Based on historical fact, Tan Dun's opera Tea: A Mirror of Soul (2002) sketches the tale of Seikyo, a prince-cum-monk. By suffering "bitter love," Seikyo has transcended a cruel destiny to achieve an austere peace, the meaning of which he teaches through tea rituals. But that is only half the story. For Seikyo's bitter love also involves a princess, an erotic passion so tainted by jealousy that it ends in death, shamanistic rituals, and fierce struggles over an ancient book of wisdom. Combining the lyricism of Italianate opera, lush Western orchestration, a male "Greek chorus," gamelan-like percussion, and the organic sounds of nature - water, paper, and stones - Tea brings an ancient tale to the 21st century. Watch soprano Nancy Allen Lundy sing  Death of Lan, an excerpt from Tan Dun's Tea: A Mirror of Soul  . . . it's one of our NEW MUSIC VIDEOS for the week.

Composer Lance Hulme's music "reflects the ambience and musical approach of the North American musical tradition. Compositional eclecticism, a conscience, playful and uninhibited attitude with tradition and the crossover between ‘serious’ and vernacular music. All these elements are to be found as well as the most advanced structural and aural techniques". His music has received many international awards and commissions, with performances in Europe, Asia, South America and the United States. Hulme studied at Yale University, the Eastman School of Music and the Universität für Musik in Vienna, Austria. Listen to Lance Hulme's Ghost Dialogues (1980) for tenor saxophone and trumpet . . . one of our PYTHEAS EARFULS for the week.

Until 1986 when he left Romania, Corneliu Dan Georgescu was considered a favorite minimalist composer, stubbornly re-inventing the intimate mechanisms of traditional Romanian folklore in a haven of mute aesthetic theories and (in his early music) grievous public hearings. Then, after moving to Germany, rumors about the composer and his theoretical concerns diminished and faded, just as it was becoming more difficult for him to mount such undertakings, or continue his émigré creations without the personal contact of musicians from his native land. Georgescu's settling in Berlin marked the continuation and completion of compositional cycles and sets started decades ago in Bucharest: Jocuri (Games), Transylvanian antemporale Studies, Preludes, and other contemplative models. His forays crossed the rubicon of musicological exile, without any formal schism or break, perpetuating those cherished structural themes of profound vision, based on rules and precepts concerning the essential act of creation. Georgescu's aesthetic guidelines are "based strictly on geometric symmetries and principles of proportion" or "the idea that anecdotal art that entertains the audience, especially in association with the 'standardized academic vanguard', is profoundly foreign" [notes thanks to Liviu Dănceanu]. Listen to a sampling of Corneliu Dan Georgescu's sound world with his electroacoustic piece Resonanzen (1999) . . . one of our SOUND ART for the week.

. . . and check out Mark-Anthony Turnage's  Hidden Love Song (2005) . . . a work co-commissioned by the London Philharmonic Orchestra, with generous support from the South Bank Centre and in association with the Risør Festival of Chamber Music and Staatsorchester Rheinische Philharmonie. The soprano saxophone is an instrument closely associated with Turnage's music, and the love song of the title is heard as a melody in the solo part, with occasional contributions from orchestral soloists. The chamber orchestra provides supporting accompaniment for much of the piece, coloured distinctively with high and low contrasts (for instance with the woodwind line-up of pairs of flute, cor Anglais and bass clarinet), but a number of characteristic violent interruptions attempt to disrupt the lyrical line. The ‘hidden’ aspect of the title comes through the work’s ‘secret’ composition as a gift for Turnage's fiancée Gabriella Swallow, the use of musical cryptograms of her name, and allusions to a W.H Auden Lullaby (‘Lay your sleeping head, my love…’). 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.