Tuesday, March 30, 2010

Iannis Xenakis composed his Pleiades in 1978. Its four movements employ an amazing sound world of percussion instruments: metal plates struck by hammers; marimbas used in minimalist repeated patterns, rhythms and colors; and drums of all sizes. Watch a hypnotic performance of the second movement, Claviers by the Yale Percussion Group . . . one of this week's FEATURED NEW MUSIC VIDEOS.

In the first half of the twentieth century, Aaron Copland was at the forefront of American music. He was a skillful and determined composer who incorporated jazz, European post-Romanticism, and even serialism into his works. But it was his distinctively American pieces that have made him famous -- they're vigorous, energetic, highly rhythmic and extremely accessible, and Copland's original audiences loved them. Listeners still do: Fanfare for the Common Man and the ballets Billy the Kid, Rodeo and Appalachian Spring are burned into the American psyche. But the appeal he has as a popular artist does not make for work of poor quality. Even the most ostensibly jingoistic or simplistic of his pieces is multilayered, incredibly dense and harmonically sophisticated, revealing a formidable mind at work. For instance, the composer's best-known ballet Appalachian Spring is a powerful and emotional document of the pioneer spirit that subtly moves from austere phrases to full, lush textures. The piece flirts with dissonance, quotes from traditional folk tunes and utilizes effective and propulsive changes in meter. Copland was shrewd enough to craft art that still touches people, and talented enough to ensure it lasted beyond his lifetime. Check out the fascinating film Aaron Copland and the American Sound film created by Michael Tilson Thomas and the San Francisco Symphony Orchestra as part of their "Keeping Score" series . . . and our COMPOSER PORTRAIT for the week.

The dance work Smoke (1995), using the music of Arvo Pärt, was originally created by choreographer Mats Ek for Swedish Television. Revamped and adapted later for the stage as Solo For Two, it is a melancholic love duet, mysterious and strict, considered one of the most admirable examples of the meeting between classical and contemporary dance. The work describes the very intense communication between a man and a woman with all its emotional and psychological complexity. Both dancers explore human existence and its contradictions. It is an example of the daring creative style of Mats Ek, combining the use of psychological dilemmas with a very subtle sense of humor. Check out the original Swedish Television version of this haunting work performed by Niklas Ek and Sylvie Guillem . . . our current DANSES PYTHEUSES.

According to composer John Tavener, "The Greek word Ypakoe means "to be obedient", "to hear", "to respond". In the present context it refers to the Ypakoe of Easter in the Orthodox Church. "Why seek ye among the dead, as though He were a mortal man?". Ypakoe, written in 1997 for solo piano, is a meditation on both the passion and resurrection of Christ. The work is a totally spiritual concept - to attone the individual's (performer's or listener's) will to the divine will." Watch a performance of Ypakoe by pianist Ralph van Raat . . . this week's FROM THE PYTHEAS ARCHIVES.

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

Friday, March 26, 2010

The Ground Beneath Her Feet (2007) is a full-length work for orchestra (including a rock trio), singers and narrator by composer Victoria Borisova-Ollas with a libretto by Edward Kemp based on the novel by Salman Rushdie. The work features a film directed by Mike Figgis. The attraction of the novel for this treatment lies in its combination of central action, linguistic and geographical colour and underlying mythic elements. The fact that many of the earliest operas and oratorios dealt with the Orpheus myth makes this millennial re-imagining a particularly attractive source for a contemporary engagement with the form. Check out a performance of this unique work . . . one of this week's FEATURED NEW MUSIC VIDEOS.

Hans Zimmer is a composer and keyboard synthesizer player who made popular music history then became one of the most successful film score composers. Raised and educated mainly in England, he has no formal musical education; he says the most he ever got was about "two weeks of piano lessons." Nevertheless, he took an early interest in electronic musical synthesizers in the 1970s, when these were large, bulky analog devices programmed usually by means of patch cords and individual oscillator settings. He found work writing tunes and electronically scoring music for television commercials and, still in his early twenties, joined two British musicians named Trevor Horn and Geoff Downes to form a rock group called The Buggles. They produced a world-wide hit called Video Killed the Radio Star, which made music history as the first piece ever broadcast on America's music network MTV. Zimmer became interested in film music, mostly through the influence of Italian composer Ennio Morricone, but it was a meeting with another film composer, Stanley Meyers, that led Zimmer into scoring for films and into a style using classical and electronic techniques. He has scored such well known films as My Beautiful Laundrette, Rain Man, Driving Miss Daisy, Black Rain, Days of Thunder, Thelma and Louise, Crimson Tide, and two of the Pirates of the Caribbean films. Zimmer's best known work is the score to The Lion King, Disney's most popular animated film, which won the Academy Award. Hear Has Zimmer talks about his music . . . our COMPOSER PORTRAIT for the week.

If you want to know what contemporary ballet looks like check The Wheeldon Company’s Polyphonia (2001). That sense of modernity — the feeling that you are watching dancers of today in works of today — is what Christopher Wheeldon hopes to offer audiences. Polyphonia, set to piano pieces by Gyorgy Ligeti, delivers just such modernity. From its opening moments, when four couples move separately with spiky intensity to the thorny rhythmic thickets of Ligeti’s Désordre, you can see why: Mr. Wheeldon mirrors the sense of simultaneous chaos and order in the music, creating a thrilling what-will-happen-next? excitement . . . check this all out at our current DANSES PYTHEUSES.

Alberto Ginastera was among the most prolific and successful composers to emerge from Latin America. His music is heavily, though not universally, peppered with folk influence. His abundance of compositions for the cello is due in no small part to his second marriage to cellist Aurora Natola, who was instrumental in the composition or revision of nearly all of Ginastera's output for her instrument. Check out a performance of his delightful Pampeana No. 2 (1950) . . . this week's FROM THE PYTHEAS ARCHIVES.

Explore, Listen and Enjoy!
Vinny Fuerst
Pytheas Center for Contemporary Music
According to composer Adrienne Albert, "Musescapes had its beginnings in 2005 when I received a commission from Carol S. Gee to write a work for her amateur piano trio. At the time, I was listening to a lot of the music of Astor Piazzolla and thought it would be great fun to write a three movement work with roots in North American jazz and South American tango music. During the composing of this work, my mother passed away. She was a professional violinist and often played chamber music in our home when I was a child. For My Mother (2009), the second movement of Musescapes became an homage to her. It is a loving, melancholy, melodic work." Watch a performance of For My Mother by the Newstead Trio . . . one of this week's FEATURED NEW MUSIC VIDEOS.

The title of Elliott Carter’s Au Quai (2002) was suggested by Arnold Schoenberg’s short story To the Wharfs in which he describes the mounting anxiety of the members of a French fishing village as the boats and the sea-bound fisherman failed to appear after a storm and several days’ absence. When they were suddenly sighted all shouted "to the wharfs, aux quais, O.K." Hear the London Sinfonietta perform Au Quai . . . this week’s PYTHEAS EARFUL.

The London Wireless Soundscape Project aims to broadcast simultaneous "live" soundscapes from various locations around London. This is made possible using laptops to stream audio over the internet using 'Wifi' networking. The 'streamed' audio is then broadcast on Resonance 104.4 FM in central London. Using free internet access points around London LWSP broadcasts from different locations every fortnight. Their first show was broadcast from the heart of London with Leicester Square and Covent Garden on 5th October 2003. They have broadcast from the Hackney Road, Paddington Station, Greenwich Naval College, Greek St and a multicast from Picadilly Circus. A recent show featured hydrophones submerged in the River Thames and Camden Lock . . . check this all out at our current FEATURED NEW MUSIC WEBSITE.

Libby Larsen Cowboy Songs (1979) . . . this week's FROM THE PYTHEAS ARCHIVES.

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

Monday, March 8, 2010

Written for Yo Yo Ma, and commissioned by the Pacific Symphony for Dr. George Cheng in honor of his wife Arlene, Bright Sheng's 7 Tunes Heard in China is based on seven folk tunes the composer heard in China: I. Seasons; II. Guessing Song; III. The Little Cabbage; IV. The Drunken Fisherman; V. Diu Diu Dong; VI. Pastoral Ballade; VII. Tibetan Dance. Watch performances of Little Cabbage and Seasons by cellists Nicholas Finch and Jerry Liu . . . this week's FEATURED NEW MUSIC VIDEOS.

Nick Burton writes, "Dziga Vertov’s most famous film, A Man with a Movie Camera (1929), is the ultimate example of his radical documentary style, and while he made the film with the Stalin regime overseeing the project, there is something very subversive at work here. For all it’s imagery of the triumph of Soviet industrialization, the film questions the very nature of the images it portrays. Ostensibly a day in the life of the Soviet Union from early morning to the five o’clock work whistle, the film is an astonishing torrent of images edited in a then experimental, almost avant-garde style of short, rapid edits. The film begins slowly with the silent city being watched over by surreal store mannequins, but as the city comes steadily to life, the rhythms of the editing increase, and the film soon teems with fast images of transportation – trains, street cars, planes come buzzing to life – and with intercut opposing images of people waking – first a well-to-do woman, then a homeless man on a park bench. It’s a simple, effective way of illustrating the dialectics of society, the ebb and flow of life from morning to evening, from birth to death (a real birth is cut with scenes of a funeral). Images here are of machinery and factories, whirring with artificial life dominate, with every gear and lever framed meticulously as if it were abstract art. But with the introduction of the cameraman himself – a newsreel cameraman like Vertov himself whom we see filming from time to time – and of the film’s editor, who we see at several points in the film editing the reels of film, the film becomes more than a simple documentary. Few documentaries are so aware of the manufacturing of images: Indeed there is a scene of the editor intercut with shots of seamstresses, implying that film, like any other industrial product, is processed and controlled – something that doesn’t speak well for the truth of images. And when we see the cameraman behind his camera, we realize that we are seeing a false image; we are seeing a man playing a cameraman whom is himself being filmed. We are at the mercy of the invented reality of cinema, no matter how much objective truth is being offered by its images. Vertov never lets you forget that, before all else, this is cinema". All this, and a score by Michael Nyman . . . our PYTHEAS SIGHTING for the week.

Contemporary music in Norway is a field that combines vibrant activity with a wide international reputation. Besides being innovative creators and performers of composed music, Norway’s younger generation of composers and musicians are also venturing into improvisation, jazz, 'noise' and mixed media arts. There is also a small but growing interest in contemporary fiddle players (see section on Folk music and dance). Notable among contemporary Norwegian composers having achieved international acclaim are Arne Nordheim (b. 1931), Lasse Thoresen (b. 1949), Olav Anton Thommessen (b. 1946), Rolf Wallin (b. 1957), Cecilie Ore (b. 1954), Sven Lyder Kahrs (b. 1959) and Jon Øivind Ness (b. 1968). Young and aspiring Norwegian composers with growing international exposure are Maja S K Ratkje (b. 1973), Eivind Buene (b. 1973) and Lars Petter Hagen (b. 1975). Ratkje and Wallin are the foremost examples of artists combining the roles of composer and performer. Check all this out at Norway Cultural Profile (Cultural Profiles Project) . . . our current FEATURED NEW MUSIC WEBSITE.

Composer Lee Actor has won a number of awards for his compositions, most recently for Redwood Fanfare, which was one of three winners of the 2009 Ridgewood Symphony Orchestra Fanfare Competition, and the Concerto for Horn and Orchestra (2007), which was the First Prize Winner in the 2007 International Horn Society Composition Contest. Watch a performance of Actor's Horn Concerto by hornist Patrick Hughes and the St. Olaf Orchestra . . . this week's FROM THE PYTHEAS ARCHIVES.

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

Friday, March 5, 2010

Designed by Thomas Jefferson to represent the “authority of nature and the power of reason,” the Rotunda is the architectural and symbolic center of the University of Virginia, founded by Jefferson in 1824 as the first secular Liberal Arts university in America. Inspired by these now threatened ideals, composer Judith Shatin and filmmaker Robert Arnold have created a sound and video portrait of the Rotunda that juxtaposes its timeless majesty with the every-changing hum of daily life. Judith Shatin, a University of Virginia professor of music, conceived of the project while looking out her office window at Jefferson's Lawn and Rotunda. Noted filmmaker Robert Arnold, was the ideal collaborator for this work, because his films often deal with time in fascinating ways. For an entire year, a remote controlled camera installed on a building facing the Rotunda captured digital time-lapse images throughout each day. These were then uploaded to Arnold’s studio in Boston every night. During this same time period Shatin collected sounds, both in and around the Rotunda, and recorded unscripted interviews about what the Rotunda meant to a variety of people. Participants ranged from students to architectural historians, Jefferson experts, UVA alumni, professors and administrators. The sound world of the piece was based on these recordings. With nearly half a million images to work with, Arnold and Shatin decided to build their piece around the idea of one day on the Lawn unfolding over the course of a year. The resulting fifteen-minute video moves from sunrise to sunset as the year moves from season to season. The video juxtaposes the timeless ideals represented by the Rotunda with the constant flux of life and nature. Watch an excerpt of Rotunda (2009) . . . one of this week's FEATURED NEW MUSIC VIDEOS.

Frank Ticheli's music has been described as being "optimistic and thoughtful" (Los Angeles Times), "lean and muscular" (New York Times), "brilliantly effective" (Miami Herald) and "powerful, deeply felt crafted with impressive flair and an ear for striking instrumental colors" (South Florida Sun-Sentinel). Ticheli joined the faculty of the University of Southern California's Thornton School of Music in 1991, where he is Professor of Composition. From 1991 to 1998, he was Composer in Residence of the Pacific Symphony, and he still enjoys a close working relationship with that orchestra and their music director, Carl St. Clair. Ticheli is well known for his works for concert band, many of which have become standards in the repertoire. In addition to composing, he has appeared as guest conductor of his music at Carnegie Hall, at many American universities and music festivals, and in cities throughout the world. Hear Ticheli talk about his life and music . . . our COMPOSER PORTRAIT for the week.

The Emerson String Quartet: The Bartók Quartets, explores the six string quartets of Béla Bartók through the vision of the Emerson String Quartet in this amalgamation of video footage, written commentary, and animated musical score. Much of the video was taken during a workshop given by the Emerson Quartet members in 2003 and has been supplemented with additional video of Emerson members and others speaking about the quartets. The site is intended for performers who are preparing these pieces, as well as listeners and concertgoers who wish to learn more about the Bartók quartets and about the many musical decisions that must be made in order to perform these demanding works. . . . check this all out at our current FEATURED NEW MUSIC WEBSITE.

Tom Flaherty’s Trio for Cello & Digital Processor (1991) plays with rhythmic hockets and explores the sonorous possibilities of the cello. The digital processor is not intended to actually alter the cello sound in any significant way; rather, it sends the cello sound to left and right speakers a half second and a full second later than the original acoustic sound. The resulting piece is in effect a cello trio, although it would be virtually impossible to accurately coordinate three live players to the degree required in the piece. Watch composer/cellist Flaherty in a performance of his work . . . this week's FROM THE PYTHEAS ARCHIVES.

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