Walter Piston was a leading light among those mid-twentieth century American composers who opted to explore traditional musical forms and language. Although he was perhaps better known as a teacher and the author of a widely used book on harmony than as a composer, Piston's music displays superb craftsmanship within his selected neo-Classic-Romantic idiom. Piston wrote his Piano Quintet in 1949 on commission from the University of Michigan. The sense of elegance and calm that opens the work seems to flow from the French roots of the composer's studies with Nadia Boulanger; indeed, the spirit of Piston's work at times recalls the chamber music of Gabriel Faure. His treatment of his thematic material is more a matter of textural variation rather than formal development; the music is by turns flowing, staccato, and stormy, the piano taking a concerto-like solo role throughout. In the finale, a jittery syncopated rhythm creates a jazz-like atmosphere, interrupted by a contrasting central section [our thanks on this note to the AllMusicGuide]. Watch a performance of Piston's Piano Quintet played by pianist Leonid Treer and the Miami String Quartet . . . one of this week's FEATURED NEW MUSIC VIDEOS.

During the second half of the 20th century Manuel Enríquez was the predominant personality on the Mexican musical scene, not only as a composer, but also as an administrator, teacher, diffuser and active member of the most prestigious cultural institutions in the country. His dynamic presence, and abundant musical activity for three decades, made him a  pillar in Mexican music. He received a Guggenheim Fellowship in 1971, and went to the Center of Electronic Music at Columbia University to experiment with Electronics and to study the new resources afforded by contemporary technology. He considered electronics to be just another tool for the contemporary composer. And because of his desire to keep up with new tendencies in composition, he attended the renowned international courses of Darmstadt where he made contacts with the great European avant-garde composers: Berio, Xenakis, Stockhausen, Penderecki and Ligeti. Between 1975 and 1977, Enríquez lived in Paris, commissioned by the Mexican government to promote Mexican music in Europe. He gave recitals (he was also a renowned violinist) in Vienna, Paris, Bonn, Warsaw, Bourges, etc. This intense activity also included lecturers on new music in Mexico and helped to make known Mexican composers in Europe. In many ways Enríquez was a pioneer in the field of new execution techniques and in specializing in contemporary repertoire. Yet his most important field remained composition. Heir to the school of Bernal Jimenez, he quickly broached new directions that included poly-tonality, dodecaphonism, alleatoric and electronic music. His extensive catalogue of nearly 150 works, includes all genres of instruments, sporadic encounters with vocal music, electroacoustic music, and music with purely electronic sounds and multimedia. Listen to Manuel Enríquez's Viols (1971) . . . it's our SOUND ART for the week.

Concert musician (oboe and English horn), piano accompanist and composer Ayser Vançin is passionate about poetry and literature, finding inspiration from the poet-humanists. Her deep embrace of words and notes is a bridge between East and Occident. Among her compositions are works for ensembles including winds, with or without piano. Her latest works for musical theater include: Nuage Amoureux (Cloud of Love), D'Exil en Exil (Of Exile in Exile) [on text and emotive poems of Nazim Hikmet], Regard Noir, Langue de Feu (Black Gaze, Tongue of Fire) [on text of Senghor], La Rencontre Aragon-Hikmet (The Aragon-Hikmet Meeting) [on texts of these writers], Voyage Poetico-Musical en Orient Express: Paris-Istanbul (A Poetic-Musical Voyage on the Orient Express: Paris-Istanbul) [show route, literature and music, a bridge between France and Turkey], Chants de la Vigne (Songs of the Vine) [an intoxicating spectacle of poetry and music bacchanalia around wine], Chants des Hommes (Songs of Men) [a show of words and notes about universal writers and poets] and a delicious spectacle of songs [texts from Verlaine, Aragon, Hikmet, Supervielle, Maeterlinck, Lent, Molin, Vian, Ungaretti] called Vers a Chanter, Vers Enchantes (Towards Singing, Towards the Enchanted) featuring singer Mathieu Chardet. Listen to a performance of Ayser Vançin's Les plaintes d'un Icare (2004) . . . it's one of our PYTHEAS EARFULS for the week.

Swedish composer Stefan Klaverdal is from Stockholm and studied composition with Maurice Karkoff and Hans Gefors, among others. He graduated in 2003 with a Master of Arts in composition from the Malmo Academy of Music. He is one of his generation's most active and performed composers and his music has been performed countless times in Europe and elsewhere. In recent years, his focus has been on purely vocal and instrumental pieces in combination with live electronics. A prominent and long-standing feature of Klaverdal’s work is cross-genre collaboration, especially his music for dance performances and for dance and art films. He was originally a singer, and strives to reproduce these lyrical and human qualities in his compositions. With live electronics as an active extension of his own voice, he paints acoustic-electronic landscapes from a palette of passion, drama and beauty. Listen to a performance of Stefan Klaverdal's piece for alto saxophone and computer Prayer of a King (2004) . . . it's this week's FROM THE PYTHEAS ARCHIVES.

Stefan Klaverdal is one of his generation’s most active and performed composers in Sweden and his music has been performed countless times in Europe and elsewhere. In recent years, his focus has been on purely vocal pieces and vocal and instrumental pieces in combination with live electronics. An early and frequently performed work is Fragment av en mässa (Fragment of a mass) (1999) for vocal sextet, while the much talked about scenic oratorio Judas (2003) for vocal soloists, mixed choir, organ and electronics, stands as one of his seminal creations. A prominent and long-standing feature of Klaverdal’s work is cross-genre collaboration, especially his music for dance performances and for dance and art films. His scores to the dance films Manskligt monster (Human pattern) and Insyn (Insight) earned him top honours in the multimedia category at the Bourges International Festival of Electroacoustic Music and Sonic Art in 2006 and 2008. Klavedal was originally a singer, and strives to reproduce these lyrical and human qualities in his compositions. With live electronics as an active extension of his own voice, he paints electroacoustic landscapes from a palette of passion, drama and beauty. Watch a performance of Stefan Klaverdal's  eyes like a flame of fire (2009) with soprano recorder player Susanna Borsch . . . one of this week's FEATURED NEW MUSIC VIDEOS.

Choreographer Jiri Kylian’s Memoires d’Oubliettes (2009) was a fitting inclusion in Nederlands Dans Theater’s 50th Anniversary Tour, concluding Kylian reign as resident choreographer, with pieces that offer echoes of nostalgia yet retains all the freshness and relevance of the magnificent Nederlands Dans Theater company. In Memoires d’Oubliettes the dancers explore a shadowy, empty terrain, at times moving as though pushing through inky waters - with a silky slowness and a spellbinding serenity - at others, shifting with an itchy, percussive desperation, their bodies scribbling urgent messages in the darkness. Kees Tjebbes interrupts the black space with pale pools of blue, evoking ocean depths with an effective lighting design, while whispering voices creep through the music (by Dirk Haubrich), adding to the edgy atmosphere. Watch an excerpt from Memoires d’Oubliettes performed by members of the Nederlands Dans Theater . . . it's our DANSES PYTHEUSES for the week.

Delvyn Case is Boston-based musician who is active as a composer, orchestral and choral conductor, and college educator. He also maintains an active career as a writer and lecturer on a variety of musical topics, from sacred music to hip-hop, and pursues numerous musical outreach projects in his home city of Quincy, Massachusetts, and beyond. He is currently Assistant Professor of Music at Wheaton College in Norton, Massachusetts, where he serves as Music Director of the Great Woods Chamber Orchestra. Formerly he served as Visiting Professor of Theory and Composition at the Longy School of Music and as an adjunct faculty member at Boston College and Northeastern University. He currently serves as Music Director of the Eastern Nazarene College Choral Union, the Quincy Bay Chamber Orchestra (a professional orchestra he founded to provide outreach and educational concerts), the Quincy Summer Singers (a community choir he founded in 2009), as pianist in the avant-garde improvisation ensemble "The Meltdown Incentive", and as composer-in-residence for Cambridge’s "Dance Currents, Inc." Listen to a performance of Delvyn Case's Tenebrae factae sunt (2000) sung by the New York Virtuoso Singers . . . it's one of our PYTHEAS EARFUL for the week.

Pianist Eve Egoyan talks about the music of Canadian composer Ann Southam in an interview with Musicworks magazine, "... there is a close connection between composing for or playing the piano and other forms of work done by hand, such as weaving, that reflect the nature of traditional women's work - repetitive, life-sustaining, requiring time and patience. But through it all, runs a thread of questioning." Musically, Ann Southam's questioning takes the form of ever-repeating musical motifs that, over time and small changes, coalesce into answers. Hear this in Southam's piano work In Retrospect (2004) . . . this week's FROM THE PYTHEAS ARCHIVES.

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.