Celebrated American composer Melinda Wagner has amassed a wide-ranging catalog of chamber and orchestral music, but she is perhaps best known for works featuring soloists with orchestra, including her Trombone Concerto commissioned by the New York Philharmonic for principal trombonist Joseph Alessi, Extremity of Sky commissioned by the Chicago Symphony for pianist Emmanuel Ax, and the Concerto for Flute, Strings and Percussion, commissioned for Paul Dunkel and the Westchester Philharmonic. The Concerto for Flute, Strings and Percussion was also the winner of the 1999 Pulitzer Prize for Music. Melinda Wagner's Four Songs (2004) are inspired by the poetry of Robert Desnos, Denise Levertov and Emily Dickinson. Watch soprano Haleh Abghari and the Monadnock Music ensemble perform the fourth song in Wagner's in set, Safe in Their Alabaster Chambers . . . one of this week's FEATURED NEW MUSIC VIDEOS.

Light is Calling (2004) is a short film by film maker Bill Morrison, "constructed" on the music of Michael Gordon. Gordon is one of the founding members of the Bang on a Can ensemble, who, for over a decade, have concerned themselves with injecting the vitality and relevance of popular forms into the world of modern art music. And if you have heard of Bill Morrison it is probably in relation to his feature film Decasia: The State of Decay (2002), and his process of taking pre-existing footage from films which have been largely lost to the natural process of nitrate deterioration, and reconstituting them as artifacts for a new artistic product. Light is Calling continues that concept, using images from the 1926 film The Bells set to the music of Michael Gordon. Here's how IMDb describes it: "A scene from The Bells (1926) is optically reprinted and edited to Michael Gordon's seven minute composition. It is a meditation on the fleeting nature of life and love, as seen through the roiling emulsion of an film". Watch Light is Calling (2004) . . . it's our PYTHEAS SIGHTING.

Gyorgy Ligeti began his development as a composer using serial techniques. By 1961, Ligeti began using textural (sound, sonority or color) techniques, often resulting in music which is completely divisi, i.e. one part for each performer. His most famous work in this style is Atmospheres, an orchestral composition written on 87 staves.  Ligeti's Lux Aeterna (1966) is a study in vocal clusters and choral color - an expansion of the techniques he first used in a much earlier work Apparitions. In Lux Aeterna the text is divided into four sections which correspond to the four thoughts comprising the traditional Latin Requiem text: (1) Light Eternal shine on them, Lord; (2) Together with your Saints in Eternity; (3) Grant them rest eternal, for you are holy, Lord; and (4) Let light perpetual shine on them. The work is scored for a 16-part vocal ensemble. Both Lux Aeterna and Atmospheres were used in the soundtrack of Stanley Kubrick’s epochal film 2001: A Space Odyssey (Robert L. Edwards). Listen to a performance of Ligeti's  Lux Aeterna . . . one of this week's PYTHEAS EARFULS.

Boston based composer Andrew List is a graduate of New England Conservatory of Music, and he received his doctorate in music composition from Boston University. He has enjoyed numerous commissions and performances from ensembles and solists in the United States and Europe, including The Boston Classical Orchestra, Zodiac Trio, Alea III, The Esterhazy Quartet, Interensemble (Padova Italy), The Kalistos Chamber Orchestra, North-South Consonance, The Metamorphosen Chamber Orchestra, Duo Diorama, Winston Choi (pianist), Emmanuel Feldman (cellist) and soprano Lisa Saffer. List was the first prize winner of the Renegade Ensemble’s composition competition and a finalist in the Alea III International Composition Competition and the 2008 Massachusetts Cultural Council Artist Fellowship. He has had residencies at the MacDowell Colony, Yaddo, The Atlantic Center for the Arts, The Aspen Music Festival, La Cite Internationale des Arts in Paris and The Visby Centre for Composers in Sweden. In 2001 he was awarded a distinguished artist-in-residence grant, sponsored by Amsterdams Fonds voor de Kunst, and the city of Amsterdam. During his eight-month residency in Amsterdam he presented four concerts of his music and that of other American composers. He was also invited to present a concert at the American Embassy in The Hague, and gave lectures and workshops at major music conservatories in the area. He is the first American and the first composer to be awarded this prestigious residency. Watch a performance of Andrew List's Mystical Journey (2000) by pianists Manon Hutton-DeWys and Evi Jundt . . . this week's FROM THE PYTHEAS ARCHIVES.

The Ground Beneath Her Feet (2007) is a full-length work for orchestra (including a rock trio), singers and narrator by composer Victoria Borisova-Ollas with a libretto by Edward Kemp based on the novel by Salman Rushdie. The work features a film directed by Mike Figgis. The attraction of the novel for this treatment lies in its combination of central action, linguistic and geographical colour and underlying mythic elements. The fact that many of the earliest operas and oratorios dealt with the Orpheus myth makes this millennial re-imagining a particularly attractive source for a contemporary engagement with the form. Check out a performance of this unique work . . . one of this week's FEATURED NEW MUSIC VIDEOS.

Hans Zimmer is a composer and keyboard synthesizer player who made popular music history then became one of the most successful film score composers. Raised and educated mainly in England, he has no formal musical education; he says the most he ever got was about "two weeks of piano lessons." Nevertheless, he took an early interest in electronic musical synthesizers in the 1970s, when these were large, bulky analog devices programmed usually by means of patch cords and individual oscillator settings. He found work writing tunes and electronically scoring music for television commercials and, still in his early twenties, joined two British musicians named Trevor Horn and Geoff Downes to form a rock group called The Buggles. They produced a world-wide hit called Video Killed the Radio Star, which made music history as the first piece ever broadcast on America's music network MTV. Zimmer became interested in film music, mostly through the influence of Italian composer Ennio Morricone, but it was a meeting with another film composer, Stanley Meyers, that led Zimmer into scoring for films and into a style using classical and electronic techniques. He has scored such well known films as My Beautiful Laundrette, Rain Man, Driving Miss Daisy, Black Rain, Days of Thunder, Thelma and Louise, Crimson Tide, and two of the Pirates of the Caribbean films. Zimmer's best known work is the score to The Lion King, Disney's most popular animated film, which won the Academy Award. Hear Has Zimmer talks about his music . . . our COMPOSER PORTRAIT for the week.

If you want to know what contemporary ballet looks like check The Wheeldon Company’s Polyphonia (2001). That sense of modernity — the feeling that you are watching dancers of today in works of today — is what Christopher Wheeldon hopes to offer audiences. Polyphonia, set to piano pieces by Gyorgy Ligeti, delivers just such modernity. From its opening moments, when four couples move separately with spiky intensity to the thorny rhythmic thickets of Ligeti’s Désordre, you can see why: Mr. Wheeldon mirrors the sense of simultaneous chaos and order in the music, creating a thrilling what-will-happen-next? excitement . . . check this all out at our current DANSES PYTHEUSES.

Alberto Ginastera was among the most prolific and successful composers to emerge from Latin America. His music is heavily, though not universally, peppered with folk influence. His abundance of compositions for the cello is due in no small part to his second marriage to cellist Aurora Natola, who was instrumental in the composition or revision of nearly all of Ginastera's output for her instrument. Check out a performance of his delightful Pampeana No. 2 (1950) . . . this week's FROM THE PYTHEAS ARCHIVES.

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

From Paula at Sequenza21: "Ge Gan-ru's Fall of Baghdad (String Qt No.5) (2005) is at once a tribute to George Crumb’s Black Angels for electric string quartet (1970) and an expression of the composer’s own feelings about the war in Iraq. Like Crumb’s work before it, the music comprises three long sections divided into thirteen shorter ones. 'Hair-raising squeals' produced by 'applying pressure to the strings behind the bridge to create a scraping sound of indefinite pitch' open the work. In this quartet, Ge uses extended techniques neither as cultural relics nor as suggestions of ethereal spirits, as he has in other works. Instead, he uses his unique musical language to symbolize the devastation and despair associated with war. Ge employs microtonal inflections to suggest Middle Eastern music (which shares some of its idioms with the music of his native country China) and also makes use of glissandi and distorted sound to create "hellish" effects; playing col legno (striking the strings with the wooden part of the bow) both in front of and behind the bridge for the Caliph’s drum and using extreme high notes on low strings for "moaning" sounds." Hear a performance by Modern Works . . . one of this week's FEATURED NEW MUSIC VIDEOS.

György Ligeti was an adventurer in form and expression and a great visionary of contemporary music. His richly varied output takes a special position in its musical quality and uncompromising individuality. Ligeti moved far away from aesthetic trends and methods all his life. He was characterized by fresh and unorthodox ideas, any form of dogmatism was foreign to his nature, his entire oeuvre is marked by radical turning points. Admired and hugely influential in the profession, the sensual accessibility of his music has won the hearts of audiences everywheres ... hear him talk about his life and music - our current COMPOSER PORTRAIT.

Sarah Horick, a native of Charleston, SC, is currently a doctoral student in composition at Catholic University, having earned an M.M. in Music Composition and an M.A. in Music Theory from Florida State University. Her primary composition teachers have included Ladislav Kubik, Mark Wingate, Mark Kilstofte, and private study with Christopher Theofanidis. Horick’s works have been performed in the United States, Canada and Europe. Have a listen to a work by this up and coming composer, her Equipoise (2006) for flute and vibraphone - this week's PYTHEAS EARFUL.

Once Leos Janácek found his compositional voice (quite late in life by any standard) he explored musical territory uniquely his own. His Concertino for Piano (1925) is no exception. Here the piano is joined by a small ensemble of 2 violins, viola, clarinet, horn and bassoon, with the horn taking a prominent role in the first movement's musical conversation. Watch a wonderful performance by pianist Martha Argerich ... FROM THE PYTHEAS ARCHIVES.

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

From the folks over at Bad Assembly: "György Ligeti composed Artikulation in 1958 and recorded it at the Studio of Electronic Music of the West German Radio in Cologne. The piece predates the modern analog synthesizers of the late 60’s and early 70’s – the sound sources are a combination of generated sound and tape manipulation. When you hear it you can’t help but think of R2D2, and yet Artikulation was written 20 years before Star Wars was released. Twelve years after Ligeti recorded the piece, Rainer Wehinger created an "aural score" for it. The liner notes from Ligeti's score provide an explanation for what’s going on in the music: "The piece is called Artikulation because in this sense an artificial language is articulated: question and answer, high and low voices, polyglot speaking and interruptions, impulsive outbreaks and humor, charring and whispering". To realize this in a score, Wehinger used a timeline measured in seconds, and used shapes and colors instead of notes on a staff. He used dots for impulses and combs for noise. He used different colors to represent variations in timbre and pitch". Have a look and listen - György Ligeti's Artikulation (1958) with "aural score" by Rainer Wehinger . . . one of this week's FEATURED NEW MUSIC VIDEOS.

"It's impossible to discuss twentieth-century music without touching upon Stravinsky's best-known work (Le Sacre du Printemps/The Rite of Spring - 1913) to some extent. Indeed, the twentieth century's long list of masterpieces would have been inconceivable if not for this forty-minute work that ruffled many feathers at its debut". (Paul-John Ramos: Stravinsky's Le Sacre at 90, Classical Net). Watch a performance choreographed in 1959 by the great Maurice Béjart ... our current DANSES PYTHEUSES.

Check out what Phil Muse of Sequenza21 is talking about ... "The scintillating performance by the Seattle Symphony Orchestra under Gerard Schwarz - a longtime champion of contemporary music - of four works by Bright Sheng shows clearly why this composer is a great favorite among present-day musicians. He has a penchant for treating traditional instruments of the orchestra in non-traditional ways that today’s generation of young musicians find stimulating and challenging. And his rhythmic vocabulary will keep everyone (the audience included) on their toes" ... this week's FEATURED RECORDING. Then read Vivien Schweitzer's (The New York Times) article about Bright Sheng's life and works - Intrepid Journey Leads to Ambitious Works - our FEATURED THOUGHT & IDEA this week at Pytheas.

And what more can be said about the most controversial piece of contemporary music there is - John Cage's 4' 33" (1952). I think it's just best to have a listen with a friend and speak your mind ... experience it at FROM THE PYTHEAS ARCHIVES.

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