Pytheas Talk

2012-01-28T09:06:00.001-08:00

This Week at Pytheas [1/23/12]
[under construction]

2012-01-17T21:25:00.000-08:00

Composer Robert McCauley talks about his Kamrick Variations (2010): "Oboist Janet Rarick and bassoonist Benjamin Kamins are legends in the Houston orchestra arena; both teach at Rice University's Shepherd School of Music, and they happen to be married. It is in Janet's capacity as artist, teacher and chamber music coach that I got to know her, as I tried to get some of my wind pieces programmed in the school's wind chamber music program. What impressed me even in my dealings with her more than her musicality and professionalism was her warmth and caring. After a number of years, I thought that I'd like to write a piece for her, and of course I thought, 'I've got to include her husband Ben, too.' They both said they would be delighted to look over the piece once I finished it. It took six weeks in the spring of 2010 to write a theme and 10 variations for oboe, bassoon and piano - the most famous 20th century piece for that combination being the Trio by Francis Poulenc. After reading through the piece, they accepted the work as their own. I wanted to call the piece "Rarick Variations", but in a gesture of modesty Janet demurred, so I combined Rarick and Kamins to form Kamrick, and thus Kamrick Variations. Watch a performance of Robert McCauley's Kamrick Variations played by oboist Scott Bell, bassoonist Jim Rodgers, and pianist Alaine Fink . . . one of this week's FEATURED NEW MUSIC VIDEOS.

According to composer Barry Truax, his work Riverrun (1986) . . . "creates a sound environment in which stasis and flux, solidity and movement co-exist in a dynamic balance. The corresponding metaphor is that of a river, always moving yet seemingly permanent. From the smallest rivulet to the fullest force of its mass, a river is formed from a collection of countless droplets and sources. So too with the sound in this composition which bases itself on the smallest possible 'unit' of sound in order to create larger textures and masses. The title is the first word in James Joyce's Finnegan's Wake. Riverrun is entirely realized with the method of sound production known as granular synthesis. With this method small units or 'grains' of sound are produced, usually with very high densities (100-2000 grains/sec), with each grain having a separately defined frequency and duration. When the grains all have similar parameters, the result is a pitched and amplitude modulated sound, but when random variation is allowed in a parameter, a broad-band noise component is introduced." Hear a performance of Barry Truax's Riverrun . . . it's our SOUND ART for the week.

Miriam Gideon’s Of Shadows Numberless (1966) takes its title from a phrase in John Keats’ poem, Ode to a Nightingale, and each of its six movements, likewise, draws inspiration from a phrase in Keats’ work. Ode to a Nightingale addresses the popular Romantic trope of a bird as an idealized version of a poet, a version who – according to Shelley’s analogous work, To a Skylark – "pourest [his] full heart in profuse strains of unpremeditated art," or according to Wordsworth’s To a Cuckoo, is "an invisible thing / a voice, a mystery." Keats’ poem focuses on the bird-poet dichotomy by following the fanciful journey of a depressed subject who is thrown into further despair when confronted with the unreachable beauty of the nightingale’s "plaintive anthem." The piece, like the poem, is full of shadows and mazes. Whereas Keats writes of "verdurous glooms and winding mossy ways," and "fad[ing] away into the forest dim," Gideon writes dense, dark music filled with half-step, major seventh, and minor ninth relationships, crowded clusters, and incessantly mumbling inner voices. Although the melodies are tuneful and usually simple, Gideon often includes some oddity in the phrasing or intervallic structure that makes the tune feel just out of reach, transported a step beyond the realm of ordinary music (thanks to Jeremy Siskind for these notes!). Listen to a performance of Miriam Gideon's Of Shadows Numberless by pianist Paula Ennis Dwyer . . . it's one of our PYTHEAS EARFULS for the week.

John Tavener's choral work Song for Athene (1993) is an elegiac tribute, not, as one might suppose, to the mythological goddess Athene, but to a young family friend, Athene Hariades, half Greek, a talented actress who was tragically killed in a cycling accident. "Her beauty," writes Tavener, "both outward and inner, was reflected in her love of acting, poetry, music and of the Orthodox Church." Tavener had heard Athene reading Shakespeare in Westminster Abbey and, rather as in the case of his Little Requiem For Father Malachy Lynch, conceived the piece after her funeral, lighting on the effective ideas, so touchingly realized, of combining words from the Orthodox liturgy with lines from Shakespeare's Hamlet. Between each line is a monodic "Alleluia", and, following the example of traditional Byzantine music, the whole piece unfolds over a continuous "ison" or drone. The music also received its most famous performance at the funeral of Diana, Princess of Wales. Hear a performance of John Tavener's Song for Athene sung by the Westminster Abbey Choir . . . this week's FROM THE PYTHEAS ARCHIVES.

2012-01-13T17:23:00.000-08:00

"Music, a mysterious form of time," says a famous line by the poet Jorge-Luis Borges. The work of Ramon Lazkano originates in this basic dimension of music. The way his pieces progress and the gradual "erosion" of the elements linking them (a process of erosion that demands a certain materiality of the sound, which thus becomes its most striking characteristic) make allusion to how we understand and sense the passage of time, how wear and tear set in, leading to the inevitable but unimaginable end of everything it contains. The progression of his pieces "enables us to grasp our own passage towards death." Since music is time, every time we listen brings us one step nearer the ultimate end. Lazkano is a contemporary Spanish Basque composer whose works have been played around the globe, played both by him and by some of the most prestigious orchestras in the world. He is currently professor of orchestration at the Higher Academy of Music of the Basque Country "Musikene." Listen to Ramon Lazkano's Wintersonnenwende (2005) performed by Trío Arbós and Neopercusión . . . one of this week's FEATURED NEW MUSIC VIDEOS.

The music of American composer David T. Little has been described as "dramatically wild…rustling, raunchy and eclectic," showing "real imagination" by New York Times critic Anthony Tommasini, and his work "completely gripped" New Yorker critic Alex Ross: "every bad-ass new-music ensemble in the city will want to play him." Little’s highly theatrical, often political work draws upon his experience as a rock drummer, and fuses classical and popular idioms to dramatic effect. His music has been performed throughout the world - including in Dresden, London, Edinburgh, LA, Montreal, and at the Tanglewood, Aspen, MATA and Cabrillo Festivals - by such performers as the London Sinfonietta, eighth blackbird, So Percussion, ensemble courage, Dither, NOW Ensemble, PRISM Quartet, the New World Symphony, American Opera Projects, and many others. He has received awards and recognition from The American Academy of Arts and Letters, the Mid Atlantic Arts Foundation, Meet The Composer, the American Music Center, the Harvey Gaul Competition, BMI, and ASCAP, and has received commissions from Carnegie Hall, the Baltimore Symphony, the Albany Symphony, the New World Symphony, Pittsburgh New Music Ensemble, the University of Michigan, and Dawn Upshaw’s Vocal Arts program at the Bard Conservatory. Watch Witness in Sound, an interview with David T. Little at NewMusicBox . . . it's our FEATURED COMPOSER for the week.

Thea Musgrave's Narcissus (1987) was written for four American flautists, in response to a commission from the National Endowment for the Arts. The composer has subsequently arranged the work for solo clarinet specially for F.Gerald Errante. It is intended as a concert work but it can also be performed as a ballet for two dancers (Narcissus and His Reflection). The work follows the myth of Narcissus closely: the "live" flute taking the part of Narcissus and the echo effects produced by the digital delay system evoking Narcissus' reflection. Perhaps the story is best summed up in the quotation from Hermann Melville's Moby Dick: 'And still deeper the meaning of that story of Narcissus, who because he could not grasp the tormenting mild image he saw in the fountain, plunged into it and was drowned. But that same image, we ourselves see in all rivers and oceans. It is the image of the ungraspable phantom of life...' Listen to a performance of Thea Musgrave's Narcissus (1987) played by flutist Carolyn Keyes . . . it's one of our PYTHEAS EARFULS for the week.

Lee Hyla's music is profoundly individual. Its extremes of expression are all unmistakable facets of one wide-ranging musical personality. Hyla has fashioned a personal language capable of both the simple, exquisitely polished opening of his String Quartet No. 3 and the raw Jerry Lee Lewis-like riffs in his Piano Concerto No. 2. This Jekyll-and-Hyde nature is to some extent the natural consequence of a musical background informed equally by classical music, improvisation, and rock-and-roll. The diversity of his background and the way it finds an outlet in the music may explain why his music appeals to a variety of listeners, including both uptown and downtown audiences. Appealing though it is, the music is not cynically ingratiating: Hyla consistently shies away from emulating the commercial end of each of these musics. Unlike many of his contemporaries, Hyla actually was a practicing rocker (as well as an accomplished new-music keyboardist and improviser), and has an insider's knowledge of rock's glories and limitations. What he brings from rock is its energy, and, on occasion, its brute power and rhythmic sensibilities, so different from those of jazz and classical music. From his classical training he brings a gift for musical organization and, unapologetically, a modernist aesthetic; from jazz, a melodic and gestural language that he separates from its traditional harmonic underpinnings. All of this makes for very listening indeed: Hyla's music is always direct, its drama visceral, its organic unity palpable (Eric Moe/New World Records). Watch a performance of Lee Hyla's Ciao, Manhattan (1990) played by counter)induction . . . this week's FROM THE PYTHEAS ARCHIVES.

2012-01-06T17:30:00.001-08:00

Colin McPhee Nocturne (1958) . . . one of this week's FEATURED NEW MUSIC VIDEOS.

John H. Beck Overture for Percussion Ensemble (1976) . . . it's our BANG, CLANG and BEAT, our New Music for Percussion for the week.

Edgar Varèse Arcana (1925-27) . . . it's one of our PYTHEAS EARFULS for the week.

Richard Rodney Bennett Guitar Sonata (1983), mvt III – Vivo . . . this week's FROM THE PYTHEAS ARCHIVES.

2011-12-27T18:34:00.001-08:00

Happy Holidays!

Danny Elfman The Nightmare Before Christmas (1993)

Dmitri Tiomkin It’s a Wonderful Life (1946)

2011-12-20T18:05:00.000-08:00

Kati Agócs John Riley (2005) . . . one of this week's FEATURED NEW MUSIC VIDEOS.

Race With the Devil (1975) - Music by Leonard Roseman - Film by Jack Starrett . . . it's our PYTHEAS SIGHTING for the week.

Peggy Glanville-Hicks Gymnopedie No. 1 (1934; rev. 1953) . . . it's one of our PYTHEAS EARFULS for the week.

Tom Guralnick Slides Peak (1994) . . . this week's FROM THE PYTHEAS ARCHIVES.

2011-12-13T16:44:00.000-08:00

Christopher Theofanidis Rainbow Body (2000) . . . one of this week's FEATURED NEW MUSIC VIDEOS.

The Lucy Poems (2007) - Music by David Lang - Choreography by Deborah Lohse . . . it's our DANSES PYTHEUSES for the week.

William Walton Viola Concerto, 3rd mvt (1929) . . . it's one of our PYTHEAS EARFULS for the week.

Katherine Hoover El Andalus (2003) . . . this week's FROM THE PYTHEAS ARCHIVES.

2011-12-05T20:01:00.001-08:00

Joan Tower Wild Purple (1998) . . . one of this week's FEATURED NEW MUSIC VIDEOS.

John Williams On Scoring "Saving Private Ryan" . . . it's our FEATURED COMPOSER for the week.

George Crumb Ancient Voices of Children (1970) . . . it's one of our PYTHEAS EARFULS for the week.

Kevin Volans Mbira (1980) . . . this week's FROM THE PYTHEAS ARCHIVES.

2011-11-29T20:21:00.001-08:00

Henri Dutilleux Choral et Variations, from Sonate (1948) . . . one of this week's FEATURED NEW MUSIC VIDEOS.

John Cage A Flower (1950) . . . it's our BANG, CLANG and BEAT - New Music for Percussion for the week.

Leroy Anderson Piano Concerto (1953), finale . . . it's one of our PYTHEAS EARFULS for the week.

James Dillon Ti.re-Ti.ke-Dha (1979) . . . this week's FROM THE PYTHEAS ARCHIVES.

2011-11-21T21:02:00.001-08:00

Luigi Dallapiccola Ist's moeglich (1953) . . . one of this week's FEATURED NEW MUSIC VIDEOS.

Amy Beth Kirsten . . . she's our COMPOSER PORTRAIT for the week.

Alfred Schnittke Piano Quintet (1976) . . . it's one of our PYTHEAS EARFULS for the week.

Ken Ueno ...blood blossoms... (2002) . . . this week's FROM THE PYTHEAS ARCHIVES.

2011-11-14T18:07:00.001-08:00

Cuban composer Leo Brouwer's Guitar Sonata was written in 1990 for guitarist Julian Bream, who gave its first performance the following year. The first movement, entitled Fandangos y Boleros, begins with a Preambulo followed by a Danza section in which, according to Graham Anthony Devine (Naxos Records), "Brouwer merges the rhythms of the Spanish baroque Fandango with those of the Bolero, a Cuban love-song. Brouwer describes the first movement as a sort of puzzle in which the colours are recomposed and redistributed much the same way as in Paul Klee’s Magic Squares. There is a quotation from Beethoven’s Pastoral Symphony towards the end of the movement and Brouwer has likened the fragmented form of Fandangos y Boleros to the fragmented sonata form found in the first movement of Beethoven’s famous Pastoral Symphony." Watch a performance of the Fandangos y Boleros section of Leo Brouwer's Guitar Sonata (1990) by Anna Likhachevao . . . one of this week's FEATURED NEW MUSIC VIDEOS.

Andersen Viana received his PhD in Music Composition from the Federal University of Bahia, Brazil. He started his activities as a composer at age of thirteen and as a music professor at the age of nineteen. At present he works as a composer-conductor, cultural producer as well as a professor at Clóvis Salgado Foundation – Palácio das Artes and at Escola Livre de Cinema, both in Belo Horizonte, Brazil. He also lectures and presents workshops at various institutions both in Brazil and abroad. He has received twenty awards in Brazil, Europe and the USA, including the first prize in the International Contest of Composition Lys Music Orchestra 2001 in Belgium, First Prize and the Audience Prize in the Lambersart 2006 International Contest of Composition. To date, Viana has composed almost three hundred works for voices, acoustic and electronic instruments. He has also composed numerous film scores, including music for Rubens R. Camara's short film Vivalma (Living Soul) (2003). Watch Vivalma, with music by Andersen Viana . . . it's our PYTHEAS SIGHTING for the week.

The immediate impressions made by Joan Tower's music - bold contrasts, surprising subtleties, honesty of expression, imagination, sensitivity - derive from those same qualities in the composer. Many of her earliest works were composed for the New York new music ensemble, Da Capo Chamber Players, for which she served as pianist from 1969 to 1984. As a composer, Tower prefers to let her music speak for itself. Articulate about music in general, and used to exploring compositions with her students at Bard College, she nevertheless resists explaining her own music; writing program notes "is torture for me," she says. What, after all, can words say that music can't express much better itself? Clarity of expression has characterized Tower's compositions from the beginning. Whether written for orchestral forces, chamber ensembles, or solo instruments, her music speaks energetically and directly to the listener [Sandra Hyslop/New World Records]. Listen to Joan Tower's chamber work Fantasy ... those harbour lights (1983) performed by clarinetist Crystal Medina and pianist Manon Hutton-DeWys . . . it's one of our PYTHEAS EARFULS.

Lee Actor's Concerto for Timpani and Orchestra (2005) was commissioned by the Palo Alto Philharmonic, and dedicated to timpani soloist Stuart Chafetz. The concerto consists of a single movement divided into three distinct parts, with the two fast outer sections framing a slower middle section. The overall character of the piece is described by its initial tempo marking, "Playful and jazzy". Though much of this work is in a light and humorous vein, Actor's main aesthetic goals of clarity of expression and bold, dramatic style are still paramount. The harmonic scheme is tonally derived, though much of the main melodic and accompanying material (including a recurring walking bass line) is based on various octatonic scales. The resulting clashes between melodic material and the underlying triadic harmonies are exploited to produce what are effectively heard in context as "blue" notes, another allusion to jazz within the work's symphonic style. Listen to a performance of Lee Actor's Concerto for Timpani and Orchestra with timpani soloist Stuart Chafetz and the Slovak Rado Symphony Orchestra, conducted by Kirk Trevor . . . it's this week's FROM THE PYTHEAS ARCHIVES.

2011-11-07T14:01:00.000-08:00

American composer Christopher Rouse writes about his Flute Concerto (1993): "Although no universal credence for the Jungian concept of "genetic memory" exists, for me it seems a profoundly viable notion. Although both of my parents' families immigrated to America well before the Revolutionary War, I nonetheless still feel a deep ancestral tug of recognition whenever I am exposed to the arts and traditions of the British Isles, particularly those of Celtic origin. I have attempted to reflect my responses to these stimuli in my flute concerto, a five-movement work cast in a somewhat loose arch form. The first and last movements bear the title Amhrán (Gaelic for "song") and are simple melodic elaborations for the solo flute over the accompaniment of orchestral strings. They were intended in a general way to evoke the traditions of Celtic, especially Irish, folk music but to couch the musical utterance in what I hoped would seem a more spiritual, even metaphysical, maner through the use of extremely slow tempi, perhaps not unlike some of the recordings of the Irish singer Enya. The second and fourth movements are both fast in tempo. The second is a rather sprightly march which shares some of its material with the fourth, a scherzo which refers more and more as it progresses to that most Irish of dances, the jig. However, by the time the jig is stated in its most obvious form, the tempo has increased to the point that the music seems almost frantic and breathless in nature. In a world of daily horrors too numerous and enormous to comprehend en masse, it seems that only isolated, individual tragedies serve to sensitize us to the potential harm man can do to his fellow. For me, one such instance was the abduction and brutal murder of the two-year old English lad James Bulger at the hands of a pair of ten-year old boys. I followed this case closely during the time I was composing my concerto and was unable to shake the horror of these events from my mind. The central movement of this work is an elegy dedicated to James Bulger's memory, a small token of remembrance for a life senselessly and cruelly snuffed out. Watch a performance of the final movement from Christopher Rouse's Flute Concerto played by flutist Daniel Stein . . . one of this week's FEATURED NEW MUSIC VIDEOS.

Chen Yi should be no stranger by now to listeners interested in contemporary music. She’s one of a potent handful of Chinese composers who came of age during the Cultural Revolution of the 1970s, but who were young enough not to be broken by it (as a matter of fact, for many, the forced repatriation into the countryside seemed to help them rediscover traditional musical roots). Chen Yi is perhaps the most extroverted of these; her music has color, dynamism, and energy to spare. She’s also developed an extremely fluent and sophisticated way of blending Eastern and Western classical practice. From the former, she takes traditional modes, rhythmic patterns, motivic formulae, and timbral/intonational inflections. From the latter, she takes larger developmental forms, quick modal modulations, polymodality, Western instrumentation, and extended performance techniques. The result sounds Chinese without ever sounding self-consciously exotic. No mean feat. This disc consists of chamber works, predominated by strings. Each has distinctive characteristics: Sound of the Five is the most substantial, being a four movement series of folkloristic portraits; Yangko is notable for the vocalizing (beat-box-like) of the percussionists; Sprout displays confident traditional counterpoint; Burning, as its title implies, is a passionate, propulsive work; the Tibetan Tunes are the only pieces to cite actual folk sources; Happy Rain on a Spring Night is for me the stunner of the group, a non-stop build of energy and color that crests and refreshes like an ocean wave (or the shower of its title). At the same time, these works seem to be part of one vast work in progress. Chen Yi has a seemingly inexhaustible store of music within her, and combined with her masterful technique, whatever seizes her at a given moment seems to be the piece that emerges [Robert Carl/Fanfare]. Check out Chen Yi's Sound of the Five (New World Records 80691) . . . it's our FEATURED RECORDING for the week.

. . . also listen to Chen Yi, featured in this week's COMPOSER PORTRAIT.

Ulf Grahn studied music at the Royal Academy of Music, Stockholm and at the Stockholm City College where his principal composition studies were with Hans Eklund, violin and viola with Rudolf Forsberg, piano with Herbert Westrell, and voice with Bertil During. In 1973 he founded the Contemporary Music Forum, Washington, D.C. and served as its Program Director until 1984. During 1988-90 he was Artistic and Managing Director of the Music at Lake Siljan Festival, Sweden. Prior to this he was on the faculty of Catholic University of America, Northern Virginia Community College and at George Washington University. Presently he teaches Swedish language and culture at the Foreign Service Institute. He has received commisions from The Library of Congress Mc Kim Fund, The Swedish Broadcasting Corporation, The Stockholm Philharmonic Orchestra, National Symphony String Quartet, Washington Music Ensemble, and George Washington University. His awards and prizes include Composers’ Forum New York, Charles Ives Center for American Music, Composers’ Conference Johnson Vermont, First prize at the Stockholm International Organ Days, Musik i Dalarnas Carillon contest and the Kil International Piano contest. His music has been performed throughout Europe, North and South America, Japan, Korea. Listen to a performance of Ulf Grahn's A Due (1985) . . . it's one of our PYTHEAS EARFULS.

Edson Zampronha has received two awards from the São Paulo Association of Art Criticism, Brazil. In 2005 he won, together with SCIArts Group, the Sixth Sergio Motta Award, the most outstanding prize on Art and Technology in Brazil, for the sound installation Poetic Attractor. He has received commissions from different groups and institutions such as the Museum for the Applied Arts (Cologne, Germany) for the Cultural Activities during the Soccer World Cup 2006; from designer María Lafuente for her catwalk show at the Pasarela Cibeles 2006 and 2010 (Madrid, Spain), and from the São Paulo State Symphonic Band for the 100th Anniversary of the São Paulo State Gallery in 2005 (São Paulo, Brazil). His works have been performed around the world, including performances at the Auditorio 400 - Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía in Madrid, the CBSO Centre in Birmingham (UK), and the Municipal Theater of São Paulo, Brazil. Listen to a performance of Edson Zampronha's Viaje al Interior (Travel to Inward) (2006) . . . it's this week's FROM THE PYTHEAS ARCHIVES.

2011-11-02T20:01:00.000-07:00

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.

2011-10-28T03:22:00.003-07:00

Thea Musgrave's Niobe (1987), a work for solo oboe and electronic tape, is closely based on the Greek legend about the weeping nymph Niobe. In Greek mythology, Niobe was the daughter of Tantalus and wife of Amphion, King of Thebes. She unwisely boasted to Leto about her many sons and daughters. Leto, who only had two children, Apollo and Artemis, was angered. As punishment Apollo slew all of Niobe's sons and Artemis all her daughters. Out of pity for Niobe's inconsolable grief, the Gods changed her into a rock, in which form she continued to weep. In this short work for solo oboe and tape, the solo oboe takes the part of Niobe bitterly lamenting her murdered children. The tape with the distant high voices and the slow tolling bells, and later gong, is intended to provide an evocative and descriptive accompaniment. Watch a performance of Thea Musgrave's Niobe by oboist Heather Guadagnino . . . one of this week's FEATURED NEW MUSIC VIDEOS.

Writing about his Toccata and Divertimento (2000), composer Ney Rosauro says, "In Northeastern Brazil there is a kind of musical game where two people begin singing and making rhymes, and challenge each other to create a better story on a given theme. This musical genre/game is called 'desafio'. My "Toccata and Divertimento" is based on the mood and melodies found on the 'desafio' and as such, the two instruments will dialog, sometimes imitating, and sometimes challenging each other. The themes and the rhythm of the piece are based on modal melodies from the baiao, a very popular dance from Northeastern Brazil". Watch a performance of Ney Rosauro's Toccata and Divertimento by percussionists Josip Konfic and Hrvoje Sekovanic . . . it's our BANG, CLANG and BEAT - contemporary percussion music for the week.

Meira Warshauer's "Ahavah" (Love) (1994) uses a text in Hebrew and English from Deuteronomy 11:13-21 which is also found in the second paragraph after the Sh'ma (Hear O Israel) in the traditional Jewish prayer book. The themes of the text are love for God, and the rewards and consequences of following or turning away from God's commandments. Warshauer chose this text in part for its relevance to our threatened earthly environment and the role of morality and love in sustaining life. The first movement, Sh'ma v'ahavta, from "Ahavah" (Hear and love), portrays themes of love and fulfillment: "...and you will eat and be satisfied.." Here a mantra-like "ahavah" combines with a modal chant "v'ahavta" (and you shall love) and a more dramatic "sh'ma" (hear/listen) in an arch form over lush orchestral harmonies. The middle movement contains the warning, "Hishamru" (beware), and represents severity and chaos. A more strident musical language with chromatic harmonies and jagged percussive outlines portrays the consequences of turning away from the commandments: "...you will perish swiftly from the land." The final movement restores order, "Place these words on your heart..." with a passacaglia-like pattern of repeating harmonies under a calm tonal melody as the "ahavah" theme returns, weaving through the simple texture. Hear a performance of the first movement of Meira Warshauer's Ahavah" (1994) with mezzo-soprano Jennifer Hines and the Slovak Philharmonic Chorus and Orchestra with Kirk Trevor conducting . . . it's one of our PYTHEAS EARFULS.

Canadian composer Robert Rival recently joined the Edmonton Symphony Orchestra as Composer in Residence for the 2011-12 season. Critics have described his work, written in a contemporary tonal style, as "well crafted", "engaging", "immediately appealing", "melodic and accessible", "memorable", and his song cycle, "Red Moon and Other Songs of War", has been called "an unequivocal hit". His music for orchestra, chamber ensemble, voice and the stage has been broadcast on CBC radio and performed by the Gryphon Trio and other leading Canadian musicians, ensembles and orchestras. His orchestral works include a one-movement Symphony "Maligne Range", inspired by a hike through the Rockies, and "Maya the Bee", a work for young audiences based on the classic children's tale. Committed to music education and appreciation, he has taught theory and composition to students of all ages, at several universities as well as privately, and has written liner and program notes for major festivals, presenters and record labels. Hear excerpts from Robert Rival's song cycle Red Moon and Other Songs of War (2007) . . . it's this week's FROM THE PYTHEAS ARCHIVES.

2011-10-28T03:22:00.001-07:00

You want the future of guitar? How about a guitarist in his twenties who is trained in composition (MM, SF Conservatory), who has received major commissions (Elaine Kaufman Cultural Center, NY), and who comes from a well-known lineage (son of famed minimalist composer Terry Riley). A guitarist trained by one of our formeost guitarists (David Tanenbaum) and one of the foremost guitarist composers (Dusan Bogdanovic). A guitarist who not only plays with but writes for other instruments and who accomplishes both tasks admirably. Isn't this what every teacher says the guitarist of the future should be? If it is, then Gyan Riley is the future of guitar, now [Andrew Hull, Guitarra Magazine]. Gyan Riley, born in northern California in 1977, has emerged as a prominent figure of guitar and contemporary music, both as a performer and composer. In 1999, he became the first graduate level guitarist ever to be awarded a full merit-based scholarship from the San Francisco Conservatory of Music. His awards include First Prize in the Portland International Guitar Festival Competition, First Prize in the San Francisco Conservatory Guitar Concerto Competition, and First Prize in the Music in the Mountains Young Musicians Competition. Riley played in the American premiere of John Adams El Nino, with David Tanenbaum, soprano Dawn Upshaw, and the San Francisco Symphony. Concert tours have taken him to some of the world's most prestigious concert halls in the UK, Germany, Austria, Italy, France, Croatia, Turkey, Norway, and throughout the United States, and her has been commissioned to write various works, served as the artistic director for the San Francisco Classical Guitar Society from 2002-2004, and is currently engaged as professor of guitar at Humboldt State University. Watch Gyan Riley perform his Food for the Bearded (1999) . . . one of this week's FEATURED NEW MUSIC VIDEOS.

In Wayne McGregor's Chroma (with music by Joby Talbot), the bodies of 10 dancers are folded, a bit spindled, but not exactly mutilated, and you watch this process unfold for 25 minutes with a measure of fascination and considerable detachment. Which is, perhaps, what the choreographer wants. This much-lauded essay in kinetic architecture, prepared for London's Royal Ballet in 2006, arrived in the U.S. in 2011 via the San Francisco Ballet, and it is sure to provoke debate. Chroma revels in its unpredictability, and you are not sure it will look the same on your next encounter. This can be an exhilarating sensation, but it suggests that what's missing is an overall structure, a clearly conceived destination. The dancing stops when the music stops [Allan Ulrich, San Francisco Chronicle]. Watch an excerpt from Chroma (2006), choreographed by Wayne McGregor, with music by Joby Talbot . . . it's our DANSES PYTHEUSES for the week.

Todd Goodman's Bass Clarinet Concerto (2008) was commissioned by Bruce Lauffer and the Beaver Valley Philharmonic to conclude their 2008-09 season. The work, in two movements, takes the orchestra and soloist through a passionate journey of the relationship between a child and a parent. The first movement, Promenade Comique, translated as funny walk, is an argument between the orchestra, acting as the parent and the soloist, representing the child. The second movement, A Berceuse et Reve (A Lullaby and Dream) reverses the roles of the two characters and tells the story of a parent, this time represented by the bass clarinet who is trying to put their child, the orchestra, to sleep. Goodman has been described as "one of America's promising young composers." Born in Bedford, Penn., he received his Bachelor of Music degree in composition at the University of Colorado at Boulder and his Masters of Music degree in composition at Duquesne University in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Currently finishing a Ph.D. in theory and composition at Kent State University, he has also studied at the Ecole Normale de Musique in Paris, France, with the European American Musical Alliance and at the Aspen Music Festival in Aspen, Colorado. His principal composition teachers have been pulitzer prize winning composer George Tsontakis, David Stock, Frank Wiley, and Richard Toensing. His work has been played by principle members of the Chicago, Pittsburgh, Boston, Singapore and Seattle Symphonies. Goodman has received commissions from a wide variety of players and ensembles across the United States. With many performances in the United States his works have also been performed in Canada, Mexico, Europe and Asia. Goodman is also the founder and artistic director of the innovative contemporary art ensemble, Ensemble Immersion. The group combines music, dance, literature, film, visual arts, drama, set design, and creative audience interaction to create artistic experiences unlike any other. Listen to a performance of Todd Goodman's Bass Clarinet Concerto [and continued here] . . . it's one of our PYTHEAS EARFULS for the week.

Francois Truffaut's film Fahrenheit 451 (1966) is based on Ray Bradbury's book, overtly from his science fiction genre, but in reality depicting something more akin to an Orwellian future. In this future all books are forbidden, and the film/book title represents the temperature at which paper burns, and the firemen of the story are employed not to put out fires but to find and destroy any discovered books. One of the firemen is tempted by the lure of books, and various characters including his wife and supervisor react to this in different ways. The movie has a surreal quality to it where the characters seem strangely detached from their predicament. It's difficult to pinpoint how this is accomplished exactly. In part it is due to some superb acting, where the characters behave quite normally in extraordinary circumstances, but the music, by Bernard Herrmann, is very much a part of this surreal experience. There are two sublime moments, both of which are enhanced by Herrmann's lustrous score. The first is the burning of Montag's books cruelly documented to the sound of the shimmering Flowers of Fire music. The second is the final shot of the Book People walking in the snow while reciting the texts they have learnt by heart - this scene, which was filmed outdoors at Pinewood Studios, was a happy accident with Truffaut taking advantage of a real snowstorm [thanks to The Classic Film Scores of Bernard Herrmann and mfiles]. Listen to two excerpts from the Fahrenheit 451 film score: The Road and Finale . . . it's this week's FROM THE PYTHEAS ARCHIVES.

2011-10-11T09:39:00.001-07:00

In a typically exuberant 1959 lecture-demonstration on the creative process, entitled Thinking Twice, composer Stefan Wolpe warned: "Form must be ripped endlessly open and self-renewed by interacting extremes of opposites. One is where one directs oneself to be. On the back of a bird, inside of an apple dancing on the sun's ray, speaking to Machaut [the 14th century composer], and holding the skeleton's hand of the incredible Cezanne - there is what there was and what there isn't is also. Don't get backed too much into a reality that has fashioned your senses with too many realistic claims. When art promises you this sort of reliability, this sort of prognostic security, drop it. It is good to know how not to know how much one is knowing. One should know about all the structures of fantasy and all the fantasies of structures, and mix suprise and enigma, magic and shock, intelligence and abandon, form and antiform." Watch a performance of Stefan Wolpe's Form for Piano (1959) played by pianist Christopher Czaja Sager . . . one of this week's FEATURED NEW MUSIC VIDEOS.

If you are familiar with film maker/claymationist extraordinaire Bruce Bickford, you know that he specializes in a unique variation of surrealist animation, made famous in the Frank Zappa films Baby Snakes, The Dub Room Special and The Amazing Mr.Bickford. After breaking with Zappa, Bickford went on to create his magnum opus, Prometheus' Garden, and then dissolved into obscurity, feverishly working in solitude for some 25 years on perpetually evolving personal projects. He is also the subject of the award-winning documentary Monster Road. Gazing in awe at the vastness of his unseen work, I can't help but wonder if the majority of it might never see the light of day. He seems more interested in creating than finding an audience, which flies in the face of everything I previously surmised about the artistic impulse. Here was one that seemingly enjoys the act of creating, more than the result or the accolades of his achievement. Either that, or it's simply compulsion. Bruce Bickford may be notoriously lackadaisical about getting his work out there, but make no mistake; he's been incessantly building a vast library of work for himself outside of the public eye. He seems to have no qualms about exposing it, he's simply waiting for someone to show an interest. [from Erik Van Horn's blog Sinisthesia] . . . Watch an excerpt from The Amazing Mr. Bickford (1987) with music by Frank Zappa [his piece Dupree's Paradise] . . . it's our PYTHEAS SIGHTING for the week.

Tobias Fischer (at Tokafi.com) writes: "So, what constitutes the groove in the first place? To most, it’s the inexplicable part, the moment, when a "simple beat" turns into something bigger, better, brighter, when it suddenly lifts off into the sky and melts into the clouds. The groove is what makes you jump up, quit thinking, move your body and "shake that thing". Yet this mighty tool, which has been ubiquitious in charts and clubs all over the planet and, to a certain degree, even in the concert halls, has been noticeable absent from 21st century "serious" music. Why? "That’s an interesting question which invites a multitude of answers", composer Gernot Wolfgang says, "But I think at the core of the issue is, that for a long time a large majority within the classical and contemporary concert music world - conductors, musicians, critics, academics, record executives, radio hosts and the like - viewed groove-oriented music [like pop, rock & roll, jazz and world music] as inferior. Their dislike of the perceived simplicity in melody, harmony, form and rhythm translated into the exclusion of virtual all elements - including grooves - from contemporary concert music. Groove-oriented music was simply considered not to be intellectually high-brow enough and was only accepted in pops programs." Still, the inspiration for Common Ground stems from various sources and they don’t always have to do with Jazz or Pop music alone. Wolfgang openly admits his admiration for the work of Lutoslawski, Penderecki, Britten, Webern, John Adams, Esa-Pekka Salonen and Markus Lindberg . . . and yet it might be interesting to shortly have a look at another archetypical musician of the last half-century, who probably emancipated the groove more than anyone else to understand Wolfgang’s point: James Brown." Listen to a performance of Gernot Wolfgang's Common Ground, Igor at Last (2004) . . . it's one of our PYTHEAS EARFULS.

American-born but now living in Austria, Nancy Van de Vate is known internationally for her orchestral, solo, and chamber music and is most famous for her Pulitzer Prize-nominated operas All Quiet on the Western Front and Where the Cross is Made. In 2005, Where the Cross is Made also was the winner of the National Opera Association's biennial competition for new chamber operas. Van de Vate has composed more than 130 works in virtually all forms, earning eight Pulitzer Prize and five Grawemeyer Award nominations. Her 26 orchestral works include Chernobyl, which was nominated for a 1989 Koussevitsky International Record Award. Van de Vate founded the International League of Women Composers in 1975 and supports the work of women composers with the Nancy Van de Vate International Composition Prize. She also includes many works by women composers on her Vienna Modern Masters label, an international recording company which she co-founded in 1990. Listen to a performance of Nancy van de Vate's Dark Nebulae (1981) played by the Polish Radio and Television Orchestra, Krakow with Szymon Kawalla conducting . . . it's this week's FROM THE PYTHEAS ARCHIVES.

2011-10-05T18:02:00.001-07:00

The music of Daron Hagen is notable for its warm lyricism, but his style defies easy categorization. While his works demonstrate fluency with a range of twentieth century compositional techniques, those procedures are secondary to his exploitation and expansion of the possibilities of tonal harmony, giving his music an immediacy that makes it appealing to a wide spectrum of audiences. Hagen's song cycle for baritone and string quartet Alive in a Moment was composed during July of 2003 and it functions both as an instrumental string quartet and a traditional song cycle. In seven movements, based on the poetry of W.H. Auden, the entire work develops three musical ideas given at the outset: a rhythmic tattoo in the violin, what the composer calls a "smudged melody," created by adding trills to each successive note of the melody, and heavy glissandi. Watch a performance of the first movement of Daron Hagen's String Quartet No. 2, "Alive in a Moment", performed by baritone Robert Frankenberry and the Voxare String Quartet . . . one of this week's FEATURED NEW MUSIC VIDEOS.

Composer William Ortiz-Alvarado was born in Puerto Rico and raised in New York City. A member of that fascinating hybrid culture known as "Newyorican", Ortiz composes music that often reflects the realities of urban life. After studying composition with Hector Campos Parsi at the Puerto Rico Conservatory of Music, he received his M.A. from SUNY at Stony Brook where his teachers were Billy Jim Layton and Bulent Arel. He later was granted a Ph.D. in Composition from SUNY at Buffalo, where he studied with Lejaren Hiller and Morton Feldman. Ricardo A. Coelho de Souza writes in his book The Percussion Music of William Ortiz, "Ortiz uses the clave rhythm as a motive or as a sonic icon of Latin American music. In his percussion quartet La Clave Bien Temperada for four clave players, it is no surprise that the clave rhythm is used. Here this distinctive rhythm is treated simply as a musical motif and not as a structural principle, as Ortiz has employed it in some of his other percussion works." Watch a performance of William Ortiz-Alvarado's The Well-Tempered Clave (La Clave Bien Temperada) (2003) played by members of Academia Latinoamericana de Percusion y Fesnojiv, with Jose Alicea-Concierto de Clasura conducting . . . it's our BANG, CLANG and BEAT/Contemporary Percussion Music for the week.

Scottish born composer Thea Musgrave writes about her work Night Music (1968), "In this work, two horn players are featured in soloistic and dramatic ways. Contrasting musical ideas are explored dependent on where they are seated in the orchestra — more lyrical when they are seated close together, more dramatic later on, when they stand at either side of the conductor, some distance from each other, and then near the end of the work the musical contrasts are further heightened by the echo effects produced by one distant offstage horn. As so often in Dreams, there are quickly changing moods; frightening, eerie, peaceful, romantic, stormy, and so in this work, highly contrasted musical sections quickly follow on from each other, they interchange and at times even overlap. The dream landscape painted in Night Music is thus in one continuous movement - the different sections indicating the changing moods: Andante Notturnale: / Misterioso: / Svegliato: (waking up) / Andante Amoroso..piu mosso, con ardore: / Appassionato: / Calmo: (Here the two horns move to their new positions either side of the conductor) / Minaccevole: (threatening) / Tempestuoso: (Here the first horn moves offstage) / Tempo di Andante amoroso alternating with Scherzoso: / Tempo di Andante." Hear a performance of Thea Musgrave's Night Music . . . it's one of our PYTHEAS EARFULS for the week.

Award-winning composer Robert J. Bradshaw strives to forge a unique connection between composer, musicians and audiences. His compositions have been heard throughout the Americas, Europe, Asia and Middle East. Bradshaw’s numerous commissions include works for the American String Teachers Association with NSOA, New England Musical Heritage Initiative / New England String Ensemble and the Pappoutsakis Flute Competition. His music has been honored with first place awards by the Alabama Orchestra Association Composition Competition and the Manchester Music Festival Composition Competition which included a performance of Articles Nor-east at Lincoln Center, New York. Many of Bradshaw’s compositions, commissions and residencies have been made possible through such organizations as the National Endowment for the Arts, Meet the Composer, MetLife Creative Connections program, American Music Center, American Composers Forum, Harvard Musical Association, Harpley Foundation, Argosy Foundation, The Bruce J. Anderson Foundation, Alabama State Council on the Arts, The Cape Ann Symphony Association, Inc., Youths’ Friends Association, The Goldhirsh Foundation and the Massachusetts Cultural Council. Passionate about expressing himself through the abstract art of music, Robert Bradshaw has always loved composing. Winner of many commissions and awards, he is convinced that classical music is alive and well in America. Watch a performance of the third movement of his Concerto for Trumpet (2006) performed by trumpetist Michael Arndt and the MTSU Wind Ensemble . . . this week's FROM THE PYTHEAS ARCHIVES.

2011-09-28T19:47:00.001-07:00

Carlos Chavez's Ten Preludes for Piano, composed in 1937, is quite different in treatment from Chavez's earlier piano works. Both in form and in the natural pianism of the Preludes, Chavez renounced some of his former stridency and created instead a modern counterpart (terse, linear, percussive) of Bach's preludes. The composer wrote: "My plan was to write one for each of the seven white keys. I composed, then, a Prelude in each of the Gregorian modes. Thus I started with the Dorian and followed with Phrygian, Lydian, Mixolydian, Hypodorian, Hypophrygian, and Hypolydian. These seven modes taken care of, I decided to expand the series to ten and continued with a kind of bimodality in the eighth and a mixture of modality-tonality in the ninth and tenth. In almost all of my previous works there is evidence of procedures that are classic or academic, such as imitations, progressions, sequences, etc. In these Preludes, I indeed followed some of these procedures, since I felt that at least here they were capable of going beyond traditional effects." The Ten Preludes possess a hypnotizing monotony, the kind associated with the ritual music of the Aztecs. Instead of attempting to reproduce a direct reflection of the spirit of Mexico, Chavez has created a synthesis of that spirit. Watch a performance of two of Chavez's Ten Preludes played by pianist Mauricio Garza . . . one of this week's FEATURED NEW MUSIC VIDEOS.

Pierre Boulez is among the most influential contemporary musicians, as both a composer and a conductor. He is known principally for his extension of the techniques of serialism beyond the limits of the Second Viennese School of Schoenberg, under the strong influence of his teacher Messiaen, into a logical style that brings with it a paradoxical freedom. His career as a conductor has brought him engagements with the most famous orchestras in a wide repertoire, from Rameau to Wagner to the contemporary. Listen to an interview with Pierre Boulez as he discusses his life and his music . . . it's our COMPOSER PORTRAIT for the week.

. . . and watch a performance of his Le soleil des eaux (1948/65) with soprano Elizabeth Atherton, the BBC Singers and Symphony Chorus, and the BBC Symphony Orchestra conducted by the composer, Pierre Boulez.

Composer John Corigliano writes: "When Sylvia McNair asked me to write her a major song cycle for Carnegie Hall, she had only one request; to choose an American text. I have set only four poets in my adult compositional life: Stephen Spender, Richard Wilbur, Dylan Thomas and William M. Hoffman. Aside from asking William Hoffman to create a new text, I had no ideas. Except that I had always heard, by reputation, of the high regard accorded the folk-ballad singer/songwriter Bob Dylan. But I was so engaged in developing my orchestral technique during the years when Dylan was heard by the rest of the world that I had never heard his songs. So I bought a collection of his texts, and found many of them to be every bit as beautiful and as immediate as I had heard, and surprisingly well-suited to my own musical language. I then contacted Jeff Rosen, his manager, who approached Bob Dylan with the idea of re-setting his poetry to my music. I do not know of an instance in which this has been done before (which was part of what appealed to me), so I needed to explain that these would be in no way arrangements, or variations, or in any way derivations of the music of the original songs, which I decided to not hear before the cycle was complete. Just as Schumann or Brahms or Wolf had re-interpreted in their own musical styles the same Goethe text, I intended to treat the Dylan lyrics as the poems I found them to be. Nor would their settings make any attempt at pop or rock writing. I wanted to take poetry I knew to be strongly associated with popular art and readdress it in terms of concert art-crossover in the opposite direction, one might say. Dylan granted his permission, and I set to work. I chose seven poems for what became a thirty-five minute song cycle." Hear soprano Hege Monica Eskedal and pianist Eva Herheim perform Chimes of Freedom from Corigliano's Mr. Tambourine Man (2000) . . . it's one of our PYTHEAS EARFULS for the week.

The years Bohuslav Martinu spent in America between 1941 and 1953 weren't happy ones; the combination of political events in Czechoslovakia, the turmoil of World War II, and Martinu's residing in a country he found less than congenial depressed his spirits considerably. Nevertheless, he managed to keep up his usual prolific pace of composition. In his first five years in America he had produced fully 25 new pieces, and the spirit of optimism upon the end of the war brought Martinu a new burst of creativity; the Symphony No. 4, one of Martinu's most engaging and mellow orchestral works, was born of this spirit. The symphony was written between April and June 1945, mostly in New York and partly at Martinu's summer home near South Orleans, Massachusetts, on Cape Cod [from the All Music Guide]. Watch a performance of the first part of the scherzo-like second movement of Martinu's Symphony No. 4 with the Berlin Philharmonic conducted by Alan Gilbert . . . this week's FROM THE PYTHEAS ARCHIVES.

2011-09-19T05:43:00.001-07:00

Karen Tanaka is acclaimed as one of the leading living composers from Japan. She has been invited as a composer in residence at many important festivals, and her music, for both instrumental and electronics media, has been widely performed throughout the world by major orchestras and ensembles. As described in The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians, Tanaka's "music is delicate and emotive, beautifully crafted, showing a refined ear for both detail and large organic shapes." Her three movement harpsichord piece Jardin des Herbes (1989) is representative of her writing style: well crafted with attention to detail and attention to the transformation of timbres similar to the effect of light refracting through crystals and prisms. The second movement, entitled Sweet Violet: Early Spring Flowers with Seductive Scent is set in a freely ternary structure providing an attractive melody accompanied by consonant, yet not quite tonal harmonies. Watch a performance of Karen Tanaka's Sweet Violet by harpsichordist Antonio Oyarzabal . . . one of this week's FEATURED NEW MUSIC VIDEOS.

Blow (2007) is an experimental film made with an 8mm camera, using the music of Estonian composer Mirjam Tally. It follows the different rhythms of urban society. Old abandoned greenhouses from the Soviet Era and quick changes to modern Tallinn, the capital city of Estonia, are used to show how a country transforms from post-socialism to capitalism. Estonian film maker Ülo Pikkov graduated from the Turku Arts Academy in Finland in 1998 and from the Institute of Law at University of Tartu in Estonia in 2005. He has published numerous caricatures, comics and illustrations, as well as written and illustrated books for children. At the moment he works as an Associate Professor in Animation at the Estonian Academy of Arts. Watch Ülo Pikkov's film Blow (2007) . . . it's our PYTHEAS SIGHTING for the week.

Oleg Ledeniov (MusicWeb International), in reviewing the CD Montage Music Society - Starry Night Project writes, "The work that ends the disc - or, I better say, crowns it - is Andrew List's Noa Noa: A Gauguin Tableau for violin, clarinet and piano. The three eternal questions of Gauguin's picture - 'Where do we come from?', 'What are we?', 'Where are we going?' - are interpreted by the composer 'as representing three facets of human consciousness.' I hope the Mahlerites won't kill me if I describe the parts as 'What the body tells me' (aggressive, determined, forceful - our Past), 'What the mind tells me' (ever-changing, fluent, searching - our Present), and 'What the soul tells me' (spiritual, peaceful, and blissfully beautiful - hopefully, our Future). This last movement is sublime. It also serves as an answer to the unsettling questions of the first track, the Starry Night by Gauguin's friend van Gogh. If you know these moments, when the music ends and you stay in silent awe and then exhale 'Aaah!...' - you'll know this is one of them." Listen to the first movement of Andrew List's Noa Noa, A Gauguin Tableau (2008) performed by members of Montage Music Society . . . it's one of our PYTHEAS EARFULS for the week.

Claude Debussy's Sonata for Flute, Viola and Harp (1915) is at once evocative and emotionally ambiguous, a languid oasis from the harmonically adventuresome Cello Sonata (1915) and Violin Sonata (1917) which were written by Debussy in the final years of his life. He once remarked that he didn't know whether it "should move us to laughter or to tears. Perhaps both?" The sonata is in three free flowing movements: Pastorale, Interlude - Tempo di minuetto, and Allegro moderato ma risoluto. Listening to such an abstract, non-representational movements, it is easy to understand why Debussy was moved on one occasion to refer to anyone who described such music as "impressionistic" as an "imbecile" [from the All Music Guide]. Watch a performance of Debussy's gorgeous Sonata for Flute, Viola and Harp played by members of The New York Harp Trio . . . this week's FROM THE PYTHEAS ARCHIVES.

2011-09-14T16:24:00.000-07:00

Joaquín Rodrigo's music is an homage to the rich and varied cultures of Spain. No other Spanish composer has drawn on so many different aspects of his country's spirit as sources of inspiration, from the history of Roman Spain to the work of contemporary poets. His music is refined, luminous, fundamentally optimistic, with a particular predominance of melody and original harmonies. His first works reveal the influence of composers of his time, such as Ravel and Stravinsky, but a personal voice soon emerged which would go on to create a notable chapter in the cultural history of Spain in the 20th century, where the originality of Rodrigo’s musical inspiration goes hand in hand with a devotion to the fundamental values of his tradition. Rodrigo’s numerous and varied compositions include eleven concertos for various instruments, more than sixty songs, choral and instrumental works, and music for the theatre and the cinema. Many distinguished soloists have commissioned works from him, among them Gaspar Cassadó, Andrés Segovia, Nicanor Zabaleta, James Galway, Julian Lloyd Webber and the Romero guitar quartet. His numerous writings on music reveal a profound understanding of his art [note from GuitarDaily.com]. Watch a performance of Rodrigo's Tonadilla (1959) played by guitarists John Williams and Julian Bream . . . . one of this week's FEATURED NEW MUSIC VIDEOS.

The ballet Maa (1991) [the word "maa" in Finnish can mean "earth", "land" or "country", possibly even "world"], with music composed by Kaija Saariaho, was the response to a commission from the ballet of the Finnish National Opera. The ballet does not have a plot as such, rather it is built around thematic archetypes such as doors, gates, stepping into new worlds, journeys and the crossing of waters. Both scenography and music are shrouded by deliberate mystery and characterized by a lucidity and minimalism of gesture. The work's openness and approachability make it an ideal introduction to the poetry and poeticism of Saariaho's music. The approach taken by original choreographer Carolyn Carlson and Saariaho when producing Maa was not one of close collaboration, rather they chose to let their differing artistic personalities encounter one another and spark off tensions and syntheses. Carlson's methods rely heavily on improvisation and the development of ideas whose outcome cannot be known a priori, while Saariaho's conceptual process makes active use of deterministic solutions and carefully planned temporal frameworks. In no sense did these contrasting, if not conflicting approaches lead Saariaho to neglect the dramatic requirements of the different sections of the ballet. In working a weave of textures which progress and change at a leisurely and gradual, almost minimalistic pace, she has clearly been attentive to finding a balance for the whole work which takes the listener into account. Saariaho's compositions are laid out in such a way that they encourage us to imbibe and dwell in the timbral detail. The sensuous calm which permeates the music for Maa inevitably affects our mood and senses, turning them to higher levels of sensitivity and awareness [note by Juhani Nuorvala]. Watch an excerpt from the ballet Maa, performed by Works & Process and the International Contemporary Ensemble, with new choreography by Luca Veggetti . . . it's our DANSES PYTHEUSES for the week.

The music of Puerto Rican composer William Ortiz-Alvarado depicts the Latino culture in the United States, mainly that of New York City. Raised in Manhattan and Brooklyn, the composer's musical roots are a mesh between the metropolis' own imposing and crowded socio-culture of the oppressed, with those unemployed and marginalized Latinos who gather in the streets in search of a musical outlet in order to forget their life condition. Ortiz-Alvarado is not deaf to this reality; he grasps it and makes a fascinating musical graffiti through his craft as a trained classical composer. He calls his musical canvas "graffiti sonora" or "streetlore" where elements of the two cultures collide to create a new authentic and legitimate musical language. Within the last three decades, Ortiz-Alvarado has written over 130 compositions for almost all types of musical genres; from song to opera, from chamber music to symphonic works. Among his numerous awards, grants and commissions is the 2001 Latin Grammy Nomination for the CD Tango mata danzon mata tango by the Baja California Orchestra, which includes his Guitar Concerto Tropicalizacion. Listen to a performance of Ortiz-Alvarado's Urbanización (1985) . . . it's one of our PYTHEAS EARFUL for the week.

A self-taught composer, Don Dilworth's career has encompassed both folk music and contemporary concert music, ballet, and opera. An aspiring composer from grade school, he was proficient in both folk and classical guitar by the time he entered college at M.I.T. as a physics major. This coincided with the late '50s folk music boom, which was particularly vibrant in Boston. While attending M.I.T., he was a regular patron at Club 47, a venue that became one of the leading showcases for new folk music talent, including Joan Baez, Noel Paul Stookey, Eric Von Schmidt, and the Charles River Valley Boys, and he later started playing guitar there on occasion. Baez became a particularly big fan of Dilworth's playing and later asked him to perform at her sister's wedding. Shortly after Baez signed with Vanguard Records and left Boston, Dilworth gave her the gift of a song, Annabel Lee, based on the poem by Edgar Allan Poe. Baez later recorded the song in an arrangement by Peter Schickele on her album "Joan" (1967). Apart from some instruction from Gregory Tucker at M.I.T. and Nicolai Martinov of the St. Petersburg Conservatory in Russia, Dilworth has remained almost entirely self-taught as a composer and musician. Based in Maine, he has written seven operas, several songs cycles, and a considerable body of chamber music, as well as works for synthesizer and cello. Listen to Don Dilworth's The Sick Rose (1994) performed by soprano Nancy Ogle and pianist Clayton Smith . . . this week's FROM THE PYTHEAS ARCHIVES.

2011-09-06T20:35:00.000-07:00

According to composer Jesse Ayers, his piece Jericho (2005) is "a surround-sound piece employing expanded instrumentation, multiple antiphonal effects, narration, and extensive and unorthodox audience participation. It is based on the Biblical account of the Battle of Jericho (Joshua 6), in which the famed walls of Jericho fell down flat. The work was composed over a 17-month period from Oct 2003 - Feb 2005, and was premiered April 22, 2005, by the Valparaiso University Chamber Concert Band under the direction of Dr. Jeffrey Scott Doebler. The score carries the dedication 'to Ted, from whom I learned about risk taking and breakthrough.' Compositionally, Jericho makes extensive use of the 15th-century melody Veni Emmanuel (O come, O come, Emmanuel). It is used to generate motivic ideas; it appears as a cantus firmus in the bass in the long pedal tones; a three-voice, fifth species harmonization of Veni is used to generate harmonic cycles; and finally it is quoted directly in the last section of the piece as the audience sings the phrase O Come, O Come, Emmanuel." Watch a performance of Jesse Ayers' Jericho by narrator Kenneth Cox with the Lamont Symphony Orchestra and Chorale, conducted by Lawrence Golan. . . . one of this week's FEATURED NEW MUSIC VIDEOS.

Composer Richard Maxfield is one of the little-sung names in American avant-garde music. "For someone nearly forgotten today, Maxfield had a tremendous impact—largely through his classes at The New School in New York, which attracted radically avant-garde musicians such as Joseph Byrd, Dick Higgins, and even John Cage himself. Born in Seattle in 1927, Maxfield had studied with Krenek, Babbitt, Sessions, and Dallapiccola, but left this Eurocentric background behind to move toward a Cagean experimentalism." Eventually he made contributions to the so-called "minimalism" movement, while forecasting a wide range of developments in the future of electronic music. His Amazing Grace (1960) mixes tape loops from two sources: a speech by revivalist James G. Brodie and electronic fragments from Maxfield's 1958 opera Stacked Deck. The loops play back at various speeds, causing the fragments to overlap in complex ways. This method would later be explored further by Terry Riley, Steve Reich and others. "It is astonishing how many threads of 1960s music seem to begin with the ideas Maxfield explores, and it is a tragedy that his early death, from leaping out a window at age 42, kept him from participating in the more rewarding scene that would later appear" (our thanks to New World Records' liner notes). Listen to Maxfield's Amazing Grace . . . it's our SOUND ART for the week.

Louise Talma was born in Arcachon, France to American parents. Her pianist father died during her infancy, and her mother, an opera singer, moved the family to New York City in 1914. She studied at the Institute of Musical Arts (later the Juilliard School), New York University and Columbia University, where she received her Master’s of Arts in 1933; she also spent sixteen summers in Fontainebleau, France studying piano with Isidor Philipp and composition with Nadia Boulanger, who was the first to suggest that she compose. Talma's many awards include two Guggenheim Fellowships, a Fulbright Grant to compose the opera The Alcestiad (1958) (featuring a libretto by Thornton Wilder), the Sibelius Medal for Composition, the Bearns Prize for Composition, and a grant from the National Endowment for the Arts and the Humanities. And in 1974, she became the first woman composer to be elected to the National Institute of Arts and Letters. In addition, she served on the music faculty of Hunter College in New York for over fifty years. Her best-known choral work is the charming three movement cycle Let's Touch the Sky (1952) for chorus, flute, oboe and bassoon to words by e.e. cummings. Listen to the Jane Hardester Singers performing "If ups the word...", the third movement of Louise Talma's Let's Touch the Sky . . . it's one of our PYTHEAS EARFUL for the week.

In October 1918, Charles Ives suffered a heart attack brought on by exhaustion and undiagnosed diabetes. This marked a turning point in his career. As Ives' biographer Jan Swafford points out, for the remainder of his life the primary focus of Ives' musical efforts would be promoting his works, rather than composing. The very first work that he chose to show to the world - after fifteen years of nearly absolute artistic isolation - was his Second Piano Sonata, subtitled "Concord, Mass., (1840-1860). Ives had a special regard for the work. He took great pains to explain his aims in his Essays Before a Sonata, a programmatic overview of the sonata that Ives included when he published the work (at his own considerable expense) in 1921. In short, the sonata is a series of meditations on four great Transcendentalist writers: Emerson, Hawthorne, "The Alcotts," and Thoreau. The fourth movement is dedicated to Thoreau, who Ives describes as "a great musician, not because he played the flute, but because he did not have to go to Boston to hear 'the Symphony'". (note by Scott Mortensen/MusicWeb International) Listen to a performance of the Thoreau movement of Ives' Piano Sonata No. 2 . . . this week's FROM THE PYTHEAS ARCHIVES.

2011-09-02T08:00:00.000-07:00

Stefan Klaverdal is one of his generation’s most active and performed composers in Sweden and his music has been performed countless times in Europe and elsewhere. In recent years, his focus has been on purely vocal pieces and vocal and instrumental pieces in combination with live electronics. An early and frequently performed work is Fragment av en mässa (Fragment of a mass) (1999) for vocal sextet, while the much talked about scenic oratorio Judas (2003) for vocal soloists, mixed choir, organ and electronics, stands as one of his seminal creations. A prominent and long-standing feature of Klaverdal’s work is cross-genre collaboration, especially his music for dance performances and for dance and art films. His scores to the dance films Manskligt monster (Human pattern) and Insyn (Insight) earned him top honours in the multimedia category at the Bourges International Festival of Electroacoustic Music and Sonic Art in 2006 and 2008. Klavedal was originally a singer, and strives to reproduce these lyrical and human qualities in his compositions. With live electronics as an active extension of his own voice, he paints electroacoustic landscapes from a palette of passion, drama and beauty. Watch a performance of Stefan Klaverdal's eyes like a flame of fire (2009) with soprano recorder player Susanna Borsch . . . one of this week's FEATURED NEW MUSIC VIDEOS.

Choreographer Jiri Kylian’s Memoires d’Oubliettes (2009) was a fitting inclusion in Nederlands Dans Theater’s 50th Anniversary Tour, concluding Kylian reign as resident choreographer, with pieces that offer echoes of nostalgia yet retains all the freshness and relevance of the magnificent Nederlands Dans Theater company. In Memoires d’Oubliettes the dancers explore a shadowy, empty terrain, at times moving as though pushing through inky waters - with a silky slowness and a spellbinding serenity - at others, shifting with an itchy, percussive desperation, their bodies scribbling urgent messages in the darkness. Kees Tjebbes interrupts the black space with pale pools of blue, evoking ocean depths with an effective lighting design, while whispering voices creep through the music (by Dirk Haubrich), adding to the edgy atmosphere. Watch an excerpt from Memoires d’Oubliettes performed by members of the Nederlands Dans Theater . . . it's our DANSES PYTHEUSES for the week.

Delvyn Case is Boston-based musician who is active as a composer, orchestral and choral conductor, and college educator. He also maintains an active career as a writer and lecturer on a variety of musical topics, from sacred music to hip-hop, and pursues numerous musical outreach projects in his home city of Quincy, Massachusetts, and beyond. He is currently Assistant Professor of Music at Wheaton College in Norton, Massachusetts, where he serves as Music Director of the Great Woods Chamber Orchestra. Formerly he served as Visiting Professor of Theory and Composition at the Longy School of Music and as an adjunct faculty member at Boston College and Northeastern University. He currently serves as Music Director of the Eastern Nazarene College Choral Union, the Quincy Bay Chamber Orchestra (a professional orchestra he founded to provide outreach and educational concerts), the Quincy Summer Singers (a community choir he founded in 2009), as pianist in the avant-garde improvisation ensemble "The Meltdown Incentive", and as composer-in-residence for Cambridge’s "Dance Currents, Inc." Listen to a performance of Delvyn Case's Tenebrae factae sunt (2000) sung by the New York Virtuoso Singers . . . it's one of our PYTHEAS EARFUL for the week.

Pianist Eve Egoyan talks about the music of Canadian composer Ann Southam in an interview with Musicworks magazine, "... there is a close connection between composing for or playing the piano and other forms of work done by hand, such as weaving, that reflect the nature of traditional women's work - repetitive, life-sustaining, requiring time and patience. But through it all, runs a thread of questioning." Musically, Ann Southam's questioning takes the form of ever-repeating musical motifs that, over time and small changes, coalesce into answers. Hear this in Southam's piano work In Retrospect (2004) . . . this week's FROM THE PYTHEAS ARCHIVES.

2011-08-22T08:14:00.001-07:00

Peter Maxwell Davies' chamber opera The Lighthouse (1979) is based on a real incident in 1900 when three keepers of an Outer Hebrides lighthouse disappeared in unexplained, Marie Celeste-like circumstances. The opera's exploration of the inter-personal tensions and paranoia of the three men is one possible version of what may have happened. A prologue moves between a court of enquiry into the incident and flashbacks to the arrival of the relief boat. The boat's three officers answer questions posed by a solo horn, with small discrepancies emerging in their three stories. Watch an excerpt of Maxwell Davies The Lighthouse from a performance featuring Andrew Slater, Paul Carey Jones and Sean Clayton . . . one of this week's FEATURED NEW MUSIC VIDEOS.

Composer Alice Shields talks about her electronic piece The Transformation of Ani (1970): "The text of 'The Transformation of Ani' is taken from the Egyptian Book of the Dead, as translated into English by E. A. Budge. Most sounds in the piece were made from my own voice, speaking and singing the words of the text. Each letter of the English translation was assigned a pitch, and each hieroglyph of the Egyptian was given a particular sound or short phrase, of mostly indefinite pitch. Each series, the one derived from the English translation, and the one derived from the original hieroglyphs, was then improvised upon to create material I thought appropriate to the way in which I wanted to develop the meaning of the text, which I divided into three sections. Listen to Alice Shields' The Transformation of Ani . . . it's our SOUND ART for the week.

New York based composer David T. Little wrote his piece Spalding Gray (2008) in memory of the writer Spalding Gray, and it was premiered December 9th, 2008 by the NOW Ensemble at Princeton University. The music of American composer David T. Little has been described as "dramatically wild ... rustling, raunchy and eclectic, and "showing "real imagination" by New York Times critic Anthony Tommasini. Little’s highly theatrical, often political work draws upon his experience as a rock drummer, and fuses classical and popular idioms to dramatic effect. His music has been performed throughout the world - including in Dresden, London, Edinburgh, LA, Montreal, and at the Tanglewood, Aspen, MATA and Cabrillo Festivals - by such performers as the London Sinfonietta, eighth blackbird, So Percussion, ensemble courage, Dither, NOW nsemble, PRISM Quartet, the New World Symphony, American Opera Projects, the New York City Opera, the Grand Rapids Symphony and the Baltimore Symphony. Little has taught music in New York City through Carnegie Hall’s Musical Connections program, served as the inaugural Digital Composer-in- Residence for the UK-based DilettanteMusic.com, and is currently the Executive Director of New York’s MATA Festival. Listen to a performance of David T. Little's Spalding Gray (2008) played by the NOW Ensemble . . . it's one of our PYTHEAS EARFUL for the week.

Philadelphia born composer Vincent Persichetti was the recipient of three Guggenheim Fellowships and grants from the National Foundation on the Arts and Humanities, and the National Institute of Arts and Letters. His Night Dances, written in 1970, was commissioned by the New York State School of Music Association and was introduced during that organization’s meeting at Kiamesha Lake, New York, on December 9, 1970, by the All-State Orchestra under Frederick Fennell. Persichetti has said of this work (which he considered a companion piece to his Symphony No. 9): "Lines of poetry, floating about in my head, seemed to suggest a kind of music that flourished in the fertile climate of the Symphony. I believe these two companion pieces are linked spiritually, but subconsciously. As in my three volumes of Poems for Piano (1939), each of the seven sections of this work reflects, or parallels, the mood of a single line recalled from a poem. After the last page of music in the score, I have listed the titles of the seven poems from which these lines came, but the music is a parallel of these specific lines only, and has nothing necessarily to do with the respective poems in their entirety (though my choice of title may have been influenced by that of the Sylvia Plath poem quoted in the penultimate section). These Night Dances do have to do with what we all dream in a different reality from that of our waking thoughts. In dreams things appear, bidden or unbidden, as an underside of something made of a fabric that will hold together because it is part fantasy. These seven pieces form a crystal created by a melodic pair of dewdrops." [notes from "Recorded Anthology of American Music, Inc."] Listen to a performance of Persichetti's Night Dances, op. 114 (1970) played by the Juilliard Orchestra, James DePriest conductor . . . this week's FROM THE PYTHEAS ARCHIVES.

2011-08-15T18:59:00.000-07:00

Join the Portland Chamber Music Festival for their final concert of the 2011 season, featuring Osvaldo Golijov's "Lullaby and Doina" and Schubert's great masterpiece, the Octet in F major for Clarinet, Bassoon, French Horn, and Strings. Held at the Abromson Center at the University of Southern Maine, The festival's five-concert series has been broadcast on National Public Radio and WGBH in Boston and has been awarded two grants from the Aaron Copland Fund for Music. Join in the excitement this Saturday, August 20th at 8pm. Check it all out at the Portland Chamber Music Festival's website http://www.pcmf.org/

Stephen Cohn is internationally recognized for his music for the concert stage, as well as his scores for feature films and television. His concert works have been performed and recorded by the world's finest chamber music ensembles in the United States and Europe, such as the Kansas City Symphony, Arditti Quartet, the City of Prague Philharmonic Orchestra and the Chroma String Quartet. He has been Composer-in-Residence at The International Encounters of Catalonia in the south of France, and his commissions have been performed in New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, Brussels, France, and Prague. He has received an Emmy Award for "Outstanding Achievement in Music", and his scores have been part of many award winning productions featuring such stars as Lily Tomlin, Joanne Woodward, Kathleen Quinlan, Colleen Dewhurst, William Shatner and Wallace Shawn. Watch the premiere performance of Stephen Cohn's chamber piece "Sea Change" (2011) . . . one of this week's FEATURED NEW MUSIC VIDEOS.

Insyn (Insight) is a dancefilm by choreographer Klara Elenius and composer Stefan Klaverdal where choreography and music creates a unique synergy, inspired by the Nordic mentality. The basic concept of the film is to create rifts in our perception of what is real and what is not. Do the characters in the film really live as we do, or are they caught in some kind of flux between dream and reality? The main characters live in a very still and unmoving house. They seem to have a somewhat strict relationship to each other. Everything just about normal, but everywhere seem to hold some abstract components that shifts the perception and creates a reality of its own. The music reflects on the quasi-normal view of reality using vocal samples somewhat transformed, gliding between recognizable patterns and more abstract sonic landscapes. The music was the winner in the 35th IMEB composition for electroacoustic music in Bourges 2008. The movie has also been awarded as a whole in the international competitions for short films in 2007 Cozmic Zoom Copenhagen (2 prizes) Cinedans Amsterdam Dancescreen the Haague. Watch the Elenius/Klaverdal dancefilm "Insyn" . . . it's our DANSES PYTHEUSES for the week.

Todd Goodman has been described as "one of America's promising young composers." Born in Bedford, Penn., he received his Bachelor of Music degree in composition at the University of Colorado at Boulder and his Masters of Music degree in composition at Duquesne University in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. His works have been played by principle members of the Chicago, Pittsburgh, Boston, Singapore and Seattle Symphonies. Goodman has received commissions from a wide variety of players and ensembles across the United States. With many performances in the United States his works have also been performed in Canada, Mexico, Europe and Asia. Goodman currently serves as the resident composer for the Lincoln Park Performing Arts Center. He feels that the audience connection and participation in his music is vital to its success. He wants people to leave a concert feeling that they experienced a work rather than just observing. Goodman has received grants from the National Endowment for the Arts for his work with the Altoona Symphony Orchestra, the American Music Center, as well as grants from the University of Colorado Entrepreneurship Center. Goodman is the founder and artistic director of the innovative contemporary art ensemble, Ensemble Immersion, which combines music, dance, literature, film, visual arts, drama, set design, and creative audience interaction to create artistic experiences unlike any other. Listen to a performance of Todd Goodman's "River of Sorrows" (2006) with the Duquesne University Wind Ensemble . . . it's one of our PYTHEAS EARFULS for the week.

Stefan Weisman was born and raised in New Jersey, and now lives in Hell's Kitchen, New York City. Anthony Tommasini (New York Times) has called his music "personal, moody and skillfully wrought." His works include chamber, orchestral and choral pieces, as well as music for theater, video and dance. He is a recipient of a 2006 Bang on a Can "People’s Commission." Among his other commissions are works for Sequitur, the Minimum Security Composers Collective, the Empire City Men's Chorus with the Cosmopolitan Symphony Orchestra, the Battell Chapel Choir, and the Oregon Bach Festival Composers’ Symposium, which commissioned a piece in honor of George Crumb on the occasion of his 75th birthday. Other groups who have performed his work include the Miro String Quartet, So Percussion, the Locrian Chamber Players, the New Millennium Ensemble, the Third Angle Ensemble, the Yesaroun' Duo, the Da Capo Chamber Players, Luna Nova, pianist Lisa Moore, flautist Patti Monson, mezzo-soprano Hai-Ting Chinn, male soprano Anthony Roth Costanzo, Newspeak, the NOW Ensemble, the Woodstock Chamber Orchestra, the Hudson Valley Philharmonic and the New Jersey Symphony. He is a recipient of awards from Meet the Composer, SCI, ASCAP, and the American Music Center. Listen to a Stefan Weisman's cello and percussion piece SuperSoft (2007) . . . this week's FROM THE PYTHEAS ARCHIVES.

2011-08-12T12:45:00.001-07:00

Portland Chamber Music Festival will kick off its 2011 season with a program entitled "Leclair, Vaughan Williams and Mendelssohn", and Maine Public Radio will be providing its listeners with a front row seat to the start of this critically-acclaimed series. Held at the Abromson Center at the University of Southern Maine, the Portland Chamber Music Festival program will feature Jean-Marie Leclair's Sonata in C major, Op. 3 No. 3, Ralph Vaughan Williams' On Wenlock Edge and Felix Mendelssohn's Octet in E flat major, Op. 20, This program will feature famed tenor John McVeigh. A Maine resident, Mr. McVeigh has performed with the Metropolitan Opera and Lyric Opera of Chicago. The PCMF has garnered nationwide attention since its inception in 1994. The festival's five-concert series has been broadcast on National Public Radio and WGBH in Boston and has been awarded two grants from the Aaron Copland Fund for Music. Join in the excitement Thursday, August 11th at 8pm - either live (at Abromson Center at the University of Southern Maine in Portland) or over the airwaves and online at MPBN Radio or online at MPBN.net. Check it all out at the Portland Chamber Music Festival's website.

The acclaimed Spanish composer Joaquin Rodrigo is the man most responsible for popularising the guitar as a classical concert instrument. His most famous composition is his 1939 Concierto de Aranjuez, the first orchestral work composed specifically for guitar. This ground-breaking composition was prompted by a meeting between Rodrigo and Spanish guitarist Regino Sainz de la Maza, in Paris. De la Maza performed the Aranjuez for the first time in 1940 with the Barcelona Philharmonic Orchestra. Since then, the work has been recorded innumerable times and is the most well-known and influential piece of 20th century Spanish music. Rodrigo's compositions developed from his blending of Baroque compositions for the vihuela (a lute-like instrument that pre-dates the guitar) with the folk traditions of flamenco music and his own classical training. Before he began producing compositions for guitar the only classical work available to master guitarists, such as Andres Segovia and others, were piano transcriptions of Bach and other classical composers (John Martinez, wsws.org). Watch a performance of Rodrigo's Invocacion y Danza (1961) by guitarist Denis Azabagic . . . one of this week's FEATURED NEW MUSIC VIDEOS.

Dubbed a five time "Classical Music Pick" by the Boston Globe, Juventas New Music Ensemble voices the musical culture of the present. From lyrical melodies to recorded sounds from outer space, their performances are a tour de force, showcasing the most engaging music of today's generation. Juventas offers new music - ranging from a world premiere Kung Fu opera to a wintry-inspired holiday concert. They offer fresh repertoire - featuring the eclectic sounds of over 90 young composers from around the globe. With over 60 exhilarating concerts under their belt, the 2011-2012 season will bring more high energy performances including a collaboration with Intermezzo Opera and Schola Cantorum of Boston, a fully-staged world premiere of Ketty Nez's opera The Fiddler and the Old Woman of Rumelia and their first ever performance in Providence, Rhode Island. As an ensemble-in-residence at the Boston Conservatory and Middlebury College (Vermont), Juventas is excited to continue theirr educational work and reach out to new, young talents . . . it's our FEATURED ENSEMBLE for the week.

In 2003 violinist Ittai Shapira made a critically acclaimed Carnegie Hall debut with the Orchestra of St Luke's performing the world premier of a violin concerto written for him by his Israeli compatriot Shulamit Ran. Winner of the Pulitzer Prize in music and composer-in-residence of the Chicago Symphony, Ran's music blends high-energy, dense compositional thought, with a penchant for long-spun melismatic melodies. The Albany Records recording of Ran's Violin Concerto has become part of a compilation of her works performed by the BBC Concert Orchestra conducted by Charles Hazlewood, and Daniel Barenboim and the Chicago Symphony Orchestra. Hear the second movement of Shulamit Ran's Violin Concerto with violinist Ittai Shapira . . . it's one of our PYTHEAS EARFULS for the week.

2011-08-07T17:25:00.004-07:00

Portland Chamber Music Festival will kick off its 2011 season with a program entitled "Leclair, Vaughan Williams and Mendelssohn", and Maine Public Radio will be providing its listeners with a front row seat to the start of this critically-acclaimed series. Held at the Abromson Center at the University of Southern Maine, the Portland Chamber Music Festival program will feature Jean-Marie Leclair's Sonata in C major, Op. 3 No. 3, Ralph Vaughan Williams' On Wenlock Edge and Felix Mendelssohn's Octet in E flat major, Op. 20, This program will feature famed tenor John McVeigh. A Maine resident, Mr. McVeigh has performed with the Metropolitan Opera and Lyric Opera of Chicago. The PCMF has garnered nationwide attention since its inception in 1994. The festival's five-concert series has been broadcast on National Public Radio and WGBH in Boston and has been awarded two grants from the Aaron Copland Fund for Music. Join in the excitement Thursday, August 11th at 8pm - either live (at Abromson Center at the University of Southern Maine in Portland) or over the airwaves and online at MPBN Radio or online at MPBN.net. Check it all out at the Portland Chamber Music Festival's website.

Discussing the genesis of Peter Maxwell Davies' guitar piece "Hill Runes", Julian Bream, who commisioned the work in 1981 has said, ". . . somehow I never felt his musical language would fit naturally onto the guitar. Composers of astringent yet complex textures, like Max Davies, often find the colour of the instrument too personal, too exotic, and not abstract enough for their musical language. But having heard some of Max’s more recent works, I felt he was in a musical period in his life when he was writing music that might be suitable and indeed even work well on the guitar." Known to his friends simply as Max, Sir Peter Maxwell Davies is one of the most prolific and frequently performed of British composers. His several hundred compositions draw from an eclectic array of influences, from Indian music to serialism to Renaissance polyphony. Davies has also worked tirelessly in the area of music education and as an environmental activist. Watch a performance of Peter Maxwell Davies' "Hill Runes" (1981) played by guitarist Giacomo Fiore . . . one of this week's FEATURED NEW MUSIC VIDEOS.

Karl Korte is a scrupulous composer of music that’s of high quality and not easily categorized. These three works are the fruit of his ongoing recent collaboration with Duo46 (Matt Gould, guitar, and Beth-Ilana Schneider-Gould, violin). Korte has a gift for writing music that’s fluid (it always has an idea and knows how to develop it), focused on clear and memorable motives, and harmonically rich but neither chromatically clotted nor too tonally predictable. He has a naturally sophisticated rhythmic sense. Check out Duo46's recording "The Guitar Music Of Karl Korte" (Centaur 3059) . . . it's our FEATURED RECORDING for the week.

Elliott Jungyoung Bark's works have been performed/read by many orchestras, ensembles and musicians, including the New York Youth Symphony, Cleveland Orchestra musicians, Indiana University Orchestra & New Music Ensemble, Juventas New Music Ensemble, Zzyzx Saxophone Quartet, Indiana University Saxophone Ensemble, Kuttner String Quartet, Luna Nova Chamber Ensemble, duo parnas, conductor Kevin Noe, violinists Liana Gourdgia and Michelle Lie, countertenor Daniel Bubeck and saxophonist Zach Shemon. His works have also been presented at the Bowdoin International Music Festival, the Festival of New Music at Florida State University, Midwest Composers Symposiums at Universities of Indiana (‘07), Iowa (‘08) and Michigan (‘09), North American Saxophone Alliance Biennial Conference, Belvedere Chamber Music Festival, United States Navy Band International Saxophone Symposium and 2010 GAMMA at University of Texas at Austin. Here a performance of Elliott Bark's "Neutral Tones" (2008) . . . it's one of our PYTHEAS EARFULS for the week.

Francis Poulenc loved Paris, poetry, and the human voice. He fused those three loves into his melodies, crafting those French art songs into works for which he is best known. Poulenc was born and raised near the city of his heart and his earliest memories center on the popular tunes he heard in cultural institutions such as the cabaret, music hall, and circus. It is not surprising, then, that the composer infused his music with that popular flavour. In doing so, Poulenc paid homage to his Parisian musical roots, intentionally keeping his music "French." In addition, by utilizing the popular elements he heard all around him when he was young, Poulenc lends a nostalgic air to his music (Karen Jee-Hae McCann). Hear a performance of Poulenc's Les Chemins de l’Amour (1940) . . . this week's FROM THE PYTHEAS ARCHIVES.

2011-08-07T17:25:00.002-07:00

A classical composer and orchestral conductor based in Santa Monica, David Avshalomov is also an accomplished solo bass vocalist. As a composer, he writes in an accessible modern neo-tonal style that balances a lyric gift with a characteristic rhythmic vitality. His influences include the great 20th-century European and American tonal composers (plus his father and paternal grandfather, Aaron Avshalomoff). He has composed music for a wide variety of forces from solo instruments to full orchestra, band, and choir, in forms ranging in scale from songs and incidental pieces to full-length oratorio. Recently he has been writing much vocal music, with an increasing number of regional commissions, and serving as resident composer with several Los Angeles area choruses. Avshalomov's music has been performed professionally across the US and in Europe and Russia, and has been recorded on the Albany and Naxos labels. Has sung professionally as a chorister and soloist for 45 years. He earned his B.A in Music at Harvard and a D.M.A. in conducting and composition from the University of Washington, studied at Aspen and Tanglewood, has been music director of a number of US orchestras and choruses including several in the LA area, has guest conducted widely here and toured in Europe and the Far East, and recorded orchestral music by his grandfather Aaron Avshalomoff in Moscow. His conducting work garnered listings in Who's Who in Music and Who's Who in the West. David Avshalomov Diversion ("Terwilliger") (1966) . . . one of this week's FEATURED NEW MUSIC VIDEOS.

Patricia Sonego made her operatic debut in New York City in the world premiere of American composer Jack Beeson's Sorry, Wrong Number with the Center for Contemporary Opera under the baton of Richard Marshall, for which she received an enthusiastic review from Robert Prag of Opera News. A champion of contemporary, avant garde, improvisational, and electroacoustic music, Sonego is in demand to premier new works, many of which have been composed for her. In a new arrangement dedicated to her by the composer, she recently gave the world premier of Prologue & Messages for Raoul Wallenberg by award winning American composer Terry Winter Owens at Carnegie Hall, Weill Recital Hall, with the Alaria Chamber Ensemble. Sonego is co-founder and Artistic Director of Reizen Ensemble, a new music group dedicated to the performance of new compositions, particularly for voice with instruments or electronics. Patricia Sonego - coloratura soprano . . . it's our FEATURED PERFORMER/ENSEMBLE for the week.

“Inscape,” a word that throws off rich and mysterious resonances, is the lovely coinage of the nineteenth-century English poet and priest Gerard Manley Hopkins. In a brief preface to the score, Copland writes that Hopkins invented the word “to suggest ‘a quasi-mystical illumination, a sudden perception of that deeper pattern, order, and unity which gives meaning to external forms.’ This description, it seems to me, applies more truly to the creation of music than to any of the other arts.” For Hopkins, the opposite of “inscape” was “instress,” which refers to perception as opposed to intrinsic, essential quality. Discussing Inscape, Copland’s biographer Howard Pollock writes that “the composer uses sounds as an ‘instress’ that communicates a deeper inner essence, an ‘inscape.’” Copland’s idea was to write music that “seemed to be moving inward upon itself.” (Michael Steinberg/Los Angeles Philharmonic). Aaron Copland Inscape (1967) . . . it's one of our PYTHEAS EARFULS for the week.

Edward Wright was born in Buckinghamshire, England 1980. He is currently studying for a PhD in music with Andrew Lewis at Bangor University, where he has been a Parry Williams scholar and teaches music technology. His work is mainly focused toward the electro-acoustic end of the musical spectrum, although he writes for and plays real instruments as well. He performs on violin, viola and voice, as well as laptop: and works with a number of school/student groups promoting performance of both older and more modern music. Recent highlights include a mention in the 2008 Prix Bourges for his piece Con-chords, a number of commissions, a London premiere with his piece Polarities, a two day sound installation piece in Conwy castle, airplay on BBC Radio 1 and S4C television, and signing to a record label. Wright lives in North Wales (U.K.) with Emma, their daughter Alena (18 months old and the time of writing) Ben the dog and Bess the cat. Edward Wright Twr (2009) . . . this week's FROM THE PYTHEAS ARCHIVES.

2011-08-07T17:25:00.000-07:00

While on a weekend excursion, composer Benjamin Britten read poems by the nineteenth century Frenchman Arthur Rimbaud, and stated, "I must put them to music." Whereas many others - even the notoriously nationalistic French - had passed over Rimbaud's works, considering them too thorny for lyrical settings, Britten was deeply affected by them and felt a strong affinity with the author; especially familiar to Britten was Rimbaud's sense of cynicism, and a longing for the innocence of childhood. In writing "Les Illuminations" (1939) - a song cycle written for high voice and string orchestra - he not only embraced the French language, but also distinctly French elements of style; this marks the beginnings of his move away from certain identifiable "Britishisms", and toward a more cosmopolitan and personal style (All Music Guide). Watch a performance of Britten's "Les Illuminations" with soprano Laura Aikin and The Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra, Sir Neville Marriner conducting . . . one of this week's FEATURED NEW MUSIC VIDEOS.

Michael Daugherty is one of the most commissioned, performed, and recorded composers on the American concert music scene today. His music is rich with cultural allusions and bears the stamp of classic modernism, with colliding tonalities and blocks of sound; at the same time, his melodies can be eloquent and stirring. Daugherty has been hailed by The Times (London) as "a master icon maker" with a "maverick imagination, fearless structural sense and meticulous ear." Daugherty first came to international attention when the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra, conducted by David Zinman, performed his "Metropolis Symphony" at Carnegie Hall in 1994. Since that time, Daugherty’s music has entered the orchestral, band and chamber music repertory and made him, according to the League of American Orchestras, one of the ten most performed living American composers. Listen to and watch Michael Daugherty in conversation with Frank J. Oteri of NewMusicBox . . . it's our COMPOSER PORTRAIT for the week.

Giorgio Koukl is a pianist/harpsichordist and composer who resides in the beautiful town of Lugano, located in the Italian speaking canton of Ticino in southern Switzerland. He was born in Prague, Czechoslovakia (now Czech Republic) and studied there at the State Music School and Conservatoire. In 1968 he moved to Switzerland, continuing his studies at both the Conservatories of Zurich and Milan. Koukl is the prizewinner of many international music competitions including those of Ciudad Ibague (Colombia), Tolosa (Spain), Viotti (Italy), the H.Rahn competition (Switzerland) and the Alienor Competition (Washington DC). A truly international performer and composer, Koukl has given many recitals and concerto performances, and his compositions have received first performances in many major European cities, in Asia, and in the United States. Frequently broadcast both as soloist and a composer, Koukl has collaborated in all his capacities with such organizations as the BBC London, RTSI Lugano, SRG Zurich, SSR Geneve, SFB Berlin, SWF Baden-Baden, WDR Köln, RTHK Hong-Kong, CR Prague, Radio Malta, Radio Vatican, ORF Vienna, NRC Oslo and SF Stuttgart. Listen to a performance of Giorgio Koukl's "Five Miniatures" (1976) . . . it's one of our PYTHEAS EARFULS for the week.

French director Georges Franju's "Les Yeux sans visage" (Eyes Without a Face) (1960) is an unsettling, sometimes poetic, horror film. Pierre Brasseur plays a brilliant plastic surgeon (Prof. Genessier), who has vowed to restore the face of his daughter, Christiane (Edith Scob), who was mutilated in an automobile accident. With the help of his assistant (Alida Valli), he kidnaps young women, surgically removes their facial features, and attempts to graft their beauty onto his daughter's hideous countenance. Franju's haunting, muted handling of basic horror material is what lifts "Les Yeux sans visage" out of the ordinary and into the realm of near-classic. Often cited as one of the most poetic horror films ever committed to celluloid, "Les Yeux sans visage" has a lingering effect that conjures more melancholy malaise than outright fright. Franju opts for a deliberate pacing that perfectly compliments the somber tone of his dark tale, and cinematographer Eugen Schufftan's moody nighttime photography provides the ideal visual representation of the inner turmoil experienced by both the father who longs to make up for past indiscretions (regardless of the pain he inflicts to achieve his goal) and the daughter whose horrendous appearance serves as a constant reminder of the mistake that will haunt him to the grave. French composer Maurice Jarre created an equally haunting score for the film (AMG Review). Watch an excerpt from Les Yeux sans visage . . . this week's FROM THE PYTHEAS ARCHIVES.

2011-07-11T07:50:00.001-07:00

Bruce Morley (New Zealand Music Magazine) writes about "View From Olympus" (2001), the double concerto for piano, percussion and orchestra by New Zealand composer John Psathas: "Our composer du jour has really done it this time. Psathas is a composer who seems to have listened to everyone from Ketelbey to Keith Jarrett, and is totally confident of his ability to create a new orchestral music. His compositions . . . are diverse, unclassifiable and fragmented, yet utterly organic. Engaged by the kinetic drive of Psathas' rhythms, classical listeners have taken to the results with enthusiasm". "View from Olympus" won for Psathas the 2002 SOUNZ Contemporary Award, as well as being chosen as one of the orchestral works presented in 2009 for the International Association of Music Information Centres' "IAMIC sounds of the Year". Watch a performance of John Psathas' "View From Olympus", with pianist Michael Houstoun, percussionist Leonard Sakofsky and the Christchurch Symphony Orchestra, conducted by Marc Taddei . . . one of this week's FEATURED NEW MUSIC VIDEOS.

During most of his years as a composer, Charles Knox has been employed as a performer or teacher. He was an instructor of contemporary, traditional, baroque and renaissance musical styles; director of student ensembles at small and large colleges and universities; and performer in symphonic and jazz ensembles. This is often reflected in the choice and style of his creative work. Having held the position of Professor of Music at Georgia State University from 1965 to 1995, Knox now lives in academic - but not compositional - retirement in Atlanta, the city where he has spent most of his life. He has been called "the dean of Atlanta composers", and in 2001 he received the Mayor's Fellowship in the Arts (Award in Music) from the City of Atlanta. Listen to a performance of his 1998 chamber work "2002: Semordnilap No. 2" . . . it's one of our PYTHEAS EARFULS for the week.

A native of Washington, D.C., composer Elizabeth Vercoe has been called "one of the most inventive composers working in America today" by her hometown newspaper (The Washington Post). She has worked as a composer in the U.S. and abroad: at the Civitella Ranieri Center in Italy, the St. Petersburg Spring Music Festival in Russia, the Cite International des Arts in Paris, and the MacDowell Colony in New Hampshire. She has written works on commission for Wellesley College, Austin Peay State University, the Pro Arte Orchestra, and the First National Congress on Women in Music. Her awards include grants from the National Endowment for the Arts, Meet the Composer, the Artists Foundation, and the Massachusetts Arts Council. According to the Vercoe her work "Sonaria" (1980) "is a melodrama for solo cello written in memory of my father, an amateur cellist and violinist. Since the music was written as commentary on an imagined dance/mime either live or filmed, the listener is invited to 'screen' those private visual images sometimes evoked by music instead of hastily suppressing them and trying to 'pay attention.' The mood of the piece is at times tongue-in-cheek, but for the most part is entirely serious". Watch a performance of Vercoe's "Sonaria" played by cellist Jerome Desbordes . . . it's our second FEATURED NEW MUSIC VIDEO for the week.

According to composer Karl Henning, he "writes and plays music which no one else dare, in and near Boston. His music has been played and sung on three continents (NA, Yurp and Oz), and there is unconfirmed rumor that an Uruguayan zookeeper has papered adobe walls with the Henning organ Toccata. Karl has served at different times as Interim Choir Director and Composer-in-Residence at the Cathedral Church of St Paul in Boston, where he composed a 40-minute unaccompanied choral setting of the St John Passion (2008)". His work for 10 winds, "Out in the Sun" was premiered in 2006 by the New England Conservatory Wind Ensemble. Listen to a performance of Henning's Out in the Sun . . . this week's FROM THE PYTHEAS ARCHIVES.

2011-07-05T12:46:00.001-07:00

The Bicentennial Symphony was the 13th and last completed symphony of American composer Roy Harris. The piece was commissioned by Cal State L.A. and debuted by the National Symphony Orchestra in Washington, D.C., on Abraham Lincoln's birthday in 1976 as part of the country's bicentennial celebration. According to conductor John Malveaux, "in the 33 years since the work's debut in Washington, there is no record of the piece ever being played again by any orchestra." And for Malveaux, it is not only mystifying that the symphony disappeared, it's just plain wrong and inexcusable. Malveaux calls the Bicentennial Symphony "the strongest musical statement on U.S. history, slavery and race relations ever made by an American composer." It is a piece that was intentionally controversial. Through much of it, the chorus excoriates the racism of this country before and during Lincoln's time, accentuated by angry shouts from the singers. [Read more about this here]. Watch a performance of Roy Harris' Bicentennial Symphony (1976) played by the MusicUntold Orchestra and Chorale, conducted by John Malveaux. . . . one of this week's FEATURED NEW MUSIC VIDEOS.

Robert Beaser is often classed as a member of the new tonalists, a group whose membership includes Lowell Liebermann, Daniel Asia, Paul Moravec, and other major America composers born at mid-twentieth century. Beaser, like his colleagues, embraces more traditional methods of composition, including tonality and an expressive directness. He possesses a great melodic gift and is unabashed in his use of it. Moreover, he is versatile in writing in a variety of genres, from opera and orchestral works to chamber pieces and songs and solo works for piano and guitar. Beaser is also active as a teacher, having chaired the composition department at Juilliard since 1994, a year after he joined the faculty there. He has also served as artistic director of the Carnegie Hall-based American Composers Orchestra, for whom he was previously composer-in-residence. Hear Robert Beaser talk about his Guitar Concerto and the compositional process . . . it's our COMPOSER PORTRAIT for the week.

Latvian composer Pēteris Vasks' music always directly affirms ethical values and responsibility towards life, toward living things and their beauty, as opposed to the catastrophic world-view. Life's great existential themes are undoubtedly present in all his works - his symphonies and other orchestral works, concertos, string quartets anther chamber works, his music for solo instruments, and also his large-scale dramatic poems and lyrical miniatures for unaccompanied choir. Listen to a performance of Vasks' choral work Mate saule (Mother Sun) (1975) . . . it's one of our PYTHEAS EARFULS for the week.

Composer Andrew List, in speaking of his Six Bagatelles for String Trio (2002), has stressed his desire to create six little pieces with maximum contrast ranging from "in your face" to "other-worldly." The third Bagatelle, Soliloquoy highlights the viola in a keening, mournful melody accompanied by sustained notes, largely in harmonics. Listen to a performance Andrew List's Soliloquoy, from Six Bagatelles for String Trio . . . this week's FROM THE PYTHEAS ARCHIVES.

2011-06-28T21:45:00.001-07:00

Alban Berg Altenberg Lieder (1912) . . . one of this week's FEATURED NEW MUSIC VIDEOS.

Elliott Carter March, from "Eight Pieces for Timpani" (1950) . . . it's our BANG, CLANG and BEAT - New Music for Percussion for the week.

Gustav Holst Terzetto (1925) . . . it's one of our PYTHEAS EARFULS for the week.

Elliott Bark Reminiscence (2006) . . . this week's FROM THE PYTHEAS ARCHIVES.

2011-06-22T20:03:00.001-07:00

Steven E. Ritter (Fanfare Magazine) writes about American composer Margaret Brouwer's Violin Concerto (2007): "Brouwer is one of our best composers, and certainly near the top. Her Violin Concerto is simply a marvel to hear, combining phenomenally difficult solo passages with some of the most ingratiating melodies I have heard in a recent composition. For those of us who, years ago, were wondering where music might turn after the challenges of the atonalists, this is it. She is not afraid of the modern idiom, and uses whatever techniques are called for at the moment, but at the same time never loses sense of that fundamental and essential musical ingredient called melody." Watch a performance of Margaret Brouwer's Violin Concerto played by Kyung Sun Lee, violin, and the University of Houston Symphony Orchestra with Franz Krager, conductor . . . one of this week's FEATURED NEW MUSIC VIDEOS.

And don't miss the double review by Hubert Culot (MusicWeb International) of two recordings of music by Margaret Brouwer - selections of her orchestral music on the Naxos label, and a CD of her chamber music on New World Records . . . our current FEATURED RECORDINGS.

Maine based composer Beth Wiemann was raised in Burlington, Vermont, studied composition and clarinet at Oberlin College and received her PhD in theory and composition from Princeton University. Her works have been performed in New York, Boston, Houston, San Francisco, Washington DC, the Dartington Festival (UK), the "Spring in Havana" 2000 Festival (Cuba), and elsewhere by the ensembles Continuum, Parnassus, Earplay, ALEA III, singers Paul Hillier, Susan Narucki, DiAnna Fortunato and others. Wiemann's compositions have won awards from the Opera Vista Chamber Opera Competition, the Orvis Foundation, Copland House, the Colorado New Music Festival, American Women Composers, and Marimolin as well as various arts councils. A founding member of Griffin Music Ensemble, a contemporary music group in Boston, she premiered many clarinet works and conducted "composer in the schools" workshops in the Boston and Worcester public schools. Watch a video of Beth Wiemann talking about her work at the University of Maine, Orono . . . it's our COMPOSER PORTRAIT for the week.

For sixteen summers, the Warebrook Contemporary Music Festival has brought the exciting world of contemporary concert music to the Northeast Kingdom of Vermont every summer in mid-July to ever increasing audiences. Based on a 450 acre working dairy farm, Warebrook Contemporary Music Festival showcases the modern, cutting edge world of new music within the traditional, rural backdrop of Northern Vermont. Established in 1990, the festival's purpose is to increase the knowledge of and appreciation for contemporary music; provide performance opportunities for musicians; encourage the composition of new works; and to enrich this area of Vermont culturally. WCMF informs the public through integrating lectures by prominent American composers with first-rate performances of their works; and presenting the stylistic diversity of this century's music through well-balanced and exciting concert programming. Works by established composers are heard next to emerging composers just embarking on their careers; three to five world premieres are presented every summer, carefully rehearsed and performed by New England's top interpreters of contemporary music. WCMF presents its eighteenth season July 11-16, 2011 in conjunction with its exciting new educational program, the Warebrook Institute for the Advancement of Modern Music . . . it's our FEATURED NEW MUSIC FESTIVALS for the week.

To call Dmitri Tymoczko a multi-dimensional composer would be both an irony and an understatement. For one thing, he has made a name for himself both as a composer and as a theorist. Second, he prides himself on being conversant with all available genres of new music and on understanding each from a multiplicity of viewpoints: "Musicians tend to make too much out of genres", he writes. "I like to think of myself as participating in a culture that includes not just contemporary music, but also popular music, jazz, folk music, classical music, and pretty much everything else. I hope to make a concerted effort to try to think about what I am doing, not just from the vantage of contemporary academic art, but from a more general perspective that (hopefully) encompasses fundamental human values". And finally, he has gained international recognition for his innovative ideas about the non-Euclidean "geometry" of harmony: by mapping the notes of chords within a space of three or more dimensions, he has made it possible to visualize and to understand some of the most elusive harmonic progressions and the hidden connections that unite disparate genres or styles of music production (from notes for the San Francisco Contemporary Music Players). Listen to a performance of Dmitri Tymoczko's string quartet work Echo Code (2003) . . . this week's FROM THE PYTHEAS ARCHIVES.

2011-06-13T20:50:00.001-07:00

Born in Wausau, Wisconsin, Gloria Coates began composing and experimenting with overtones and clusters at the age of nine. Her musical intuition led her to ever widening visions and experiences. Coates, an American living in both Europe and the United States since 1969, has the honor of being the most prolific woman symphonist today. She also studied with Alexander Tcherepnin and has been a tireless advocate for American music overseas and at home, where she also maintains a residence. Kyle Gann, noted music critic and composer, who has served as an advocate for her music for many years, has written, "The sparer context of her chamber works sounds solidly American . . . a rustic stolidity, a willingness to walk firmly forward off the beaten paths . . . an American through and rough." And Trevor Hunter (NewMusicBox), writes, "For Coates, artistic expression is a spiritual necessity. She has great interest and significant participation in painting, architecture, theater, poetry, and singing - but it is through composing that she taps into a wellspring of abstracted emotionality that the others cannot reach. Or perhaps abstracted is not the correct term, as it would seem that Coates is merely being oblique about what the inner, personal meaning of the music is to her. Whatever the veiled expressions of her work may be, there is an undoubted emotional richness present, which if not concretely knowable is at least viscerally felt by the audience. Canons constructed of quarter-tones and glissandos evoke gloomy instability, but also unearthly beauty." She also has a lyrical aspect, of which her Three Songs are typical. Watch a performance of Gloria Coates Three Songs: "Armistice" (They Dropped Like Flakes)/1972/text by: Emily Dickinson; "Fangen den Wind" (Catch the Wind)/2009/text by: Alexandra Coates; and "Komplementar" (Complementary)/1999/text by: Mayroicker, all performed by soprano Patricia Sonego and pianist Taka Kigawa . . . one of this week's FEATURED NEW MUSIC VIDEOS.

Evan Ziporyn makes music at the crossroads of genre and culture, high and low, west and east. Raised in a musically ecumenical household in Evanston, Illinois, he grew up listening to his father's violin, his grandmother's Yiddish Socialist chorus, his mother's extensive folk & jazz collection, and the sounds of top 40's; Motown on AM radio. A deep desire to play trumpet was thwarted by his 4th grade bandmaster, and his career as a clarinetist began. He started composing music at age 13 after a visionary high school music teacher, Betty Jacobsen, played him - in rapid succession - "The Rite of Spring", Charles Ives' "Quarter Tone Studies", Alvin Lucier's "I Am Sitting in A Room", and Steve Reich's "Come Out". He soon thereafter began managing his father's small record store, beginning work the same week Bob Dylan's Blood on the Tracks and Earth, Wind & Fire's That's the Way of the World were released. By the end of high school he had composed earnest, undistinguished works for full orchestra, jazz ensemble, the high school musical, and his basement progressive rock band, "Chronosynclastic Infundibulum." Persisting, he studied composition at the Eastman School of Music and Yale University, while also studying piano and clarinet. In 1979, he heard a short recording of traditional Balinese gamelan and had a self-described 'conversion experience.' He spent the following summer in Oakland working with Wayan Suweca and Michael Tenzer in the newly formed Gamelan Sekar Jaya, then traveled to Bali on Yale Murray Fellowship upon graduation in 1981. There he studied gender wayang, the music of the shadow play, and pelegongan drumming. Returning to the US he received his MA & PhD in composition from UC Berkeley. He was to New York to perform a solo clarinet work at a small new music festival, whimsically titled the "First Annual Bang on a Can Marathon", which he began an ongoing involvement with "Bang on a Can" that continues to this day. His works have been commissioned and performed by such artists and ensemble as Yo-yo Ma's Silk Road Project, Kronos Quartet, Orkest de Volharding, Maya Beiser, So Percussion, Gamelan Semara Ratih, and the Boston Modern Orchestra Project. Listen to Evan Ziporyn talk about his life and his music . . . it's our COMPOSER PORTRAIT for the week.

Critically acclaimed guitarist/composer Nathan Kolosko has performed throughout the US, Europe and Asia. As a musician, Nathan is compelled to expand the voice of the guitar through composition, improvisation, and collaborations with both musicians and visual artists. He is currently collaborating with visual artist Ling-Wen Tsai on several inter-disciplinary projects, and performs regularly with flute player Carl Dimow. Nathan has been the recipient of numerous grants and awards, including grants from the Allied Arts Foundation and D'Addario Strings. As a composer, Nathan has made numerous contributions to the repertoire for the guitar. In addition to being a performer and composer, Kolosko is a teacher dedicated to furthering the pedagogy of the guitar. Listen to the first of Nathan Kolosko's Five Short Pieces for Guitar (2006) . . . one of our PYTHEAS EARFULS for the week.

According to Steven Schick, "In many ways, Morton Feldman's The King of Denmark (1964) is an anti-percussion piece. It is to be played very softly using only the hand and fingers - no sticks or mallets. Its notation on a graph indicates how many sounds are to be played per beat and whether they are to be in high, medium, or low registers. Even though a tempo runs throughout, no rhythmic coherence emerges. Sounds simply float out, detached and weightless. One instrument has no more sonic gravity than another does. A small bell weighs the same - takes up the same acoustical space - as a large gong. An auditory illusion follows: close your eyes and you can imagine that the instruments are being played at their natural volumes. They are sounds in many different loudnesses, but they are being heard from different distances. The gong is really forte but it is heard from the distance of fifty yards. It sounds as soft as the little bell six inches from your ear. Mirages of distance appear and evaporate again into music. It is like rain or the sound of rain. These illusions come from Feldman's love of the pulsating but rhythmically directionless canvases of Mark Rothko and other American Abstract Expressionists. Directionlessness is key here. The King of Denmark is music that refuses to dictate the way it should be perceived. It does not light a particular way nor lead you by the ear like an angry headmaster along a corridor of preferred comprehension. It simply floats in timeless ether to be looked at from any angle, any proximity, any point of view." Watch a performance of Morton Feldman's The King of Denmark (1964) played by percussionist Shawn Savageau . . . this week's FROM THE PYTHEAS ARCHIVES.

And by the way, if you missed the link on last week's feature of Ravel's "Bolero", watch a second, even more exiting performance of this modern masterpiece with Sylvie Guillem and members of the Tokyo Ballet - it's well worth it!

2011-06-08T21:24:00.000-07:00

Patrício da Silva received formal musical training at the Escola Superior de Música de Lisboa (Lisbon, Portugal), followed by composition studies in the United States at CalArts, and the University of California. His composition teachers include António Pinho Vargas, Mel Powel, Stephen L. Mosko, Morton Subotnick, William Kraft, David Cope, Curtis Roads, Michael Gandolfi, John Harbison and Sydney Hodkinson. Following his graduate studies, da Silva engaged in post-doctoral work in algorithmic composition at IRCAM in Paris. He has received numerous awards and fellowships and his compositions have been performed by the Berkeley Symphony Orchestra (where da Silva was Composer in Residence, 2008-10), California Ear-Unit, Lontano, Lyris Quartet, Memphis Symphony Orchestra, Moscow Piano Quartet, New Fromm Players, Orquestra do Algarve, Shakespeare & Co., What's Next? Ensemble, Stefan Asbury, Tzimon Barto, Ryu Cipris, Gloria Cheng, Joana Carneiro, Cesário Costa, William Eddins, Lorenz Gamma, David Gutkin, Paul Haas, Vimbayi Kaziboni, Michael Kudirka, David Loebel, Brian Pezzone, José Rodilla, Mark Robson, Tara Schwab, Ming Tsu, Laurent Wagner and Ian Whitcomb. Watch a performance of his The Fact of the Matter as a Matter of Fact (2007) played by Orquestra do Algarve, Cesario Costa conducting . . . one of this week's FEATURED NEW MUSIC VIDEOS.

Just before departing on his American Tour in 1928, Maurice Ravel received a commission from Ida Rubinstein for a ballet, to be called Fandango. His intention was to orchestrate some pieces from Iberia by Albéniz, but as he was beginning work in July, he discovered that the rights to the music were already assigned to another composers. Ravel was initially dismayed and at a loss as to how he would fulfill his commission. However while continuing his holiday in Saint-Jean-de-Luz, he developed a Spanish-sounding theme which had about it "something quite insistent". Boléro, as the work was renamed, went on to become Ravel's most popular work, and one of the most frequently played pieces of classical music. The work lasts about 15 minutes, repeating each of the theme's two parts 9 times in the same key (until the very last bars), using different orchestrations to vary the texture and to create a gradual crescendo, and Ravel was insistent that the work should be played at a steady and unvarying tempo (as his own recording demonstrates). At the first performance of her ballet production in 1928, Ida Rubinstein danced the role of a flamenco dancer who is trying out steps on a table in a bar, surrounded by men whose admiration turns to lustful obsession. Ravel did not entirely approve; his own conception was an outdoor scene in front of a factory whose machinery provides the inflexible rhythm; the factory workers would emerge to dance together, while a story of a bullfighter killed by a jealous rival was played out. Watch Boléro (1928) performed by famed ballerina Maya Plisetskaya as choreographed by Maurice Béjart . . . it's our DANSES PYTHEUSES for the week.

. . . and see another Bolero with ballerina Maria Alexandrova, with (so we're told) choreography by Bronislava Nijinska - who choreographed the work for Ida Rubenstein.

Kurt Weill composed his ballet chanté (sung ballet) The Seven Deadly Sins (1933) during a time of tremendous political upheaval and turmoil in Europe. Weill's most enduring works of this period were his collaborations with leftist writer Bertolt Brecht, especially "The Threepenny Opera." "The Seven Deadly Sins" marks the end of Weill's European career, being his last collaboration with Brecht and the last enduring work that he composed in his European theater style. This style is characterized by its directness, which is a product of Weill's use of elements from popular music – in the case of this work, dance music and the barbershop quartet – as well as his use of established musical forms, like the church chorale. The ballet was commissioned by Edward James, a wealthy Englishman whose Paris ballet troupe, Les Ballets 1933, counted the choreographer and dancer George Balanchine among its founders. It was decided that the ballet would be sung, with the main character, Anna, "split" into singing and dancing halves. This way, Weill's estranged wife, the singer Lotte Lenya, could star alongside James' also estranged dancer wife, Tilly Losch (John Mangum/Los Angeles Philharmonic). Watch a concert performance of The Seven Deadly Sins with soprano Akiko Nakajima and the Miyazaki International Music Festival Orchestra with Charles Dutoit conducting . . . the second of this week's FEATURED NEW MUSIC VIDEOS.

Amy Scurria knew at a very young age that music would hold a prominent position in her life. She began composing as early as eight years old pursuing study and in piano and composition. After winning various piano and composition contests, she went on to study composition at the Westminster Choir College Summer Program in Princeton, NJ, Shepherd School of Music at Rice University, Aspen Music Festival, Peabody Conservatory, La Schola Cantorum in Paris, France, and Duke University. Notable teachers have included Chen Yi, Robert Sirota, Narcis Bonet, Anthony Kelley, and Stephen Jaffe. She has been commissioned and performed by the Philadelphia Orchestra, the Minnesota Orchestra, LongLeaf Opera, Sigma Alpha Iota and Fort Wayne Philharmonic, the Vermont Youth Orchestra, Youth Pro Musica, the Shepherd College Concert Choir, and many others. She has had performances throughout the U.S., England, Brazil, Spain, Portugal, France, and Japan. Scurria's music is currently moving towards the creation of opera, however, her music (non-vocal included) has always included a background narrative or story. She believes that "music is a powerful and unusual language that, when spoken well, can reach the deepest part of the human spirit." Listen to a performance of Amy Scurria's Adaptations (2007) . . . this week's FROM THE PYTHEAS ARCHIVES.

2011-05-31T08:16:00.001-07:00

Latvian composer Pēteris Vasks writes about his composition Plainscapes (2002): "The beauty of the Latvian landscape inspired many of my works, for it has given me moments of exceptional happiness. The plains are a dominant feature of the Latvian countryside, a place where one can see the horizon and look at the stars in the sky. Plainscapes is made up of three vocalises separated by little interludes. The dynamic of this diatonic, meditative composition is piano (quiet) almost throughout. At the end of the third vocalise the mood changes, however. A growing crescendo leads to the climax – to the Vision of Nature Awakening." Watch a performance of Vasks' Plainscapes by Sol Gabetta (cello), Guy Braunstein (violin), and Camerata Vocale Freiburg, conducted by Winfried Toll . . . one of this week's FEATURED NEW MUSIC VIDEOS.

Augusta Read Thomas’ deeply personal music is guided by her particular sense of musical form, rhythm, timbre, and harmony. But given this individuality, her music is affected by history - in Thomas' words, "Old music deserves new music and new music needs old music." For Thomas, this means cherishing her place within the musical tradition and giving credit to those who have forged the musical paths she follows and from which she innovates. She was the Mead Composer-in-Residence with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra from May 1997 through June 2006, a residency that encompassed nine world premieres, culminating in the premiere of her concerto for violin, flute and orchestra entitled Astral Canticle - one of two finalists for the 2007 Pulitzer Prize in Music. Watch Augusta Read Thomas talk about her life and her music in an interview for Boston Symphony Orchestra . . . it's our COMPOSER PORTRAIT for the week.

François Bayle's Jeita (1970) originally appeared on an LP in the mythical Silver Series on the Philips label in the early 1970s. This piece was assembled out of sound material partly recorded in front of a live audience in an actual cave. According to Bayle, "Straight away, I realized I had duplicated this large machine which turns time into form flowers by means of billions of busy and regular [water] drops — an immense clock — and I had created a man-size clock for the ear." Heavy natural reverb, echoes, water droplets, site workers, instruments, etc. are all transformed into abstract hazes of the finest order, hence the quote, "This is not a cave!" (- our thanks to the folks at ArcaneCandy.com). Listen to François Bayle's Jeita . . . our FEATURED SOUND ART.

John Aylward's music has been praised for its youthful energy and precision. In line with his mentors David Rakowski, and George Tsontakis, Aylward is quickly paving a new path of sophisticated and emotional American modernism. His latest works entertain experimental harmonic and textural concepts while not sacrificing rigorous technique or rhythmic vitality. Aylward's music has been performed within the U.S and abroad by numerous ensembles including the New York New Music Ensemble, The Lydian String Quartet, Third Angle, The Bard Symphony Orchestra, Juventas, and The Aspen Contemporary Ensemble. His work has also been championed by soloists Jo Ellen Miller, Curt Macomber, Chris Finkel, Steven Gosling, Christopher Oldfather, Sam Solomon, Elizabeth Keusch, Karina Sabac and Daria Binkowski. In 2010, Aylward was selected as a Composers Apprentice at the National Centre for the arts in Ottowa, Canada. Listen to a performance of John Aylward's Reciprocal Accord (2009) . . . this week's FROM THE PYTHEAS ARCHIVES.

2011-05-23T13:14:00.000-07:00

Katherine Hoover, born in West Virginia and living in New York City, is a leading composer and flutist who attended the Eastman and Manhattan Schools of Music. On several occasions she has been drawn to Native American subjects through works in media other than music. In the case of Kokopeli (1990), her most often performed and recorded work for flute, the composition was suggested by the Hopi Nation stories of Kokopeli, who is one of the mahu, or hero spirits, and who is often depicted as a hunchbacked flute player. Kokopeli led the migrations of the Hopi through the canyon lands of the Southwest, playing his flute so the people could follow him by sound, a sound that can sometimes be heard whistling through the canyons and reflecting off cliffs. Hoover sought in this work to depict this wandering, during which the Hopi learned of their special relationship with the land. The music has a kind of solemn joy, and suggests a Native American ritual (Joseph Stevenson, All Music Guide). Watch a performance of Katherine Hoover's Kokopeli by flutist Johanna Borenstein . . . one of this week's FEATURED NEW MUSIC VIDEOS.

Roman Polanski's Chinatown (1974), the stark tale of political and moral corruption in Los Angeles, is one of the undisputed classics of a bright decade in American filmmaking. In Chinatown Polanski and screenwriter Robert Towne took the disillusioned, shadow-dappled cinematic language of '40s film noir and translated it into contemporary terms. Every neo-noir film released since then has borrowed from Chinatown, which looks as fresh today as it did in 1974. Yet a preview audience hated it, and studio executives were sure that it would bomb at the box office - until composer Jerry Goldsmith, working against the clock, wrote a brand-new score that helped turn a costly disaster into an unforgettable hit. It isn't unusual for movies to be rescored under pressure, but Goldsmith's music for Chinatown is so well suited to the film that it's hard to imagine that he knocked it out at the very last minute. The original score, written by Phillip Lambro, was heard on the soundtrack of the version of the film that was shown seven weeks prior to the film's release date at a preview in San Luis Obispo, a small town north of Los Angeles. "By the time the lights came up, half the audience had walked out, scratching their heads," Robert Evans (the film's producer) wrote in his 1994 autobiography The Kid Stays in the Picture. Concluding that Mr. Lambro's original score was responsible for the film's poor reception, Mr. Evans called in Goldsmith, and 10 days later Chinatown had a new score. Mr. Towne, who was present at the first recording session for Goldsmith's score, later told a journalist that "you could see the movie come to life. It was like you couldn't see the movie with the other score, and now you could, and I thought, 'Omigod, we may have a chance.'" So it did: Chinatown is now universally acknowledged as one of the key American films of the '70s. Yet most of the critics ignored the score, and though Jerry Goldsmith received an Oscar nomination for Chinatown, he lost out to Nino Rota for The Godfather, Part II. Nowadays, of course, film connoisseurs don't need to be told twice that the music of Chinatown is central to its greatness - but how many people are aware that Goldsmith's score is one of the finest compositions of the postwar era, regardless of genre? (Terry Teachout, WSJ Online) Watch an excerpt from Roman Polanski's Chinatown . . . it's our PYTHEAS SIGHTING for the week.

Jeremy Grimshaw writes of our Second New Music Video for the week: "Of Charles Ives' more than 200 songs, General William Booth Enters Into Heaven (1914/33) is one of the best known, and certainly one of the most musically ambitious. The stirring song is a setting of the poem by the same name, penned by Vachel Lindsay in 1912. The poem, which became very popular and brought considerable notoriety to its author, is an ode to William Booth, founder of the Salvation Army. In it, Lindsay imagines Booth marching into the hereafter at the head of a large army consisting of lepers, drunks, and other downtrodden folks, of which 'each slum had sent its half-a-score the round world over.' These 'vermin-eaten saints with mouldy breath' march as a procession in drills before the pearly gates, and, as they enter in, Jesus appears, his outstretched hand healing them of their ills. Ives' brash musical style is a perfect match for Lindsay's uncompromising imagery (which William Butler Yeats praised for being 'stripped bare of ornament'). Ives characteristically includes in his broad palette of musical materials liberal quotations from familiar musical sources. The most prominent of these is a repeated refrain, interpolated throughout the song, which is taken from the Salvation Army hymn tune known as 'Fountain.' The refrain, which often finds itself juxtaposed with Lindsay's most unsavory images, poses the question 'Are you washed in the blood of the Lamb.' These parenthetical asides poignantly highlight a familiar Christian metaphor by placing side-by-side the unsightly image of Jesus' suffering with that of Booth's weary followers. Ives' further seems to revert the message outward to the listener by rendering the refrain with a sudden change of tonal orientation. This imperative is driven home when, at the end of the piece, as Booth's troops are healed and welcomed into heaven and the piano's drum beats fade into silence, the refrain appears once again as a lingering question." Watch a performance of Ives' General William Booth Enters Into Heaven by The Lee University Chorale, with Dr. William Green, conductor . . . our second FEATURED NEW MUSIC VIDEO.

"I never saw Duke Snider play — by the time I became aware of the Dodgers, Snider had been lost to the newly created Mets and then traded to the hated Giants. But the old-timers still talked about him and that kept the memory of his greatness alive. The Duke was part of the collective memories of the fans — our shared history, our myth, our lore. Baseball fans love this kind of stuff — the constant measuring of the present against the past, the counting of things, the microscopic scrutiny of arcane statistics. The baseball historian Bill James revolutionized the way players and games get evaluated with his innovations in how these statistics get sliced up and weighted, inventing new terms like 'sabermetrics' and 'win shares.' Baseball fans not only love this stuff; they think that knowing these things makes the game more fun to watch. Connections are drawn between the game in front of you today and all the games ever played before, creating an intense dialog between each player on the field and all past players on all past fields. Somehow the legendary magnificence of baseball's past doesn't get in the way of enjoying what is happening in baseball’s present. Can we say the same thing about classical music? Not always. Our love of the past can enhance what we hear, but I often feel that the appreciation of classical music’s glorious past can get in the way of truly hearing the music being made right now . . ." Read more from A Pitch for New Music, written for The New York Times by composer David Lang . . . this week's FEATURED THOUGHT & IDEA.

2011-05-16T04:55:00.000-07:00

Composer David Felder has long been recognized as a leader in his generation of American composers. His works have been featured at many of the leading international new music festivals, and earn continuing recognition through performance and commissioning programs. Felder’s work has been broadly characterized by its highly energetic profile, through its frequent employment of technological extension and elaboration of musical materials (including his Crossfire video series), and its lyrical qualities. Felder has received numerous grants and commissions including many awards from the National Endowment for the Arts, two New York State Council commissions, a New York Foundation for the Arts Fellowship, Guggenheim, two Koussevitzky commissions, two Fromm Foundation Fellowships, two awards from the Rockefeller Foundation, Meet the Composer "New Residencies" (1993-1996), and many more. In May 2010, he received the Music Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, a career recognition award. Watch a performance of David Felder's Inner Sky (1994) with flute soloist Mario Caroli . . . one of this week's FEATURED NEW MUSIC VIDEOS.

Judd Greenstein has attracted attention through his close collaboration with many of the best young solo musicians in New York and beyond, including violist Nadia Sirota, soprano Anne-Carolyn Bird, percussionist Samuel Solomon, violinist Colin Jacobsen, pianists Michael Mizrahi and Blair McMillan, and flutist Alex Sopp. He has also received performances by and commissions from a wide array of ensembles around the country, including Present Music, the Seattle Chamber Players, as well as many prominent ensembles in New York, including Carnegie Hall, the Kaufman Center, Newspeak, the Da Capo Chamber Players, the New Millennium Ensemble. Central to his output is his work for NOW Ensemble, the composer/performer collective that has quickly established itself as one of the most prominent and promising sounds in 21st century chamber music. Butterfly Dream (2010) is a dance collaboration between Greenstein and choreographer Xiao-xiong Zhang. Based on a story by Chinese philosopher Zhuangzi, the story deals with a man who dreams he is a butterfly and then upon waking questions the nature of existence; it explores the ideas of self-invention and re-creation. Watch an excerpt from Butterfly Dream performed by Nimbus Dance Works . . . it's our DANSES PYTHEUSES for the week.

I recently attended a performance of Andrew List's new work From The Temple of Dendera: 12 Etudes for Piano, featuring the work's dedicatee, pianist George Lopez. It was a wonderful experience - gorgeous music presented by a consummate artist in the beautiful Studzinski Recital Hall on the campus of Bowdoin College in Brunswick, Maine. The work is a fascinating and evocative exploration of Egyptian mythology through the sumptuous sound world of Andrew List. Read what the composer has to say about his new piano work . . . it's this week's PYTHEAS THOUGHT & IDEA.

Creative expression has always been a matter of course for Estonian composer Mirjam Tally. She has tried almost every medium, from writing to painting – even radio. But the one she eventually plumped for was also the one she finds the most difficult: composing music. Explore Tally's sound world through her gorgeous choral work Call Love to Mind (2009) . . . this week's FROM THE PYTHEAS ARCHIVES.

... and find out more about Mirjam Tally, her life and her music, at her Pytheas Composer Page.

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

2011-05-09T08:06:00.001-07:00

John Luther Adams is a composer whose music embodies the landscapes of Alaska, his home since 1978. Adams attended Cal Arts as an undergraduate in the early 1970s, and after graduating began work in environmental protection. This work first brought him to Alaska in 1975. His deep love for the location led to his permanent migration there in 1978 and it continues to be the driving force in his music to this day. Adams' compositions span many genres and media. His frequent use of static textures and subtle changes show his obvious affinities with minimalism, and his tendencies toward extended, meditative, and intuitive structures belie his true love of the music of Morton Feldman. Adams has written: "My music has always been profoundly influenced by the natural world and a strong sense of place. Through sustained listening to the subtle resonances of the northern soundscape, I hope to explore the territory of 'sonic geography', that region between place and culture . . . between environment and imagination". Watch a performance of John Luther Adams' The Farthest Place (2001) performed by Lydia Kabalen (violin), Brian Archinal and Andy Bliss (vibraphone), Satoru Tagawa (bass), and Clint Davis (piano) . . . one of this week's FEATURED NEW MUSIC VIDEOS.

The celebrated French composer Pierre Henry was among the pivotal forces behind the development of musique concrete, becoming the first formally educated musician to devote his energies to the electronic medium. Born in Paris, he began training at the Paris Conservatoire at the age of ten, studying piano and percussion, while also attending the classes of Olivier Messiaen. Still, Henry had little regard for traditional musical instruments, preferring instead to experiment privately with non-musical sound sources; over time, he grew fascinated with the notion of incorporating noise into the compositional process. In 1949, Henry joined the staff of the RTF electronic studio, founded by Pierre Schaeffer five years earlier; he soon immersed himself completely in electronic music, heading the Groupe de Research de Musique Concrete throughout the greater part of the 1950s. In 1958, Henry left the RTF, and in 1960 he teamed with Jean Baronnet to found the Apsone-Cabasse Studio, the first private electronic music workshop in France; concurrent was his realization that for musique concrete to evolve, it would need to begin incorporating the electronic aesthetics pioneered in other areas of the world. Throughout the decade to follow his music adopted increasingly spiritual and meditative qualities. In 1969, he premiered Ceremony, which included music by the pop band Spooky Tooth. By the 1970s, his primary interest was large-scale works, complete with elaborate lighting effects. Henry has continued to work regularly on into the 21st century in a vast range of musical contexts -- even collaborating with the American alternative rock trio Violent Femmes. Watch and listen to composer Pierre Henry talk about his life and music in Pierre Henry - The Art of Sounds . . . it's our COMPOSER PORTRAIT.

At the request of Yo-Yo Ma, who had played the 1992 premiere of American composer Peter Lieberson's King Gesar, Lieberson conceived a concerto for amplifihttp://www.pytheasmusic.org/honegger.htmled cello and orchestra, entitled The Six Realms, that outlines a key Buddhist teaching: that differing states of mind and emotions color our view of the world and shape human experience. This philosophy is reflected in the piece's formal structure; each of the concerto's six continuous sections represents a different state of being. The work's fifth movement The Human Realm deals with Passion: the desire for something better, and a lessening of self-absorption, allowing for the possibility of our becoming dignified humans who long for liberation from these six realms of existence. It is only from this realm that we are able to move on to achieve Enlightenment: the right way to view, and interact with, the world. Put simply, Buddhists believe that humans cycle back and forth, endlessly, through these six states, experiencing the concomitant afflictions that attach themselves to each level. In Lieberson's Six Realms, the cello soloist acts as emotional protagonist and the orchestra's "guide" — a cousin to the Romantic concerto's "hero" — leading all of us from realm to realm until we finally are able to liberate ourselves from this misery-inducing cycle. Although not programmatic, the piece's subtle use of musical imagery allows the listener without any previous knowledge of Buddhist tenets to grasp its depiction of universal human experiences. Listen to a performance The Human Realm from Peter Lieberson's The Six Realms (2000) with cellist Michaela Fukacova and the Odense Symphony Orchestra, Justin Brown conductiong . . . one of this week's PYTHEAS EARFULS.

Arthur Honegger's Concertino for Piano and Orchestra (1924) is in reality a ten-minute neo-classical "piano-concerto-in-two-movements", sporting severe "wrong note" harmonies and complex counterpoint within what is actually a rigid framework. The two movements further subdivide into four, and the effect is a full-scale, but tiny, piano concerto. Overall, the work is a sort of miniature jewel of a concerto which displays Honegger's gift in full maturity and shows both the extent to which he departed from the Impressionism of some of his countrymen, and the effectiveness with which he managed the neo-classical form. As one of his mature works, the piece is somewhat complex and demanding, especially in its rhythmic shifts and contrasts. As just plain music, the work is fun and satisfying (- from the All Music Guide). Watch an smart and inventively filmed performance of Honegger's Concertino for Piano and Orchestra with pianist Ilana Vered and the Swiss Radio Symphony Orchestra, Matthias Bamert conducting . . . this week's FROM THE PYTHEAS ARCHIVES.

2011-05-04T19:14:00.000-07:00

"Trained as a professional flautist and leading a busy career as conductor and flautist, Katherine Hoover is also a distinguished composer with a sizeable body of works to her credit. Though she has composed much music for flute, she has also written substantial works for orchestra and chamber ensembles. I for one was particularly impressed by Katherine Hoover the composer whose music was new to me and who is a most distinguished composer with a remarkable orchestral flair, who has obviously things to say and who knows how to say them in the best possible way" (Hubert Culot/MusicWeb International). Watch a performance of Katherine Hoover's Thin Ice (2009) with pianist Mirian Conti . . . one of this week's FEATURED NEW MUSIC VIDEOS.

John Luther Adams is a composer whose music embodies the landscapes of Alaska, his home since 1978. Like many composers of his generation, Adams did not grow up immersed in scored music. He began playing music as a teenager, as a drummer in rock bands. Through his experience in rock bands, friends introduced him to the music of Frank Zappa. Through the liner notes of a Zappa album, he discovered Edgard Varèse. Similarly, Varèse's liner notes brought him to John Cage. But it was not until Adams discovered Morton Feldman that he found his calling. After graduating from Cal Arts, Adams began work in environmental protection. This work first brought him to Alaska in 1975. His deep love for the location led to his permanent migration there in 1978. It continues to be the driving force in his music to this day. Adams' musical work spans many genres and media. He has composed for television, film, children's theater, voice, acoustic instruments, orchestra, and electronics. Adams himself says: "My music has always been profoundly influenced by the natural world and a strong sense of place. Through sustained listening to the subtle resonances of the northern soundscape, I hope to explore the territory of 'sonic geography' - that region between place and culture . . . between environment and imagination". Watch a performance of John Luther Adams' Sauyatugvik - The Time of Drumming (1996) with the Mark Pekarsky Percussion Ensemble . . . it's this week's FEATURED NEW MUSIC FOR PERCUSSION.

William Zagorski (Fanfare Magazine) writes: "Karen Amrhein's collection of works on MMC Records showcases a young and still evolving composer with a strong musical profile and an abiding respect for, and mastery of, techniques of the past. She is a striking miniaturist and a superb contrapuntalist, but one who exploits that often dour and forbidding device in the most ingratiating of ways. Her aphoristic music is enlivened by an attractive sense of whimsy and delight at being alive, and listening to it in chronological sequence, I have the sense of a composer who is not merely developing at a fast pace, but doing so explosively." The Baltimore based Amrhein has twice been nominated for the Pulitzer Prize, and she has written for orchestra, soloists with orchestra, chorus, chamber ensembles, voice and instrumental soloists. Listen to the final movement from Amrhein's Sonata for Trumpet and Piano (1996) . . . one of this week's PYTHEAS EARFULS.

Lou Harrison for fifty years was in the vanguard of American composers. An innovator of musical composition and performance that transcends cultural boundaries, Harrison's highly acclaimed work juxtaposes and synthesizes musical dialects from virtually every corner of the world. Growing up in the culturally diverse San Francisco Bay Area, Harrison was influenced by Cantonese Opera, Gregorian chants and the music of California's Spanish and Mexican cultures. He also developed an interest in Indonesian Gamelan music through early recordings. His early compositions included a large body of percussion music, combining Western, Asian, African and Latin American rhythmic influences with homemade "junk" instruments. During this period, Harrison worked closely with John Cage and began studies in Los Angeles with Arnold Schoenberg. A move to New York in the mid-1940's brought Harrison to the Herald Tribune as music critic. Here he helped to bring wider attention to the work of Charles Ives, and is considered largely responsible for Ives' receiving the Pulitzer Prize. The young composer and critic also embarked on a study of early European music during this period. In the late forties, Harrison taught at the legendary Black Mountain College. By the early fifties, he moved back to California, where he lived till his death in 2003. Over the decades he maintained an interest in dance, theater and the craft of instrument building and was an accomplished puppeteer who wrote written musical for puppet theater. Harrison traveled extensively, adding to the global resonance his artistry, performing and studying with the musical masters of varied cultures, and presenting his work to enthusiastic audiences everywhere. Watch a performance of the Round from Harrison's Serenade for Guitar (1978) with guitarist Joshua Bornfield . . . this week's FROM THE PYTHEAS ARCHIVES.

2011-04-26T05:58:00.001-07:00

Ralph Vaughan Williams Symphony No. 5 (1943) - 2nd mvt

Julia Wolfe - Composer Portrait

Yarmouth Contemporary Music Days 2011 (Yarmouth, ME, USA)

Electronic Music: Where Technology Becomes Art? (Peter Gutmann, Classical Notes)

2011-04-20T05:13:00.001-07:00

Celebrated American composer Melinda Wagner has amassed a wide-ranging catalog of chamber and orchestral music, but she is perhaps best known for works featuring soloists with orchestra, including her Trombone Concerto commissioned by the New York Philharmonic for principal trombonist Joseph Alessi, Extremity of Sky commissioned by the Chicago Symphony for pianist Emmanuel Ax, and the Concerto for Flute, Strings and Percussion, commissioned for Paul Dunkel and the Westchester Philharmonic. The Concerto for Flute, Strings and Percussion was also the winner of the 1999 Pulitzer Prize for Music. Melinda Wagner's Four Songs (2004) are inspired by the poetry of Robert Desnos, Denise Levertov and Emily Dickinson. Watch soprano Haleh Abghari and the Monadnock Music ensemble perform the fourth song in Wagner's in set, Safe in Their Alabaster Chambers . . . one of this week's FEATURED NEW MUSIC VIDEOS.

Light is Calling (2004) is a short film by film maker Bill Morrison, "constructed" on the music of Michael Gordon. Gordon is one of the founding members of the Bang on a Can ensemble, who, for over a decade, have concerned themselves with injecting the vitality and relevance of popular forms into the world of modern art music. And if you have heard of Bill Morrison it is probably in relation to his feature film Decasia: The State of Decay (2002), and his process of taking pre-existing footage from films which have been largely lost to the natural process of nitrate deterioration, and reconstituting them as artifacts for a new artistic product. Light is Calling continues that concept, using images from the 1926 film The Bells set to the music of Michael Gordon. Here's how IMDb describes it: "A scene from The Bells (1926) is optically reprinted and edited to Michael Gordon's seven minute composition. It is a meditation on the fleeting nature of life and love, as seen through the roiling emulsion of an film". Watch Light is Calling (2004) . . . it's our PYTHEAS SIGHTING.

Gyorgy Ligeti began his development as a composer using serial techniques. By 1961, Ligeti began using textural (sound, sonority or color) techniques, often resulting in music which is completely divisi, i.e. one part for each performer. His most famous work in this style is Atmospheres, an orchestral composition written on 87 staves. Ligeti's Lux Aeterna (1966) is a study in vocal clusters and choral color - an expansion of the techniques he first used in a much earlier work Apparitions. In Lux Aeterna the text is divided into four sections which correspond to the four thoughts comprising the traditional Latin Requiem text: (1) Light Eternal shine on them, Lord; (2) Together with your Saints in Eternity; (3) Grant them rest eternal, for you are holy, Lord; and (4) Let light perpetual shine on them. The work is scored for a 16-part vocal ensemble. Both Lux Aeterna and Atmospheres were used in the soundtrack of Stanley Kubrick’s epochal film 2001: A Space Odyssey (Robert L. Edwards). Listen to a performance of Ligeti's Lux Aeterna . . . one of this week's PYTHEAS EARFULS.

Boston based composer Andrew List is a graduate of New England Conservatory of Music, and he received his doctorate in music composition from Boston University. He has enjoyed numerous commissions and performances from ensembles and solists in the United States and Europe, including The Boston Classical Orchestra, Zodiac Trio, Alea III, The Esterhazy Quartet, Interensemble (Padova Italy), The Kalistos Chamber Orchestra, North-South Consonance, The Metamorphosen Chamber Orchestra, Duo Diorama, Winston Choi (pianist), Emmanuel Feldman (cellist) and soprano Lisa Saffer. List was the first prize winner of the Renegade Ensemble’s composition competition and a finalist in the Alea III International Composition Competition and the 2008 Massachusetts Cultural Council Artist Fellowship. He has had residencies at the MacDowell Colony, Yaddo, The Atlantic Center for the Arts, The Aspen Music Festival, La Cite Internationale des Arts in Paris and The Visby Centre for Composers in Sweden. In 2001 he was awarded a distinguished artist-in-residence grant, sponsored by Amsterdams Fonds voor de Kunst, and the city of Amsterdam. During his eight-month residency in Amsterdam he presented four concerts of his music and that of other American composers. He was also invited to present a concert at the American Embassy in The Hague, and gave lectures and workshops at major music conservatories in the area. He is the first American and the first composer to be awarded this prestigious residency. Watch a performance of Andrew List's Mystical Journey (2000) by pianists Manon Hutton-DeWys and Evi Jundt . . . this week's FROM THE PYTHEAS ARCHIVES.

2011-04-13T07:19:00.003-07:00

The Portland (Maine) area is about to be treated to an Innovation Celebration April 15-17, 2011 featuring the New Music Weekend at the University of Southern Maine School of Music combined with the Portland Conservatory of Music’s Back Cove Contemporary Music Festival. Experience the mixed musical stylings of New York and Maine in a weekend of new music at the USM School of Music, starting with Unaccustomed Earth, a performance from the New York-based group Two Sides Sounding in collaboration with the composers collective South Oxford Six. Then keep enjoying new music as South Oxford Six offers a master class on composition on Saturday, April 16 and round out the weekend with a free performance of original works from the USM Composers Ensemble. All this happens April 15-17 at USM School of Music, Corthell Concert Hall, on USM’s Gorham campus. And when the concerts end at USM, they’re just beginning at the Back Cove Contemporary Music Festival sponsored by the Portland Conservatory of Music. A series of don’t-miss performances are sprinkled throughout Saturday and Sunday April 16-17. The Festival is back for its third year of concerts. And don't forget that the Pytheas Center's own Yarmouth Contemporary Music Days 2011 is coming up on April 29th & 30th in Yarmouth (of course!). . . . this week's FEATURED NEW MUSIC PERFORMANCES. Find more detail at Pytheas Performances.

Daniel Sonenberg has written extensively for chamber and orchestral ensembles, and has recently gained notice for his art songs and theater compositions. His Baseball Songs, described by James Oestreich as "touching" in the New York Times, won the Robert Starer Competition Prize of the City University of New York. His music has been presented by the Da Capo Chamber Players, Friends and Enemies of New Music, the Momenta String Quartet, the New York Singing Teachers Association, the American Composers Alliance, Hudson Valley Philharmonic, The Woodstock Chamber Orchestra and others. Portions of his opera, The Summer King, have been presented by American Opera Projects, the Manhattan School of Music, and as part of New York City Opera’s "Vox and Friends" festival at Symphony Space. Sonenberg is a founding member of the New York-based composers collective South Oxford Six, who have presented concerts of new music at Symphony Space and the Brooklyn Conservatory of Music. He has received grants and fellowships from Meet The Composer, The Corporation of Yaddo, the MacDowell Colony, and the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts. He has also gained national and international recognition for his scholarly work on singer-songwriter Joni Mitchell. Watch a performance of Sonenberg's Whistlesparks (2006), played by flutist Lisa Lutton and harpist Arielle . . . one of this week's FEATURED NEW MUSIC VIDEOS.

Aleksandra Vrebalov, who arrived in the United States from her native Serbia in the 1990s, is technically no longer an "emerging composer" or a "recent émigré." Her music has been commissioned by Carnegie Hall, has appeared on several recordings as well as in a prominent print publication, and her first opera, Mileva, will be staged this fall. But Vrebalov's initial success - performance by and subsequent commissions from the Kronos Quartet beginning when she was still in her 20s and had only just relocated to this side of the Atlantic - remains an encouraging model for all aspiring composers. According to Vrebalov, the lesson is "to be willing to take chances". Watch and listen to composer Aleksandra Vrebalov in an interview with NewMusicBox's Frank J. Oteri . . . it's our COMPOSER PORTRAIT.

An internationally acclaimed composer, pianist and thereminist, Dalit Warshaw's works have been performed by over twenty-six orchestral ensembles, including the New York and Israel Philharmonic Orchestras, the Boston Symphony, the Cleveland Orchestra, the Houston Symphony, the Y Chamber Orchestra, the Colorado Symphony, the Albany Symphony and the Grand Rapids Symphony. Awards and grants include five ASCAP Foundation Grants to Young Composers, a Fulbright Scholarship to Israel (2001-2002), a Fromm Music Foundation Grant from Harvard University, and a Charles Ives Scholarship from the American Academy of Arts and Letters. In 1984, she became the youngest person ever to win the BMI Award for Student Composers, with her orchestral piece Fun Suite, written at the age of eight. As a pianist, Warshaw has performed widely as soloist, chamber player and improviser, in such diverse concert spaces as Avery Fisher Hall, Miller Theater, the Juilliard Theater, Merkin Hall, Steinway Hall, Tonic, and the Stone. Having studied theremin with the renowned Clara Rockmore from an early age, she has appeared as thereminist with such ensembles as the New York Philharmonic, the Boston Symphony, the American Composers Orchestra and the Royal Stockholm Philharmonic, and has also performed in spaces such as Carnegie Hall, Disney Hall and Alice Tully Hall. A full-time faculty member of the composition/theory department at the Boston Conservatory since September 2004, Warshaw obtained her doctorate in music composition from the Juilliard School in May 2003. Warshaw has held residencies at the Yaddo and MacDowell Artist Colonies, as well as at the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts. Listen to a performance of her Agitata (or "The Fiery One!") (1994) . . . one of this week's PYTHEAS EARFULS.

2011-04-11T20:39:00.000-07:00

A world view was incorporated into the compositions of Somerville, Massachusetts-born Alan Hovhaness. While much of his music reflects his Armenian heritage, Hovhaness also utilized elements of Indian ragas, Japanese gugaku music and natural sounds. His mystical/contemplative gift can be heard in his lament for solo viola Chahagir (1945), which some say was the Armenian-American composer's homage to the Holocaust. Hear a performance of Hovhaness' Chahagir by violist Julia Rebekka Adler . . . one of this week's FEATURED NEW MUSIC VIDEOS.

Hubert Culot (MusicWeb International) writes about the Chandos Records release Luigi Dallapiccola: Orchestral Works, Vol. 2, "Dallapiccola's music may not be easy but is ultimately richly rewarding on repeated hearings, especially when helped by committed and carefully prepared readings such as these. The recording and the production of this release are up to Chandos’s best standards. This is one of the finest discs to have come my way recently; and, before ending up in my list of Recordings of the Year, it will be my Record of the Month". Read the full review and hear excerpts from this recording . . . it's this week's FEATURED RECORDINGS.

Alban Berg's Four Pieces for Clarinet and Piano, op. 5 (1913) are the composer's only true miniatures. Berg's former teacher, Arnold Schoenberg, roundly criticized Berg (and possibly these particular works), attempting to discourage Berg from composing songs and small-scale works, and encouraging him toward extended instrumental composition. Critics have noted the irony in Schoenberg's attack on Berg in light of the fact that Berg's Four Pieces were strongly influenced by Schoenberg's own set of miniatures, the Six Little Piano Pieces, Op. 19 (1911). Berg's fellow Schoenberg pupil, Anton Webern, also wrote a number of miniatures, and indeed his music became best-known for its concise expressivity, its cool character, angular melodies, and pointillistic texture. In contrast, Berg's miniatures — and indeed, his music in general — are decidedly more Romantic in gesture, texture, and timbre. The Four Pieces are very brief and complex; Berg abandons motivic connections in favor of deep structural relationships beneath a perpetually moving surface. As with most of Berg's early works, there is a preponderance of quartal and whole-tone harmonies; like the String Quartet, Op. 3 (1910), the Four Pieces undergo constant changes in tempi, dynamics, and articulation according to Berg's intricate instructions (which sometimes change from beat to beat). The first and last of the Four Pieces are the longest, flanking a slow second piece and a scherzo (AllMusicGuide). Hear a performance of Berg's Four Pieces for Clarinet and Piano . . . one of this week's PYTHEAS EARFULS.

2011-04-03T20:20:00.000-07:00

Just listening to Kaija Saariaho's Fall (1991). She's one of Finland's leading composers. Very haunting and hypnotic. And I just can't get enough of Dmitri Tymoczko's Eggman Variations (2005). He teaches at Princeton University and has written on The Geometry of Musical Chords.

2011-04-01T20:48:00.000-07:00

Today is the first day of the 10x5 Listening Group! What new music have YOU listened to today? I started with an all time favorite - Javier Alvarez's Metro Chabacano (1991). Then it was off to something completely different - Ed Wright's Y Twr (2009). Off we go . . . Vinny Fuerst

2011-03-29T19:58:00.001-07:00

Composer Osvaldo Golijov writes, "I wrote Tenebrae (2002) as a consequence of witnessing two contrasting realities in a short period of time in September 2000. I was in Israel at the start of the new wave of violence that is still continuing today, and a week later I took my son to the new planetarium in New York, where we could see the Earth as a beautiful blue dot in space. I wanted to write a piece that could be listened to from different perspectives. That is, if one chooses to listen to it 'from afar', the music would probably offer a 'beautiful' surface but, from a metaphorically closer distance, one could hear that, beneath that surface, the music is full of pain. I lifted some of the haunting melismas from Couperin's Troisieme Leçon de Tenebrae, using them as sources for loops, and wrote new interludes between them, always within a pulsating, vibrating, aerial texture. The compositional challenge was to write music that would sound as an orbiting spaceship that never touches ground. After finishing the composition, I realized that Tenebrae could be heard as the slow, quiet reading of an illuminated medieval manuscript in which the appearances of the voice singing the letters of the Hebrew Alphabet (from Yod to Nun, as in Couperin) signal the beginning of new chapters, leading to the ending section, built around a single, repeated word: Jerusalem." Watch a performance of Osvaldo Golijov's Tenebrae by the Odeon Quartet . . . one of this week's FEATURED NEW MUSIC VIDEOS.

In writing about his dance film Blue Yellow (1995), director Adam Roberts writes, "Sylvie Guillem, the celebrated ballerina, asked Jonathan Burrows and I to make a dance film. The film would be included in a prime time experiment to be called Evidentia, funded by BBC 2 and France 2. The film is called blue yellow after the Mattisse’s painting Intérieur jaune et bleu, 1946. This colour scheme inspired my design and much of the pictorial composition. Inevitably, being neither a dancer nor a choreographer, I felt rather removed from the choreographic process, and so decided that I should reflect this is the form of the film. I also wanted to consolidate ideas I had first tried out on a film called Very, where I had explored and made overt the very fragmentary nature of my untutored, subjective experience of dance. The aim would be to make it a task for a viewer of the film to imagine the space and the continuity of movement – so that the dance, if it exists at all, exists and is held in the mind of the viewer. The filming took two days, and the editing about a week. Kevin Volans suggested using a section of one of his string quartets which we cut up an interspersed through the film. At first we laid out the sections at regular intervals, but, as with all editing, human judgment finds some coincidences more pleasing than others. Hugh Strain at De Lane Lea sound studios achieved a perfect sound mix, foregrounding the music, as if it were, “this side” of the door. In broad terms, the film tries, by means of patterning and rhythm, to maintain interest in what is glimpsed through a door, and sometimes allows a pause long enough but unobtrusive enough to satisfy a kind of longing, even if such stolen moments must only ever be brief. Watch Blue Yellow with dancer Sylvie Guillem and music by Kevin Volans . . . it's this week's DANSES PYTHEUSES.

"Elliott Schwartz's music combines so many disparate elements that it moves beyond eclecticism into its own genre - multifaceted yet self-contained. Schwartz's music is virtuosic for the performer, challenging to the listener, yet, for the most part, he eschews the spiky Modernist shield that less secure composers use to dissuade all comers. His work combines tonal and nontonal elements, improvised and fully notated passages and unusual instrumental effects (plucking the inside of a piano, stratospheric squeals for the woodwinds, and so on) in an idiosyncratic manner that is Mr. Schwartz's own." (Tim Page/The New York Times) Hear a performance of Elliott Schwartz's Souvenir (1978) for clarinet and piano, featuring clarinetist Jerome Bunke and the composer as pianist . . . one of this week's PYTHEAS EARFULS.

"Manuel de Falla wrote his Harpsichord Concerto (1926) for Wanda Landowska, the pioneering Polish-French harpsichordist who had been urging her contemporaries to write new music for her chosen instrument. In this Concerto for six solo instruments, 'the composer felt no constraint to conform to the classic form of the concerto for a single instrument with the accompaniment of the orchestra,' Falla wrote in a note for the premiere. This austere, stripped down style – of 'the esthetic which is ascetic,' in Alexis Roland-Manuel’s words – is similar to that of contemporary works such as Stravinsky’s L'histoire du soldat, Symphonies of Wind Instruments, or the chamber symphonies of Schoenberg." (John Henken/Los Angeles Philharmonic). Hear a performance of Falla's brilliant Harpsichord Concerto . . . this week's FROM THE PYTHEAS ARCHIVES.

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

2011-03-23T09:59:00.001-07:00

How does composer Nikolai Kapustin view himself? . . . "I was never a jazz musician. I never tried to be a real jazz pianist, but I had to do it because of the composing. I’m not interested in improvisation – and what is a jazz musician without improvisation? All my improvisation is written, of course, and they become much better; it improves them." According to pianist Leslie De’Ath, "Kapustin's piano music is technically formidable, and as a pianist he possesses a technique to match. He remains the definitive interpreter of his own music, not just by virtue of the truism that he composed it, but also because his own recordings are astonishing feats of technical and musical accomplishment". Experience this firsthand by watching Nikolai Kapustin perform his Impromptu, op. 66, no. 2 (1991) . . . one of this week's FEATURED NEW MUSIC VIDEOS.

While relearning an old favourite piece, To the Earth (1985), for 4 terracotta pots and voice by composer Frederic Rzewski, percussionist Fleur Green discovered a poem she had written while working on the piece years ago:

In this earth where man makes and makes and makes, and quite often makes a mess,
we sometimes forget the earth has already made.

Perhaps we have forgotten that nature is violent and destructive enough
without us having to make more.

While we are making war with ourselves, we forget that nature alone is violent,
and a battle of elements.

While we are making objects of beauty for ourselves,
we forget that nature alone is beautiful and something to admire.

Have we forgotten reality is violent, depressing, intriguing and beautiful enough
to overwhelm?

If we are no longer touched by the beauty of a change in season,
no longer touched by the unique landscape that presents itself to us
silently every day,
and if we no longer rejoice in the ‘gentleness and cruelty of nature’,
then perhaps we need reminding.

Watch a performance of Rzewski's To the Earth by percussionist Bonnie Whiting Smith . . . it's this week's BANG, CLANG AND BEAT - New Music for Percussion.

George Crumb writes of his piece Processional (1983): "Like much of my music, Processional is strongly tonal, but integrates chromatic, modal, and whole-tone elements. The descending six tones stated at the beginning present the basic harmonic cell, subsequently elaborated by varied cluster combinations and permutations. Although Processional is essentially a continuum of sustained legato playing, tiny melodic fragments (which intermittently emerge and recede) provide contrast in articulation. I think of Processional as an 'experiment in harmonic chemistry' (Debussy's description of his Images for piano) - the music is concerned with the prismatic effect of subtle changes of harmonic color and frequent modulation. While composing the work, I felt no need for the resources of the 'extended piano' and limited myself to the contrasts of texture and color available through the conventional mode of playing on the keys. However, I subsequently did construct an alternate version which does in fact include a minimal use of non-keyboard effects (the choice between the two versions left to the pianist). The title of the music was suggested by the music's obsessive reiteration of pulse (sempre pulsando, estaticamente) and broad 'unfolding' gestures. Perhaps the music suggests more a 'processional of nature' rather than any sort of festive or sombre 'human' processional. Listen to a performance of George Crumb's Processional . . . one of this week's PYTHEAS EARFULS.

In Alvin Lucier's I am sitting in a room (1969), several sentences of recorded speech are simultaneously played back into a room and re-recorded there many times. As the repetitive process continues, those sounds common to the original spoken statement and those implied by the structural dimensions of the room are reinforced. The others are gradually eliminated. The space acts as a filter; the speech is transformed into pure sound. All the recorded segments are spliced together in the order in which they were made and thus constitute the work. In this fascinating exploration of acoustical phenomena, Lucier slips from the domain of language to that of music in the course of the repetitions of a simple paragraph of text. Listen to Alvin Lucier's I am sitting in a room . . . this week's FROM THE PYTHEAS ARCHIVES.

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

2011-03-14T20:03:00.000-07:00

Composer/pianist Frederic Rzewski's Winnsboro Cotton Mill Blues (1979) is an accessible, if disturbing, rumination on both industrial mechanization and a 1920's folk/blues song of the same name. The work slowly develops from a simple rocking two note figure into a low-register-driven juggernaut that, to those who have experienced it first-hand, replicates the clamorous workings of a cotton mill. A nervous pastoral interlude begins after the manically industrial opening section, which could possibly represents a weekend's rest after a hard week of work. However, all is not restful, as the pastoral melodies become more and more dissonant and manic. Watch a performance of Rzewski’s Winnsboro Cotton Mill Blues by pianist Ralph van Raat . . . one of this week's FEATURED NEW MUSIC VIDEOS.

In 1968, Jerry Goldsmith caught massive critical attention with his landmark, controversial soundtrack to the post-apocalyptic science fiction epic "Planet of the Apes" (1968), which was one of the first film scores to be written entirely in an avant garde style. When scoring "Planet of the Apes", Goldsmith used such innovative techniques as looping drums into an echoplex, using the orchestra to imitate the grunting sounds of apes, having horns blown without mouthpieces, and instructing the woodwind players to finger their keys without using any air. The score went on to garner Goldsmith an Oscar nomination for Best Original Score and the music now ranks as #18 on the American Film Institue’s top 25 American film scores. Watch the ending scene of director Franklin J. Schaffner’s Planet of the Apes . . . it's this week's PYTHEAS SIGHTING.

Karl Henning fell in love with the sound of the clarinet at age 10 and has been learning, practicing and creating music ever since in pursuit of the Muse. He has studied with composers Jack Gallagher, Paul Schwartz, Nancy Garlick, Judith Shatin, Walter Ross, Douglas Hargrave, Charles Wuorinen and Louis Andriessen. After his doctoral work, Henning lived for four years in and near St. Petersburg, Russia, where he studied the canals, bridges, cathedrals, white nights and starry winter skies of St. Petersburg. This was a period of informal arts study which he feels in many ways equal in importance to his years of formal musical training. Henning has served at different times as Interim Choir Director and Composer-in-Residence at the Cathedral Church of St Paul in Boston, where he composed a 40-minute unaccompanied choral setting of the St. John Passion (2008). Hear a performance of his Heedless Watermelon, part of his flute and clarinet work entitled "Three for Two" . . . one of this week's PYTHEAS EARFULS.

According to composer Adrienne Albert, "The notion of writing a piece based on the findings of an Austrian mathematician who observed the increase and decrease in the pitch of sound when the source and observer are getting closer or further apart came to me while traveling through Italy and hearing the myriad sirens passing by through the dense traffic. The motif descends by a minor second returning to the original harmony combined with the repeated minor seconds portraying the incessant sounds of car horns. The melodic lines portray the vibrancy and sensuality of the people in contrast to the craziness around them". Listen to a performance of Adrienne Albert Doppler Effect (1998) . . . this week's FROM THE PYTHEAS ARCHIVES.

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

2011-03-09T16:33:00.001-08:00

Kaija Saariaho's ballet "Maa" (1991) was commissioned by the ballet of the Finnish National Opera and the work's mixing and manipulation of sounds was carried out in the Finnish Radio Experimental Studio. The ballet does not have a plot as such, rather it is built around thematic archetypes such as doors, gates, stepping into new worlds, journeys, and the crossing of waters. Both scenography and music are shrouded by deliberate mystery and characterized by a lucidity and minimalism of gesture. Its openness and approachability makes it an ideal introduction to the poetry of Saariaho's music. The work's abstract, non-narrative plot is fertile soil for her musical thinking. As in her earlier radiophonic work "Stillen", she avoids telling a story, choosing instead to handle the germinal themes of traveling, remoteness, yearning and communication in a dream-like way through the medium of association. Number symbolism also plays its own role in injecting significance into "Maa" - the group of players numbers seven, and each of the work's seven main movements divides further into seven subsections. The music to the ballet's seventh section, can be performed as a separate piece entitled Fall (1991), and we feature it this week in a performance by harpist Consuelo Giulianelli . . . one of this week's FEATURED NEW MUSIC VIDEOS.

According to Lynn René Bayley (Fanfare Magazine), "No one ever said life was fair, and this is probably truer in the arts field, where name recognition and assessment of quality are engendered more by promotion and institutional affiliation than by talent. A case in point is Nancy Van de Vate, without question one of the most talented and original composers of our time, whose name is barely known in this country though she is extremely well respected in her adopted country of Austria. The composer of pieces ranging from the tone-clusterish orchestral works "Journeys" and "Dark Nebulae", remarkable chamber works such as "Seven Fantasy Pieces for Violin and Piano" and "Music for Viola, Percussion, and Piano", a number of concertos and the superb opera "All Quiet on the Western Front", Van de Vate wrote "Where the Cross Is Made" during a time in her life when she was facing a personal crisis. She was distraught but felt the need to work in order to feel normal, and so she kept returning to the score over a period of time, reworking it as she had time, not really knowing whether the finished product would be as good as she hoped or not. Remarkably, "Where the Cross Is Made" (2003) is a masterpiece, building in rhythm, harmony, and melody through an almost unbroken wave of sound initiated by a syncopated figure, propelling the opera to its inexorable conclusion." Read more about Nancy Van de Vate's Where the Cross Is Made, and listen to an excerpt from the opera . . . it's this week's FEATURED RECORDING.

Swedish composer Anna-Lena Laurin writes complex orchestral music with very strong melodic and rhythmical components. Her music is imbued with a dark, dramatic, as well as a light and lyrical/romantic tone language. She has received numerous grants, prizes and enthusiastic reviews, as well as appreciation from the Swedish Queen Silvia for her 2002 album "Sang till mormor". Born in Halmstad, Sweden, Laurin started playing classical piano at the age of seven and continued with music in different directions and styles on various instruments, but mainly as a pianist and vocalist. She began her professional musical career as a pianist and singer in different jazz ensembles, but now works exclusively as a composer, with a very busy schedule and new commissions coming from symphony orchestras, chamber orchestras or soloists. Upcoming commissions are a concerto for Hakan Hardenberger, Camerata Nordica and Terje Tönnesen. Her works include the much publicized "String Quartet No. 1" (2004) and "Autumn Fields" (2008) for violin and piano (or string orchestra), her "Concerto for Flute, Strings and Harp" (2009), the orchestral "Piece from the Silence" (2006), and "Shards of Time" (2010) for solo piano. Laurin's influences are from composers and musicians of many different genres and epoques and she has composed works mixing different genres - such as "The Painter (2009) for symphony orchestra, trumpet and jazz group, "Iphigenia" (2009) for symphony orchestra and improvising jazz soloists, and "Colours" (1997) concerto for trumpet, jazz trumpet, chamber choir and jazz group - an hour long trumpet concerto specially composed for trumpet soloists Hakan Hardenberger (who commissioned it) and Anders Bergcrantz. Listen to a recording of Laurin's Meadows from her "Piece from the Silence" (2006) . . . this week's PYTHEAS EARFUL.

Even before he finished orchestrating the score, composer Bela Bartok began to doubt that he would ever see his ballet "The Miraculous Mandarin" (1919) staged. In fact, the performance history of "The Miraculous Mandarin" is marked by such formidable struggles that the score didn’t receive the acclamation it deserved until after the composer’s death. The premiere of "The Miraculous Mandarin", in the conservative city of Cologne in November 1926, caused an uproar. Audience members walked out, the conductor was officially reprimanded by the city's mayor, and the work was subsequently banned. But Cologne wasn’t at the heart of the music world, and it wasn’t the composer’s hometown; so the incident passed without making international headlines. The work wasn’t staged in Budapest until 1946, after the composer’s death, and a quarter of a century after the score was finished. A production in Budapest was announced in 1931, as part of the celebration honoring Bartok fiftieth birthday, but it was canceled after the dress rehearsal, when officials got wind of the work’s subject matter. Another performance scheduled for 1941 was opposed by the clergy. The problems were both the graphic, intense music and the story — a violent and erotic tale with implicit social criticism (from comments by Phillip Huscher written for the Chicago Symphony Orchestra). Watch an excerpt from Bartok's ballet The Miraculous Mandarin in a performance by the ballet of Angers Nantes Opera . . . this week's FROM THE PYTHEAS ARCHIVES.

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

2011-03-02T10:54:00.000-08:00

Eric Whitacre is quickly becoming one of the most popular composers and conductors of his generation, inspiring and motivating a new generation of singers and musicians. The "unearthly beauty and imagination" (Los Angeles Times) and "emotional directness and intensity" (American Record Guide) of Whitacre’s music create a visceral, impassioned response in audiences and performers. In 2008, the all-Whitacre choral CD Cloudburst (released by the British ensemble Polyphony on Hyperion Records) became an unexpected international best-seller, topping the classical charts and earning a Grammy nomination. The BBC raves that "what hits you straight between the eyes is the honesty, optimism and sheer belief that passes any pretension. This is music that can actually make you smile." Watch a performance of Eric Whitacre conducting his Sleep (2000), performed by the VocalEssence Chorus, the Ensemble Singers, The St. Olaf Choir, and the Minnesota High School Honors Choir . . . one of this week's FEATURED NEW MUSIC VIDEOS.

Lawrence Dillon has produced an extensive body of work, characterized by a keen sensitivity to color, a mastery of form, and what the Louisville Courier-Journal has called a "compelling, innate soulfulness." Increasingly in demand, Dillon has received commissions in the past year from the Emerson String Quartet, the Ravinia Festival, the Cassatt String Quartet, the Mansfield Symphony, the Boise Philharmonic, the Salt Lake City Symphony, the Daedalus String Quartet, the University of Utah and the Idyllwild Symphony Orchestra. In 1985, he became the youngest composer to earn a doctorate at The Juilliard School, and was shortly thereafter appointed to the Juilliard faculty. Dillon is now Composer in Residence at the University of North Carolina School of the Arts. This week we are privileged to present an exclusive interview with Lawrence Dillon by the Pytheas Center's director, Vinny Fuerst. He talks about his life as a composer, his current compositions and activities, and his thoughts on contemporary music . . . it's this week's COMPOSER PORTRAIT.

Frederic Rzewski is among the major figures of the American musical avant-garde to emerge in the 1960s, and he has been highly influential as a composer and performer. He first came to public attention as a performer of new piano music, having participated in the premieres of such monumental works as Stockhausen's Klavierstück X (1962). In 1966, he co-founded the famous ensemble Musica Electronica Viva (MEV). MEV combined free improvisation with written music and electronics. These experimentations led directly to the use of a so-called "process piece," which also combines elements of spontaneous improvisation with notated material and instructions. Rzewski's improv-classical hybrids are some of the most successful of the kind ever produced thanks to the fervent energy at the core of his music. During the 1970s, his music continued to develop along these lines, but as his socialist proclivities began to direct his artistic course, he developed new structures for instrumental music that used text elements and musical style as structuring features. Rzewski's music is among that which defines postwar American new music. He has consistently given the exuberant boyish pleasures of a composer like Copland within the rigorously experimental framework of a composer like Cage. Often unapologetically tonal and fun, Rzewski's music cuts right through the frequent churlishness of avant garde music. The Pytheas Center this week highlights Frederic Rzewski with a FEATURED RECORDING - Fred (on Cedille Records) - and a PYTHEAS EARFUL - Squares (1978). Explore, Listen and Enjoy!

Dan Locklair is one of America's most widely performed composers. His compositions include symphonic works, ballet, opera, and numerous solo, chamber, vocal and choral compositions. His awards have included annual ASCAP awards, a Kennedy Center Friedheim Award, and the top Barlow International Competition Award, and he was named Composer of the Year in 1996 by the American Guild of Organists. His many commissions have come from such organizations as the Knoxville Symphony, the Binghamton Symphony, the American Guild of Organists, the Mallorme Chamber Players and the Bel Canto Company. Listen to a performance of Locklair's Toccata, from In Mystery and Wonder (2004) performed by organist Alan Morrison . . . this week's FROM THE PYTHEAS ARCHIVES.

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

2011-02-23T08:54:00.001-08:00

Stephen Eddins writes (at AllMusic.com), "Latvian composer Pēteris Vasks, who for much of his career worked under the constraints of the Soviet system, sees composition as a political act and hopes that his music might be a vehicle for national healing. He has written, 'I have always dreamed that my music would be heard in the places where unhappy people are gathered.' Much of Vasks' work is soulfully meditative, as are most of the movements of his string quartets. Many have the mournful tone and the static sense of time being suspended that is characteristic of the Eastern European mysticism of composers like Pärt and Górecki. The feeling of time being displaced or being cyclical is most striking in the first movement of the Second Quartet, which begins almost exactly like the last movement of the Third Quartet (1995), with a distinctive, hushed, almost pitchless murmuring in the upper strings." Watch a performance of the last movement of Vasks' String Quartet No. 3 performed by the Navarra String Quartet . . . one of this week's FEATURED NEW MUSIC VIDEOS.

The film world recently morned the loss of one of its greatest composers, John Barry, who died of a heart attack on January 30, 2011, at his home in Oyster Bay, Long Island, New York. As Jon Burlingame of FilmMusicSociety.com put it, "John Barry was one of a kind. He invented a new style of action-adventure music for the movies — that much is certain — but he was equally adept at quiet dramas, historical epics and contemporary thrillers. And what's more, he could write music appropriate to all of these kinds of movies and still sound like nobody else. Barry's death marks the passing of an era. Yes, some of our musical icons from the 1960s, '70s and '80s are still around, still writing, still conducting... but the loss of John Barry is keenly felt simply because there was no one quite like him." Some of his most famous film scores include From Russia With Love, Goldfinger, Born Free, and Dances With Wolves. Watch the opening of another John Barry classic, Out of Africa (1985), which stars Meryl Streep and Robert Redford . . . this week's PYTHEAS SIGHTING.

Composer Michael Colgrass' Winds of Nagual for wind ensemble draws its programmatic inspiration from the writings of Carlos Castaneda who has become somewhat of a cult icon. Castaneda's writings center on his work for fourteen years in Mesoamerican shamanism with Don Juan Matus. According to the composer, "[Although] the score is laced with programmatic indications, the listener need not have read Castaneda's books to enjoy the work, and I don't expect anyone to follow any exact scenario. My object is to capture the mood and atmosphere created by the books and to convey a feeling of the relationship that develops as a man of ancient wisdom tries to cultivate heart in an analytical young man of the technological age." Hear a performance of the first section of Winds of Nagual (1985), entitled The Desert . . . one of our PYTHEAS EARFULS this week.

Shulamit Ran, winner of the 1991 Pulitzer Prize in composition, has been awarded most major honors given to composers in the U.S., including two fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation, grants and commissions from the Koussevitzky Foundation, the National Endowment for the Arts, the Fromm Music Foundation, Chamber Music America, the American Academy and Institute for Arts and Letters, first prize in the Kennedy Center-Friedheim Awards competition for orchestral music, and many more. According to the Chicago Tribune, "Ran has never forgotten that a vital essence of composition is communication." This sort of reaction is by no means unusual. Around the country, from Seattle to Baltimore to Houston, commentary on her music typically runs thus: "gloriously human," and "compelling not only for its white-hot emotional content but for its intelligence and compositional clarity; Ran is a magnificent composer." Watch a performance of the second movement of Ran's Sonatina for 2 Flutes (1961) by the Blithe Duo . . . this week's FROM THE PYTHEAS ARCHIVES.

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

2011-02-17T05:07:00.001-08:00

Lawrence Dillon has produced an extensive body of work, characterized by a keen sensitivity to color, a mastery of form, and what the Louisville Courier-Journal has called a "compelling, innate soulfulness." Increasingly in demand, Dillon has received commissions in the past year from the Emerson String Quartet, the Ravinia Festival, the Cassatt String Quartet, the Mansfield Symphony, the Boise Philharmonic, the Salt Lake City Symphony, the Daedalus String Quartet, the University of Utah and the Idyllwild Symphony Orchestra. Although he lost 50% of his hearing in a childhood illness, he began composing as soon as he started piano lessons at the age of seven. In 1985, he became the youngest composer to earn a doctorate at The Juilliard School, and was shortly thereafter appointed to the Juilliard faculty. Dillon is now Composer in Residence at the University of North Carolina School of the Arts, where he has served as Music Director of the Contemporary Ensemble, Assistant Dean of Performance, and Interim Dean of the School of Music. Watch a performance of his Bacchus Chaconne (1991) performed by violinist Danielle Belen and violist Juan Miguel Hernandez . . . one of this week's FEATURED NEW MUSIC VIDEOS.

Stephen Cohn's concert works have been performed and recorded by the world's finest orchestras and chamber music ensembles, including the Arditti String Quartet, the Kansas City Symphony, the Prague Philharmonic and the Chroma String Quartet. He has been Composer-in-Residence at The International Encounters of Catalonia in France and has been commissioned to compose new works which have been performed in Los Angeles, New York, Chicago, Brussels, Ceret, France, and Prague. He has received an Emmy Award for "Outstanding Achievement in Music", and his scores have been part of many award winning productions and films featuring such stars as Lily Tomlin, Joanne Woodward, Kathleen Quinlan, Colleen Dewhurst, William Shatner, and Wallace Shawn. He has also received a Parents' Choice Gold Award for his CD release, "Two Together, An American Folk Music Suite". Watch and listen to Stephen Cohn talk about his life and his music in an interview with Inner World View . . . this week's COMPOSER PORTRAIT.

Greg Bartholomew's music has been performed across the United States, Canada, Europe and Australia. His works have been preformed by the the Ars Brunensis Chorus, The Esoterics, the William & Mary Choir, the American University Chamber Singers, the Third Angle ensemble, the odeonquartet and the Alaska Brass of the United States Air Force Band of the Pacific. According to James R. Maclean, "Greg Bartholomew understands the nature of instruments . . . and manages to capture the complexity of the setting in a way that is fresh, portraying a sense of sorrow and a soaring sense of hope that is somehow fitting and certainly fulfilling." His 2008 work Conversation in Orange & Brown is a duet scored for either tuba & horn/tuba & euphonium/Two horns/or cello & double bass. It has been described as a "work exploring a range of colors and textures. The contrasting musical ideas are effective, and the use of solos, question and answer, and unified rhythms help to maintain interest for players and audiences alike." Listen to Greg Bartholomew's Conversation in Orange & Brown . . . one of our PYTHEAS EARFULS this week.

Hawaii (1966) is an epic saga based on James A. Michener's over 1,000-page novel of the same name. George Roy Hill's lavish 189-minute production stars Julie Andrews, Max Von Sydow, Richard Harris and Gene Hackman in a sweeping cinematic telling of Michener's sprawling, multi-generational adventure. Von Sydow plays Abner Hale, a Yale student who, on the day after receiving his diploma (in 1819), hears Hawaiian Keoki Kanakoa (Manu Tupau) speak to a group of fellow brothers who have been studying for their ministries at the University. Kanakoa makes a plea for the group to supply missionaries to bring Christianity to the islands and save the souls of his people. When Abner and his friend John Whipple (Hackman) later volunteer themselves for such service, Hale learns that he must first find a wife before he can be accepted into the program. The University's Reverend Thorn arranges for Abner to meet his sister's daughter. The 22-year-old girl, Jerusha Bromley (Andrews), is thusly courted and married in short order and Abner Hale, now accompanied by his new, young wife soon leaves Boston for the remote, mystical, almost mythical, land of Hawaii. To score his immense new production, Hill called on Elmer Bernstein, who had just scored his The World of Henry Orient, and who would go on to score the director's following next picture, Thoroughly Modern Millie, which would earn the composer an Academy Award. Bernstein's vast musical panorama for Hawaii, displays a near ecstatic degree of energy and enthusiasm. It's a jubilant and rapturous work which makes frequent visits to Bernstein's well of melodic invention. The score is, without question, one of the composer's most, magnificent opuses. Watch the opening of this historic saga, Hawaii . . . this week's FROM THE PYTHEAS ARCHIVES.

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

2011-02-07T07:18:00.000-08:00

David Gillingham has an international reputation for the works he has written for band and percussion. Many of these works are now considered standards in the repertoire. His works are regularly performed by nationally recognized ensembles including the Prague Radio Orchestra, Cincinnati Conservatory of Music Wind Ensemble, North Texas University Wind Ensemble, Michigan State University Wind Ensemble, University of Illinois Symphonic Band, and many others. Gillingham is a professor of music at Central Michigan University and the recipient of an Excellence in Teaching Award (1990), a Summer Fellowship (1991), and a Research Professorship (1995). His Symphony No. 2, "Genesis" (2007) is a programmatic piece based on the first nine chapters of Genesis. Watch it performed by the J.B. Castle H.S. Symphonic Wind Ensemble, with Arnold A. Alconcel conducting . . . one of this week's FEATURED NEW MUSIC VIDEOS.

Augusta Read Thomas’ deeply personal music is guided by her particular sense of musical form, rhythm, timbre and harmony. She was the Mead Composer-in-Residence with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra from May 1997 through June 2006, a residency that encompassed nine world premieres, culminating in the premiere of her concerto for violin, flute and orchestra entitled "Astral Canticle" - one of two finalists for the 2007 Pulitzer Prize in Music. Her 2001 work for string ensemble Murmurs in the Mist of Memory is a 4-movement piece that possesses a wide spectrum of nuance, at times lyrical, abstract, passionate, subtle, vivid, aggressive, colorful, floating, rhythmic, elegant, clean, or light. Each movement features a different attribute of the string soloists' phenomenal technique — individual and collective — left hand as well as bow arm. The aim is to capture, concisely, a specific "universe" or "mood" in each movement, such that the musicians can escort the listener through a mini suite of diverse expeditions into remembrances. Each of the movements is inspired by a poem of Emily Dickinson, with each poem revealing impressions of light. Hear a performance of Murmurs in the Mist of Memory by the Sejong Soloists, Great Mountains Music Festival, South Korea . . . one of our PYTHEAS EARFULS this week.

David Lang writes about his piece Face So Pale (1992), "At the top of the fifteenth-century charts was Guillaume Dufay’s ballade 'Se la face ay pale' (If my face is pale). My piece 'Face So Pale' takes Dufay’s famous love song, subjects it to numerous pulling and stretching procedures, and divides the original three parts among six pianos. The result is a bizarre equilibrium between the spaciousness of the actual music and the stuttering mechanism by which it is made." Watch a performace of Face So Pale arranged for 6 marimbas by Brad Meyer and the UKPG . . this week's NEW MUSIC FOR PERCUSSION.

Composer Elena Ruehr grew up in Michigan’s isolated and beautiful Upper Peninsula. Her musical training began at home, where she learned folk songs from her mother, who sang and played guitar. Her father, a mathematician, played jazz piano and listened to the Beethoven and Bartok string quartets while solving equations. Her older brothers brought home recordings of Morton Sobotnik and Led Zeppelin, Janis Joplin and Paul Simon. Ruehr started playing the piano and composing at age four. As a teenager, Ruehr worked as a church organist, rock-band keyboardist/singer and musical director of the local university’s theater troupe. She studied at the University of Michigan and Juilliard, and now is a professor in the MIT music department. Her song cycle lullabies and spring songs (1998) is based on the poetry of Langston Hughes. Hear a performance of Stars, from lullabies and spring songs (1998) by baritone Stephen Salters and pianist David Zobel . . . this week's FROM THE PYTHEAS ARCHIVES.

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

2011-02-01T07:27:00.001-08:00

This week the Pytheas Center honors American composer Milton Babbitt, who died this week at the age of 94. Read about Babbitt's life and music in Allan Kozinn's obituary from The New York Times.

Then hear Milton Babbitt himself talk about his life and electronic music in this week's COMPOSER PORTRAIT.

And listen to two featured works by Babbitt. His Composition for 12 Instruments (1948/54) . . . one of this week's FEATURED NEW MUSIC VIDEOS.

And Philomel (1964), composed for soprano and electonically synthesized sound . . . our FEATURED SOUND ART.

Aulis Sallinen is one of the most prominent figures in Finnish music, and his music often focuses on figures from Finnish history. While his lyric writing shows a strong Sibelius influence, there is also a certain acerbic touch in both his subject matter and his music that is strongly reminiscent of Prokofiev, Shostakovich and Weill. His opera The Red Line (1978), in particular, has a sardonic, slightly bitter tone that strongly resembles Shostakovich's Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk. And like Kurt Weill, he also used jazz elements, as in the ironic song in in the opera Kullervo (1988) in which Kullervo learns that he has slept with his own sister. Hear a performance of Sallinen's Some Aspects of Peltoniemi Hintrik's Funeral March (1981), a work for string orchestra derived from his String Quartet No. 3 . . . one of our PYTHEAS EARFULS this week.

The instrumental and electroacoustic music of composer Alexandra Gardner combines explorations into the rich details of acoustic sound with a visceral percussive energy to create dynamic sonic landscapes. Drawing inspiration from sources ranging from mythology and contemporary poetry, to her training as a percussionist, Gardner is building new audiences for contemporary music with an expressive sound and a flair for the imaginative and unexpected. A native of Washington, DC, Gardner's compositions have been featured at festivals and venues throughout the U.S. and internationally. Watch a performance of her Bloom (2009) performed by cellist Joshua Roman . . . this week's FROM THE PYTHEAS ARCHIVES.

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

2011-01-24T19:16:00.000-08:00

Joseph Stevenson at the All Music Guide writes about Nino Rota's Trombone Concerto (1966), "With his lyrical gift, dramatic flair, and grasp of the tragic and comic (often at the same time), Nino Rota in an earlier age could have become a leading opera composer. He did write some excellent operas, but gained his greatest fame and his finest opportunities for theatrical expression as the favored composer of film director Federico Fellini. His 1966 Trombone Concerto exhibits one of the most amazing characteristics of Rota's music: it is such attractive and easy-to-listen-to music that the listener is apt to mistake it for a conventional work of no great depth. But a little more attention reveals a subtle depth, with hidden feelings and a little irony, particularly in the way some seemingly banal moments add a sense of the pressures of modern life." Watch a performance of the first movement of Rota's Trombone Concerto by trombonist Domingo Pagliuca and Orquesta Sinfonica de Venezuelar . . . it's one of this week's FEATURED NEW MUSIC VIDEOS.

Bonjour Tristesse (Hello Sadness) is a 1958 film directed by Otto Preminger and based on a novel by Françoise Sagan. It stars David Niven and Jean Seberg as a playboy father and his somewhat meddlesome teenage daughter. Problems arise when Niven meets and falls for Deborah Kerr and Seberg attempts to break up the relationship. Almost sounds like it could be a Haley Mills Disney film, but when the novel was written in 1954 it was quite scandalous. The music for the film was composed by French composer Georges Auric. The Title Sequence for the film was designed by noted graphic designer Saul Bass. For those of you who have never heard of Saul Bass, this week we bring you his opening of Bonjour Tristesse . . . though you've probably seen his work in such classic films as The Man with the Golden Arm (1955), Vertigo (1958), Anatomy of a Murder (1958), North by Northwest (1959), Psycho (1960), West Side Story (1961), Cape Fear (1991) and Catch Me If You Can Opening (2002), among many others . . . this week's PYTHEAS SIGHTING.

Stephen Cohn is internationally recognized for his music for the concert stage, as well as his scores for feature films and television. His concert works have been performed and recorded by the world's finest chamber music ensembles in the United States and Europe, such as the Kansas City Symphony, Arditti Quartet, the City of Prague Philharmonic Orchestra and the Chroma String Quartet. He has been Composer-in-Residence at The International Encounters of Catalonia in the south of France, and his commissions have been performed in New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, Brussels, France, and Prague. He has received an Emmy Award for "Outstanding Achievement in Music", and his scores have been part of many award winning productions featuring such stars as Lily Tomlin, Joanne Woodward, Kathleen Quinlan, Colleen Dewhurst, William Shatner and Wallace Shawn. Listen to a performance of Stephen Cohn's Essay for Guitar written in 2008 . . . one of our PYTHEAS EARFULS this week.

Arvo Pärt began a "prismatic approach to musical construction" in his Für Elina (1976), a piece for solo piano which announced - quietly, thoughtfully, beautifully - the arrival of his "tintinnabuli style". Written originally as a gift for a young Estonian girl on her own in London, the work's modest means give little hint of the soul-searching that preceded its composition. About Für Elina, Pärt has said, "This was the first piece that was on a new plateau. It was here that I discovered the triad series, which I made my simple little guiding rule." Composition, for Pärt, had become a process of self-discovery, and his first requirement was clarity. (from Musicolog.com) - Watch, and bask in, a performance of Pärt's Für Elina . . . this week's FROM THE PYTHEAS ARCHIVES.

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

2011-01-19T05:56:00.001-08:00

After pushing one end of the envelope with three slow movements in his Symphony No. 3 (1976), Henryk Górecki swung back the other way in 1980 with his delightful Concerto for Harpsichord and String Orchestra (1981). This sparkling piece lasts about nine minutes and consists of two fast movements, both centering around D. The harpsichord is accompanied by a small string orchestra; if the solo part is played on piano, the strings are expanded to compensate. This concerto is strongly related to Górecki's Three Pieces in Olden Style (1963), which was shocking at the time for its unabashed simple, diatonic style. (thanks to Rod Corkin/Classical Muic Mayhem for these insights). Watch a performance of Górecki's Concerto for Harpsichord and String Orchestra with Elżbieta Chojnacka, harpsichord, and the Narodowa Orkiestra Symfoniczna Polskiego Radia, Antoni Wit conducting . . . one of this week's FEATURED NEW MUSIC VIDEOS.

Robert Moon (at Audiophile Audition) writes about CPO Records first volume of the Symphonic Works of Andrzej Panufnik: "Andrzej Panufnik is the least known of the three great Polish composers of the twentieth century – the others being Witold Lutoslawski and Krzysztof Penderecki. His music combines the architectural quality of consecutive soundblocks – extended music with distinctive tone and texture – with the emotional feel of the spiritual and visionary. By manipulating three note cells in a mathematical manner, Panufnik's music has a forceful, sometimes overwhelmingly powerful presence which is often contrasted by a more meditative, atmospheric section. The music on this disc can be best understood by tracing their personal, political and sociological times in which they were created. The Tragic Overture (1941) recreates the cataclysmic terrors of World War II. The composer uses a four note motto theme throughout this short work that plays beneath a cantabile violin melody. The Heroic Overture, ostensibly written for the pre-Olympic competition in Warsaw in 1952, was really a testament to the valiant resistance of Poland to the Nazi invasion of 1939. Here the conflict is punctuated by a valorous march and a triumphant ending. In Nocturne (1948) "I completely detached myself from the tragic memories of the past years," Panufnik writes, "I was escaping reality, weaving for myself a kind of night vision, as in a dream." This 17 minute work starts quietly, moves towards a devastating climax, and then recedes into the mist. Its structure reminds me of Barber’s Adagio for Strings, but there is a portent of fear and danger under the patina of calmness. There also is a warmth, especially in the string writing, that perhaps reflects the composer’s love for humanity. Nocturne may have been cathartic for Panufnik, but, as moving emotionally as it is, there still remains the imprint of the horror the composer experienced in World War II. It is the major discovery of this disc. Katyn Epitaph is a searing remembrance of the Katyn Forest Massacre of thousands of Polish patriots by Russian soldiers in World War II. The quiet and lovely A Procession for Peace is a symphonic prelude dedicated "to peace loving people of every race and religion, of every political and philosophical creed," Panufnik wrote. Harmony – a Poem for Chamber Orchestra - was composed in 1989 and dedicated to the composer’s wife of 25 years. Its spiritual and graceful tone is an excellent example of the meditative and visionary Panufnik. This impressive disc is a sampling of the diversity of symphonic music which this under-appreciated composer has given to the world. Performances and sound are excellent, as are the extensive program notes. This is an important beginning to recordings of Panufnik's orchestral works (this is Volume 1), and I look forward to future issues, especially recordings of his ten symphonies." Check this and other contemporary music recordings out out at the Pytheas Recordings Archive . . . it's this week's FEATURED RECORDING.

Karen Amrhein is an award-winning member of ASCAP, a recipient of a 2005 Maryland State Arts Council Individual Artist Award, and has twice been nominated for the Pulitzer Prize. Her music has been described as "very sensitive to melody, and quite insightful as to the harmonic structure that will best support it. What results is both engaging and intriguing, as well as emotionally satisfying, not infrequently witty, and quite often uplifting - all characteristics and affects that seem regrettably rare in the work of more recent times." Listen to a peformance of the second movement of Amrhein's Sonata for Clarinet and Piano (1996) . . . one of our PYTHEAS EARFULS this week.

In another collaboration between Judith Lang Zaimont and her husband Gary Zaimont (with video production by Mike Bregman), The Joy of Dance, features Zaimont's art song Clair de Lune from the song cycle Chansons Nobles et Sentimentales sung by tenor Charles Bressler . . . this week's FROM THE PYTHEAS ARCHIVES.

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

2011-01-14T06:21:00.001-08:00

David Lang's impetus for Cheating, Lying, Stealing (1993) was to be the opposite of a big-brained, I-am-so-smart composer. Instead, Lang wanted to focus more on the more appalling and snide aspects of life. Lang tries to get every bang for his buck out of the musical material that he has. His composition is like a ten-minute-long machine that follows a set of laws that he invented, at which point the music seems to have simply written itself. He tweaks one aspect of the conventions, and cheats his way into having even more material. The piece, composed for the Bang on a Can All-Stars and scored for bass clarinet, cello, piano, and two percussionists (who play junk metals on opposite ends of the stage), is angular, edgy, and repetitious . . . Watch a performance of Cheating, Lying, Stealing with Sam Chernoff, Paul Kerekes, Hiromi Nishida, Derek Kwan, Austin Shadduck, and Joe Fee, with Matthew Kasper conducting . . . one of this week's FEATURED NEW MUSIC VIDEOS.

The Pytheas Center's director Vinny Fuerst writes: "The Richard Rodgers/Robert Russell Bennett score of the NBC documentary series Victory at Sea [26 half hour episodes which first aired from October 26, 1952 through May 3, 1953] has always held a special place in my heart. My mother tells the story of how I, age 5, would sit in front of the stereo and listen over and over again to the album of highlights for Victory at Sea. I must have been swept away by the drama, adventure and heroism evoked in that famous score. Just recently, I've found out the fascinating details behind the collaboration between Richard Rodgers (one of the most famous composers in American musical theater) and Robert Russell Bennett (a composer, too, and one of the most famous and sought after arrangers and orchestrators of the 20th century); how Bennett took Rodgers' twelve themes and a total of seventeen pages of music, and arranged (transformed, really) them into over 11 hours of music". Watch part of the first episode of Victory at Sea . . . it's this week's PYTHEAS SIGHTING.

And read more about the Richard Rodgers/Robert Russell Bennett collaboration . . . here at Pytheas.

In his fifty career, Brian Fennelly has contributed more than ninety works to the repertoire of twentieth-century music. He brought the discipline garnered by studies in mechanical engineering at Union College in Schenectady, New York to graduate studies in music at Yale University, from which he received Master of Music and Ph.D. degrees. His most significant teachers were Mel Powell, Donald Martino, Gunther Schuller, George Perle, and Allen Forte. From 1968 to 1997 he was Professor of Music in the Faculty of Arts and Science at New York University, where he is now Professor Emeritus. In addition to a Guggenheim fellowship, his awards include three fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts, two commissions from the Koussevitsky Foundation as well as commissions from the Fromm Foundation, Meet the Composer/Reader’s Digest, the Hudson Valley Philharmonic, and others. In 1997 he received a lifetime achievement award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters. Fennelly's music has been performed by orchestras including the Rochester Philharmonic, American Composers Orchestra, and The Louisville Orchestra, as well as by chamber ensembles such as the American and Empire Brass Quintets, and the Concord and Audubon String Quartets. In addition to composing and teaching, he has been active as a pianist, and co-directs the Washington Square Contemporary Music Society, which he founded in 1976. Hear a performance of Brian Fennelly's Sukhi! (1999) for clarinet, violin, cello and piano (1999) . . . one of our PYTHEAS EARFULS this week.

According to American composer Gian Carlo Menotti, "One of the essential ingredients for music to sound 'modern'... is the constant and unrelieved use of dissonances. I don't know why dissonance per se should be more exciting or interesting than consonance ... There are people who consider it essential for contemporary music to be nervous and intense. Again, why should tension be more interesting than serenity? Artists struggling to be original seem to be unaware that there is only one way to be honestly and candidly oneself ... I am convinced that composition is more an act of discovery than of creation ... and only when I feel I have reached the inner chambers of my heart, I know that I have become an original composer." The human voice played a significant role in Menotti's work, and the bulk of his output consists of opera, musical theater, and choral music, for most of which he composed both music and text. He created the first opera for radio, The Old Maid and the Thief (1939), and for television, Amahl and the Night Visitors (1951), and wrote a number of ballets and works for children. Menotti received the Pulitzer Prize in music and Drama Critics' Circle Award for both The Consul (1949) and The Saint of Bleecker Street (1954). In 1958 Menotti founded the Spoleto Festival of Two Worlds in Italy, devoted to cultural collaboration between Europe and America; in 1977 he founded Spoleto USA in Charleston, South Carolina. Menotti's Concerto for Violin and Orchestra was commissioned in 1952 by Efrem Zimbalist, violinist and then director of the Curtis Institute of Music, of which Menotti was a former student. The work was premiered by Zimbalist and the Philadelphia Orchestra in December of that year. Divided into three movements, the concerto is a conventional showpiece for the virtuoso soloist, with a lyricism and tonality characteristic of much of Menotti's work. The final movement features a section for oboe, tambourine, and Indian drum reminiscent of the Middle Eastern influences found in Menotti's opera Amahl and the Night Visitors. Hear a performance of Menotti's Violin Concerto by violinist Ruggiero Ricci with the Pacific Symphony Orchestra, Keith Clark conducting . . . this week's FROM THE PYTHEAS ARCHIVES.

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

2011-01-06T20:05:00.000-08:00

Paul Serotsky writes at MusicWeb International: "For Dmitri Shostakovich, 1953 to about 1960 was a period of relative prosperity and security: with Stalin's death a great curtain of fear had been lifted. Shostakovich was gradually restored to favour, allowed to earn a living, and even honoured, though there was a price . . . co-operation (at least ostensibly) with the authorities. The peak of this 'thaw', in 1956 when large numbers of 'rehabilitated' intellectuals were released, coincided with the composition of the effervescent Second Piano Concerto. Shostakovich's son, Maxim, gave the concerto its first performance on 10th May 1957, Maxim's 19th birthday. Shostakovich must have intended all along that this would be a 'birthday present' - for, while the composer remained covertly dissident (the Eleventh Symphony was just around the corner), the piano concerto is utterly devoid of all subterfuge, cryptic codes and hidden messages. Instead, it brims with youthful vigour, vitality, romance - and such sheer mischief that it may even have been a 'character study' of Maxim." Watch a performance of the first movement of Shostakovich’s Piano Conc. No. 2 (1957) with pianist Kirill Gerstein and the NHK Symphony Orchestra, Charles Dutoit, conducting . . . one of this week's FEATURED NEW MUSIC VIDEOS.

Identity has always been at the center of Gabriela Lena Frank's music. Born in Berkeley, California, to a mother of mixed Peruvian/Chinese ancestry and a father of Lithuanian/Jewish descent, Frank explores her multicultural heritage most ardently through her compositions. She has traveled extensively throughout South America and her pieces reflect and refract her studies of Latin-American folklore, incorporating poetry, mythology, and native musical styles into a western classical framework that is uniquely her own. She writes challenging idiomatic parts for solo instrumentalists, vocalists, chamber ensembles, and orchestras. Moreover, Frank writes, "There's usually a story line behind my music; a scenario or character". Watch an interview of Gabriela Lena Frank with Frank J. Oteri (thanks to NewMusicBox) Composite Identity (NewMusicBox) . . . it's our COMPOSER PORTRAIT for the week.

Disillusioned by many aspects of the classical music establishment, Steve Martland has forged his own path, employing what he finds of value in the classical tradition, but also incorporating elements of jazz, folk, and rock into his energetic, dynamic music. He is also an active force in the field of music instruction, and has not been shy about speaking his mind on political issues. He worked with composer Louis Andriessen, whose music, combining minimalism and popular music styles, became something of a model for Martland when he was a young composer. He also studied with Gunther Schuller at the Berkshire Music Center as a composition fellow in 1984. Listen to a performance of Steve Martland’s Beat The Retreat (1995) . . . one of our PYTHEAS EARFULS this week.

The Concerto Macabre (1944/1972) from the film Hangover Square (1944) is Bernard Herrmann's only venture into film piano concertos. The film starred Laird Cregar as a mad composer who went on killing sprees whenever he heard loud noise. Through the concerto Herrmann generates a haunting impression of loneliness and death, and the work is a rare example of a piano concerto ending with just the solo piano. Hear a performance of the Concerto Macabre with pianist David Beuchner and the New Zealand Symphony Orchestra, with James Sedares conducting . . . this week's FROM THE PYTHEAS ARCHIVES.

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

2010-12-22T08:40:00.000-08:00

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

2010-12-14T08:15:00.000-08:00

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

2010-12-06T05:14:00.000-08:00

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