One doesn't normally think of The Nightmare Before Christmas (1993) as a Christmas movie, rather a Halloween movie, but the movie is a great alternative to the classic Christmas movies. The soundtrack was composed and written by Danny Elfman, and Elfman was at his best when he created the soundtrack - the composition is stellar and fits for something that is both Disney and (director) Time Burton in nature . . . one of the FEATURED NEW MUSIC VIDEOS for this week.

It's not hyperbole to say that Ástor Piazzolla is the single most important figure in the history of tango, a towering giant whose shadow looms large over everything that preceded and followed him. Piazzolla's place in Argentina's greatest cultural export is roughly equivalent to that of Duke Ellington in jazz -- the genius composer who took an earthy, sensual, even disreputable folk music and elevated it into a sophisticated form of high art. But even more than Ellington, Piazzolla was also a virtuosic performer with a near-unparalleled mastery of his chosen instrument, the bandoneon, a large button accordion noted for its unwieldy size and difficult fingering system. In Piazzolla's hands, tango was no longer strictly a dance music; his compositions borrowed from jazz and classical forms, creating a whole new harmonic and rhythmic vocabulary made for the concert hall more than the ballroom - which was dubbed Nuevo Tango. (Steve Huey, allmusic) Read about Piazzolla's revolution in Ástor Piazzolla: Chronology of a Revolution (Jorge Pessinis & Carlos Kuri, piazzolla.org) . . . this week's FEATURED THOUGHT & IDEA.

Here' the story behind Angels in the Snow (1998) in the words of composer Tracy Rush: "It was December 3, 1990, and the biggest blizzard of the season hit the Midwest. While Dad was shoveling, Mom was working a jigsaw puzzle in the living room. She watched out the picture window as the neighborhood paperboy did his daily ritual: he would always stop in the middle of my parents' lawn and read the last paper before delivering it next door. This particular day, as he walked past the window, he could not resist the beautiful snow and threw himself on his back and made a snow angel. A short while later, Mom looked out and saw my dad on his back in a snow bank, in the angel position. Only he wasn't moving and 911 could not revive him. We still call him our Snow Angel. The work I composed is a joyous song celebrating the season and is my way of raising a toast to the memory of my father." Hear this beautiful celebration . . . our current PYTHEAS EARFUL, Tracy Rush's Angels in the Snow.

Karel Husa's Divertimento for Brass and Percussion (1958) is intimately connected to the composer's personal life and his Czech heritage, and it has become one of his most frequently performed works. Husa intended the music to be accessible for all levels of musicians and audiences alike, and we feature the work this week
. . . FROM THE PYTHEAS ARCHIVES.

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

Composer Judith Lang Zaimont has recently been joining up with her husband, the painter Gary Zaimont, to present videos which highlight both her vibrant and original music and his stunning visuals. The latest of their collaborations is entitled Borealis which features the composer's Sky Curtains: Borealis Australis (1984) scored for the unusual combination of flute, clarinet, bassoon, viola and cello. Check it out at Pytheas . . . one of this week's FEATURED NEW MUSIC VIDEOS.

John Psathas is one of New Zealand’s most frequently performed composers. With works in the repertoire of such high profile musicians as Evelyn Glennie, Michael Brecker, Pedro Carneiro, the Halle Orchestra and others, he has achieved what was until recently held to be a near impossibility for a composer of contemporary New Zealand music – he is establishing a solid international profile, and receiving regular commission offers from outside New Zealand. Fragments, this week's FEATURED RECORDING, has been described as "an injection of adrenalin direct to the heart of New Zealand classical music". Read more about the recording, John Psathas' music and hear some excerpts from Fragments . . . our FEATURED RECORDING at Pytheas.

This week we bring you an unusual short film by Jamie Ward which feature's both the music of Astor Piazzolla and Richard Grunn's human puppet "Cliff". December (or "Winter") (2009) takes us on a journey through New York City as film maker Ward brings us a visual interpretation of Piazzolla's La muerte del Ángel (1962) and La resurrección del Ángel (1965). Check it all out at this week's PYTHEAS SIGHTING.

Glenn Klotche writes, "Steve Reich's Clapping Music (1972) is an outgrowth of those works . . . [which] require nothing but the human body - in this case, two performers who hand-clap. Reich states that the piece is 'to have one performer remain fixed, repeating the same basic pattern throughout, while the second moves abruptly, after a number of repeats, from unison to one beat ahead, and so on, until he is back in unison with the first performer.' The piece is intended for performance in an auditorium where the echoes and reverberations of the clapping create, as Reich states, "a surrounding sensation of a series of variations of two different patterns with their downbeats coinciding.' As the piece unfolds, the patterns interact to create a garden of rhythms unlike anything I had previously heard. I was blown away that something so conceptually simple could sound so complicated." Watch a performance recorded in Milna, Croatia . . . this week's FROM THE PYTHEAS ARCHIVES.

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

In his operas The Horseman and Kullervo, and in his music for the television epic The Iron Age, Aulis Sallinen has penetrated deep into the mists of Finnish prehistoric myth. Similar mists veil the events his The Red Line, although they are set in our own century and can indeed be timed to the day. The most shattering moments in all these works are those in which Death suddenly and shockingly reaps its harvest. Sallinen movingly examines the pain of life under the shadow of death also in his song cycle Four Dream Songs (1973) based on his opera The Horseman. Hear a gorgeous performance of the third and fourth "Dream Song" by soprano Soile Isokoski . . . one of this week's FEATURED NEW MUSIC VIDEOS.

For this week's Composer Portrait we turn to pianist Gwendolyn Mok. She specializes in the music of Maurice Ravel, and has recorded Ravel's complete solo piano works on a restored Erard concert grand piano, dating from 1875, similar to Ravel' s own piano . . . it's this week's COMPOSER PORTRAIT.

Sergei Prokofiev's ballet Trapèze is a circus-themed one-acter which was written in 1924 for Boris Romanov, a modernist Russian choreographer who had emigrated to Germany in 1921. His Berlin-based company was so hard up it couldn’t afford an orchestra, so Prokofiev duly scored his commission for a quintet of clarinet, oboe, violin, viola and double-bass. Watch an excerpt of Trapèze brought to us by Video Artists International (VAI), an independent record label of Classical, Jazz, Broadway, Ballet, and Opera DVD's and CD's whose catalogue includes performances by such luminaries as Leopold Stokowski, David Oistrakh, Fritz Reiner, Van Cliburn, Beverly Sills, Leontyne Price, Renata Scotto, Franco Corelli, and Maria Callas among others . . . this week's DANSES PYTHEUSES.

The first five pieces of Arnold Schoenberg's Six Little Piano Pieces, op. 19 (1911) were composed in a single day, February 19, 1911; the sixth followed on June 17. These very brief and compact pieces are a sort of musical equivalent of aphorisms: the longest of the set (No. 1) encompasses no more than 18 measures. Schoenberg here experiments with the construction of ideas that are complete from the outset and require no development. Watch a performance of these classics of 20th century music by pianist Michel Beroff . . . this week's FROM THE PYTHEAS ARCHIVES.

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

"Ástor Piazzolla was keenly aware of the changing style of the Argentine national dance over his lifetime. It was entirely natural that he should seek to remind his critics and fans alike of the fact that tango had begun in the process of musical evolution and altered its sound and mood through that same process. Histoire du Tango (1985) is the vehicle by which he did so. It is not written for the standard tango band, but is a kind of abstraction of that sound into a classical suite, originally written for flute and guitar. The music is a little over 20 minutes long and covers the evolution of the dance through the twentieth century. Tango evolved from an earlier popular dance called the milonga, which is itself evolved from the Cuban rhythm known as habañera. Tango was initially regarded as a low dance. Like North American jazz, it originated in bordellos, and so the first movement is entitled Bordel 1900. The second movement is called Café 1930. By now, tango was the favorite dance of all classes in Argentina and was known as a daring dance around the world. Piazzolla is now writing directly from his memories of the type of tango played in cafés in Buenos Aires. This is a respectful depiction of the full-blown traditional tango. The third movement, Nightclub 1960 (1985) evokes the precise time when Piazzolla returned to Buenos Aires after his efforts to create jazz tango in the U.S. It now becomes clear that Piazzolla is dealing in the overall composition with his own place in the history of the music, as more sophisticated jazz elements enliven a music that had become standardized and complacent. This is a picture of the early version of Tango Nuevo. The final movement is called Concert d'aujourd'hui, a title that most literally translates as "Concert of Today" but which might also be called "Contemporary Concert." By the 1980s, Piazzolla was becoming an exciting voice in classical concert music. He shows himself here as having taken tango from its polite café form through its new nightclub dance form and making it into a new form for concert music. The harmonic vocabulary here is advanced and often startling, and it is music for listening more than dancing." (Joseph Stevenson, allmusic.com) . . . one of this week's FEATURED NEW MUSIC VIDEOS.

Orchestra 60X60 is a project containing 60 works each 60 seconds in length presented continuously in an hour performance synchronized with an analog clock. The 60x60 mission is to present an audible slice of what is happening in the contemporary music scene by representing 60 works that are diverse in aesthetic and style. Since 2003, the music of more than 1200 contemporary composers has been featured on the Electroacoustic 60x60 project. Thousands of audience members from Berlin to Chicago to New York City to Los Angeles and points in between have experienced this innovative program which synchronizes a clock with 60 one-minute electroacoustic compositions. The Orchestra 60X60 project brings this innovative listening experience into symphony concert halls. Check Orchestra 60X60 out . . . this week's FEATURED NEW MUSIC WEBSITE.

Powell and Pressburger's film "The 49th Parallel" - released in the USA as "The Invaders" - was the first film for which Ralph Vaughan Williams wrote a score. Made in 1941, the film depicts an ill-fated invasion of an isolated spot in Canada by the crew of a German U-boat. Watch an excerpt from The 49th Parallel (1941) . . . the PYTHEAS SIGHTING for the week.

As the critic Antoine Golea so aptly observed, "The Concerto for Flute and Strings (1949) is one of Andre Jolivet's works where violence gives way to tenderness, force and passion yield to charm. Of course the nature of the solo instrument dictated to some extent the intimate, discreet and suave aspects of this work, and Jolivet also had the good sense not to pit the flute against a full orchestra. The strings alone engage in a dialogue with the flute - sometimes lyrical, sometimes piquant and capricious." Watch a performance by flutist Seth Allyn Morris . . . this week's FROM THE PYTHEAS ARCHIVES.

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

Anthony Tommasini of The New York Times writes of American composer Richard Danielpour's opera Margaret Garner (2005), "Mr. Danielpour’s undeniable craft comes through in almost every passage. He can write lyrically ruminative vocal lines and knows how to energize choristers, as in an animated ensemble of slaves awaiting auction, where the words “No, no more!” become a theme for a syncopated, patter-filled, fuguelike chorus. The orchestral writing is flecked with color and richly sonorous". Hear Gregg Baker and Denyce Graves of the Opera Company of Philadelphia sing an excerpt from Margaret Garner . . . one of this week's FEATURED NEW MUSIC VIDEOS.

One of the 20th-century's great symphonists, Witold Lutoslawski created an impressive, always progressing body of music in the most difficult of circumstances. As the commander of a military radio station, he was captured by the invading Germans at the beginning of World War II. He escaped, and survived the occupation by playing piano duos in Warsaw cafes, including his Variations on a Theme of Paganini. In 1949 his Symphony No. 1 was the first Polish work to be denounced as formalist by Stalinist cultural politicians. In reaction, Lutoslawski wrote public works based on folk material, while continuing to develop a more personal language privately. In the cultural thaw following Stalin's death, Lutoslawski became a major international figure, renowned for innovations in form and performing techniques and a consistently eloquent personal voice - (from the Los Angeles Philharmonic). Hear Lutoslawski speak of his life and his music in an interview with Charles Amirkhanian . . . this week's COMPOSER PORTRAIT.

Composer Karen Amrhein has now completed her project of creating an animated film based on her 2007 work "Princess Paliné, who learned the seven words that stay a dragon's hunger and cool its fires". According to the composer, "The 28-minute animated film (with musical score and narration) ... engaged much of my time over the past year and a half. Having almost no experience with film-making – and none with animation – before beginning this, I’ve learned a great deal. I created the animation by employing time-tested stop-motion techniques to altered images from old fruit and vegetable crate labels, medieval illuminations, and bits from scans of paintings by the masters. Preview audiences have been left in stunned silence by the results". Watch an excerpt from this beautiful and timeless film . . . the second of our FEATURED NEW MUSIC VIDEOS for the week.

Erik Satie's Nocturnes are some of the last compositions he wrote for piano. Their harmonies rely on fourths and fifths and each shows a characteristic simplicity of texture. By this stage of his life, Satie's compositional technique had altered somewhat and the Nocturnes, like most of his works from the 1890s onwards, are made up of juxtaposed fragments of themes. Listen to and watch a unique performance of the Nocturne No. 2 (1919) . . . this week's FROM THE PYTHEAS ARCHIVES.

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

Villa-Lobos' Bachianas brasileiras No. 1 (1930) is scored for an "orchestra of cellos", so paying tribute to Bach’s Cello Suites while allowing Villa-Lobos to exploit the tonal and textural range of his favorite instrument. Interestingly, what is now the work's first movement was added eight years later for performance at the composer’s own Sociedade Pro Musica concerts. This Introdução (Embolada) takes a folk-song from North-Eastern Brazil as inspiration for a driving, toccata-like movement which potently combines melodic appeal, harmonic richness and contrapuntal dexterity. The Prelúdio (Modinha) that follows draws on a type of popular love-song who's gentle motion and stylized, even archaic themes evoke the slow movements of Bach concertos. The Fuga (Conversa) that concludes the work is inspired by the "question and answer" routines often improvised by Rio de Janeiro street musicians during the composer’s childhood. (Richard Whitehouse/Naxos Recordings). Check out a performance of the Prelúdio from the Bachianas brasileiras No. 1 led by cellist Mischa Maisky . . . one of this week's FEATURED NEW MUSIC VIDEOS.

The ensemble recherche, based in Freiburg im Breisgau, Germany, is one of the most distinguished ensembles for new music. With almost four hundred premieres to its credit since it was founded in 1985, the ensemble has made a substantial contribution to the development of contemporary chamber and ensemble music. Consisting of nine soloists, the ensemble has its very own dramaturgical profile and ranks highly on the international music scene. Apart from its many concert activities, ensemble recherche also takes part in musical theatre projects, does productions for radio and film, gives courses for instrumentalists and composers and lets young talents watch its rehearsals. Find out more about this amazing new music ensemble . . . this week's FEATURED ENSEMBLE.

The film Now, Voyager (1942) is the quintessential, soap-opera or chick flick (aka weepie) and one of Bette Davis' best-acted and remembered films of the 40s. Master film composer Max Steiner provides the lush, romanticized, Academy Award-winning score. The film was nominated for a total of three Academy Awards, including Best Actress (Bette Davis) and Best Supporting Actress (Gladys Cooper), with Steiner's nomination as the sole win (Steiner's second Oscar). Watch Now, Voyager's final scene . . . this week's PYTHEAS SIGHTING.

Susan Halpern writes, "Rebonds (Rebounds), composed in 1989, was Iannis Xenakis’s second work for solo percussionist. Very different from his first (Psappha, 1975), it extended the boundaries of what Xenakis defined as music. In Rebonds, a homogeneous collection of drums and woodblocks are played with a consistent pulse, and rhythmic power is the central element of this work. Contrasting timbres form the motivic material in place of themes or subjects. Watch a performance by percussionist Pedro Carneiro . . . this week's FROM THE PYTHEAS ARCHIVES.

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

Susan Key, writing about Samuel Barber's Violin Concerto (1940) for the Los Angeles Philharmonic, notes that "Barber's romantic sensibility permeates his only concerto for violin. It was originally commissioned in 1939 by soap magnate Samuel Fels for his adopted son, Iso Briselli. The dedicatee, however, complained that the work was overbalanced: too much lyricism and not enough virtuosity. When Barber added a breakneck third movement, the complaint became that the entire work lacked unity. Eventually Barber revised it further and it was premiered by Albert Spalding and the Philadelphia Orchestra under Eugene Ormandy in 1941". Regarding the work's final movement critic Nathan Broder writes, "Here an almost willfully cultivated Mendelssohnian simplicity is suddenly interrupted by a presto perpetuum mobile full of irregular rhythms and quite un-Mendelssohnian dissonances. It is as if the composer had suddenly lost patience with certain self-imposed stylistic restrictions". Watch violinist Anne Akiko Meyers' performance of this "un-Mendelssohnian" finale from Barber's Violin Concerto . . . one of this week's FEATURED NEW MUSIC VIDEOS.

Elliott Carter is, according to Aaron Copland "one of America's most distinguished creative artists in any field." Carter was initially encouraged to become a composer by Charles Ives who had sold insurance to his parents, later going on to study at Harvard with Walter Piston and in Paris with Nadia Boulanger. With his explorations into tempo relationships and texture, Carter's consistently innovative and dynamic output of works is unmistakably American. Sometimes, in works such as the String Quartet No. 1, it is reminiscent of the vastness of the American landscapes; at other times, for example in the Concerto for Orchestra, his complex counterpoint conjures up the dense and hectic environment of the big cities. His intricate, mercurial work often mirrors human interactions and relationships. Hear and see Elliott Carter talk about his life and his music . . . as this week's COMPOSER PORTRAIT.

Zbynek Mateju's ballet Ibbur, or a Prague Mystery (2005), with choreography by Petr Zuska, is based on motifs from Gustav Meyrink's novel Golem. Its creators Daniel Wiesner, Petr Zuska and Elia Cmiral have shaped a story that strides the boundary between dream and reality, mythical vision and legend, and mirrors the fragile world of a human being's psychic balance. On the level of dance art, this production represents an effort to express the original theme of the novel using a contemporary choreographic 'language' and expand the artistic experience for our audience to include new staging procedures and performance techniques. See an excerpt from Ibbur featuring The National Theatre Ballet, Prague . . . this week's DANSES PYTHEUSES.

George Crumb writes of his Vox Balaenae (Voice of the Whale) (1971), "the work was inspired by the singing of the humpback whale, a tape recording of which I had heard two or three years previously. Each of the three performers (flute, cello and piano - all amplified) is required to wear a black half-mask (or visor-mask). The masks, by effacing the sense of human projection, are intended to represent, symbolically, the powerful impersonal forces of nature, i.e. nature dehumanized. Watch a performance of the first part of Crumb's Vox Balaenae (1971) by Pendulum New Music . . . this week's FROM THE PYTHEAS ARCHIVES.

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