Born in Belleville, Illinois and raised in the suburbs of Kansas City and Chicago, Amy Beth Kirsten received degrees from Benedictine University, the Chicago College of Performing Arts at Roosevelt University, and from Peabody Conservatory. She has taught on the faculties of Peabody Conservatory, Towson University, Wesleyan University, and the University of Connecticut. Kirsten received a 2011 Guggenheim Fellowship and Levy Supplemental Stipend for music composition and was recently a finalist for the Rome Prize. She has also received a Rockefeller Foundation Artist Fellowship, and was named a 2011 Artist Fellow from the Connecticut Commission on Culture & Tourism. In 2009-2010, Kirsten was named Missouri's First Composer Laureate due to her close association with the state. Her composition World Under Glass No. 1, and its companion piece, World Under Glass No. 2, were inspired by the Distillation Series of visual artist Thomas Doyle. Watch a performance of Amy Beth Kirsten's World Under Glass No. 1 (2011) played by the ensemble Dark in the Song . . . one of this week's FEATURED NEW MUSIC VIDEOS.

For those of you in either the Portland (ME) or Baltimore (MD) areas, there are two new music performances by Pytheas Center Composers to check out . . .
On Wednesday, November 16, 2011, Frontier Cafe and Arts Venue is proud to present a Composer to Composer concert. In this unique event, Frontier Cafe will play host to some of New England's finest Composer/Performers as they present world premieres of ten new works for solo instruments. Curated by composer and contrabassist Joshua DeScherer, this concert also features compositions and performances by Beth Wiemann (bass clarinet), Matt Samolis (flute), Michael Dobiel (saxophone), Mark Tipton (trumpet), Morgan Evans-Weiler (violin), and others. The Composer to Composer concert is free, with donations for the performers strongly encouraged.

And, Vivian Adelberg Rudow will create a live sound collage using The Vivian Technique, in her Performance Art music presentation with the Effervescent Collective Dance Group, Friday, November 18, 2011, 7:30pm at Theatre Project [45 West Preston Street, Baltimore MD], during a Sound in Motion IV: Available performance of a collaboration between the Baltimore Composers Forum and local dancers and choreographers. Other composers music in the concert includes Garth Baxter, Jin-Hwa Choi, Ljiljana Jovanovic, Keith Kramer, Ariyo Shahry and George Spicka, with choreography by Lynne Price. Ticket are: General admission, $20; Seniors/Artists/Military, $15; Student, $10.

Lowell Liebermann's Eight Pieces, op. 59 (1997) for bass flute, alto flute, C-flute or piccolo was commissioned by Sarah Baird Fouse and first performed at the National Flute Association Convention in Phoenix, August 1998. These pieces were also awarded the Best Newly Published Work from the National Flute Association. Conceived initially as music for solo bass flute, Liebermann leaves the choice of flute completely up to the performer. The music is even supplied with some transposed parts and alternative notes to accommodate the shortened lower octave of the piccolo. The eight pieces are diverse and almost epigrammatically brief, but together form a set of engagingly varied works. Fanfare, the seventh piece, as the title implies, is an alternation of declamatory and what might be accompanying figures mixed together in a somewhat disjunct fashion. The eighth and final movement, March, became the basis for the second movement of Liebermann’s Second Symphony. These two movements have been choreographed by C. Neil Parsons for dancer and flutist. Parsons graduated from Interlochen Arts Academy and received his Bachelor’s degree from Oberlin Conservatory of Music, where he studied bass trombone with Ray Premru. While at Oberlin, he combined his interests in music, dance and teaching by designing an individual major: Interdisciplinary Performance and Education. He then continued his studies with trombonist Tony Baker and at the Ohio University School of Dance. A diverse performer, Parsons' performance credits include roles in professional theatre productions, choreographing and performing numerous pieces, and playing music with a variety of ensembles including a disco orchestra. As a collaborative performance artist, Parsons has made a specialty of choreographing and directing musicians in interdisciplinary works. Watch a performance of Fanfares & March (2010) with flutist Zara Lawler and dancer C. Neil Parsons  . . . it's our DANSES PYTHEUSES for the week.

The children of composers often have dedications bestowed upon them, and the pieces so dedicated are normally simple, appropriately childlike works. Luigi Dallapiccola's Quaderno musicale di Annalibera (Annalibera's Musical Notebook), however, dedicated to his daughter Annalibera on her 8th birthday, is a dense 12-tone work whose name, form, and content all pay tribute to Johann Sebastian Bach. The work was written during a 1952 journey across America, for the Pittsburgh International Contemporary Music Festival. Its sixth movement, Ornaments, would go on to serve as the basis of Dallapiccola's Songs of Liberation, leading some to suspect that the Quaderno was a preparatory work for the later piece; the whole notebook was later transcribed as the Variations for Orchestra. This is music of no mean interest — strictly constructed, and sharply characterized — but it may have left young Annalibera a little bewildered. Dallapiccola's Quaderno Musicale di Annalibera is an interesting and personal tribute to and assimilation of J.S. Bach and some of the most difficult music ever dedicated to an 8 year old [Andrew Lindemann Malone, Rovi/AllMusic Guide]. Listen to a performance of Dallapiccola's Quaderno Musicale di Annalibera played by pianist Mariaclara Monetti . . . it's one of our PYTHEAS EARFULS.

Long known for her luxuriant romanticism and uncanny ability to find just the right chord between onscreen drama and viewer emotions, composer Rachel Portman has been scoring films consistently and tirelessly since 1982. With more than 30 scores to her name, and work in both television and film, Portman became an important figure in the history of film in 1997 when she became the first female composer to win an Academy Award for her score to director Douglas McGrath's adaptation of Jane Austen's Emma. Born in Haslemere, England, Portman showed an avid interest in music when she began to play a variety of instruments from a very early age. By the time she had reached her early teens, Portman had taken a strong affection towards the piano and begun composing original music. Drawn to the more naturalistic musical instruments rather than electronic synthesizers, Portman decided to pursue her career in music with an education at the University of Oxford. It wasn't until her enrollment at Oxford that she began to take an interest in the relation of music to film, scoring Privileged (1982), a successful student film also featuring an early appearance by Hugh Grant. A small theatrical release of the film found Portman with her first success as a film composer, an ability she would continue to refine with steady work for the BBC in the coming years, winning the British Film Institute's Young Composer of the Year award in 1988. A frequent collaborator of filmmaker Beeban Kidron (for whom she has scored Used People, 1992 and To Wong Foo, Thanks for Everything! Julie Newmar, 1995), Portman has steadily gained recognition for her lush and emotional style, distinguishing herself with her moving compositions and richly organic scores. In 2000 she received her second Oscar nomination for her score to Chocolat. Listen to a suite from Portman's score to Never Let Me Go (2010) . . . it's this week's FROM THE PYTHEAS ARCHIVES.