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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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