With his Fantasia bética (1919) ("bética" refering to the region in the south of Spain that the Romans called Baetica, now known as Andalusia), Manuel de Falla brought the classical world to new territory – Spanish modernism, which Falla seems to have invented. There's an obvious debt to the Stravinsky's Rite of Spring, but Falla does not imitate so much as melt down and recast. And much like Stravinsky, he penetrates to the primitive heart of his culture. In Fantasia bética Falla depicts the three essential components of Flamenco art: singing, dancing and the hand clap. Hear it now ... one of this week's FEATURED NEW MUSIC VIDEOS.

The American Classical Music Hall of Fame is a non-profit organization devoted to celebrating the past, present and future of American classical music. Located in the historic Herschede building in downtown Cincinnati on Fourth Street, the 9,000 square-foot facility contains a variety of engaging displays. The first floor houses biographical plaques highlighting the lives and accomplishment of each inductee. In addition, the facility also includes an art gallery and areas for temporary exhibits and performances - it's this week's FEATURED NEW MUSIC WEBSITE.

Lee Actor's music is filled with rhythmic drive and shows the composer’s superb ear for orchestral color. His Horn Concerto (2007) won first prize in the 2007 International Horn Society Composition Contest. Hear Actor’s beautiful Horn Concerto ... our second NEW MUSIC VIDEO for this week at Pytheas.

Check out the performance of Mitchell Peters' Yellow After the Rain (1999) - one of our Fun/Cool/Great New Music Videos! ... and this week's FROM THE PYTHEAS ARCHIVE.

Explore, Listen and Enjoy!

Vinny Fuerst
Pytheas Center for Contemporary Music

Composer Michel van der Aa employs the atonal idiom with absolute freedom, while the computer is a natural tool for him, not so much for composition but for the production of soundtracks, which constitute yet another instrument, as it were, and which enrich his musical language. See violinist Maaike Aarts perform his Memo (2003) for violin and portable cassette tape recorder ... this week's FEATURED NEW MUSIC VIDEO.

According to composer Dennis Báthory-Kitsz, "The 365-day composition project We Are All Mozart (WAAM) was an idea I had had for years. I believed that productivity and excellence are not mutually exclusive, nor do they belong to the past alone. I believe that our ability to "be Mozart" (meaning a prolific composer) today is inhibited by lack of demand on our inherent productivity. In other words, the more we do, the better we get at it and the more new ideas we have. Humans are problem solvers, and for composers, it is the blank page that is to be solved. But just as important to me was to do something intense to keep nonpop-music visible and to inspire ensembles, listeners and other composers." Read more about We Are All Mozart and listen to some of the music composed during the 365-day project - it's this week's FEATURED NEW MUSIC WEBSITE.

A composer who dabbled in the Dada movement, a Bohemian “gymnopédiste” of fin-de-siècle Montmartre, and a legendary dresser known as “The Velvet Gentleman,” Erik Satie cut a unique figure among early twentieth-century European composers. His spare, haunting melodies have inspired a wide range of musicians, from his contemporary Claude Debussy to The Velvet Underground's John Cale. According to guitarist Jonathan Stone, "His music is still relevant, because it was unique in its time and it was a departure at its time. In a way, to me, Satie creates a timelessness in much of his music. It's just as fresh now as it was a hundred years ago." Watch Chris Bannerman's dance piece inspired by Satie's Gnossienne No. 3 (1890) - our current DANSES PYTHEUSES.

In Principio (2003) is a weighty, yet spacious orchestral and choral setting of verses from the Gospel of John. Hear Arvo Pärt's spiritual - and timeless - musical setting ... this week's FROM THE PYTHEAS ARCHIVES.

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

Richard Danielpour has become one of the most sought-after composers of his generation – a composer whose distinctive American voice is part of a rich neo-Romantic heritage with influences from pivotal composers like Britten, Copland, Bernstein, and Barber. Danielpour has commented that "music [must] have an immediate visceral impact and elicit a visceral response." Check out his Souvenirs (2008) for orchestra ... this week's FEATURED NEW MUSIC VIDEO.

According to Ned Raggett (All Music Guide), "Mirjam Tally's self-titled debut CD, collecting pieces composed over the previous seven years, reflects both a striking confidence in the 27-year-old's compositional abilities and an attractively broad range of influences ..." Have a look at it - it's our PYTHEAS FEATURED RECORDING.

In 1930 Berthold Bartosch moved to Paris and created the 30 minute film entitled L'Idea/The Idea. It is described as the first serious, poetic, tragic work in animation. The film's characters and backdrops were composed of several layers of different types of paper from semi- transparent to thick cardboard. Special effects like halos, smoke and fog were made with lather spread on glass plates and lit from behind. The film was based on a book of woodcuts from Frans Masereel and the animated film featured a score by composer Arthur Honegger, who employed the Ondes Martenot in his score, the very first use of an electronic instrument in film history ... see and hear it - it's our current PYTHEAS SIGHTING.

"For sheer visceral effect, nothing matched Chen Yi's Spring Dreams. The idea of 'petals falling' was conveyed through rhythmic whispers and chatters, birds by pulsating whistles. In the midst of this cumulative din the sound of voices actually singing came as a jolt. Chen has the ability to create a minor sensation with the simplest of means." - Paul Horsely, The Kansas City Star. See a perfomance of Chen Yi's Spring Dreams (1997) by Chanticleer at this week's FROM THE PYTHEAS ARCHIVES.

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

This week's FEATURED NEW MUSIC VIDEO brings us a "classic" - a piece we've probably heard a hundred times without realizing what genius there is in it. "As with almost all his other compositions, Leroy Anderson wrote The Typewriter (1950) for orchestra, completing the work on October 9, 1950. The Typewriter received its first performance when Anderson conducted the short piece (only a minute and forty-five seconds long) for a Decca Records recording session on September 8, 1953. Since then The Typewriter has been used as a theme for numerous radio programs and television shows, but the classic performance appeared in the 1963 film Who's Minding the Store?, where Jerry Lewis pantomimes playing the typewriter part in mid-air." [from PBS's "Once Upon a Sleighride: The Music and Life of Leroy Anderson"] ... ENJOY!

Composer Gary Kulesha is one of Canada’s most active and visible musicians. Although principally a composer, he's often seen in his other roles as pianist, conductor and teacher. His music has been commissioned, performed and recorded by musicians and ensembles across North America, as well as in Europe and Australia. Listen to him speak about music and the art of composing in a "NACO-cast" (National Arts Centre of Canada in Ontario) with Chris Millard - this week's PYTHEAS COMPOSER PORTRAIT. And hear a performance of his Symphony No. 3 (2007), featured as this week's PYTHEAS EARFUL.

A native of Turin, Italy, Ezio Bosso is a world-renowned double bass player, performing as guest soloist with orchestras around the world. He is also very busy writing music for theaters throughout Europe, film soundtracks for silent and feature length films (I'm Not Scared, 2003), operas, concert works and music for contemporary dance. His Symphony No. 1 for Cello and Orchestra (2008) is the basis for Rafael Bonachela's latest dance piece We Unfold (2009), our current DANSES PYTHEUSES.

And finally, relax and enjoy Leo Brouwer's lovely guitar piece un dia de noviembre (1963) - this week's FROM THE PYTHEAS ARCHIVES, performed by Peo Kindgren.

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

Born in Wilmington, North Carolina and now teaching at Columbia College in South Carolina, Meira Warshauer is a composer whose music, in the words of Ina Ester-Joost, "comes from a place which is beyond music. It's like a prayer ... from deep within the soul". This week Warshauer's music is part of a "double feature" at Pytheas: her recent recording, Like Streams in the Desert (Albany Records) is our FEATURED RECORDING, and her new video, featuring the title track from the CD, is one of our NEW MUSIC VIDEOS. The video, produced by Mike Bregman, uses images by Shoshannah Brombacher, whose art is featured in the CD's booklet - a very effecting combination ... ENJOY!

Our other FEATURED NEW MUSIC VIDEO brings us a unique arrangement and performance of Alfred Schnittke's Gogol Suite by the Scherzo Quartet, a Balalaika quartet from Russia. Well done, and a feast for the ears and eyes...

Kyle Gann (PostClassic weblog), in two musings entitled Declining Literacy (here and here), poses the question, "Why has classical music fallen off the cultural literacy menu?". Join the discussion - this week's FEATURED THOUGHT AND IDEA.

And lastly, FROM THE PYTHEAS ARCHIVES this week brings us a bit of Elia Kazan's classic film On the Waterfront (1956) with an inspired and moving score by Leonard Bernstein. If you've never seen the whole movie, get out and do it! You'll be very glad you did.

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

"Alban Berg’s opera, Wozzeck, first performed in 1925, is a work of such enormous musical complexity that few people can hope to understand it all, even after repeated listenings. Like those enormous Gothic cathedrals that command our respect and awe, Wozzeck contains lovingly crafted details that will forever remain beyond our ken. Even conductors who pore over the music repeatedly discover new things each time they open the covers of the score ..." [note thanks to David Gregson @ Opera West]. Take in a part of this monumental work - one of this week's FEATURED NEW MUSIC VIDEOS.

The New Music Connects project enabled three young Irish composers to compose a new string quartet by collaborating with an ensemble in a number of workshops. The composers selected to participate in the project were EdBennett, Rob Canning and David Flynn. The new works were performed by the Con Tempo quartet at two concerts in Galway and Dublin in December 2007. Read, see and hear all about it at this week's FEATURED NEW MUSIC WEBSITE . . .

The Pytheas Center's DANSES PYTHEUSES, bringing you New Music for Dance, this week features Relief, a 2006 dance piece - choreography by Erin Tisdale, music by David Morneau.

The flute was French composer Albert Roussel's favorite instrument, and he composed a number of chamber works featuring it (Serenade for Flute, Strings and Harp; Trio for Flute, Viola and Cello; Andante and Scherzo for Flute and Piano; and Joueurs de flute, four pieces for flute and piano). FROM THE PYTHEAS ARCHIVES this week brings us a fine performance by flutist Bruce Tabb and pianist Nathalie Fortin of Roussel's Joueurs de flute, "Flute Players". The four movements are fashioned after famous flute players of literature: Pan, the shepherd-god, known for playing the pan-pipes; Tityre, one of the shepherds in Virgil's Bucolica; Krishna, the Hindu god, who played the flute in his youth; and M.de la Pejaudie, the hero of the novel La Pecheresse by Henri de Regnier. ENJOY!

... and just a jaw dropping WOW! for Philippe Quint's performance of John Corigliano's The Red Violin Caprice (1999).

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

Leslie De’Ath writes of composer Nikolai Kapustin, "[He] has made a minor flurry in the classical music world in recent years, largely through the championing of his music by pianists Steven Osborne, Marc-André Hamelin and Nikolai Petrov. His musical training was traditional, with a good exposure to the Russian virtuoso piano repertoire. Jazz became a big influence during his teen years, and has remained so throughout his career. From the late 1950s he immersed himself in the Russian jazz world, forming a quintet, and playing with Juri Saulsky’s Central Artists’ Club Big Band in Moscow. Later, he toured with the Oleg Lundstrem Jazz Orchestra throughout the Soviet Union. Kapustin’s piano music is technically formidable, and as a pianist he possesses a technique to match. His style of writing is crossover, in the best sense of the term, and belongs to the ‘third stream’ trend of the later 20th century. Does his music sound more like jazz than classical? That probably hinges upon the ears doing the listening ..." Check out pianist Shan-shan Sun performing his Toccatina, op.40, no. 3 (1984).

Our COMPOSER PORTRAIT this week features an interview with Steve Reich. The Guardian (London) wrote recently that "There's just a handful of living composers who can legitimately claim to have altered the direction of musical history, and Steve Reich is one of them." "Reich is among the great composers of the century," echoed The New York Times. Such adulation is a far cry from the initial reception Reich's piece Four Organs got at Carnegie Hall in 1973. "People were catcalling or holding their ears and shouting, 'Stop, stop! I'll confess!'" recalled conductor Michael Tilson Thomas, who recognized Reich's genius early and reassured him that his work was provocative and would eventually be heralded. He was right, of course. Reich's music is lauded for embracing the spoken voice and non-Western rhythms and virtually inventing "sampling" long before the computer or hip-hop. His compositions cross boundaries, attracting such admirers as minimalist composer Philip Glass, pop icon David Bowie, jazz guitarist Pat Metheny and remixing master DJ Spooky; AND his piece Double Sextet just won the 2009 Pulitzer Prize!

The Sea Hawk by Jack London is one of the most filmed stories in movie history. Erich Wolfgang Korngold's score for the 1941 film version, stark and brutally dissonant, shows the great film composer at his most dramatic - this week's PYTHEAS SIGHTING...

Lastly, FROM THE PYTHEAS ARCHIVES brings us a thrilling performance of the finale from Grazyna Bacewicz's Sonata for Solo Violin No.2 (1958). ENJOY!

Explore, Listen and Enjoy!
Vinny Fuerst