Tomorrow Shall Be My Dancing Day is an English carol usually attributed as 'traditional'; it first appeared in print in William B. Sandys' Christmas Carols Ancient and Modern (1833). The verses of the hymn progress through the story of Jesus told in his own voice, with an innovative feature of the telling being that Jesus' life is repeatedly characterized as a dance. This device was later used in the modern hymn Lord of the Dance. Most well known in John Gardner's choral adaptation, many other composers have set or arranged the tune, including Gustav Holst, David Willcocks, John Rutter and Andrew Carter. . Watch a performance of Tomorrow Shall Be My Dancing Day in John Gardner's 1965 version performed by King's College Choir, Cambridge . . . one of this week's FEATURED NEW MUSIC VIDEOS.

James Travers (Films de France) writes about René Clair's 1924 film Entr'acte: "This extraordinary early film from director René Clair was originally made to fill an interval between two acts of Francis Picabia’s new ballet, Relâche, at the Théâtre des Champs-Elysées in Paris in 1924. Picabia famously wrote a synopsis for the film on one sheet of note paper headed Maxim’s (the famous Parisian restaurant), which he sent to René Clair. This formed the basis for what ultimately appeared on screen, with some additional improvisations. Music for the film was composed by the famous avant-garde composer Erik Satie, who appears in the film, along side its originator, Francis Picabia. The surrealist photographer Man Ray also puts in an appearance, in a film which curiously resembles his own experimental films of this era. Entr'acte is a surrealistic concoction of unrelated images, reflecting Clair’s interest in Dada, a fashionable radical approach to visual art which relied on experimentation and surreal expressionism. Clair’s imagery is both captivating and disturbing, giving life to inanimate objects (most notably the rifle range dummies), whilst attacking conventions, even the sobriety of a funeral march. When the first performance of Relâche was cancelled because of the ill-health of one of is stars, the public were outraged. There was a belief that Picabia had staged the ultimate Dada stunt – as Relâche is the French word used on posters to indicate that a show is canceled, or the theater is closed. The controversy was laid to rest when the show opened, a few days later than planned. For its part, Clair’s Entr'acte won widespread praise, although the response from the paying public was divided. As to what the film actually means, well that’s anyone’s guess. Like all good surrealist art there are an infinite number of possible interpretations, and one’s appreciation and understanding of this film is very much a subjective experience. Themes which appear to dominate the work are death, mortality and the hastening pace of technology. Hence, one possible interpretation is that the film is mocking mankind’s attempts to cope with the brevity of his existence. As progress is made, man has to run faster and faster to cram more and more into a fixed duration, his limited lifespan. Could the Entr'acte of the film’s title represent that short period of what we call 'life', that too brief an interval between two acts of an eternal duration?" Watch René Clair's Entr'acte with music by Erik Satie . . . it's our PYTHEAS SIGHTING for the week.

In the Fall of 1910, Sergei Diaghilev and Igor Stravinsky convinced Alexandre Benois to write a scenario (in collaboration with Stravinsky) and to design costumes and sets for an original ballet to be entitled Petrushka. The ballet premiered in Paris in 1911, and was perhaps the most successful and influential of Diaghilev's "Ballets Russes" productions. The All Music Guide writes, "Stravinsky's score for Petrushka is brilliant, charming and absorbing, one of the most magical scores in all the classical literature. Stravinsky borrowed folk tunes to illustrate the crowd scenes, used bitonal chords to signify Petrushka's dual existence as puppet and living being, wrote his own seductive melodies, and stitched it all together seamlessly with a genius for dramatization and flair for orchestration that could only come from Stravinsky." Watch a performance of Stravinsky's Petrushka, one of the most brilliant and magical ballets in the modern repertoire in a performance by the Bolshoi Ballet . . . our DANSES PYTHEUSES this week.

Pawel Lukaszewski is one of the younger generation of Polish composers specialising in sacred and choral music. He studied composition with Marian Borkowski and cello with Andrzej Wrobel at the Fryderyk Chopin Academy of Music in Warsaw and in 2000 and 2007 he received a Ph.D and Ph.D Hab. respectively in composition. His works have been performed throughout Europe, as well as in Argentine, Chile, China, Israel, Cuba, Canada, South Korea, Peru, Uruguay and the United States. In addition, his works have been recorded on more than fifty CDs. Hear a performance of Pawel Lukaszewski's choral work Hommage a Edith Stein (2002) . . . this week's FROM THE PYTHEAS ARCHIVES.

Explore, Listen and Enjoy!
Vinny Fuerst
Pytheas Center for Contemporary Music

David Maslanka (born in New Bedford, Massachusetts, and now living in Missoula, Montana) is a composer who writes for a variety of genres, including works for choir, concert band, chamber ensembles and orchestra. His compositions have been performed throughout the United States, Canada, Japan, Australia, and Europe, and he has received three National Endowment for the Arts Composer Awards and five residence fellowships from the MacDowell Colony in Peterborough, New Hampshire. Best known for his highly acclaimed wind ensemble compositions, Maslanka has published nearly 100 pieces, including eight symphonies (six of them for concert band), nine concerti, and a full Mass. His compositional style can be rhythmically intense and extremely complex, yet it also possesses at points an underlying delicate beauty. He is a composer who works from a meditative standpoint of spiritual inspiration, and this gentle, warm spiritual quality can be felt throughout his music. Watch the Amethyst Saxophone Quartet perform Fanfare/Variations on the chorale melody 'Durch Adams Fall' (Through Adam’s Fall), the last movement of Maslanka's Recitation Book (2006) . . . one of this week's FEATURED NEW MUSIC VIDEOS.

Kile Smith, based in Philadelphia, has collaborated with the Renaissance music ensemble Piffaro and the modern music choir The Crossing to create his Vespers (2008), just out on the Navona label and selling well at local concerts by both groups. According to David Patrick Stearns (Philly.com), "Smith's music suggests a state of being that many people aspire to: His Vespers is a sanctuary, a refuge from life. His use of musical antiquity - Piffaro's Renaissance instruments - is about cheery, primary colors. The relative lack of emotional complication might suggest his is a more lightweight piece. Listen closely, though, and the spiritual solidity of his music is full of distinctive rewards." Check out more about Kile Smith's Vespers and listen to excerpts from the new Navona recording . . . it's our FEATURED RECORDING for the week.

Winner of the 2006-2007 Rome Prize, Ken Ueno, is a composer and vocalist whose wide range of innovative works have been thrilling audiences around the world. Informed by his experience as an electric guitarist and overtone singer, his music fuses the culture of Japanese underground electronic music with an awareness of European modernism. He engages with multiple modes of music making: as a composer of acoustic works, as an electronic musician, and as an improviser specializing in extended vocal techniques. Hear a performance of Ueno's Ga-uah-Chon-Ch-cha (A Song of the Rapture) (2006) . . . one of our PYTHEAS EARFULS this week.

Paul Witney is a composer, musician and educator, in demand both nationally and internationally. He has studied with some of Australia's finest contemporary Composers, including Nigel Butterley and Michael Smetanin. His works have been performed by many leading Australian and International ensembles including Australian Symphony Orchestras, The Song Company, Generator, and The Zurich Ensemble for New Music. Witney was awarded the 2MBS Young Australian Composers Award for his composition Zero Through Nine (1997). He has also been active in continuing to compose for young musicians. His association with various national and international musicians has resulted in performances of his works in the Ukraine, Canada, USA, Holland, Brisbane, Melbourne, and Sydney, and his interaction with local and Indigenous Australians has lead to exciting developments as many of his new works have an Indigenous focus and historical inspiration. Listen to a performance of Witney's Zero Through Nine . . . this week's FROM THE PYTHEAS ARCHIVES.

Explore, Listen and Enjoy!
Vinny Fuerst
Pytheas Center for Contemporary Music

Peter Sculthorpe is Australia's best-known and most respected composer. His music may be heard on radio, recordings and in concert programs almost anywhere in the world. His life and work are inextricably linked to his surrounding world of artists, writers, composers and performers. Works such as Earth Cry (1986) and Kakadu (1988) reflect the breadth, vastness and loneliness of the Australian landscape and the sounds of its wildlife. Many of his works draw on Aboriginal history, language or melody. Watch a performance of Sculthorpe's Jabiru Dreaming (1989) performed by Grupo de percusión del CONSMUPA . . . one of this week's FEATURED NEW MUSIC VIDEOS.

Morton Subotnick is one of the United States' premier composers of electronic music and an innovator in works involving instruments and other media, including interactive computer music systems. Most of his music calls for a computer part or live electronic processing; his oeuvre utilizes many of the important technological breakthroughs in the history of the genre. The work which brought Subotnick celebrity was Silver Apples of the Moon (1967). Commissioned by Nonesuch Records and written in two parts to correspond to the two sides of an LP, Silver Apples marked the first time an original large-scale composition had been created specifically for the disc medium. The record was an American bestseller in the classical music category, an extremely unusual occurrence for any contemporary concert music at the time. In the late 1970s, Subotnick developed the "ghost" box, an electronic device consisting of a pitch and envelope follower for a live signal, an amplifier, a frequency shifter and a ring modulator, which allowed sophisticated control over real-time electronic processing of a live performance. His recent works utilize computerized sound generation, specially designed software Interactor and "intelligent" computer controls which allow the performers to interact with the computer technology. Hear Morton Subotnick talk about his life and his music . . . our COMPOSER PORTRAIT for the week.

Philip Glass is generally regarded as one of the most prominent composers associated with the minimalist school. His style is quite recognizable, owing to its seeming simplicity of repeated sounds, comprised of evolving patterns of rhythms, which are often quite complex, and rhythmic themes. In some of his early works, like Two Pages (1967), the whole of the piece evolves from a single unit or idea that expands as notes are added. In later works, expansion comes via the lengthening of note values or through other inventive processes. Many describe his music in the minimalist vein as mesmerizing; others hear it as numbingly repetitive and devoid of variety in its simplicity. The latter view of his style is itself simplistic and fails to take into account the many subtleties and complexities found in his methods. Glass' mature style embraces more than just minimalism and thus must be viewed being more eclectic and far less dogmatic. There is greater emphasis on melody, less on controlling rhythmic patterns. He is one of the most popular serious composers of the latter twentieth and early twenty-first centuries and must be regarded as among the most important composers of his time. Hear and watch Philip Glass describe the origins of his opera Satyagraha in April of 2008 at the Garrison Institute . . . it's our FEATURED THOUGHT this week.

Composer Robert Gans received his B.A. from the State University of New York at Oswego. After one semester of post graduate study he returned home to New York City to pursue his musical studies and interests for the next seven years. Since moving to Maine he has continued to compose and perform his own works, and the works of others on piano in a variety of styles and settings. On the faculty of the Portland Conservatory of Music since 2005, he teaches piano, music theory and composition. As Gans describes his artistic philosophy, "I believe that art is part of life and that music is enriched and informed by life experience. Therefore for me it is desirable to live as fully as possible, to be grounded in craftsmanship, and to follow my heart in achieving the realization of my concepts. In my compositions the materials and form I employ are determined by the expressive intent of the work and the process is a mixture of planning and living spontaneity. In the marketplace, the supply of talent so far exceeds the demand, that an exclusive focus on popular acclaim is self defeating to the qualities of inspiration and originality. Art paradoxically lifts us above the trivial while acknowledging it's existence in our lives." Hear the 4th movement of his Blue Ballet (2004) . . . this week's FROM THE PYTHEAS ARCHIVES.

Explore, Listen and Enjoy!
Vinny Fuerst
Pytheas Center for Contemporary Music

For those of you in Maine this weekend, here's a heads-up about a wonderful chance to hear one of the string quartets of world renowned Australian composer Peter Sculthorpe, who turned 81 this past April. Maine's DaPonte String Quartet will be performing Sculthorpe's String Quartet No. 8 (1969), along with quartets by Haydn and Beethoven at the Second Congregational Church, Newcastle (Friday, Dec 3, 7:30 pm), St. Mary's Church, Falmouth (Saturday, Dec 4, 7:30 pm), and the United Methodist Church, Brunswick (Sunday, Dec 5, 3:00 pm). For more information, check out the DSQ website . And for more information on Peter Sculthorpe, head over to the Pytheas Center's Peter Sculthorpe Composer Page.

Although it is one of the most significant concertante works for cello and orchestra to have appeared during the second part of the 20th century, the words "cello concerto" do not appear anywhere on the score of Tout un monde lointain ... (A whole remote world ...), a work composed in 1970 by French composer Henri Dutilleux. The title of the work is taken from Baudelaire's poem La chevelure, from which the individual titles of the five movements are also taken. These (Enigma, Gaze, Surges, Mirrors, and Hymn) suggest something of the atmosphere of the whole, but are not to be interpreted too literally. Structurally, the work is extremely complex. The opening movement sets out a basic dialogue between solo cello and orchestra, wide-ranging in tempo and registral effects, but with no sense of resolution between the protagonists. The music is cast as a set of variations on the 12-note theme heard at the outset and cross-referenced in each of the successive movements. The second and fourth sections are slow moving, while the third has the function of a scherzo, with solo writing of enormous technical difficulty. The final movement (Hymn) is in the form of a vibrant Allegro, though the enigmatic overall feel of the work is still evident here (- from the All Music Guide). Watch a fabulous performance of Dutilleux's "Tout un monde lointain . . ." by cellist Xavier Phillips and Orchestre de la Suisse Romande, conducted by Marek Janowski . . . one of this week's FEATURED NEW MUSIC VIDEOS.

Voices from the Archives is a BBC website providing free access to audio interviews with authors, artists, actors, architects, broadcasters, cartoonists, composers, dancers, filmmakers, musicians, painters, philosophers, photographers, playwrights, poets, political activists, religious thinkers, scientists, sculptors, sports, writers. Among the composer interviews available in the BBC Audio Archive are ones with Elizabeth Maconchy, André Previn, Michael Tippett, Ralph Vaughan Williams and Aaron Copland. This week to Aaron Copland talk about his life and music, all thanks to BBC Four . . . and our COMPOSER PORTRAIT for the week.

Violinist Hilary Hahn and composer Jennifer Higdon shared a love of 20th century music history when Higdon was Hahn's professor at the Curtis Institute of Music in Philadelphia. "Good teaching is actually a partnership," Hahn says. Flash forward 15 years, and this student-teacher relationship has been transformed into a partnership with colleagues at the top of their field. Higdon won the 2010 Pulitzer Prize in Music for a concerto she composed especially for Hahn, who has released 11 solo albums and played more than 1,300 concerts the world over. Jeffrey Brown talked with the women at the Curtis Institute of Music recently about their collaboration and the process behind it. See the full interview with Higdon, Hahn and The PBS NewsHour's Jeffery Brown . . . our FEATURED THOUGHT this week.

David Patrick Stearns of the Philadelphia Inquirer called Kile Smith’s Vespers "breathtaking" and "ecstatically beautiful," adding that "few have Smith’s lyrical immediacy and ability to find great musical variety while maintaining an overall coherent personality." Kile Smith’s frequently performed music has been praised by audiences and critics for its emotional power, direct appeal, and strong voice. Listen to his As Kingfishers Catch Fire (2000) from the collection Poems of Gerard Manley Hopkins . . . this week's FROM THE PYTHEAS ARCHIVES.

Explore, Listen and Enjoy!
Vinny Fuerst
Pytheas Center for Contemporary Music

Gabriela Lena Frank Danza Peruana (2008) . . . one of this week's FEATURED NEW MUSIC VIDEOS.

Elmer Bernstein A Musical Tribute . . . our second FEATURED NEW MUSIC VIDEO for the week.

Henri Dutilleux Concertos and Orchestral Works . . . our FEATURED RECORDING this week.

Libby Larsen Deep Summer Music (1982) . . . this week's FROM THE PYTHEAS ARCHIVES.

Explore, Listen and Enjoy!
Vinny Fuerst
Pytheas Center for Contemporary Music

American composer Alvin Lucier counts his 1965 composition Music for Solo Performer as the proper beginning of his compositional career. In that piece, EEG electrodes attached to a performer's scalp detect bursts of alpha waves generated when the performer achieves a meditative, non-visual brain state. These alpha waves are amplified and the resulting electrical signal is used to vibrate percussion instruments distributed around the performance space. According to Lucier, this kind of performance requires quite a deal of concentration to produce a steady stream of alpha waves from the brain, instead of just isolated bursts. And as Adam Strohm writes, this is "one of the most direct lifelines between the mind and sound in modern music, taking an even more unfettered approach than anything stream of consciousness or improvisation can produce." Watch a performance of Lucier's Music for Solo Performer by Steffi Weismann . . . one of this week's FEATURED NEW MUSIC VIDEOS.

"Ástor Piazzolla's Bandoneón Concerto (1979) was also titled Aconcagua by his publisher Aldo Pagani, because "this is the peak of Ástor's oeuvre, and the highest mountain peak in South America is Aconcagua". The Bandoneón Concerto is cast in the classic fast-slow-fast three movement disposition. The soloist enters immediately with a fiercely focused tango, goosed by harp and percussion under powerful string chords. The first movement includes a singing central section and two cadenzas before driving to a whooping close (John Henken/Los Angeles Philharmonic)." Watch a performance of Piazzolla's Bandoneón Concerto with the composer himself as soloist and the Kolner Radio Orchestra, conducted by Pinchas Steinberg . . . our second FEATURED NEW MUSIC VIDEO for the week.

This October the Pytheas Center mounted Yarmouth Contemporary Music Days 2010 through a grant from Yarmouth Arts (Yarmouth, Maine). Our first new music event was an exciting experience, though quite a bit of work for our fledgling organization to fit in, in just four days! Thanks to all those who participated in YCMD 2010 and helped to make it a success. Have a look at some of the festivities at the YCMD webpage: Ten by Ten and Music as Inspiration - Enjoy!

Nora Nettlerash writes, "Stars rarely arrive fully formed, even ones as uniquely iconic as Vincent Price. Price floated around Hollywood for almost a decade in various supporting roles, some of them quite prestigious. The trouble was, no-one had yet figured out where he really belonged. Dragonwyck (1946) changed all that. "Where" is an appropriate term, because a persona like Price's not only needs the right kind of character but the right kind of world to exist in. There was no shortage of creepy villains on Price's resume up to this point, but he had yet to find himself in the land of "Grand Guignol" where he would ever after be at home. Fortunately this Gothic melodrama lays on the "Grand Guignol" as thickly as the darkness in a crypt, from the gloom-laden cinematography of Arthur Miller to the constant brooding presence of Alfred Newman's score. The acting is appropriately intense without being overly hammy, with Anne Revere at her most aloof, Spring Byington uncharacteristically sinister and Gene Tierney white-faced and innocent. And in the centre of them all we have the surrealism of Vincent Price as some relic of feudalism in nineteenth-century America, rolling his eyes in mania and curling his voice menacingly round the script." Watch an excerpt from Dragonwyck with Alfred Newman's wonderful score . . . our PYTHEAS SIGHTING this week.

Toward the Sea is a work by Japanese composer Toru Takemitsu, commissioned by Greenpeace for their Save the Whales campaign. The work is divided into three sections — The Night, Moby-Dick, and Cape Cod. These titles reference Melville's novel Moby Dick. The composer wished to emphasise the spiritual dimension of the book, quoting the passage, "meditation and water are wedded together". In the words of the composer, "The music is an homage to the sea which creates all things and a sketch for the sea of tonality." Watch a performance of Takemitsu's Toward the Sea by the flute and marimba duo Hespérides XXI . . . this week's FROM THE PYTHEAS ARCHIVES.

Explore, Listen and Enjoy!
Vinny Fuerst
Pytheas Center for Contemporary Music

Igor Stravinsky's Symphonies of Wind Instruments (1920) strikes the listener as singular for several reasons. The use of the word "symphonies" for a 10-minute piece single movement seems odd until we think back to the ancient word of "sounding together in harmony" (although as musicologist William Austin has pointed out, "nowhere before the final chord is there an unquestionable tonic or a complete and unclouded major scale"). Stravinsky clarified the use of the word, somewhat, by calling his piece "an austere ritual which is unfolded in terms of short litanies between different groups of homogeneous instruments." The lack of strings was also odd for a piece called "symphonies." Some have pointed to Stravinsky's shunning of the lush, romantic qualities of string instruments, others to post-war economic woes that made works written for smaller forces more likely to earn a performance. But the sonority of the Symphonies is so strikingly perfect to its content that one can't imagine it in any other setting. It is, again in
the words of Austin, "one of Stravinsky's most poignantly beautiful masterpieces, with a form as original and convincing as that of the Rite of Spring, and as hard to define." Watch a performance of Stravinsky's Symphonies of Wind Instruments performed by Netherlands Wind Ensemble with Reinbert De Leeuw conducting . . . one of this week's FEATURED NEW MUSIC VIDEOS.

William Schuman's 60-year career as a composer and an educator left an indelible mark on several generations of American musicians. He began exploring jazz and popular music while attending public school. After abandoning a career in commerce, Schuman enrolled in the Juilliard Summer School, and, in 1933, entered Columbia University's Teacher's College, eventually taking his bachelor's and master's degrees. He not only studied with American composer Roy Harris, he found an ally in conductor Serge Koussevitsky. Between 1938 and 1945 Schuman served as director of publications for G. Schirmer, Inc. as well as on the faculty of Sarah Lawrence College, leaving this post to take over as president of the Juilliard School. Other administrative positions throughout his long career include serving as president of the Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts (1962-1969), director of the Koussevitsky Music Foundation, director of the Chamber Music Society at Lincoln Center, and director of the Walter W. Naumberg Foundation. Already an established composer in the early 1940s, Schuman was thrust into the national and international limelight when the very first Pulitzer Prize in music was bestowed upon him in 1943 for his cantata A Free Song. His Third Symphony (1941), is considered by many to be one of the pinnacles of American symphonic achievement. Hear Schuman talk about his life and music . . . our current COMPOSER PORTRAIT.

According to composer AND choreographer Miro Magloire, "a choreographer setting an existing piece of music faces a dilemma: music written for the concert hall is often too dense to be successfully juxtaposed to dance. Many interesting results could be won from just such a misalignment, but it is rarely consciously exploited. Instead, choreographers tend to either choose music that is so simple as to approach banality, providing them with peace of mind and a rhythmic flow, or humbly distort their choreography, stretching and pulling it until it fits the dimensions of a musical masterwork - but almost loses its own identity in the process. I have been guilty of both offenses. Writing my own music for Reflections allowed me a way out of this conundrum: the dance starts with no music at all, giving the steps a chance to establish their own rhythm. Later, the dancer slows to near stillness as the music gets a chance to be heard. In the end, both what is heard and what is seen is spare enough to need the other for completion. Watch a performance of Magloire's Reflections I (2007) performed by members of the New Chamber Ballet . . . our DANSES PYTHEUSES this week.

Jonathan Elliott, a native of Philadelphia, is a composer, pianist and sound designer. His music has been heard internationally in concert and broadcasts. He has received numerous awards and honors for his music, including fellowships from the MacDowell Colony,Yaddo, the Ragdale Foundation, the New State Council on the Arts, the International Festival of New Music at Darmstadt, Centre Acanthes, the Aspen Music Festival, and the W.K. Rose Trust. In addition he he has won prizes from BMI, ASCAP, the Chicago Symphony, the American Composers Forum, Forum 91/UNESCO, and has been a nominee for the American Academy of Arts and Letters music awards. Hear a performance of Elliott's Odd Preludes (2000) for alto sax and piano . . . this week's FROM THE PYTHEAS ARCHIVES.

Explore, Listen and Enjoy!
Vinny Fuerst
Pytheas Center for Contemporary Music

Ofer Ben-Amots The Dybbuk - Between Two Worlds (2007) . . . one of this week's FEATURED NEW MUSIC VIDEOS.

Leonard Rosenman Interview with Charles Amirkhanian . . . it's our current COMPOSER PORTRAIT.

Delia Derbyshire Blue Veils and Golden Sand (1967) . . . SOUND ART FEATURE this week.

Libby Larsen Deep Summer Music (1982) . . . this week's FROM THE PYTHEAS ARCHIVES.

Gian Carlo Menotti's The Medium (1946) is something of a cautionary tale, which had its genesis in a séance attended by the composer himself. The plot of the opera runs as follows: Living in conditions of near-squalor, Baba poses as a medium with her daughter, Monica, posing as ghosts from the beyond. She takes in Toby, a mute, as a lodger but distrusts him. The business continues until, during a séance, she feels a 'cold hand' tightening about her throat. When her customers return for another session, she tells them that she is a fake and demonstrates her tricks, but her clients protest that she must be real, that it was not Monica's voice they heard. She drives them out and resolves to cast out Toby as well. When Toby returns, she shoots and inadvertently kills him. At the conclusion, she still wonders if it had been Toby". According to Barbara Eisner Bayer "The Medium is a musical theater piece, dependent upon the interactions of three principal singer/actors, one of whom's a mute whose actions and expressions are intrinsic to the plot's dramatic impact. Without Toby's 'voice', the story lacks heart". The Black Swan, from the end of Act I, is a haunting lullaby of the damned, and Menotti's magical musical lyricism is magnified by characters camaraderie and close vocal timbres. Watch a performance/collage by Madlenianum Opera Theatre Belgrade, directed by Nenad Glavan . . . one of this week's FEATURED NEW MUSIC VIDEOS.

American Composer Judith Shatin is a sonic explorer whose music spans chamber, choral, dance, electroacoustic, installation, multimedia and orchestral genres. Her inspirations range from myth, poetry and her Jewish heritage to the calls of the animals around us and the sounding universe beyond. The Washington Post has called her music "highly inventive . . . hugely enjoyable and deeply involving, with a constant sense of surprise." This week we are privileged to present an exclusive Interview @ Pytheas with Judith Shatin by the Pytheas Center's director, Vinny Fuerst. Shatin talks about her life as a composer, her current compositions and activities, technology and music, and her thoughts on contemporary music . . . it's our current COMPOSER PORTRAIT.

For those of you who'll be in southern Maine during the last weekend of October, please stop in to the Pytheas Center's Yarmouth Contemporary Music Days, a series of music events taking place Thursday through Sunday, October 28-31, involving Maine composers, musicians, educators, artists, and students. All events are FREE and made possible by a grant from Yarmouth Arts . The four day Yarmouth Contemporary Music Days features contemporary music with film, visual art, and live performances. Day One, Let's Talk Music [Thursday, Oct 28th, 6:30 PM, Bay Square at Yarmouth] will be a 'listening group' (similar to the concept of a 'book group'), open to the public, and focusing on the idea of "moving from hearing to active listening". Day Two, Film and Music [Friday, Oct 29th, 7:30 PM, The Log Cabin, Yarmouth] features film excerpts and music and focuses in on how soundtracks influence our perception of the visual and dramatic experience. Day Three, Ten by Ten [Saturday, Oct 30th, 2 PM, North Yarmouth Academy, Higgins Hall] is a performance of 10 pieces by 10 contemporary composers (a good number of them Maine-based), and many of the pieces performed by the composers themselves. And lastly, Day Four, Visual Art and Music: Music as Inspiration [Sunday, Oct 31st, 2 PM, Yarmouth High School Art Room] is a musical gallery walk through art inspired by contemporary music and created by area artists and students. It is the culmination of a project in which Yarmouth High School and Elementary School art students, teachers and area visual artists listened to selections of contemporary music and then created art in reaction to it. The day of the event will also include a "live art creation" by area visual artists. You can find the Yarmouth Contemporary Music Days webpage here and a YCMD poster here . Please come and join the Pytheas Center for an exciting weekend!

According to composer Christopher Rouse Ogoun Badagris (1976) derives its inspiration from Haitian drumming patterns, particularly those of the Juba Dance. Hence, it seemed logical to tie in the work with various aspects of Voodoo ritual. Ogoun Badagris is one of the most terrible and violent of all Voodoo loas (deities) and he can be appeased only by human blood sacrifice. This work may thus be interpreted as a dance of appeasement. The four conga drums often act as the focal point in the work and can be compared with the role of the four most basic drums in the Voodoo religion — the be-be, the seconde, the maman, and the asator. The metal plates and sleighbells are to a certain extent parallels of the Haitian ogan. The work begins with a brief action de grace, a ceremonial call-to-action in which the high priest shakes the giant rattle known as the asson, here replaced by cabasa. Then the principle dance begins, a grouillère: this is a highly erotic and even brutally sexual ceremonial dance which in turn is succeeded by the Danse Vaudou at the point at which demonic possession occurs. The word reler, which the performers must shriek at the conclusion of the work, is the Voodoo equivalent of the Judaeo-Christian Amen". Watch a performance of Christopher Rouse's Ogoun Badagris by the Percussion Section Residentie Orkest/The Hague Philharmonic . . . it's our BANG, CLANG, and BEAT/NEW MUSIC for PERCUSSION this week.

The music of Canadian-American composer Karim Al-Zand has been called "strong and startlingly lovely" (Boston Globe). His compositions are wide-ranging, from settings of classical Arabic poetry, to scores for dance, and pieces for young audiences. His works explore connections between music and other arts, and draw inspiration from diverse sources such as 19th century graphic art, fables of the world, folksong and jazz. The themes of many of his pieces speak to his middle-eastern heritage as well. Watch a performance of Karim Al-Zand's Capriccio (2002) for solo violin performed by violinist Matt Detrick . . . this week's FROM THE PYTHEAS ARCHIVES.

Explore, Listen and Enjoy!
Vinny Fuerst
Pytheas Center for Contemporary Music

Osvaldo Golijov is known for his musical hybridity in combining the traditions of classical chamber, Jewish liturgical, and klezmer music with hints of the tango of Astor Piazzolla in his compositions. He is the recipient of a MacArthur "Genius Grant" Fellowship, the Vilcek Prize, and the recording of his opera "Ainadamar" was awarded two Grammy Awards in 2006: Best Opera Recording, and Best Contemporary Composition. His piece for solo cello Omaramoor (1991) is described by Richard Buell (The Boston Globe) as "a kind of quest piece - the solo cello wanders toward some tantalizingly withheld realization - the near-statement, the composer tells us, of a song made famous by the Argentine tango specialist Carlos Gandel". Watch a performance of Omaramoor by cellist Amy Sue Barston . . . one of this week's FEATURED NEW MUSIC VIDEOS.

Richard Addinsell was a British composer most famous for his composition "Warsaw Concerto", which was written originally for the little-seen 1941 film "Dangerous Moonlight". Over the course of his career he composed scores for over 40 films, including "Blithe Spirit" (1945), "Under Capricorn" (1949) [with director Alfred Hitchcock], and "Scrooge" (A Christmas Carol) (1951), as well as music for Broadway musical plays and revues, orchestra and popular songs, especially in collaboration with Joyce Grenfell. Hear his moody and brooding score for director George Cukor's Gaslight (1944) . . . it's our current PYTHEAS SIGHTING.

Richard Maxfield was a composer of instrumental, electro-acoustic, and electronic music. Born in Seattle, he most likely taught the first University-level course in electronic music in America at the New School for Social Research. His electronic piece Amazing Grace (1960) mixes tape loops from two sources which are played back at various speeds, causing the fragments to overlap in complex ways, predating both Terry Riley’s and Steve Reich’s tape-loop pieces. "Amazing Grace" even uses a tape of a preacher, as Steve Reich's did in his famous "It's Gonna Rain" (1965); the results are at least equal to Reich's! Maxfield's pieces represent the state of new music just before minimalism was born. Sit back and listen to Richard Maxfield's Amazing Grace . . . it's one of our PYTHEAS EARFULS this week.

Edgard Varese's Ionisation (1931) is credited with being the first Western work written for percussion alone, having no basis in traditional concepts of melody and harmony. As such, the implications of the work (from the standpoint of when the piece was written) questioned the meaning of the word music, as it was understood in the Western world. Viewed historically, it is actually a return to a very ancient Eastern tradition of percussion music, particularly in the aspect of timbre. Eastern concepts of sound and Western formal concepts of structure and logic merge, resulting in a musical entity which is universal (from "Tater Z the Anti-G and DJ Hunsmire's Musical Studies Index"). Watch a classic performance of Varèse's Ionisation by the Ensemble InterContemporain with Pierre Boulez conducting . . . this week's FROM THE PYTHEAS ARCHIVES.

Explore, Listen and Enjoy!
Vinny Fuerst
Pytheas Center for Contemporary Music

According to David Weininger (Boston Globe), composer "David Rakowski is a laid-back, slightly geeky, funny guy who writes some very difficult music. Or, as Rakowski puts it on his home page, music that has "lots and lotsa notes." Rakowski never planned to add so many works to such an artistically suspect genre. He wrote the first étude, E-Machines, in 1988, more or less on a challenge from his then-roommate. "That turned out to be a fun piece and people actually liked it even though I thought it was worthless at the time. Well, I don’t know about worthless but certainly useless." Soon other pianists began asking for more; so did the publisher C.F. Peters. "And I would just write them as technique builders in between pieces or when I was stuck on a big piece I would write a little étude and then come back to the big piece refreshed. It usually kind of worked." Each étude must be written from start to finish without revision, and must take a maximum of six days to finish. And he plans to quit when he reaches 100. "I like the idea of putting closure on a project so that I can say that’s done. And seriously, it seems silly to be playing an Étude No. 101. Sounds more like a highway than an étude." His growing catalog of Études for piano has inspired performances and recordings by leading pianists on both sides of the Atlantic. Watch a performance of Rakowski's Étude No. 76, " Clave" (2007) by pianist Geoffrey Burleson . . . one of this week's FEATURED NEW MUSIC VIDEOS.

Sound is central in Mirjam Tally’s creations. Her music brims with playful contrasts – humorous, dramatic and poetic mixes of sound. She has written chamber and electronic music in which acoustic and electronic sounds often interweave, sometimes using Nordic or exotic instruments (Estonian kannel, didgeridoo, tanpura, accordion and others), treating sound material with a modernist open mind. According to Tally, "Work with electronics has considerably widened my imagination of sound. To me, color is really important in music. Lately I have discovered the recording of environmental sounds. This is a bit similar to photography – you just need to be at the right place at the right time to get a fascinating sound on tape, be it, for example, yacht masts swaying in the wind, clinks of ice floes on the coast or wind generators, not to mention the sounds of birds and nature in general. The further result (i.e. the composition) depends on if you have good ingredients; you don’t need to process and "bend" it in the studio at all. The main thing is to collect valuable sound material from the living environment." Watch Tally's collaboration with filmmaker Ülo Pikkov, their short film Tablemat of Baltic Sea (2006) . . . it's our current PYTHEAS SIGHTING.

Zoltán Kodály’s contributions to the musical life of Hungary in the 20th century were immense, and indeed, have gone far beyond mere nationalism. His orchestral compositions enjoy a place in the standard repertory. His researches into his country’s folk music have been models for ethno-musicologists. The program for folk music research drafted by him and Bela Bartok in 1913 resulted in the collection, classification and editing of over 100,000 folk songs. He also made significant contributions in the fields of music history, music criticism, history of literature, linguistics and language education. His teaching methods also went far beyond the borders of his native land with the worldwide use of the Kodály Method for teaching music in schools, the idea being general music literacy. Kodály was a vocal oriented composer; melody and lyricism were of prime importance to him. And at the core of his work is folk music. Hear Kodály talk about his ideas on music education in a rare video from Hungarian Television . . . our COMPOSER PORTRAIT this week.

Musique concrète ("concrete music" or "real music") is a form of electroacoustic music that utilizes acousmatic sound — sound one hears without seeing or knowing an originating cause — as a compositional resource. French composer Pierre Schaeffer is singularly responsible for launching the Musique concrète movement in the late 1940s and with it, the course of much of the experimental music of the 20th Century. From Wikipedia: "The importance of Schaeffer's musique concrète is threefold. He developed the concept of including any and all sounds into the vocabulary of music. At first he concentrated on working with sounds other than those produced by traditional musical instruments. Later on, he found it was possible to remove the familiarity of musical instrument sounds and abstract them further by techniques such as removing the attack of the recorded sound. He was among the first musicians to manipulate recorded sound for the purpose of using it in conjunction with other sounds in order to compose a musical piece. Techniques such as tape looping and tape splicing were used in his research, often comparing to sound collage. The advent of Schaeffer's manipulation of recorded sound became possible only with technologies that were developed after World War II had ended in Europe. His work is recognized today as an essential precursor to contemporary sampling practices. Schaeffer was among the first to use recording technology in a creative and specifically musical way, harnessing the power of electronic and experimental instruments in a manner similar to Luigi Russolo, whom he admired and from whose work he drew inspiration." Etude Noire/Black Study (1948) is an early piece of musique concrete by Schaffer . . . and this week's FROM THE PYTHEAS ARCHIVES.

Explore, Listen and Enjoy!
Vinny Fuerst
Pytheas Center for Contemporary Music

Laurie Spiegel Appalachian Grove (1974) . . . one of this week's FEATURED NEW MUSIC VIDEOS.

Tan Dun Elegy: Snow In June (1991) . . . it's our current DANSES PYTHEUSES here at Pytheas.

One World Symphony (Brooklyn, NY, USA) . . . our FEATURED ENSEMBLE for the week.

Michael Colgrass Déjà Vu (1977) . . . this week's FROM THE PYTHEAS ARCHIVES.

Dominick Argento Letters from Composers - Schumann (1968) . . . one of this week's FEATURED NEW MUSIC VIDEOS.

Sofia Gubaidulina The Deceitful Face of Hope and of Despair; Sieben Worte (Seven Words) (BIS 1449) . . . it's our FEATURED RECORDING here at Pytheas.

Bright Sheng Uncommon Sense - An Interview with Junia Doan . . . our current COMPOSER PORTRAIT.

Oyvind Torvund Krull Quest (2004) . . . this week's FROM THE PYTHEAS ARCHIVES.

John Cage In a Landscape (1948) . . . one of this week's FEATURED NEW MUSIC VIDEOS.

Francis Poulenc Les Chemins de l’Amour (1940) . . . it's one of our FEATURED EARFULS here at Pytheas.

Taras Bulba (1962) - Music by Franz Waxman - Film by J. Lee Thompson . . . our current PYTHEAS SIGHTING.

Philip Glass Concerto Fantasy for Two Timpanists & Orchestra, mvt 3 (2000) . . . this week's FROM THE PYTHEAS ARCHIVES.

Giacinto Scelsi's mature music is marked by a supreme concentration on single notes, combined with a masterly sense of form. Scelsi revolutionized the role of sound in western music, and his best known work is the Quattro Pezzi per Orchestra/Four Pieces for Orchestra (1959), each on a single note. These single notes are elaborated through microtonal shadings, harmonic allusions, and variations in timbre and dynamics. It is impossible to express the immense power of this apparently simple music in words - (Todd McComb/ClassicalNet). Hear what Todd McComb is writing about in a performance of Scelsi's Quattro Pezzi by the Vienna Radio Symphony Orchestra with Peter Rundel conducting . . . one of this week's FEATURED NEW MUSIC VIDEOS.

Hubert Culot (MusicWeb International) writes that, "Isang Yun is undoubtedly the most important composer to have emerged from Korea during the second half of the 20th century. He studied with Boris Blacher who made him aware of modern techniques, such as twelve-tone and serial writing; these Yun adopted without ever strictly adhering to them. His music is rooted in classical Korean music, of which we know very little, whereas its formal framework is often found in 20th century music. Although some of his earlier pieces are more experimental or more overtly "modern", Yun steered clear of strict serial practice, and allowed his deeply rooted lyricism to flower freely". Read more of this CD review and hear excerpts from Capriccio Record's CD of "Chamber Music by Isang Yun" . . . it's our FEATURED RECORDING here at Pytheas.

The film How Green Was My Valley (1941) is one of John Ford's masterpieces of sentimental human drama. It is the melodramatic and nostalgic story, adapted by screenwriter Philip Dunne from Richard Llewellyn's best-selling novel, of a close-knit, hard-working Welsh coal-mining family at the turn of the 20th century as a socio-economic way of life passes and the home-family unit disintegrates. Episodic incidents in everyday life convey the changes, trials, setbacks, and joys of the hard-bitten community as it faces growing unemployment, distressing work conditions, unrest, unionization and labor-capital disputes, and personal tragedy. Domestic life, romance, harsh treatment at school, the departure of two boys to find their fortune in America, unrequited love between the local preacher (Walter Pidgeon) and the only Morgan daughter (beautiful 19 year old Irish actress Maureen O'Hara), and other events are portrayed within this warm, human story. The original musical score by the great Alfred Newman was nominated for an Academy Award. Watch an excerpt from this classic film . . . our current PYTHEAS SIGHTING.

Sergei Prokofiev's Violin Sonata No. 1 in F minor, written between 1938 and 1946 (and completed two years AFTER the Violin Sonata No. 2), is one of the darkest and most brooding of the composer's works. Prokofiev described the slithering violin scales at the end of the 1st and 4th movements as "wind passing through a graveyard". The work was premiered by violinist David Oistrakh and pianist Lev Oborin, under the personal coaching of the composer. During rehearsals, Oborin played a certain passage, marked forte (loud), too gently for Prokofiev's liking, who insisted it should be more aggressive. Oborin replied that he was afraid of drowning out the violin, but Prokofiev said "It should sound in such a way that people should jump in their seat, and say 'Is he out of his mind?'". Watch a performance of the 4th movement of Prokofiev's Violin Sonata No. 1 by violinist Xenia Akeynikov . . . this week's FROM THE PYTHEAS ARCHIVES.

Explore, Listen and Enjoy!
Vinny Fuerst
Pytheas Center for Contemporary Music

"The mesmerizing two-part Offrandes (1921) is possibly the most direct statement Edgard Varèse ever made of his tormented inner world. It's that tremor of personal pain, pulsating through all the vividly colored din, that Stravinsky was reacting to when he said that the first harp attack in part two nearly gave him a heart attack. He called it 'the most extraordinary noise in all of Varèse' (All Music Guide)." Watch a performance of this contemporary music classic by soprano Anna Steiger and the Ensemble Intercontemporain, with Pierre Boulez conducting . . . one of this week's FEATURED NEW MUSIC VIDEOS.

According to composer Alejandro Viñao, "For some years I have listened to the Pakistani singer Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan. He was perhaps the greatest exponent of Qawwali, the music of the sufi mystics. This music in general, and Ali Khan’s singing in particular, are characterised by remarkable rhythmic and melismatic subtlety. The Kahn Variations (2001) are a set of 8 rhythmic variations based on a traditional theme from Qawwali music as sang by Ali Kahn. The basic pulse and ‘feel’ of the music has lingered in my mind ever since I first heard a recording of it in the early 1990’s. I developed each of the 8 variations - which are played as a continuous piece - exploring a different rhythmic and melodic aspect of the original theme. However, from the harmonic point of view the piece is rather static, respecting the lack or harmony - in the western sense - of the original traditional theme. As I look at the score now, I can recognize a range of influences from Conlon Nancarrow, tango music, and my own previous pieces for marimba. All these influences have one thing in common: the articulation of pulse, or multiple simultaneous pulses to create a dramatic musical discourse." Watch a performance of the Kahn Variations by Colin Bunnell . . . our second FEATURED NEW MUSIC VIDEOS.

Karlheinz Stockhausen emerged early on as one of the most influential and unique voices in the post-WWII European musical avant-garde and his prominence continued throughout the rest of the 20th century and into the 21stt. Combining a keen sensitivity to the acoustical realities and possibilities of sound, rigorous and sophisticated compositional methods expanded from integral serialism, innovative theatricality, and a penchant for the mystical, Stockhausen remains one of the most innovative musical personalities to span the turn of this century. Hear Stockhausen talk about his music in an interview with Lawrence Pollard . . . our PYTHEAS COMPOSER PORTRAIT.

Pulitzer Prize winning composer Paul Moravec wrote his Mortal Flesh (2008) for the recorder quartet Quartet New Generation (QNG). Impressed by all the recorder sizes the QNG members play, Moravec composed Mortal Flesh so that 20 instruments are employed, moving from the largest and lowest-sounding to the smallest and highest-sounding, and requiring very quick and tricky instrument changes. It's a terrific piece, well thought out for recorders, and at once serious and witty. Watch a performance of Mortal Flesh by Quartet New Generation . . . this week's FROM THE PYTHEAS ARCHIVES.

Explore, Listen and Enjoy!
Vinny Fuerst
Pytheas Center for Contemporary Music

Tan Dun is one of the most renowned Chinese contemporary composers in both his home country and abroad. He is a multi-talented musician, whose compositions emanate a unique shamanistic aura. His orchestral pieces combine both traditional Chinese and Western instruments with some unconventional sound sources such as water, paper or teapots. His Zheng Concerto (1999) is written for the zheng, an ancient Chinese plucked instrument, something like a zither and something like a harp, with extraordinary capabilities for bending and quartering tones. Watch a performance with zheng virtuoso Yuan Li and the strings of the WDR Sinfonieorchester Köln with Tan Dun conducting . . . one of this week's FEATURED NEW MUSIC VIDEOS.

Bob Briggs, of MusicWeb International writes, "It says much for the strength of Barbara Harbach’s work that she has created vocal music which builds on the two great American composers for the voice – Ned Rorem, who has probably done more for vocal music in the past sixty years than anyone, and Aaron Copland, whose 12 Poems of Emily Dickinson might just be the greatest American composition for voice and piano – yet manages to find her own truly American sound. As I have said before, when I have had the great pleasure to report on the previous four CDs of her music, she has forged a voice which is all her own, yet speaks clearly in the American vernacular. Don’t miss this disk for it is something very, very special". Read more, and hear excerpts from this MSR Recording . . . it's this week's FEATURED RECORDING.

American composer Ernst Bacon's collection Places (1962) consists of 10 short pieces for solo piano. Contemporary and accessible, they are suitable for performing pianists, piano students of varying levels, and piano teachers looking for new music. Many of the compositions included in Places were inspired by Bacon's world travels to lesser known geographic locations. Listen to a performance of one of the "Places" - Gnaw Bone, Indiana - played by pianist Madeline Salocks . . . one of this week's PYTHEAS EARFULS.

Jean Langlais, born in the village of La Fontenelle in 1907, was one of the most important French musicians of the 20th century. An organist and composer of international renown, his music is known and loved throughout the world, and in 2007 his centenary was celebrated in places as far afield as the USA, Estonia, Spain, Denmark, Germany, the Netherlands, Switzerland, Italy and the United Kingdom. He composed his Cinq Pièces (Five Pieces) for violin and organ in 1974. Watch a performance of the first of these pieces performed by the Duo Tolkien, Alessio Benvenuti, violin, and Marco Lo Muscioviolinist, organ . . . this week's FROM THE PYTHEAS ARCHIVES.

Explore, Listen and Enjoy!
Vinny Fuerst
Pytheas Center for Contemporary Music

According to composer Javier Alvarez, the title of his piece for maracas and tape, Temazcal (1984) "stems from the Nahuatl (ancient Aztec) word literally meaning 'water that burns'. The maraca material is drawn from traditional rhythmic patterns found in most Latin American musics, namely those from the Caribbean region, southeastern Mexico, Cuba, Central America and the flatlands of Colombia and Venezuela. In these musics in general, the maracas are used in a purely accompanimental manner as a part of small instrumental ensembles. The only exception is, perhaps, that of the Venezuelan flatlands, where the role of the maracas surpasses that of mere cadence and accenet punctuation to become a soloistic instrument in its own right. It was from this instance that I imagined a piece where the player would have to master short patterns and combine them with great virtuosity to construct larger and complex rhythmic structures which could then be juxtaposed, superimposed and set against similar passages on tape, thus creating a dense polyrhythmic web. This would eventually disintegrate clearing the way for a traditional accompanimental style of playing in a sound world reminiscent of the maracas’ more usual environment. The sound sources on tape include harp, a folk guitar and double bass pizzicatti for the tape’s attacks, the transformation of bamboo rods being struck together for the rhythmic passages and rattling sounds created with the maracas themselves for other gestures." Watch a performance of Alvarez's "Temazcal" by Brad Meyer . . . one of this week's FEATURED NEW MUSIC VIDEOS.

The music of Ástor Piazzolla epitomizes our situation in the modern world, with his fusion of folkloric beauty and contemporary tension. He forged a new music that challenged the traditionalist, and left the adventurous craving more. He took the music of the great tango masters like Garde, ripped it away from the velvet-walled concert hall and the soft-cushion drawing room, and slapped it down on the pavement of Buenos Aires. Reviled by the critics, shunned even by the conservative government, his music spoke to the next generation, and popular performers, jazz musicians and listeners all over the world eventually fell under the spell of his Nuevo Tango. Hear Piazzolla talk about his life and his music with Charles Amirkhanian . . . it's this week's COMPOSER PORTRAIT.

Elena Ruehr has been called a "composer to watch" by Opera News, and her music has been described as "stunning ... beautifully lighted by a canny instinct for knowing when and how to vary key, timbre, and harmony" (The Boston Globe). She has had commissions, awards and residencies with leading ensembles and presenters across the country including the Shanghai, Borromeo and Cypress Quartets, the Washington Chorus, the Boston Modern Orchestra Project, Opera Boston, the Metamorphosen Chamber Ensemble, the Rockport Chamber Music Festival and the Cincinnatti Symphony. Recently, she has written two string quartets for the Cypress String Quartet - her String Quartet No. 4 (2005) was called by The Washington Post "music with heart and ... a forceful sense of character and expression." A natural collaborator across genres, Ruehr has also worked with the Nicola Hawkins Dance Company on critically acclaimed performances in New York and Boston. Watch a Elena Ruehr/Rebecca Rice dance collaboration, Echoes (2004) . . . this week's DANSES PYTHEUSES.

Gerald Finzi's two works for piano and orchestra, the Eclogue (1929) and Grand Fantasia and Toccata (1928/1953), were both conceived for a piano concerto that never materialized. The Grand Fantasia and Toccata is a demanding virtuoso work inspired by Finzi's love of the music of Johann Sebastian Bach. According to Michael Jameson (ClassicsToday.com) it's a piece that can be seen "as a kind of neo-Baroque refraction, more closely associated with the 20th century than the 18th." Watch a beautiful performance of the Grand Fantasia and Toccata with pianist Leon McCawley . . . this week's FROM THE PYTHEAS ARCHIVES.

Explore, Listen and Enjoy!
Vinny Fuerst
Pytheas Center for Contemporary Music

Benjamin Lees was one of the senior figures in American music, with a large catalogue of powerful and inventive music to his credit. His piano works span almost sixty years of compositional activity but are unified by a number of consistent stylistic features: a wiry and muscular athleticism with its distant roots in Prokofiev and Bartók, a quasi-Impressionist awareness of piano sonority, a tough, no-nonsense sense of humour and an exhilarating onward drive. Experience Lees' intense and powerful music with a performance of his Fantasia (1954) . . . one of this week's FEATURED NEW MUSIC VIDEOS.

The Portland Chamber Music Festival is a local, community-based organization that has gained an outstanding regional and national reputation since its founding in 1994. The festival brings nationally recognized artists to Portland, Maine to present a wide range of classical chamber music, including the music of living composers. The PCMF has played to a nationwide audience on National Public Radio; twice has been awarded an Aaron Copland grant for performance of American contemporary music; has been recorded and broadcast by WGBH radio in Boston; and has been featured in both local and national press. Performers in recent years have included members of the Vermeer, Mendelssohn, Borromeo, and Brentano String Quartets, world-renowned baritone Sanford Sylvan, and National Symphony Concertmaster Nurit Bar-Josef. Resident Composers have included Grammy winner Osvaldo Golijov and internationally celebrated composer Earl Kim. PCMF also works to develop excitement for classical music among young people and the greater Portland community, hosting a free children’s concert, a Young Artist Apprentice Program, concerts in Gardiner and at Bates College, and adult chamber music workshops. The festival also conducts an annual Composer’s Competition, culminating in the winning work’s premiere performance . . . . . . it's this week's FEATURED NEW MUSIC FESTIVAL.

Leonard Rosenman is one of a handful of film composers who have successfully incorporated contemporary compositional techniques into conventional film scoring. Rosenman's use of Arnold Schoenberg's 12-tone technique set a standard for the use of various avant-garde, atonal, and serial effects. The first ever twelve-tone score [for a major studio film] was his score for "The Cobweb" (1955). The composer has also demonstrated an ability to employ authentic period music in a number of films dealing with historical subject matter, such as "Barry Lyndon" (1975) and "Bound for Glory" (1976). Hear Rosenman's music in an excerpt from the 1979 eco-thriller Prophecy . . it's this week's PYTHEAS SIGHTING.

Pierre Schaeffer Etude Noire (1948) is an early piece of musique concrete. "Etude Noire" means black study…making this the progenitor of all dark ambient music. Schaeffer is singularly responsible for launching the Musique Concrete movement in the late 1940s and with it, the course of much of the experimental music of the 20th Century. According toe Wikpedia, Schaeffer is generally acknowledged as being the first composer to make music using magnetic tape. "From the contemporary point of view, the importance of Schaeffer's musique concrète is threefold. He developed the concept of including any and all sounds into the vocabulary of music. At first he concentrated on working with sounds other than those produced by traditional musical instruments. Later on, he found it was possible to remove the familiarity of musical instrument sounds and abstract them further by techniques such as removing the attack of the recorded sound. He was among the first musicians to manipulate recorded sound for the purpose of using it in conjunction with other sounds in order to compose a musical piece. Techniques such as tape looping and tape splicing were used in his research, often comparing to sound collage. The advent of Schaeffer's manipulation of recorded sound became possible only with technologies that were developed after World War II had ended in Europe. His work is recognized today as an essential precursor to contemporary sampling practices. Schaeffer was among the first to use recording technology in a creative and specifically musical way, harnessing the power of electronic and experimental instruments in a manner similar to Luigi Russolo, whom he admired and from whose work he drew inspiration"
. . . this week's FROM THE PYTHEAS ARCHIVES.

Explore, Listen and Enjoy!
Vinny Fuerst
Pytheas Center for Contemporary Music

Considering the singularity of Dmitri Shostakovich’s voice, it is no surprise to find a chamber music work like the Piano Trio No.2, op.67 (1944) clothed in his typical coat of many colors: somberness, simple folkishness, diabolical urgency, satirical stridency, anger. The somberness is particularly appropriate here, for the Trio No. 2 was composed in the summer of 1944 in memory of one of Shostakovich’s closest friends, Ivan Sollertinsky, who had died the February before. The tribute to his friend is not by any means all a maudlin affair, but bereavement is apparent in the first movement’s elegiac introduction, and, particularly, in a bleak third movement. -- from notes to the LA Philharmonic . . . one of this week's FEATURED NEW MUSIC VIDEOS.

Michael Daugherty has created a niche in the music world that is uniquely his own, composing concert music inspired by American popular culture. He first came to international attention in the 1990s with a series of witty, dark-humored, brilliantly-scored pieces inspired by 20th-century American icons such as Superman, Jackie O, Elvis, J. Edgar Hoover, and Rosa Parks, and places such as Route 66, Niagara Falls, and Sunset Strip. With compositional originality and ingenuity to match his subject matter, Daugherty became one of America's most frequently performed and commissioned living composers. The London Times has described Daugherty as "a master icon-maker" and hailed his "maverick imagination, fearless structural sense and meticulous ear". His music has the uncanny knack of speaking everybody’s language at once while retaining the ability to surprise, move, stimulate, inspire and amuse. His idiom bears the stamp of classic modernism, with colliding tonalities and blocks of sound; at the same time, his melodies can be eloquent and stirring. Listen to Michael Daugherty talk about his life and music . . . it's this week's COMPOSER PORTRAIT.

While it’s true that Destination Moon kicked off the burst of sci-fi moviemaking activity that was among the most distinctive pop-cultural features of the 1950’s, that movie wasn’t quite the first one out of the gate. Mind you, it was the first one put into production, but you take certain risks when you make as big a deal of a movie in the works as Eagle-Lion did with Destination Moon - namely, that some rinky-dink independent is going to throw together a low-budget knockoff of your big, prestigious film, and get it out into the theaters while your project is still in post-production. Roger Corman is probably the most famous practitioner of this particular ploy, but he by no means invented it. Some five years before Corman had produced so much as a demo reel, Robert Lippert, the eponymous head of Lippert Studios, stole Destination Moon’s thunder by bringing Rocket Ship X-M to the screen almost before Eagle-Lion even knew what hit them. And if you believe the rumors, Lippert would have stolen more than just his competitor’s thunder; according to the gossip-mongers, the only reason the rocketship of this movie’s title fails to reach the moon as planned is because Eagle-Lion’s lawyers wrote producer/director/screenwriter Kurt Neumann some pissed-off letters. (Scott Ashlin/1000misspenthours.com). Watch Rocket Ship X-M (1950) with a score by Ferde Grofé (composer of the famous Grand Canyon Suite) . . . it's this week's PYTHEAS SIGHTING.

In addition to being one of Hungary's most well known composers, Zoltán Kodály was also a well respected and successful educator in the field of music. His veritable crusade to provide all young people with a sound basic musical education resulted in a great body of work for schools and choirs. He lectured, conducted, taught - often involving his advanced pupils as well. He published, wrote as a critic and laid the foundations for a universal musical education system where singing as a group activity ensures that children become musically literate, learn to co-operate and understand the need for verbal as well as musical communication. The Kodály Method is now his permanent legacy, used and respected world-wide where the value of producing musical literacy among the young is recognized. Kodály was one of this century’s true musical renaissance men. His many-sided interests musical, linguistic, folk and broadly cultural, and educational were all informed by the strong backbone of his ethnic consciousness. Much of his music is imbued with Hungarian folk idioms, though none sacrifices its musical integrity to it. Watch a performance of Kodály's Esti Dal (Evening Song) by the King's Singers . . . this week's FROM THE PYTHEAS ARCHIVES.

Explore, Listen and Enjoy!
Vinny Fuerst
Pytheas Center for Contemporary Music