Join the Portland Chamber Music Festival for their final concert of the 2011 season, featuring Osvaldo Golijov's "Lullaby and Doina" and  Schubert's great masterpiece, the Octet in F major for Clarinet, Bassoon, French Horn, and Strings. Held at the Abromson Center at the University of Southern Maine, The festival's five-concert series has been broadcast on National Public Radio and WGBH in Boston and has been awarded two grants from the Aaron Copland Fund for Music. Join in the excitement this Saturday, August 20th at 8pm. Check it all out at the Portland Chamber Music Festival's website  http://www.pcmf.org/

Stephen Cohn is internationally recognized for his music for the concert stage, as well as his scores for feature films and television. His concert works have been performed and recorded by the world's finest chamber music ensembles in the United States and Europe, such as the Kansas City Symphony, Arditti Quartet, the City of Prague Philharmonic Orchestra and the Chroma String Quartet. He has been Composer-in-Residence at The International Encounters of Catalonia in the south of France, and his commissions have been performed in New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, Brussels, France, and Prague. He has received an Emmy Award for "Outstanding Achievement in Music", and his scores have been part of many award winning productions featuring such stars as Lily Tomlin, Joanne Woodward, Kathleen Quinlan, Colleen Dewhurst, William Shatner and Wallace Shawn. Watch the premiere performance of Stephen Cohn's chamber piece "Sea Change" (2011) . . . one of this week's FEATURED NEW MUSIC VIDEOS.

Insyn (Insight) is a dancefilm by choreographer Klara Elenius and composer Stefan Klaverdal where choreography and music creates a unique synergy, inspired by the Nordic mentality. The basic concept of the film is to create rifts in our perception of what is real and what is not. Do the characters in the film really live as we do, or are they caught in some kind of flux between dream and reality? The main characters live in a very still and unmoving house. They seem to have a somewhat strict relationship to each other. Everything just about normal, but everywhere seem to hold some abstract components that shifts the perception and creates a reality of its own. The music reflects on the quasi-normal view of reality using vocal samples somewhat transformed, gliding between recognizable patterns and more abstract sonic landscapes. The music was the winner in the 35th IMEB composition for electroacoustic music in Bourges 2008. The movie has also been awarded as a whole in the international competitions for short films in 2007 Cozmic Zoom Copenhagen (2 prizes) Cinedans Amsterdam Dancescreen the Haague. Watch the Elenius/Klaverdal dancefilm "Insyn" . . . it's our DANSES PYTHEUSES for the week.

Todd Goodman has been described as "one of America's promising young composers." Born in Bedford, Penn., he received his Bachelor of Music degree in composition at the University of Colorado at Boulder and his Masters of Music degree in composition at Duquesne University in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. His works have been played by principle members of the Chicago, Pittsburgh, Boston, Singapore and Seattle Symphonies. Goodman has received commissions from a wide variety of players and ensembles across the United States. With many performances in the United States his works have also been performed in Canada, Mexico, Europe and Asia. Goodman currently serves as the resident composer for the Lincoln Park Performing Arts Center. He feels that the audience connection and participation in his music is vital to its success. He wants people to leave a concert feeling that they experienced a work rather than just observing. Goodman has received grants from the National Endowment for the Arts for his work with the Altoona Symphony Orchestra, the American Music Center, as well as grants from the University of Colorado Entrepreneurship Center. Goodman is the founder and artistic director of the innovative contemporary art ensemble, Ensemble Immersion, which combines music, dance, literature, film, visual arts, drama, set design, and creative audience interaction to create artistic experiences unlike any other. Listen to a performance of Todd Goodman's "River of Sorrows" (2006) with the Duquesne University Wind Ensemble  . . . it's one of our PYTHEAS EARFULS for the week.

Stefan Weisman was born and raised in New Jersey, and now lives in Hell's Kitchen, New York City. Anthony Tommasini (New York Times) has called his music "personal, moody and skillfully wrought." His works include chamber, orchestral and choral pieces, as well as music for theater, video and dance. He is a recipient of a 2006 Bang on a Can "People’s Commission." Among his other commissions are works for Sequitur, the Minimum Security Composers Collective, the Empire City Men's Chorus with the Cosmopolitan Symphony Orchestra, the Battell Chapel Choir, and the Oregon Bach Festival Composers’ Symposium, which commissioned a piece in honor of George Crumb on the occasion of his 75th birthday. Other groups who have performed his work include the Miro String Quartet, So Percussion, the Locrian Chamber Players, the New Millennium Ensemble, the Third Angle Ensemble, the Yesaroun' Duo, the Da Capo Chamber Players, Luna Nova, pianist Lisa Moore, flautist Patti Monson, mezzo-soprano Hai-Ting Chinn, male soprano Anthony Roth Costanzo, Newspeak, the NOW Ensemble, the Woodstock Chamber Orchestra, the Hudson Valley Philharmonic and the New Jersey Symphony. He is a recipient of awards from Meet the Composer, SCI, ASCAP, and the American Music Center. Listen to a Stefan Weisman's cello and percussion piece SuperSoft (2007) . . . this week's FROM THE PYTHEAS ARCHIVES.

Lawrence Dillon has produced an extensive body of work, characterized by a keen sensitivity to color, a mastery of form, and what the Louisville Courier-Journal has called a "compelling, innate soulfulness." Increasingly in demand, Dillon has received commissions in the past year from the Emerson String Quartet, the Ravinia Festival, the Cassatt String Quartet, the Mansfield Symphony, the Boise Philharmonic, the Salt Lake City Symphony, the Daedalus String Quartet, the University of Utah and the Idyllwild Symphony Orchestra. Although he lost 50% of his hearing in a childhood illness, he began composing as soon as he started piano lessons at the age of seven. In 1985, he became the youngest composer to earn a doctorate at The Juilliard School, and was shortly thereafter appointed to the Juilliard faculty. Dillon is now Composer in Residence at the University of North Carolina School of the Arts, where he has served as Music Director of the Contemporary Ensemble, Assistant Dean of Performance, and Interim Dean of the School of Music. Watch a performance of his Bacchus Chaconne (1991) performed by violinist Danielle Belen and violist Juan Miguel Hernandez . . . one of this week's FEATURED NEW MUSIC VIDEOS.

Stephen Cohn's concert works have been performed and recorded by the world's finest orchestras and chamber music ensembles, including the Arditti String Quartet, the Kansas City Symphony, the Prague Philharmonic and the Chroma String Quartet. He has been Composer-in-Residence at The International Encounters of Catalonia in France and has been commissioned to compose new works which have been performed in Los Angeles, New York, Chicago, Brussels, Ceret, France, and Prague. He has received an Emmy Award for "Outstanding Achievement in Music", and his scores have been part of many award winning productions and films featuring such stars as Lily Tomlin, Joanne Woodward, Kathleen Quinlan, Colleen Dewhurst, William Shatner, and Wallace Shawn. He has also received a Parents' Choice Gold Award for his CD release, "Two Together, An American Folk Music Suite". Watch and listen to Stephen Cohn talk about his life and his music in an interview with Inner World View . . . this week's COMPOSER PORTRAIT.

Greg Bartholomew's music has been performed across the United States, Canada, Europe and Australia. His works have been preformed by the the Ars Brunensis Chorus, The Esoterics, the William & Mary Choir, the American University Chamber Singers, the Third Angle ensemble, the odeonquartet and the Alaska Brass of the United States Air Force Band of the Pacific. According to James R. Maclean, "Greg Bartholomew understands the nature of instruments . . . and manages to capture the complexity of the setting in a way that is fresh, portraying a sense of sorrow and a soaring sense of hope that is somehow fitting and certainly fulfilling." His 2008 work Conversation in Orange & Brown is a duet scored for either tuba & horn/tuba & euphonium/Two horns/or cello & double bass. It has been described as a "work exploring a range of colors and textures. The contrasting musical ideas are effective, and the use of solos, question and answer, and unified rhythms help to maintain interest for players and audiences alike." Listen to Greg Bartholomew's Conversation in Orange & Brown . . . one of our PYTHEAS EARFULS this week.

Hawaii (1966) is an epic saga based on James A. Michener's over 1,000-page novel of the same name. George Roy Hill's lavish 189-minute production stars Julie Andrews, Max Von Sydow, Richard Harris and Gene Hackman in a sweeping cinematic telling of Michener's sprawling, multi-generational adventure. Von Sydow plays Abner Hale, a Yale student who, on the day after receiving his diploma (in 1819), hears Hawaiian Keoki Kanakoa (Manu Tupau) speak to a group of fellow brothers who have been studying for their ministries at the University. Kanakoa makes a plea for the group to supply missionaries to bring Christianity to the islands and save the souls of his people. When Abner and his friend John Whipple (Hackman) later volunteer themselves for such service, Hale learns that he must first find a wife before he can be accepted into the program. The University's Reverend Thorn arranges for Abner to meet his sister's daughter. The 22-year-old girl, Jerusha Bromley (Andrews), is thusly courted and married in short order and Abner Hale, now accompanied by his new, young wife soon leaves Boston for the remote, mystical, almost mythical, land of Hawaii. To score his immense new production, Hill called on Elmer Bernstein, who had just scored his The World of Henry Orient, and who would go on to score the director's following next picture, Thoroughly Modern Millie, which would earn the composer an Academy Award. Bernstein's vast musical panorama for Hawaii, displays a near ecstatic degree of energy and enthusiasm. It's a jubilant and rapturous work which makes frequent visits to Bernstein's well of melodic invention. The score is, without question, one of the composer's most, magnificent opuses. Watch the opening of this historic saga, Hawaii . . . this week's FROM THE PYTHEAS ARCHIVES.

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

Joseph Stevenson at the All Music Guide writes about Nino Rota's Trombone Concerto (1966), "With his lyrical gift, dramatic flair, and grasp of the tragic and comic (often at the same time), Nino Rota in an earlier age could have become a leading opera composer. He did write some excellent operas, but gained his greatest fame and his finest opportunities for theatrical expression as the favored composer of film director Federico Fellini. His 1966 Trombone Concerto exhibits one of the most amazing characteristics of Rota's music: it is such attractive and easy-to-listen-to music that the listener is apt to mistake it for a conventional work of no great depth. But a little more attention reveals a subtle depth, with hidden feelings and a little irony, particularly in the way some seemingly banal moments add a sense of the pressures of modern life." Watch a performance of the first movement of Rota's Trombone Concerto by trombonist Domingo Pagliuca and Orquesta Sinfonica de Venezuelar . . . it's one of this week's FEATURED NEW MUSIC VIDEOS.

Bonjour Tristesse (Hello Sadness) is a 1958 film directed by Otto Preminger and based on a novel by Françoise Sagan. It stars David Niven and Jean Seberg as a playboy father and his somewhat meddlesome teenage daughter. Problems arise when Niven meets and falls for Deborah Kerr and Seberg attempts to break up the relationship. Almost sounds like it could be a Haley Mills Disney film, but when the novel was written in 1954 it was quite scandalous. The music for the film was composed by French composer Georges Auric. The Title Sequence for the film was designed by noted graphic designer Saul Bass. For those of you who have never heard of Saul Bass, this week we bring you his opening of Bonjour Tristesse . . . though you've probably seen his work in such classic films as The Man with the Golden Arm (1955), Vertigo (1958), Anatomy of a Murder (1958), North by Northwest (1959), Psycho (1960), West Side Story (1961), Cape Fear (1991) and Catch Me If You Can Opening (2002), among many others . . . this week's PYTHEAS SIGHTING.

Stephen Cohn is internationally recognized for his music for the concert stage, as well as his scores for feature films and television. His concert works have been performed and recorded by the world's finest chamber music ensembles in the United States and Europe, such as the Kansas City Symphony, Arditti Quartet, the City of Prague Philharmonic Orchestra and the Chroma String Quartet. He has been Composer-in-Residence at The International Encounters of Catalonia in the south of France, and his commissions have been performed in New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, Brussels, France, and Prague. He has received an Emmy Award for "Outstanding Achievement in Music", and his scores have been part of many award winning productions featuring such stars as Lily Tomlin, Joanne Woodward, Kathleen Quinlan, Colleen Dewhurst, William Shatner and Wallace Shawn. Listen to a performance of Stephen Cohn's Essay for Guitar written in 2008 . . . one of our PYTHEAS EARFULS this week.

Arvo Pärt began a "prismatic approach to musical construction" in his Für Elina (1976), a piece for solo piano which announced - quietly, thoughtfully, beautifully - the arrival of his "tintinnabuli style". Written originally as a gift for a young Estonian girl on her own in London, the work's modest means give little hint of the soul-searching that preceded its composition. About Für Elina, Pärt has said, "This was the first piece that was on a new plateau. It was here that I discovered the triad series, which I made my simple little guiding rule." Composition, for Pärt, had become a process of self-discovery, and his first requirement was clarity. (from Musicolog.com) - Watch, and bask in, a performance of Pärt's Für Elina . . . this week's FROM THE PYTHEAS ARCHIVES.

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