Stephen Eddins writes (at AllMusic.com), "Latvian composer Pēteris Vasks, who for much of his career worked under the constraints of the Soviet system, sees composition as a political act and hopes that his music might be a vehicle for national healing. He has written, 'I have always dreamed that my music would be heard in the places where unhappy people are gathered.' Much of Vasks' work is soulfully meditative, as are most of the movements of his string quartets. Many have the mournful tone and the static sense of time being suspended that is characteristic of the Eastern European mysticism of composers like Pärt and Górecki. The feeling of time being displaced or being cyclical is most striking in the first movement of the Second Quartet, which begins almost exactly like the last movement of the Third Quartet (1995), with a distinctive, hushed, almost pitchless murmuring in the upper strings." Watch a performance of the last movement of Vasks' String Quartet No. 3 performed by the Navarra String Quartet . . . one of this week's FEATURED NEW MUSIC VIDEOS.

The film world recently morned the loss of one of its greatest composers, John Barry, who died of a heart attack on January 30, 2011, at his home in Oyster Bay, Long Island, New York. As Jon Burlingame of FilmMusicSociety.com put it, "John Barry was one of a kind. He invented a new style of action-adventure music for the movies — that much is certain — but he was equally adept at quiet dramas, historical epics and contemporary thrillers. And what's more, he could write music appropriate to all of these kinds of movies and still sound like nobody else. Barry's death marks the passing of an era. Yes, some of our musical icons from the 1960s, '70s and '80s are still around, still writing, still conducting... but the loss of John Barry is keenly felt simply because there was no one quite like him." Some of his most famous film scores include From Russia With Love, Goldfinger, Born Free, and Dances With Wolves. Watch the opening of another John Barry classic, Out of Africa (1985), which stars Meryl Streep and Robert Redford . . . this week's PYTHEAS SIGHTING.

Composer Michael Colgrass' Winds of Nagual for wind ensemble draws its programmatic inspiration from the writings of Carlos Castaneda who has become somewhat of a cult icon. Castaneda's writings center on his work for fourteen years in Mesoamerican shamanism with Don Juan Matus. According to the composer, "[Although] the score is laced with programmatic indications, the listener need not have read Castaneda's books to enjoy the work, and I don't expect anyone to follow any exact scenario. My object is to capture the mood and atmosphere created by the books and to convey a feeling of the relationship that develops as a man of ancient wisdom tries to cultivate heart in an analytical young man of the technological age." Hear a performance of the first section of Winds of Nagual (1985), entitled The Desert . . . one of our PYTHEAS EARFULS this week.

Shulamit Ran, winner of the 1991 Pulitzer Prize in composition, has been awarded most major honors given to composers in the U.S., including two fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation, grants and commissions from the Koussevitzky Foundation, the National Endowment for the Arts, the Fromm Music Foundation, Chamber Music America, the American Academy and Institute for Arts and Letters, first prize in the Kennedy Center-Friedheim Awards competition for orchestral music, and many more. According to the Chicago Tribune, "Ran has never forgotten that a vital essence of composition is communication." This sort of reaction is by no means unusual. Around the country, from Seattle to Baltimore to Houston, commentary on her music typically runs thus: "gloriously human," and "compelling not only for its white-hot emotional content but for its intelligence and compositional clarity; Ran is a magnificent composer." Watch a performance of the second movement of Ran's Sonatina for 2 Flutes (1961) by the Blithe Duo . . . this week's FROM THE PYTHEAS ARCHIVES.

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

Laurie Spiegel Appalachian Grove (1974) . . . one of this week's FEATURED NEW MUSIC VIDEOS.

Tan Dun Elegy: Snow In June (1991) . . . it's our current DANSES PYTHEUSES here at Pytheas.

One World Symphony (Brooklyn, NY, USA) . . . our FEATURED ENSEMBLE for the week.

Michael Colgrass Déjà Vu (1977) . . . this week's FROM THE PYTHEAS ARCHIVES.

"In George Crumb's Solo Cello Sonata (1955) we have a good example of a work by an American composer living in freer political and stylistic circumstances than some of his European counterparts of the time, but still facing essentially the same problems of his age: the search for an individual response to the musical revolutions of the first half of the 20th century. Written during the time when Crumb was a graduate student in Berlin, the three-movement Sonata also owes a certain amount to Bartók. An opening Fantasia, making expressive use of pizzicato, is followed by a Tema pastorale con variazioni, in which a highly chromatic theme is put through its paces in three variations and a coda. The final movement is a Toccata which, after a short slow introduction, makes much use of dynamic and timbral contrasts" (Keith Potter). Watch a performance by cellist Umberto Clerici . . . one of this week's FEATURED NEW MUSIC VIDEOS.

According to Roger Knox (The WholeNote), "Percussionique (Albany Records), a disc of percussion music by American-born Canadian composer Michael S. Horwood, should attract both new music aficionados and others interested in revitalizing listening experiences. Superbly performed by the Toronto Percussion Ensemble and guests, it is beautifully recorded and presented by Albany Records. The “spine” of this chronologically presented oeuvre is a series of Pieces Percussioniques dating from 1964 to 2008. Spanning numerous and varied contemporary compositional practices, a consistent voice still emerges, refined yet playful. A percussionist himself, Horwood writes idiomatically throughout. Intricate divisions of the beat layered variously between instruments give an effect of luxuriant flourishing, without cluttering the texture. In a noisy world we forget to listen truly: try letting Percussionique’s sound world beguile you!" Check all this out, and more . . . at our current FEATURED RECORDING.

Michael Colgrass' The Schubert Birds was commissioned by the National Arts Orchestra in 1989, and is loosely based on an obscure Waltz by Franz Schubert. According to Marvin Dickau, "I am a staunch lover of contemporary music, particularly by Canadian composers. I found The Schubert Birds to be most interesting; full of mood changes, complex melodies and rhythms, along with lush chords. There is always an overtone of dissonance, sometimes more pronounced, sometimes less. From an almost ethereal start, the composition moves through many simulated bird calls interwoven with atonal melodies in fourths and fifths, all supported by the mellow lower strings. Each section has moments of prominence – wonderful mallet work from percussion, full bodied strings and tightly woven woodwinds and reeds". Hear a performance of The Schubert Birds thanks to Arts Alive and NACmusicbox . . . one of this week's PYTHEAS EARFULS.

Lou Harrison's Canticle No. 3 (1942), written in San Francisco, is one of a series of Canticles for percussion "in the ecstatic manner". Of the work, the composer wrote, "It was written at a time I was most interested in Indian and Mexican music and is composed out of a very few rhythmic and melodic germs, developed in larger sections, by continuity, overlaps, and the usual augmentation and diminution." The revised version was first performed at the University of Illinois in 1952. An All Music Guide review explores the piece vividly . . . “The ocarina, a torpedo-shaped terra cotta flute, has a pure, primeval tone that, combined with percussion, gives this score a hauntingly primitive, ritualistic feel. The five percussionists haul out tam-tam, xylophone, snare drums, bass drums, wood blocks, temple blocks, tom-toms, and maracas, as well as such exotica as teponaztli, sistrums, brake drums (both muted and suspended), metal pipes, elephant bells, cowbells, and water-buffalo bells. Amid all this -- which Harrison exploits for timbral richness, not loudness -- the guitar struggles to make an impact of its own, remaining absent or in the background until taking a slightly more prominent role at the end. The work falls into three large sections. In the first, the ocarina plays a little pentatonic dance, then retreats for what amounts to an extended percussion cadenza arising from the rhythm of the ocarina tune. The ocarina returns for the second part, now playing a very slow melody of short, repeated phrases deeply indebted to Native American music. Percussion instruments give the melody a shimmering halo, but again the ocarina disappears during a fast-tempo, gradually expanding percussion crescendo distantly based on the rhythm and pitches of the opening tune. Just as this section climaxes in a series of widely spaced crashes, the ocarina and guitar take advantage of a moment of silence to bring back the pentatonic tune from the beginning, the quiet percussion accompaniment now more threatening than before. Yet instead of exploding in a final percussive outburst, the music very gradually slows and fades away, leaving nothing but a slowly throbbing bass drum." Watch a performance of Lou Harrison's Canticle No. 3 (1942) by The YouTube Symphony Orchestra with conductor Michael Tilson Thomas . . . it's this week's FROM THE PYTHEAS ARCHIVES.

"Here, in a nutshell," Carl Nielsen wrote, "is what I demand of all art: opposing forces which meet and glow, appearing one but remaining two, embracing and caressing like rippling water over pebbles, yet never actually touching and breaking the delicate interplay." That is the spirit of his Flute Concerto of 1926. Watch a performance of this often joyous work by flutist Ulla Miilmann . . . one of this week's FEATURED NEW MUSIC VIDEOS.

Stephen Paulus is one of America’s most talented composers, having achieved notable success with performances of operas as well as works for orchestra, chorus, chamber ensembles and piano. As a composer for the stage, he has been most closely associated with the Opera Theater of St. Louis, which commissioned and premiered The Village Singer (1979), The Postman Always Rings Twice (1982, based on James M. Cain’s novel) and The Woodlanders (1985, after Thomas Hardy). He has received commissions from such noted ensembles as the New York Philharmonic, Cleveland Orchestra, Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center and the Cleveland Quartet. He was a co-founder in 1973 of the Minnesota Composers Forum, and is also a member of the Board of Directors of ASCAP and co-founder and a current Board Vice President of the American Composers Forum, the largest composer service organization in the world. Hear him talk about his life and works with Alison Young of Minnesota Public Radio . . . our current COMPOSER PORTRAIT at Pytheas.

German born Hans Zimmer has composed music for over 100 films, including such Hollywood blockbusters as the Pirates of the Caribbean series, Gladiator, The Lion King, The Dark Knight and most recently Sherlock Holmes. Notable in his work is his integration of electronic music sounds with traditional orchestral arrangements. Hear part of his score for director Ron Howard's The Da Vinci Code (2006) . . . this week's PYTHEAS SIGHTING.

According to composer Michael Colgrass, Old Churches (2000) was one of the most challenging pieces he can remember writing. His goal was to create music that was interesting, expressive and demanding, yet playable by students in the early stages of performing on their instruments and who are also unfamiliar with modern music techniques. His solution was to write a work based on Gregorian chant. The chant unfolds through call and response patterns. One instrument intones a musical idea, then the rest of the group responds by playing it back. This musical conversation continues throughout the piece. Hear a performance of Michael Colgrass' Old Churches . . . this week's FROM THE PYTHEAS ARCHIVES.

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