Ney Rosauro is recognized as one of the most original and dynamic symphonic percussionists and composers today. Born in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, he started studying percussion in 1977, receiving degrees at the Hochschule fur Musik Wurzburg (Germany) and the University of Miami, and studying composition at the Universidade de Brasilia (Brazil). As a composer he has published over 40 pieces for percussion, as well as several percussion method books. His compositions are very popular worldwide and have been recorded by internationally acclaimed artists such as Evelyn Glennie and the London Symphony Orchestra. His Concerto for Vibraphone and Orchestra (1996) is dedicated to Evelyn Glennie. The first and last movements are constructed using scales quite often found in the folk music of northeastern Brazil. The first movement represents the constant life struggle of the poor people in the dry lands of northeastern Brazil. The second movement is based on the Brazilian folk lullaby called Tutu Maramba, and depicts a child's peaceful passage to a dream-filled slumber. The last movement depicts the flight of seagulls, which was inspired by time spent by the composer at Ipanema Beach in Rio de Janeiro, while watching a breathtaking view of the sun setting over the Arpoador rock formations. Watch a performance of the third movement of Ney Rosauro's Concerto for Vibraphone and Orchestra played by Diana Melo, vibraphone, and the Orquesta Filarmónica de Bogotá Colombia, Germán Céspedes conducting . . . one of this week's FEATURED NEW MUSIC VIDEOS.

Composer Elizabeth Hoffman has lived and worked in New York City since joining the Arts and Science Faculty at New York University (NYU) in 1998, where she founded and directs the Washington Square Computer Music Studio in NYU's Department of Music. Hoffman’s musical interests center around texture, timbre, tuning, harmony at the border of noise, and spatialization. She has written electroacoustic music since the early 1990s, and recognition for her electroacoustic music has come from the Bourges International Electroacoustic Music Competition, Prix Ars Electronica competition, Seattle Arts Commission, and Jerome Foundation. Her score for Globeland (2002) came about from a commission - with video artist Ryan Dorin - for a video composition for the 2002 Sonic Circuits International Festival of Electronic Music and Art. Enjoy Globeland, a video by Ryan Dorin with music by Elizabeth Hoffman . . . it's our PYTHEAS SIGHTING for the week.

The title of Olivier Messiaen's Un vitrail et des oiseaux [Stained glass and birds], composed in 1986, invokes two of the composer's most poignant and favored images: the myriad colors of stained glass, and the endless melody of birdsong. Such an evocative title should not be seen as an arbitrary abstraction; both images correspond not only to the overall atmosphere of the piece, but also to specific components of Messiaen's compositional process. Messiaen always insisted that birds - "our little servants of immaterial joy" - were creating music in a very real way when engaging in song. As a self-trained ornithologist, Messiaen recorded and transcribed birdsongs from all around the world; a long list of these bird-borrowed motives appear in his works, many of which advertise their birdsong content in their titles. As might be expected, Un vitrail et des oiseaux relies heavily upon birdcalls, not only as melodic seeds, but also as structural points. The duality of the title can be seen and heard immediately in the structure of the work. The first section features a xylophone trio initiating a flittering series of nightingale calls. This is followed by a chorale passage, which immediately sets the image of a stained-glass church window adjacent to that of the xylophone's nightingale. The chorale texture is not just meant as a pointer to a mental image; Messiaen's harmonies are deliberately crafted to depict a spectrum of sonic hues - which Messiaen is bold enough to associate with particular visual colors. The piece poses enormous rhythmic challenges to the performers, which Messiaen addresses in his cryptic introductory note, "... the birds are more important than the tempos, and the colors are more important than the birds. More important than everything is the aspect of the invisible" [notes thanks to Jeremy Grimshaw, Rovi/AllMusicGuide]. Hear a performance of Messiaen's Un vitrail et des oiseaux . . . it's one of our PYTHEAS EARFULS for the week.

. . . also listen to Messiaen talk about the music of French composer Claude Debussy, colors in Debussy's music, and his beloved birds . . . it this week's COMPOSER PORTRAIT.

Maija Hynninen started her composition studies in 2003 at Sibelius Academy with Paavo Heininen, at the same time completing her violin studies (bachelor of music) at Oslo Academy of Music in 2004. As well as writing for acoustic instruments Hynninen has made some explorations in electro-acoustics and live-electronics in composing music for acoustic instruments and live-electronics (with Max/MSP), tape music for dancers and art installations and purely for concert performances. Her music has been broadcast by Finnish Radio (YLE), and played in concerts and festivals in Finland as well as abroad. She has received grants from the Society of Finnish Composers Sibelius Foundation, the City of Vantaa, Finnish Cultural Foundation, the Sibelius Academy and Luses. Her works have been commissioned by Yle (Finnish broadcasting company), Viitasaari Time of Music Festival, the Helsinki Chamber Choir, and Avanti! Chamber Orchestra, among others. Hear a performance of Maija Hynninen's Kaiku 2 (Echo 2) (2007) . . . it's this week's FROM THE PYTHEAS ARCHIVES.

According to composer Bright Sheng, "the first part of The Stream Flows (1990) is based on a famous Chinese folk song from the southern part of China. The freshness and richness of the tune deeply touched me when I first heard it. Since then I have used it as basic material in several of my works. Here I hope that the resemblance of the timbre and the tone quality of a female folk singer is evoked by the solo violin. The second part is a fast country dance based on a three-note motive". Watch violinist Lynn Chang and dancer Xiao Lin Fan's performance of The Stream Flows . . . one of this week's FEATURED NEW MUSIC VIDEOS.

In Glyn Pursglove's (MusicWeb International) review of Albany Record's Pure Colors (Albany 785), a collection of works by American composer Judith Lang Zaimont, Pursglove writes, "To describe Judith Lang Zaimont as an academic composer is fair and accurate, provided that one intends the epithet to function simply as a means of pointing to the fact that she has been employed in academia throughout most of her working life. It would be quite wrong, however, to use the phrase "academic composer" if, by its use, one intended any of its pejorative associations. There is nothing dry or pedantic about Zaimont's work; there is no sense that her compositions are technical exercises or that they exist merely for teaching purposes or as demonstrations of one or another theoretical concept. In fact her music . . . is various and undogmatic, inventive and readily approachable, even if it also reveals her extensive technical knowledge. This is a rewarding fifty-five minutes’ worth of music varied in instrumentation and idiom . . . [and] consistently inventive". Check out the album at Pytheas . . . our current FEATURED RECORDING.

"Art and propaganda meet to powerful effect in the 1936 film documentary The Plow That Broke the Plains. Written and directed by Pare Lorentz, it was made (in black & white) by the U.S. government and clearly intended to promote President Franklin D. Roosevelt's New Deal, a series of initiatives designed to help the country recover from the Great Depression. Yet that fact detracts not at all from the film's artistry, as the combination of Lorentz's visuals and words and composer Virgil Thomson's music is often quite genuinely transcendent" (Sam Graham/ Amazon.com). Watch the film, in its entirety . . . this week's PYTHEAS SIGHTING.

Olivier Messiaen's six piano miniatures Petites esquisses d'oiseaux (Little Sketches of Birds) from 1985 are magnificently honed sketches that are the quintessence of his particular compositional style. In the words of Messiaen, "birds are probably the greatest musicians that exist in the musical hierarchy of our planet". Hear a performance by pianist Nanae Green of La grive musicienne (The Song Thrush), the fourth of the Petites esquisses d'oiseaux . . . FROM THE PYTHEAS ARCHIVES.

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

Tōru Takemitsu's Rain Tree Sketch II (1992) is our featured New Music Video this week. Caleb Deupree at his blog Classical-Drone has some thoughts on the piece: "Takemitsu's last major piano work was Rain Tree Sketch II, a memorial for one of his great influences, the French composer Olivier Messiaen. The work was the last in a series of memorial pieces, a set which included orchestral works for composer Morton Feldman and film director Andrei Tarkovsky and solo pieces for composer Witold Lutoslawski and sculptor Isamu Noguchi. Takemitsu had returned to a 'sea of tonality' (his phrase) in the 1980s, and Rain Tree Sketch II centers on a D minor chord (but without any of the directional aspects of nineteenth-century tonality, as far as I can tell anyway). Interestingly, at important moments the D minor chord is arpeggiated and accompanied with high overtones, which sound to me like a gamelan. I am grateful for the jewels that he wrote for piano, and these are well represented on recordings."

NOISE is our FEATURED NEW MUSIC ENSEMBLE. "NOISE is an ensemble of accomplished soloists with a deep commitment to chamber music. NOISE presents concerts that are energetic and engaging as well as intellectually stimulating and technically sophisticated. They believe that music which is sometimes called complex, difficult, or avant-garde is accessible to any audience when performed with passion and conviction." Check them out online, and, if you're in California this week, see them at the soundON Festival of Modern Music taking place in La Jolla, California, June 18-20, 2009.

A facinating read is this week's Featured Thought & Idea ... 2001: A Space Odyssey - Alex North's Unused Soundtrack. And check out the special feature of the opening scene of 2001: A Space Odyssey with the classic soundtrack replaced with Alex North's original, but discarded, score [sorry, no longer available]...

This week FROM THE PYTHEAS ARCHIVES brings us classically trained ballet dancer Sylvie Guillem. Her most notable performances have included Giselle and Rudolf Nureyev's stagings of Swan Lake and Don Quixote. As of late she has moved from ballet to contemporary dance, working with performers such as Akram Khan as an Associate Artist of the Sadler's Wells Theatre in London. Here she is featured in Wet Woman with choreography by Mats Ek and music by the Swedish group Fläskkvartetten (Fleshquartet) ...

Explore, Listen and Enjoy!
Vinny Fuerst