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.

"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.

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.

Happy Holidays!

Danny Elfman  The Nightmare Before Christmas (1993)

Dmitri Tiomkin  It’s a Wonderful Life (1946)

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.

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.

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.