and carried on the Promethean Fire. 

A REMARKABLE LIFE

Following Hale’s death, colleague Harold Babcock ended his words of memoriam with these words:

“Few men have enjoyed a life so rich as Hale’s in those returns that bring the deepest satisfaction. …His life was a rebuke and a refutation to cynicism. In the midst of our irreparable loss, the words of his friend, poet Alfred Noyes, stand out in clear relief:

“….I sing
Of those who caught the pure Promethean fire
One from another, each crying as he went down
To one that waited, crowned with youth and joy, 
—
Take thou the splendour, carry it out of sight
Into the great new age I must not know
Into the great new realm I must not tread.” 

For more on George Ellery Hale, see this excellent  documentary by my friends Todd and Robin Mason: 

http://www.journeytopalomar.org/# 

Organ Premiere of Alternative Facts

James Walker premiered the organ version of my piece

Alternative Facts February 1, 2020 at St. Cross Episcopal

Church in Hermosa Beach, CA.

Alternative Facts was composed as a reaction to the 2016 presidential campaign, election, and subsequent inauguration of our current president. Ever since he announced his candidacy we have, 

as a nation, endured a profound attack on reality, not to mention democracy, diplomacy, civility, 
and honesty.

We now know first-hand the experience of passing "Through the Looking-Glass, and What Alice Found There," Lewis Carroll's 1871 novel. We are also living in George Orwell's "1984" and the 1944 MGM film "Gaslight." This is now our exhausting "alternative facts" daily life.

Alternative Facts was composed for my long-time friend and colleague, the brilliant Emmy and Grammy winning pianist Gloria Cheng. It was recorded at the UCLA Herb Alpert School Of Music/ Ostin Music Center studio by multiple Grammy-winning engineer Rich Breen. It will be included on an upcoming, and as yet unnamed, album on the Navona label in 2020.

The piece itself reflects the times we are living in. Discombobulating, annoying, loud, repetitive, confounding, crazy-making, tiresome, frenetic, all of the above. The video contains only a tiny fraction of the 13,000+ "false or misleading" claims made by the president as gathered by the Washington Post, as well as claims made in the years before the 2016 election, and claims made by the president's supporters.