David Gillingham has an international reputation for the works he has written for band and percussion. Many of these works are now considered standards in the repertoire. His works are regularly performed by nationally recognized ensembles including the Prague Radio Orchestra, Cincinnati Conservatory of Music Wind Ensemble, North Texas University Wind Ensemble, Michigan State University Wind Ensemble, University of Illinois Symphonic Band, and many others. Gillingham is a professor of music at Central Michigan University and the recipient of an Excellence in Teaching Award (1990), a Summer Fellowship (1991), and a Research Professorship (1995). His Symphony No. 2, "Genesis" (2007) is a programmatic piece based on the first nine chapters of Genesis. Watch it performed by the J.B. Castle H.S. Symphonic Wind Ensemble, with Arnold A. Alconcel conducting . . . one of this week's FEATURED NEW MUSIC VIDEOS.

Augusta Read Thomas’ deeply personal music is guided by her particular sense of musical form, rhythm, timbre and harmony. She was the Mead Composer-in-Residence with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra from May 1997 through June 2006, a residency that encompassed nine world premieres, culminating in the premiere of her concerto for violin, flute and orchestra entitled "Astral Canticle" - one of two finalists for the 2007 Pulitzer Prize in Music. Her 2001 work for string ensemble Murmurs in the Mist of Memory is a 4-movement piece that possesses a wide spectrum of nuance, at times lyrical, abstract, passionate, subtle, vivid, aggressive, colorful, floating, rhythmic, elegant, clean, or light. Each movement features a different attribute of the string soloists' phenomenal technique — individual and collective — left hand as well as bow arm. The aim is to capture, concisely, a specific "universe" or "mood" in each movement, such that the musicians can escort the listener through a mini suite of diverse expeditions into remembrances. Each of the movements is inspired by a poem of Emily Dickinson, with each poem revealing impressions of light. Hear a performance of Murmurs in the Mist of Memory by the Sejong Soloists, Great Mountains Music Festival, South Korea . . . one of our PYTHEAS EARFULS this week.

David Lang writes about his piece Face So Pale (1992), "At the top of the fifteenth-century charts was Guillaume Dufay’s ballade 'Se la face ay pale' (If my face is pale). My piece 'Face So Pale' takes Dufay’s famous love song, subjects it to numerous pulling and stretching procedures, and divides the original three parts among six pianos. The result is a bizarre equilibrium between the spaciousness of the actual music and the stuttering mechanism by which it is made." Watch a performace of Face So Pale arranged for 6 marimbas by Brad Meyer and the UKPG . . this week's NEW MUSIC FOR PERCUSSION.

Composer Elena Ruehr grew up in Michigan’s isolated and beautiful Upper Peninsula. Her musical training began at home, where she learned folk songs from her mother, who sang and played guitar. Her father, a mathematician, played jazz piano and listened to the Beethoven and Bartok string quartets while solving equations. Her older brothers brought home recordings of Morton Sobotnik and Led Zeppelin, Janis Joplin and Paul Simon. Ruehr started playing the piano and composing at age four. As a teenager, Ruehr worked as a church organist, rock-band keyboardist/singer and musical director of the local university’s theater troupe. She studied at the University of Michigan and Juilliard, and now is a professor in the MIT music department. Her song cycle lullabies and spring songs (1998) is based on the poetry of Langston Hughes. Hear a performance of Stars, from lullabies and spring songs (1998) by baritone Stephen Salters and pianist David Zobel . . . this week's FROM THE PYTHEAS ARCHIVES.

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

According to composer Javier Alvarez, the title of his piece for maracas and tape, Temazcal (1984) "stems from the Nahuatl (ancient Aztec) word literally meaning 'water that burns'. The maraca material is drawn from traditional rhythmic patterns found in most Latin American musics, namely those from the Caribbean region, southeastern Mexico, Cuba, Central America and the flatlands of Colombia and Venezuela. In these musics in general, the maracas are used in a purely accompanimental manner as a part of small instrumental ensembles. The only exception is, perhaps, that of the Venezuelan flatlands, where the role of the maracas surpasses that of mere cadence and accenet punctuation to become a soloistic instrument in its own right. It was from this instance that I imagined a piece where the player would have to master short patterns and combine them with great virtuosity to construct larger and complex rhythmic structures which could then be juxtaposed, superimposed and set against similar passages on tape, thus creating a dense polyrhythmic web. This would eventually disintegrate clearing the way for a traditional accompanimental style of playing in a sound world reminiscent of the maracas’ more usual environment. The sound sources on tape include harp, a folk guitar and double bass pizzicatti for the tape’s attacks, the transformation of bamboo rods being struck together for the rhythmic passages and rattling sounds created with the maracas themselves for other gestures." Watch a performance of Alvarez's "Temazcal" by Brad Meyer . . . one of this week's FEATURED NEW MUSIC VIDEOS.

The music of Ástor Piazzolla epitomizes our situation in the modern world, with his fusion of folkloric beauty and contemporary tension. He forged a new music that challenged the traditionalist, and left the adventurous craving more. He took the music of the great tango masters like Garde, ripped it away from the velvet-walled concert hall and the soft-cushion drawing room, and slapped it down on the pavement of Buenos Aires. Reviled by the critics, shunned even by the conservative government, his music spoke to the next generation, and popular performers, jazz musicians and listeners all over the world eventually fell under the spell of his Nuevo Tango. Hear Piazzolla talk about his life and his music with Charles Amirkhanian . . . it's this week's COMPOSER PORTRAIT.

Elena Ruehr has been called a "composer to watch" by Opera News, and her music has been described as "stunning ... beautifully lighted by a canny instinct for knowing when and how to vary key, timbre, and harmony" (The Boston Globe). She has had commissions, awards and residencies with leading ensembles and presenters across the country including the Shanghai, Borromeo and Cypress Quartets, the Washington Chorus, the Boston Modern Orchestra Project, Opera Boston, the Metamorphosen Chamber Ensemble, the Rockport Chamber Music Festival and the Cincinnatti Symphony. Recently, she has written two string quartets for the Cypress String Quartet - her String Quartet No. 4 (2005) was called by The Washington Post "music with heart and ... a forceful sense of character and expression." A natural collaborator across genres, Ruehr has also worked with the Nicola Hawkins Dance Company on critically acclaimed performances in New York and Boston. Watch a Elena Ruehr/Rebecca Rice dance collaboration, Echoes (2004) . . . this week's DANSES PYTHEUSES.

Gerald Finzi's two works for piano and orchestra, the Eclogue (1929) and Grand Fantasia and Toccata (1928/1953), were both conceived for a piano concerto that never materialized. The Grand Fantasia and Toccata is a demanding virtuoso work inspired by Finzi's love of the music of Johann Sebastian Bach. According to Michael Jameson (ClassicsToday.com) it's a piece that can be seen "as a kind of neo-Baroque refraction, more closely associated with the 20th century than the 18th." Watch a beautiful performance of the Grand Fantasia and Toccata with pianist Leon McCawley . . . this week's FROM THE PYTHEAS ARCHIVES.

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