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

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

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.