Born in Wausau, Wisconsin, Gloria Coates began composing and experimenting with overtones and clusters at the age of nine. Her musical intuition led her to ever widening visions and experiences. Coates, an American living in both Europe and the United States since 1969, has the honor of being the most prolific woman symphonist today. She also studied with Alexander Tcherepnin and has been a tireless advocate for American music overseas and at home, where she also maintains a residence. Kyle Gann, noted music critic and composer, who has served as an advocate for her music for many years, has written, "The sparer context of her chamber works sounds solidly American . . . a rustic stolidity, a willingness to walk firmly forward off the beaten paths . . . an American through and rough." And Trevor Hunter (NewMusicBox), writes, "For Coates, artistic expression is a spiritual necessity. She has great interest and significant participation in painting, architecture, theater, poetry, and singing - but it is through composing that she taps into a wellspring of abstracted emotionality that the others cannot reach. Or perhaps abstracted is not the correct term, as it would seem that Coates is merely being oblique about what the inner, personal meaning of the music is to her. Whatever the veiled expressions of her work may be, there is an undoubted emotional richness present, which if not concretely knowable is at least viscerally felt by the audience. Canons constructed of quarter-tones and glissandos evoke gloomy instability, but also unearthly beauty." She also has a lyrical aspect, of which her Three Songs are typical. Watch a performance of Gloria Coates Three Songs: "Armistice" (They Dropped Like Flakes)/1972/text by: Emily Dickinson; "Fangen den Wind" (Catch the Wind)/2009/text by: Alexandra Coates; and "Komplementar" (Complementary)/1999/text by: Mayroicker, all performed by soprano Patricia Sonego and pianist Taka Kigawa . . . one of this week's FEATURED NEW MUSIC VIDEOS.

Evan Ziporyn makes music at the crossroads of genre and culture, high and low, west and east. Raised in a musically ecumenical household in Evanston, Illinois, he grew up listening to his father's violin, his grandmother's Yiddish Socialist chorus, his mother's extensive folk & jazz collection, and the sounds of top 40's; Motown on AM radio. A deep desire to play trumpet was thwarted by his 4th grade bandmaster, and his career as a clarinetist began. He started composing music at age 13 after a visionary high school music teacher, Betty Jacobsen, played him - in rapid succession - "The Rite of Spring", Charles Ives' "Quarter Tone Studies", Alvin Lucier's "I Am Sitting in A Room", and Steve Reich's "Come Out". He soon thereafter began managing his father's small record store, beginning work the same week Bob Dylan's Blood on the Tracks and Earth, Wind & Fire's That's the Way of the World were released. By the end of high school he had composed earnest, undistinguished works for full orchestra, jazz ensemble, the high school musical, and his basement progressive rock band, "Chronosynclastic Infundibulum." Persisting, he studied composition at the Eastman School of Music and Yale University, while also studying piano and clarinet. In 1979, he heard a short recording of traditional Balinese gamelan and had a self-described 'conversion experience.' He spent the following summer in Oakland working with Wayan Suweca and Michael Tenzer in the newly formed Gamelan Sekar Jaya, then traveled to Bali on Yale Murray Fellowship upon graduation in 1981. There he studied gender wayang, the music of the shadow play, and pelegongan drumming. Returning to the US he received his MA & PhD in composition from UC Berkeley. He was to New York to perform a solo clarinet work at a small new music festival, whimsically titled the "First Annual Bang on a Can Marathon", which he began an ongoing involvement with "Bang on a Can" that continues to this day. His works have been commissioned and performed by such artists and ensemble as Yo-yo Ma's Silk Road Project, Kronos Quartet, Orkest de Volharding, Maya Beiser, So Percussion, Gamelan Semara Ratih, and the Boston Modern Orchestra Project. Listen to Evan Ziporyn talk about his life and his music . . . it's our COMPOSER PORTRAIT for the week.

Critically acclaimed guitarist/composer Nathan Kolosko has performed throughout the US, Europe and Asia. As a musician, Nathan is compelled to expand the voice of the guitar through composition, improvisation, and collaborations with both musicians and visual artists. He is currently collaborating with visual artist Ling-Wen Tsai on several inter-disciplinary projects, and performs regularly with flute player Carl Dimow. Nathan has been the recipient of numerous grants and awards, including grants from the Allied Arts Foundation and D'Addario Strings. As a composer, Nathan has made numerous contributions to the repertoire for the guitar. In addition to being a performer and composer, Kolosko is a teacher dedicated to furthering the pedagogy of the guitar. Listen to the first of Nathan Kolosko's Five Short Pieces for Guitar (2006) . . . one of our PYTHEAS EARFULS for the week.

According to Steven Schick, "In many ways, Morton Feldman's The King of Denmark (1964) is an anti-percussion piece. It is to be played very softly using only the hand and fingers - no sticks or mallets. Its notation on a graph indicates how many sounds are to be played per beat and whether they are to be in high, medium, or low registers. Even though a tempo runs throughout, no rhythmic coherence emerges. Sounds simply float out, detached and weightless. One instrument has no more sonic gravity than another does. A small bell weighs the same - takes up the same acoustical space - as a large gong. An auditory illusion follows: close your eyes and you can imagine that the instruments are being played at their natural volumes. They are sounds in many different loudnesses, but they are being heard from different distances. The gong is really forte but it is heard from the distance of fifty yards. It sounds as soft as the little bell six inches from your ear. Mirages of distance appear and evaporate again into music. It is like rain or the sound of rain. These illusions come from Feldman's love of the pulsating but rhythmically directionless canvases of Mark Rothko and other American Abstract Expressionists. Directionlessness is key here. The King of Denmark is music that refuses to dictate the way it should be perceived. It does not light a particular way nor lead you by the ear like an angry headmaster along a corridor of preferred comprehension. It simply floats in timeless ether to be looked at from any angle, any proximity, any point of view." Watch a performance of Morton Feldman's The King of Denmark (1964) played by percussionist Shawn Savageau . . . this week's FROM THE PYTHEAS ARCHIVES.

And by the way, if you missed the link on last week's feature of Ravel's "Bolero", watch a second, even more exiting performance of this modern masterpiece with Sylvie Guillem and members of the Tokyo Ballet - it's well worth it!

Patrício da Silva received formal musical training at the Escola Superior de Música de Lisboa (Lisbon, Portugal), followed by composition studies in the United States at CalArts, and the University of California. His composition teachers include António Pinho Vargas, Mel Powel, Stephen L. Mosko, Morton Subotnick, William Kraft, David Cope, Curtis Roads, Michael Gandolfi, John Harbison and Sydney Hodkinson. Following his graduate studies, da Silva engaged in post-doctoral work in algorithmic composition at IRCAM in Paris. He has received numerous awards and fellowships and his compositions have been performed by the Berkeley Symphony Orchestra (where da Silva was Composer in Residence, 2008-10), California Ear-Unit, Lontano, Lyris Quartet, Memphis Symphony Orchestra, Moscow Piano Quartet, New Fromm Players, Orquestra do Algarve, Shakespeare & Co., What's Next? Ensemble, Stefan Asbury, Tzimon Barto, Ryu Cipris, Gloria Cheng, Joana Carneiro, Cesário Costa, William Eddins, Lorenz Gamma, David Gutkin, Paul Haas, Vimbayi Kaziboni, Michael Kudirka, David Loebel, Brian Pezzone, José Rodilla, Mark Robson, Tara Schwab, Ming Tsu, Laurent Wagner and Ian Whitcomb. Watch a performance of his The Fact of the Matter as a Matter of Fact (2007) played by Orquestra do Algarve, Cesario Costa conducting . . . one of this week's FEATURED NEW MUSIC VIDEOS.

Just before departing on his American Tour in 1928, Maurice Ravel received a commission from Ida Rubinstein for a ballet, to be called Fandango. His intention was to orchestrate some pieces from Iberia by Albéniz, but as he was beginning work in July, he discovered that the rights to the music were already assigned to another composers. Ravel was initially dismayed and at a loss as to how he would fulfill his commission. However while continuing his holiday in Saint-Jean-de-Luz, he developed a Spanish-sounding theme which had about it "something quite insistent". Boléro, as the work was renamed, went on to become Ravel's most popular work, and one of the most frequently played pieces of classical music. The work lasts about 15 minutes, repeating each of the theme's two parts 9 times in the same key (until the very last bars), using different orchestrations to vary the texture and to create a gradual crescendo, and Ravel was insistent that the work should be played at a steady and unvarying tempo (as his own recording demonstrates). At the first performance of her ballet production in 1928, Ida Rubinstein danced the role of a flamenco dancer who is trying out steps on a table in a bar, surrounded by men whose admiration turns to lustful obsession. Ravel did not entirely approve; his own conception was an outdoor scene in front of a factory whose machinery provides the inflexible rhythm; the factory workers would emerge to dance together, while a story of a bullfighter killed by a jealous rival was played out. Watch Boléro (1928) performed by famed ballerina Maya Plisetskaya as choreographed by Maurice Béjart  . . . it's our DANSES PYTHEUSES for the week.

. . . and see another Bolero with ballerina Maria Alexandrova, with (so we're told) choreography by Bronislava Nijinska - who choreographed the work for Ida Rubenstein.

Kurt Weill composed his ballet chanté (sung ballet) The Seven Deadly Sins (1933) during a time of tremendous political upheaval and turmoil in Europe. Weill's most enduring works of this period were his collaborations with leftist writer Bertolt Brecht, especially "The Threepenny Opera." "The Seven Deadly Sins" marks the end of Weill's European career, being his last collaboration with Brecht and the last enduring work that he composed in his European theater style. This style is characterized by its directness, which is a product of Weill's use of elements from popular music – in the case of this work, dance music and the barbershop quartet – as well as his use of established musical forms, like the church chorale. The ballet was commissioned by Edward James, a wealthy Englishman whose Paris ballet troupe, Les Ballets 1933, counted the choreographer and dancer George Balanchine among its founders. It was decided that the ballet would be sung, with the main character, Anna, "split" into singing and dancing halves. This way, Weill's estranged wife, the singer Lotte Lenya, could star alongside James' also estranged dancer wife, Tilly Losch (John Mangum/Los Angeles Philharmonic). Watch a concert performance of The Seven Deadly Sins with soprano Akiko Nakajima and the Miyazaki International Music Festival Orchestra with Charles Dutoit conducting . . . the second of this week's FEATURED NEW MUSIC VIDEOS.

Amy Scurria knew at a very young age that music would hold a prominent position in her life. She began composing as early as eight years old pursuing study and in piano and composition. After winning various piano and composition contests, she went on to study composition at the Westminster Choir College Summer Program in Princeton, NJ, Shepherd School of Music at Rice University, Aspen Music Festival, Peabody Conservatory, La Schola Cantorum in Paris, France, and Duke University. Notable teachers have included Chen Yi, Robert Sirota, Narcis Bonet, Anthony Kelley, and Stephen Jaffe. She has been commissioned and performed by the Philadelphia Orchestra, the Minnesota Orchestra, LongLeaf Opera, Sigma Alpha Iota and Fort Wayne Philharmonic, the Vermont Youth Orchestra, Youth Pro Musica, the Shepherd College Concert Choir, and many others. She has had performances throughout the U.S., England, Brazil, Spain, Portugal, France, and Japan. Scurria's music is currently moving towards the creation of opera, however, her music (non-vocal included) has always included a background narrative or story. She believes that "music is a powerful and unusual language that, when spoken well, can reach the deepest part of the human spirit." Listen to a performance of Amy Scurria's Adaptations (2007) . . . this week's FROM THE PYTHEAS ARCHIVES.

"Across his diverse and successful career, Jacques Ibert kept his distance from the many "isms" of the twentieth century, insisting that "all systems are valid, provided one derives music from them." His Flute Concerto, written for Marcel Moyse and premiered in 1934, is one of the classics of its genre, and in it Ibert demonstrates that his idea of "music" is not as easily "derived" as he seems to suggest. The work is a masterful blend of the new and old, exploring the full range of flute technique without indulging in virtuosity for its own sake. Ibert also takes advantage of new compositional possibilities and his exquisite sense for orchestral color, but, again, without indulging in excess, exercising a typically French restraint within delicately balanced forms and textures. Throughout, Ibert creates a nuanced balance between orchestral and virtuosic brilliance." [Raymond Knapp/Santa Monica Symphony] Watch a performance of the final movement of Ibert's Flute Concerto (1934) performed by flutist Jiro Yoshioka . . . one of this week's FEATURED NEW MUSIC VIDEOS.

According to clarinetist/composer Kinan Azmeh, "The current unrest in the seat of the world’s oldest civilization inspired us to explore the most ancient epic we have in writing today. The Epic of Gilgamesh is a lush story, rich in meaning, in romance, and in humor. Visual artist Kevork Mourad and I have chosen to explore this epic through the art forms of music and painting, using them in tandem as vehicles for story telling. With original composition on the clarinet, (with the use of Max/Msp software as a compositional extension,) inspiring and working off the visual artist’s projected illustration, the world’s oldest known epic will be brought to life in the present: through new musical forms and means, and through a new form of visual art exploring the permanence of lines on paper in the impermanence of projection". Watch an excerpt from The Gilgamesh Project (2006) . . . the second one of this week's FEATURED NEW MUSIC VIDEOS.

This week the music of Marilyn Shrude, William Albright and Burton Beerman is presented in our FEATURED RECORDING Shadows and Dawning (Albany Records 526). Fanfare Magazine writes, "The disc turns out to be a quite a winner ... with the Beerman work followed by two saxophone pieces by Marilyn Shrude. Her Shadows and Dawning (1982) for saxophone and piano is a one-movement chamber poem depicting the gradual transformation of nature's darkness into light - nighttime to dawning. Moods of mystery and modernistic performance techniques are used: multiphonics, timbral trills, and the like. Eventually the piano begins passagework reminiscent of shimmering - the first traces of light are apparent; the saxophone trills excitedly and the picture is complete". Read more about this disc and hear excerpts from it . . . it's this week's FEATURED RECORDING.

Maurice Ravel saw his Piano Concerto in G (1931) as being in the spirit of Mozart and Saint-Saëns, light and brilliant, in contrast to those heavier classical concerti which he felt were written "against" rather than "for" the piano. Ravel wrote, "The music of a concerto, in my opinion, should be light and bright and does not seek depth or dramatic effects". Watch a beautiful performance of the first movement of Ravel's Piano Concerto in G performed by pianist Martha Argerich . . . this week's FROM THE PYTHEAS ARCHIVES.

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

John Rutter is one of England's best-known composers of the late twentieth century, as well as a widely respected choral conductor and music scholar and editor. While his choral works (including the Te Deum, Magnificat, and Requiem) are the most familiar, he has also written instrumental works and two children's operas. He has a strong sense of the English musical traditions, and some of the more significant English musical influences on his work include Vaughn Williams, Walton and Britten. Listen to his beautiful setting of the 23rd Psalm, The Lord is My Shepherd (1978) . . . one of this week's FEATURED NEW MUSIC VIDEOS.

Born in La Plata, Argentina to Romanian-Jewish immigrants nearly 50 years ago, composer Osvaldo Golijov now lives just outside Boston, as one of the world's most admired composers. The reason why his music connects so magnetically with performers and audiences alike is its clear appeal to the senses. "I want my music to be intuitive," the composer explains. Each of Golijov's compositions is different. The influences include South America, the synagogue and the shtetl, wrapped in a life-filled tonal shimmer. It wasn't always easy for Golijov to express himself this way in university – he completed his graduate studies in Israel and the U.S. "I was feeling alienated from that aesthetic," Golijov says of the tyranny of serialism and other atonal experiments in the 1980s. "Then, in one week, my first daughter was born and my mother, who taught me how to play piano, died. It was that whole cycle of new life and death. It opened my eyes, and I realized I don't have to please academic orthodoxy. "You don't become a musician to get rich," he adds, laughing. "So I decided I should do what makes me happy." Golijov describes his method of writing as a combination of "intuitive impulses." "It's like Michelangelo, who said that the shape is inside the piece of marble. All you need are the right tools to find it". Listen to Osvaldo Golijov speak about his life and music . . . he's our current FEATURED COMPOSER.

Here's what Jacob Swanson of the Erie Saxophone Quartet has written about Sarah Horick's Deleted Scenes (2008), "Recently our quartet was SO FORTUNATE to have the opportunity to work with Sarah Horick, a composer currently working in Florida. She wrote a lovely piece for our ensemble, "Deleted Scenes," which consists of seven short movements - each portraying a different character. Our ensemble is looking forward to growing with this work and performing it for a long time to come. I'd love to hear what you think of the piece!" Have a listen for yourself to Deleted Scenes (2008) and let US know what you think . . . the work is one of this week's PYTHEAS EARFULS.

In 1920 Maurice Ravel was asked to contribute to a special commemorative supplement of La Revue musicale dedicated to Claude Debussy. Appearing in December 1920, the supplement included what would become the first movement of his Sonata for Violin and Cello (1920-22). Ravel had begun this movement in April 1920, and would need almost two years to complete the four movements of the Sonata. Of the Sonata Ravel wrote, "In my own work of composition I find a long period of conscious gestation, in general, necessary. During this interval I come gradually to see, and with growing precision, the form and evolution which the subsequent work should have as a whole." "The music is stripped to the bone," Ravel wrote. "Harmonic charm is renounced, and there is an increasing return of emphasis on melody." This lean, ruthlessly linear Sonata is dedicated to the memory of Debussy. Watch a performance of the second movement of Ravel's Sonata for Violin and Cello performed by Paul and Yan-Pascal Tortelier . . . this week's FROM THE PYTHEAS ARCHIVES.

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

In his operas The Horseman and Kullervo, and in his music for the television epic The Iron Age, Aulis Sallinen has penetrated deep into the mists of Finnish prehistoric myth. Similar mists veil the events his The Red Line, although they are set in our own century and can indeed be timed to the day. The most shattering moments in all these works are those in which Death suddenly and shockingly reaps its harvest. Sallinen movingly examines the pain of life under the shadow of death also in his song cycle Four Dream Songs (1973) based on his opera The Horseman. Hear a gorgeous performance of the third and fourth "Dream Song" by soprano Soile Isokoski . . . one of this week's FEATURED NEW MUSIC VIDEOS.

For this week's Composer Portrait we turn to pianist Gwendolyn Mok. She specializes in the music of Maurice Ravel, and has recorded Ravel's complete solo piano works on a restored Erard concert grand piano, dating from 1875, similar to Ravel' s own piano . . . it's this week's COMPOSER PORTRAIT.

Sergei Prokofiev's ballet Trapèze is a circus-themed one-acter which was written in 1924 for Boris Romanov, a modernist Russian choreographer who had emigrated to Germany in 1921. His Berlin-based company was so hard up it couldn’t afford an orchestra, so Prokofiev duly scored his commission for a quintet of clarinet, oboe, violin, viola and double-bass. Watch an excerpt of Trapèze brought to us by Video Artists International (VAI), an independent record label of Classical, Jazz, Broadway, Ballet, and Opera DVD's and CD's whose catalogue includes performances by such luminaries as Leopold Stokowski, David Oistrakh, Fritz Reiner, Van Cliburn, Beverly Sills, Leontyne Price, Renata Scotto, Franco Corelli, and Maria Callas among others . . . this week's DANSES PYTHEUSES.

The first five pieces of Arnold Schoenberg's Six Little Piano Pieces, op. 19 (1911) were composed in a single day, February 19, 1911; the sixth followed on June 17. These very brief and compact pieces are a sort of musical equivalent of aphorisms: the longest of the set (No. 1) encompasses no more than 18 measures. Schoenberg here experiments with the construction of ideas that are complete from the outset and require no development. Watch a performance of these classics of 20th century music by pianist Michel Beroff . . . this week's FROM THE PYTHEAS ARCHIVES.

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