Pierre Jalbert is one of the most highly regarded American composers of his generation, earning widespread notice for his richly colored and superbly crafted scores. Focusing primarily on instrumental works,  Jalbert has developed a musical language that is engaging, expressive, and deeply personal. His Icefield Sonnets (2004) was written for the Ying String Quartet and was inspired by the poetry of Anthony Hawley. Each poem in the set speaks of the notion of “north” - specifically in the winter months - and aims to capture some of the different moments of “coldness,” from quiet stillness to more violent activity. Like the set of poems, the work in three movements, the first, Cold is a Cell, marked "Cold, airy, suspended, like an ice crystal", the second, Glass is a Place, marked “driving forward,” and the third movement, North is a Notion, marked “Sustained.” Listen to a performance of the third movement of Pierre Jalbert's Icefield Sonnets, North is a Notion played by the Enso String Quartet . . . it's one of our NEW MUSIC VIDEOS for the week.

RainForest (1968), with choreography by Merce Cunningham, electronic score by David Tudor, and silver pillows by Andy Warhol, is a wonderful artifact of the 1960's, one that tells us how much fun we've been missing since. A dance work choreographed in 1968 - a year synonymous with student revolt - cannot be immune from the spirit of its time. RainForest sums up a great deal of the rebellion in the arts that Cunningham himself did so much to foster. Its implication of free-wheeling anarchy through floating decor that cannot be controlled and choreography that does not play by conventional rules, its animal and nature imagery in both the score and the dancing - all these elements are what one would call 60's material. Most typical is the point at which Cunningham and Warhol find common ground. This is the appropriation of the commonplace. Ordinary objects such as pillows become shiny silver helium-filled sculpture. Ordinary movement is integrated into sophisticated dance composition. The heyday of Pop art meets the heyday of life-is-art dance theory [notes by Anna Kisselgoff/The New York Times]. Watch an excerpt from RainForest (1968) performed by members of the Rambert Dance Company . . . it's our DANSES PYTHEUSES for the week.

Thomas Adès is one of today’s most formidable musical talents, equally at home composing, conducting or performing his own music and that of others at the keyboard. For all the piano repertoire Adès plays, there is one composer whose music is never far from his home piano: François Couperin (1668–1733) - the most accomplished member of one of France’s legendary musical families. In Three Studies from Couperin, composed in 2006 for the Basel Chamber Orchestra, Adès extracted three movements from Couperin's harpsichord studies (or Ordres). Much of the source material remains intact and recognizable, but his compositional process certainly extends beyond mere orchestration; a close analog is what Stravinsky accomplished with his Pulcinella, exploding Pergolesi’s music into a rich and personal orchestral world [notes by Aaron Grad for the Saint Paul Chamber Orchestra]. Listen to a performance of Thomas Adès' Three Studies from Couperin, with the Chamber Orchestra Of Europe conducted by the composer . . . it's one of our PYTHEAS EARFULS for the week.

Gloria Coates' relatively early Cantata da Requiem "WW II Poems for Peace" (1972) looks at World War II from the viewpoints of women on either side of the conflict - from a young German widow to American poet Marianne Moore, with a sinister BBC weather report, which indicates that “conditions [are] ideal for bombing offensives,” along the way. Coates makes no attempt to sentimentalize the thoughts and fears of these women, and the Cantata da Requiem is no less harsh than it needs to be. Again, the instrumental writing is highly imaginative, even descriptive, and the vocal lines, while uncomfortable, match both the words themselves and their intensity. Come and listen to Gloria Coates' Cantata da Requiem "WW II Poems for Peace" (1972)  . . . it's this week's FROM THE PYTHEAS ARCHIVES.

Composer Tod Machover heads the Opera of the Future project at MIT's Media Lab, and that term nicely describes his Death and the Powers: The Robots' Opera. It is clearly recognizable as opera: It has a story and characters, and its full-blooded arias, elegantly illuminating the apt (if occasionally self-conscious) text by the poet Robert Pinsky, are sung with passionate intensity by humans. The "future" part is embodied both in the orchestral writing, which skillfully combines acoustic and electronic music to create a remarkable range of colors and levels, and in the staging: not just the rather charming robots that grow, shrink and whiz around the stage, but the way that technology creates the playing environment, even allowing the main character's performance to influence and animate the set. Technique relates to theme. The opera is about what it means to be human, and what technology adds or subtracts. Simon Powers, a dying billionaire, has devised a "System" whereby his consciousness is uploaded into the walls and the objects of his room, enabling him to live forever without his body. The drama comes from his family's reactions to this disembodied being who surrounds them as a voice, a Teflon-strung, bird-like chandelier, and tall "bookcases" of flashing, trembling, color-changing lights [notes thanks to Heidi Waleson/The Wall Street Journal]. Listen to a wonderful performance of Miranda's Aria, from Death and the Powers (2010) . . it's one of our NEW MUSIC VIDEOS for the week.

Dave Brubeck has composed classical works with jazz elements at least since the 1960's. His first large choral piece, The Gates of Justice, suffers from, mainly, inexperience - among other things, routinely sending soloists into their topmost range, over-complicating the texture beyond the ability of players to distinguish inner lines. Despite this, however, the oratorio gave plenty of hope that Brubeck would work through these problems. The Gates of Justice was far more than an excuse for a cynical promoter to cash in on Brubeck's popularity as a performer, unlike, say, EMI and Paul McCartney's Liverpool Oratorio. For one thing, Brubeck knew something about how to write paragraphs extended beyond those of song, or, in the case of jazz playing, choruses. One also sensed a mind constantly exploring musical connections between such superficially disparate things as the blues and Jewish cantorial singing. So check out Telarc Records' Classical Brubeck (Telarc 80621 which features so of Dave Brubeck's other choral works: Beloved Son (1978); Pange Lingua Variations (1983); Voice of the Holy Spirit (Tongues of Fire) (1985); and the instrumental Regret (2001) . . . it's our FEATURED RECORDING for the week.

According to composer Judd Greenstein, "Be There (2008) is a continuation of my effort to strip down my musical language to its essential components, to be fluid and Romantic and gestural and rhythmic all at the same time, without calling undue attention to those features or qualities. When I am writing music, and things are going well, I feel that I am present in the moment of the music's creation, a present-ness that is more full than any other I know. To "be there" is the best state that there is; it's the state of complete association with life and living, an association that is the utter antidote to the dissociative forces of anxiety and fear. Whether Be There expresses that idea to other listeners, fully, partially, or not at all, it somehow conveys that meaning to me. Many thanks to Colin Jacobsen and Peggy Kampmeier for their support in bringing the work to life" . . . . it's one of our PYTHEAS EARFULS for the week.

. . . and have a listen to Michael Torke's  Green (Verdant Music) (1986) . . . it's this week's FROM THE PYTHEAS ARCHIVES.

Thomas Adès has enjoyed enormous visibility since first emerging as a composer in the early 1990s. He quickly dazzled thanks to the confidence with which he discovered his unique voice, with scarcely a pause to clear his throat. His Asyla (1997), a compact four-movement symphony, is immense not only in its scoring for large orchestra but in the emotional range it telescopes into its deceptively brief duration. Adès choice of title is typically suggestive and mysterious - Asyla is the Latin plural of "asylum," which can mean both a place of inviolable refuge and an institution for the insane. The beauty of Asyla is how it plays on this plurality of meaning without devolving into a chaos of too-muchness [notes by Thomas May]. Watch a performance of the third movement of Thomas Adès Asyla played by the Berlin Philharmonic conducted by Simon Rattle  . . . it's one of our NEW MUSIC VIDEOS for the week.

Stephen Petronio’s I Drink the Air Before Me (2009), with music by Nico Muhly, begins where none of his other dances have: aboard a ship. Scrim in the shape of a sail is pinned to one side of the stage; the choreographer, with the costuming help of the artist Cindy Sherman, is its craggy, bearded captain, dressed in a nautical jacket, chaps and rubber hip boots over jeans. Named after a line from Shakespeare’s Tempest, the dance is inspired by a raging storm. Like Petronio's choreography, the score, by Nico Muhly, evokes turbulent undercurrents in which the frantic sounds of flute and strings are woven with the more tumultuous notes of a trombone and piano. Without being literal, the music and choreography create a sonic, ephemeral wave. The bulk of I Drink the Air Before Me assembles Petronio's usual tools: ferocious speed, rigorous structure and dancers who ravel and unravel like ribbons. Groups of bodies swell and dissipate like squalls, though while the scene is frequently forceful, the relentless choreography is only part of the picture. Petronio’s movement also reverberates as an energetic echo, moving past the physical form to etch invisible lines and patterns onto his canvas, the stage. Amanda Wells, arching her back, swirls her legs and arms as if swept by wind. Gino Grenek whips his body across the stage like a funnel cloud. And Shila Tirabassi, a force of nature herself, elongates her reach with every movement to impart sensual fluidity. When the violent rush of bodies threatens to overwhelm, Mr. Petronio calms things down. The Young People’s Chorus of New York City joins the dancers onstage to sing the work’s choral finale, One Day Tells Its Tale to Another. Their innocence softens the fury; the sea is finally still, and Petronio has weathered a perfect storm [Gia Kourlas, The New York Times]. Watch an excerpt from I Drink the Air Before Me . . . it's this week DANSES PYTHEUSES.

According to composer Amy Scurria, her Five Haiku (1998) "is somewhat of a tragic love story, in which the man is singing about a woman who exists not in his life, but very strongly in his mind, and only in his mind. He has been touched by this woman and cannot let her go from his memory. He sings about all of the emotions, both beautiful and painful that her memory evokes. He is terribly saddened without her and yet her imprint that she has left on him is so strong that he knows he is wonderfully changed forever by her. Although the title of the piece is Five Haiku and is set to five haiku, the piece opens and closes with a poem. Five Haiku is a story about longing and letting go. We seem to always be longing for something and in a certain way it is that longing that keeps us striving forward to reach that unobtainable goal. However, when that longing stifles us and causes us to turn around and to cease facing forward, it is then that the longing must be let go of and there must be a realization that everything in our lives, no matter how wonderful or how horrible, can ultimately change us in the most wonderful ways that we often don't even recognize." Listen to a performance of Amy Scurria's Five Haiku  . . .  it's one of our PYTHEAS EARFULS for the week.

. . . and check out Miles Hoffman and Alberto Parrini playing Walter Piston's Duo for Viola and Violoncello (1949) . . . it's this week's FROM THE PYTHEAS ARCHIVES.

French composer Emmanuel Séjourné is fascinated by the relations between music and other performing arts. His music is rhythmic, romantic, energetic, inspired both by the Western classical tradition and by popular culture (jazz, rock, extra-European). His compositions are played throughout the world by soloists, ensembles and orchestra, including the Nagoya Philharmonic, Osaka Philharmonic, Sinfonia Toronto, Croatian Radio Television Symphony, Luxembourg Philharmonic, Lausanne Chamber Orchestra, Orchestre de la Suisse Italienne, Camerata de Bourgogne, Orchestre d’Auvergne, and the Wurttembergisches Kammerorchester, among others. Séjourné's Akadinda Trio (1992) was inspired by the percussive mallet music of Uganda. Each player uses 2 mallets, and all three players play on one 5-octave marimba. Numerous melo-rhythmic lines interlock to form an interesting polyrhythmic (3:2, etc.) groove. No one part is particularly difficult, yet concentration is required so as to realize the interlocking rhythmic patterns. Watch a performance of Emmanuel Séjourné Akadinda Trio (1992) played by percussionists Corey Hewitt, Paul Hutson and David Tart . . . it's one of our NEW MUSIC VIDEOS for the week.

Anna Weesner's music has been performed by leading ensembles, including the American Composers Orchestra, Metamorphosen, the Indianapolis Symphony, and the orchestra of the Curtis Institute. Other important performances includes those by Dawn Upshaw and Richard Good, the Cassatt Quartet, the Cypress Quartet, the MATA festival, Network for New Music, Veronica Kadlubkiewicz, Matt Bengtson, Ensemble X, Counte induction, the Syracuse Society for New Music and Orchestra 2001. She has been commissioned by numerous performers and presenters, including Open End, the Newburyport Chamber Music Festival, violist Melia Watras, Sequitur, and Orchestra 2001. The contemporary music organization Network for New Music, to celebrate their 25th Anniversary, asked 25 composers to write new variations on the theme Beethoven used in his Diabelli Variations. Each variation was to be under two minutes, and for any combination of a small choice of instruments. All of the pieces were performed at the Settlement Music School (Philadelphia) on a concert in May 2010. Listen to Anna Weesner talk about her contribution to Network for New Music's 25th Anniversary celebration . . . it's this week COMPOSER PORTRAIT.

In 1980, composer Chen Yi attended a performance of Duo Ye while she was collecting folk songs of the Dong minority in southwest China. This emotionally charged experience prompted her to write a piano piece using the same title and utilizing similar musical characteristics. Duo Ye is a traditional folk song and dance form of the Guangxi Province in China. It is often performed to celebrate the joy of a harvest or the arrival of an important guest. In it the lead singer improvises a melody while others dance in a circle with a bonfire set in the middle. Listen to a performance of Chen Yi's Duo Ye (1984) played by pianist Amy Lin . . .  it's one of our PYTHEAS EARFULS for the week.

. . . and check out Dialogos (2008), an animated Film by Ulo Pikkov with music by Mirjam Tally . . . it's this week's FROM THE PYTHEAS ARCHIVES.

Eleanor Hovda (1940–2009) was a full professor and composer-in-residence at Princeton, Yale, and Bard College who suffered a debilitating illness that led to her eventual death in Arkansas in 2009. She was a minimalist not in the systems-based sense of a Steve Reich or holy minimalist tradition of a Górecki but in the sense that her arrangements are generally spare, with often an instrument or two prominently featured and only rarely a dense ensemble sound in play. A dancer herself, in her later work she collaborated often with leading choreographers, including Nancy Meehan and Meg Stuart. A native of Minnesota, Hovda spent much of her career in New York and was a respected and beloved member of the contemporary music community - her compositions championed by leading new music ensembles all across the country, including the Bang on a Can All-Stars, Boston Musica Viva, the Cassatt and Kronos Quartets, the San Francisco Contemporary Music Players, and Zeitgeist. Watch a performance of Hovda's Jo Ha Kyu (1990) played by oboist Libby Van Cleve. . . it's one of our NEW MUSIC VIDEOS for the week.

Young-Shin Choi is a composer for both instrumental and electroacoustic music with a strong interest in interactive digital arts. Choi strives to cultivate an aesthetic based upon a unique combination of musical elements drawn from Korean traditional music and modern Western musical idioms. Listen to Young-Shin Choi's UJO IMU III (2009)  . . . one of our SOUND ART for the week.

John Newell's earliest musical training was in piano. He has studied with Iain Hamilton, Mel Powell, and Morton Feldman. While at the State University of New York at Buffalo, where he studied with Feldman, he held the first Edgard Varese Fellowship in composition. Like many composers today he draws from a variety of musical traditions. His objective is to create works that reflect his personal sensibility, that arise from his spiritual journey and response to the world. He finds inspiration in the beauty and wonder of nature, in poetic and visual imagery, and in what he learns from the world's sacred traditions. Newell is equally at home composing for vocal ensembles, chamber groups and orchestra. Listen to a performance of John Newell's Quartet for Strings - A Day's Journey (2008) . . .  it's one of our PYTHEAS EARFULS for the week.

And check out a scene from Polar Express (2004) with music by Alan Silvestri . . . it's this week's FROM THE PYTHEAS ARCHIVES.

In addition to his extensive compositional output, Romanian composer Corneliu Dan Georgescu has studied music performance, theory, morphology, musicology, and ethnomusicology. His compositional work has developed in parallel with his scientific research in ethnomusicology and aesthetics. From 1962-83 he worked at the Bucharest Institute Constatin Brailoiu (formerly the Institute of Folklore, Institute for Social Anthropology and Dialectological Research), where he undertook fieldwork as an ethnologist. Georgescu then worked as an art historian at the Institute for Art History, Bucharest. From 1970-1987 he was awarded nine prizes of the Romanian Composers Union for his compositional and musicological works. In 2007 he received the "The Cultural Merit" award. Watch a performance of Corneliu Dan Georgescu's  Praeludium fur Columna Infinita (2011) . . . it's one of our NEW MUSIC VIDEOS for the week.

Anna Weesner's music has been described as “animated and full of surprising turns” (The New York Times), as “a haunting conspiracy” (The Philadelphia Inquirer) and cited as demonstrating “an ability to make complex textures out of simple devices” (San Francisco Classical Voice). John Harbison has written that “none of it proceeds in obvious ways. Her vocabulary is subtle and rather elusive; the effect is paradoxically confident and decisive.” Weesner is the recipient of a 2009 Guggenheim Fellowship and a 2008 award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters. Listen to her work for string orchestra, Still Things Move (2003) . . . it's one of our PYTHEAS EARFULS for the week.

Described as "beautiful and impassioned ... lustrous at the keyboard" by The New York Times, Lisa Moore’s playing combines music, theatre and expressive, emotional power - whether in the delivery of the simplest song, a solo recital or a fiendish chamber score. Crowned "New York's queen of avant-garde piano" and "visionary" by The New Yorker this New York based Australian virtuoso has performed with a large and diverse range of musicians and artists – the London Sinfonietta, New York City Ballet, Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center, Bargemusic, Bang on a Can All-Stars, TwoSense, Steve Reich Ensemble, Grand Band, So Percussion, Don Byron Adventurers Orchestra, Signal, Le Train Bleu, Third Coast Percussion, Da Capo Chamber Players, eighth blackbird, and the John Jasperse Dance Company. Pitchfork writes "She's the best kind of contemporary classical musician, one so fearsomely game that she inspires composers to offer her their most wildly unplayable ideas". Moore's repertoire moves between composers such as Joseph Haydn, Robert Schumann, Leos Janacek, Bela Bartok, Modeste Mussorgsky, Gyorgy Ligeti, Randy Newman, Rufus Wainwright, Martin Bresnick, John Adams, Missy Mazzoli and Frederic Rzewski . . . she's this week's NEW MUSIC PERFORMER.

Richard Danielpour  Three Preludes (2003), nos. 1 and 2 . . . a little something FROM THE PYTHEAS ARCHIVES.

Composer, percussionist and performer Gareth Farr is an indisputably colourful figure in New Zealand music, and, whether scored for percussion duet or the resources of two large orchestras, his music reflects his personality—bold, brash, or delicate and sensuous, but inevitably, immediately engaging. He was born in Wellington, New Zealand, studied composition, orchestration and electronic music at Auckland University and was a regular player with the Auckland Philharmonia and the Karlheinz Company. Further study followed at Victoria University, Wellington, where he became known for his exciting compositions, often using the Indonesian gamelan. Farr is recognised as one of New Zealand’s most versatile and successful contemporary composers and as a skilled percussionist. He's also known for his alter ego, Lilith Lacroix. Watch a performance of Gareth Farr's Taheke (2002), played by flutist Christy Kim and harpist Sarah Davis . . . it's one of our NEW MUSIC VIDEOS for the week.

There can be few active musicians able to remember a time when Darius Milhaud's name was not familiar, fewer still who can claim knowledge of the vast quantity of work produced during the long career of this incessantly prolific and versatile composer. Milhaud's musical training began in his native city of Marseilles. At the age of 17 he went to the Paris Conservatoire. His teachers were Dukas, Leroux and Gédalge. Among his friends were Georges Auric and Arthur Honegger. Of equal if not greater importance were literary friendships with, for example, Francis Jammes and Paul Claudel, two of the great influences (Andre Gide was the third) on the early years of Milhaud's career. In 1917, Claudel took Milhaud to Rio de Janeiro as a member of his ambassadorial staff. Brazil brought him into fruitful contact with a civilisation half-Latin, half-exotic, with Latin-American popular music and with jazz. After returning to Paris in 1919 Milhaud was adopted into the circle of Les Six, a group of progressive French composers brought together under the guidance of Jean Cocteau. However, like any such artificial collection, Les Six was quick to dissolve, and during the 1920s Milhaud adopted an assortment of new musical influences (notably jazz, which the composer first discovered during a trip to the U.S. in 1922, and which features prominently in much of his subsequent music). Milhaud composed, performed, and taught ceaselessly during the 1920s and 1930s, only abandoning his homeland in late 1939 after all hope of resisting the German advance vanished. Settling in the United States, Milhaud accepted a teaching position with Mills College in Oakland, California, and continued to compose prolifically. From 1947 he combined his American teaching duties with a similar position at the Paris Conservatoire, remaining at both institutions until 1971. Watch Darius Milhaud Part I - A Recollection of the Twenties (KQED), originally produced for KQED in 1965 . . . our COMPOSER PORTRAIT for the week. And visit Darius Milhaud at the Pytheas Center.

Finnish composer Pertti Jalava was a jazz musician before taking up classical music. He has kept jazz and classical music compartmentalized instead of combining them, as some have done, into a crossover style. Some of his works are based on his earlier jazz output, but he adapts the old material to the new genre. By far Jalava’s most substantial works are his symphonies. Listen to a performance of Pertti Jalava's Symphony No. 3, "Forms of Opinion" (2004-08) . . . it's one of our PYTHEAS EARFULS for the week.

And also check out: Classical Music Dead? Nico Muhly Proves It Isn't (Lucy Jones, The Telegraph) . . . it's our PYTHEAS THOUGHT and IDEA for the week. And visit Nico Muhly at the Pytheas Center.