Carl Vine

The concept of an undiscovered artist in the world of “academic music” is problematic. (I’m only speaking about composers here, not performers). Because of the collaborative nature of academic music, especially for large-scale works, where bureaucratic institutions like orchestral management become involved, a new artist either falls into the category of truly undiscovered, in that there music is at best only realized through modest means afforded through use of samplers and synthesizers, or they have been discovered by some musical authority and have had some works played, but that their works have not been heard by their worldwide potential audience (which is still small compared to other genres).

Carl Vine falls into the latter category; having been born in Australia in 1954, and having had some of his most important works premiered as early as the 1970s. Yet most of the world (meaning a few scattered modern-classical/jazz enthusiasts) has not heard of him, due mostly to the lack of recordings available. I subscribed to emusic.com recently, which does a very good job at stocking an organized classical and jazz catalog comprising many smaller independent labels (and it is often the independent classical labels that will actually have the new artists since they often can’t afford the marquee performers necessary to produce competitive recordings of the standard “warhorses”). Yet Mr. Vine was very underrepresented even on emusic. Due, once again, to the lack of available recordings, I have only heard a few of Vine’s works. What I have heard, though, showed a capable, dynamic composer who managed to marry depth of composition with a self-confident irreverence towards the musical boundaries dictated by “good taste,” the result being a viscerally exciting, original work that seems to be accessible by incident, rather than by any tired concept of “pandering to the audience.” I won’t make any predictions of stardom for Vine, mostly because he has been around long enough where one would have expected him to reach that point if he was going to at all. I do think his is a name that deserves recognition, and I can only hope that the ease of making recordings available these days will be reason enough for us to finally get some first-rate recordings from the majority of his catalog (beyond what the somewhat isolated Australian musical community already has).

- Alex T.