American composer Joseph Turrin is a greatly valued contributor to contemporary American musical life thanks to his wide-ranging activities as a composer, orchestrator, conductor, pianist, and teacher. According to The New York Times, "Turrin's music is nervous, loud, swift and aggressive to the point of violence. It is also beautifully made, negotiating its constant changes of speed and pulse with grace. His music is young - no past, only future." Turrin studied composition at the Eastman School of Music and the Manhattan School of Music, and has pursued a career that has always been multifaceted. As a composer, he has produced works in many genres. Writing about his piece Two Portraits (1995), Turrin says: "I composed the Two Portraits for the 20th Anniversary of the International Trumpet Guild. The first Portrait, conceived as a flugelhorn solo, is entitled Psalm. The soloist plays a soulful chant over a ostinato figure in the piano. The second Portrait is Incantation, and is for both trumpet and flugelhorn. This movement is in direct contrast to Pslam, with it's energetic and lively character and a good deal of changing meters. There are some strong melodic lines in the solo part which soar above the rhythmic excitement in the piano." Watch a performance of Joseph Turrin's Two Portraits played by Andrew Bezik . . . one of this week's FEATURED NEW MUSIC VIDEOS.

The music of composer Sebastian Currier has been performed worldwide in major cities such as Paris, Rome, Berlin, Munich, Frankfurt, Tokyo, Beijing, Moscow, London and Toronto. In the United States, his works have been performed in Carnegie Hall in New York, Symphony Hall in Boston, the Kennedy Center in Washington DC and Davies Symphony Hall in San Francisco. One of his most notable works Aftersong was written for the world-renowned violinist Anne-Sophie Mutter who, with pianist Lambert Orkis, premiered the work at the Schleswig-Holstein Festival, performed it at the Salzburg Festival, and subsequently toured with it and with another composition called Clockwork throughout the rest of Europe and the United States. Currier has received a Rome Prize, a Guggenheim Fellowship, several awards from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, a Friedheim Award, a Fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts, a Tanglewood Fellowship, and has held residencies at the MacDowell and Yaddo Colonies. Commissions include Meet the Composer, Fromm Foundation, Koussevitzky Foundation, Barlow Endowment, Mary Flagler Cary Charitable Trust and the American Composers Orchestra. His works have been performed by such orchestras as the National Symphony, Gewandhaus Orchestra, American Composers Orchestra, EOS Orchestra and the San Francisco Symphony. Currier is currently on the faculty of Columbia University. Listen to an interview with Sebastian Currier . . . our COMPOSER PORTRAIT for the week.

A great degree of virtuosity is required for Derek Bermel's Coming Together (1999), for clarinet and cello. Coming Together is a quintessential Bermel work: humorous, gesture-based and demonstrating a keen ear for invoking the human voice. Commissioned by the Elaine Kaufman Cultural Center and Merkin Hall for Bermel and Fred Sherry, this short duo consists entirely of glissandi. Says Bermel, "I wanted to write a piece without any straight pitches, one which relied solely on gestural development, yet which would still be convincing and emotional." Bermel achieves this by specifying exactly where each pitch starts and ends and where each glissando occurs in time. This careful placement of tonal areas defines the structure and carries the piece forward. Listen to a performance of Derek Bermel's Coming Together . . . it's one of our PYTHEAS EARFULS for the week.

Writing about her flute concerto Aile du Songe (Wing of the Dream) (2000), Finnish composer Kaija Saariaho says: "I have been very familiar with the flute since my earliest pieces. I like the sound in which breathing is ever present, with timbral possibilities that befit my musical language: the instrument's body makes it possible to write phrases that go through grinding textures coloured with phonemes whispered by the flutist, which gradually go towards pure and smooth sounds. The concerto's title and the general mood of the piece derive from Saint-John Perse's collection of poems Oiseaux: "Aile falquee du songe, vous nous retrouverez ce soir sur d'autres rives!". The concerto is composed of two main parts: Aerienne and Terrestre. The three sections of Aerienne describe three different concerted situations: In Prelude the flute gradually pervades space and generates the orchestra's music, in Jardin des oiseaux the flute interacts with individual instruments of the orchestra, while D'autres rives compares the flute to a lone, high flying bird whose shadow forms different images played by the strings over the unchanged landscape of the harp, celesta and percussion. The first section of Terrestre, Oiseau dansant, introduces a deep contrast with the other material of the concerto. It refers to an Aboriginal tale in which a virtuosic dancing bird teaches a whole village how to dance. While writing this section, I was especially thinking of Camilla Hoitenga and her personality as a flutist. The finale - the second section of Terrestre - is a synthesis of all the previous aspects, then the sound of the flute slowly fades away." Listen to a performance of Kaija Saariaho's Aile du Songe played by flutist Camilla Hoitenga and the Finnish Radio Symphony Orchestra, Jukka-Pekka Saraste conducting . . . it's this week's FROM THE PYTHEAS ARCHIVES.

Elliott Carter has written about his song cycle Mirror on Which to Dwell (1975): "When I agreed to write a cycle of songs for the ensemble Speculum Musicae I decided, first, that it should be for soprano and chamber orchestra. The poems of Elizabeth Bishop impressed me because they have a clear verbal coherence as well as an imaginative use of syllabic sounds that suggest the singing voice. I was very much in sympathy with their point of view, for there is almost always a secondary layer of meaning, sometimes ironic, sometimes passionate, that gives a special ambiance, often contradictory, to what the words say. The order of the songs is entirely mine, alternating as they do between considerations about nature, love and isolation. A Mirror on Which to Dwell, a line from the poem Insomnia is the title I chose partly because it seemed to characterize the general world of the poems, partly because I wanted the music to be a mirror of the words and partly because Speculum Musicae commissioned the work in honor of the U.S. Bicentennial. Watch a performance of Anaphora, the first song in Elliott Carter's Mirror on Which to Dwell, with soprano Jo Ellen Miller and the East Coast Contemporary Ensemble, Jeffrey Means conducting . . . one of this week's FEATURED NEW MUSIC VIDEOS.

Mario Verandi is an Argentinean born composer, sound and media artist. He primarily works with new technologies as an aid to exploring and expanding the boundaries of sound, space, perception and meaning. A distinct characteristic of his work has been the exploration of the poetic and evocative potential of concrete and environmental sounds and their incorporation in sound compositions, audiovisual installations, live performances and radio art pieces. His works have received prizes and awards in the Bourges International Electroacoustic Music Competition (France), Musica Nova Competition (Prague), CIEJ Electronic Music Awards (Barcelona), Prix Ars Electronica (Linz), Stockholm Electronic Art Awards (Sweden), SGAE Electroacoustic Music Competition (Spain) and the European Bell Days Composition Prize (ZKM, Karlsruhe). He has a long-standing interest in interdisciplinary projects and as a result has created music and sound designs for art installations, dance, theatre, films and the radio. Verandi has collaborated among others with the American visual artist Catherine Ferguson, German choreographer Helge Musial, Polish theater director Grazyna Kania, German visual artist Corinna Rosteck, Berlin-based visual artitst Lillevan, Russian visual artists Igor and Svetlana Kopystianski, and German film-maker Harun Farocki. Listen to Mario Verandi's Klangbuch der imaginaeren Wesen (2007) . . . it's our SOUND ART for the week.

Composer Kaija Saariaho writes: "Grammaire des Rêves/Grammar of Dreams (1988-89) was born from my curiosity about the relationship between human voice and instruments, a subject which I had put aside for many years. As the title of the piece indicates, another source of interest was the structural life of dreams. Different ideas concerning the research of dreams (for example, how our moving body affects our dreams, changing their directions or interrupting them; in this piece the harp is imagined as a collection of restless limbs, which by their movements direct the musical flow), are drawn to the background during the compositional work, or are transformed into purely musical form. Another interest was to search for a fusion in this rather heterogeneous ensemble. For this reason the musical texture is maybe more simple than in some other of my recent pieces, and the more radical textural changes have been replaced by vibratos, trills, glissandi, dynamic evolutions and other gestures, used here as imaginary matrices, through which the instrumental parts are ‘filtered’. The major part of the text is a collage from the texts of Paul Eluard. Some longer fragments have been used from his poem Premierèment. Listen to Kaija Saariaho's Grammaire des rêves/Grammar of Dreams . . . it's one of our PYTHEAS EARFULS for the week.

Joaquín Rodrigo's music is an homage to the rich and varied cultures of Spain. No other Spanish composer has drawn on so many different aspects of his country's spirit as sources of inspiration, from the history of Roman Spain to the work of contemporary poets. His music is refined, luminous, fundamentally optimistic, with a particular predominance of melody and original harmonies. His first works reveal the influence of composers of his time, such as Ravel and Stravinsky, but a personal voice soon emerged which would go on to create a notable chapter in the cultural history of Spain in the 20th century, where the originality of Rodrigo’s musical inspiration goes hand in hand with a devotion to the fundamental values of his tradition. Rodrigo’s numerous and varied compositions include eleven concertos for various instruments, more than sixty songs, choral and instrumental works, and music for the theatre and the cinema. Many distinguished soloists have commissioned works from him, among them Gaspar Cassadó, Andrés Segovia, Nicanor Zabaleta, James Galway, Julian Lloyd Webber and the Romero guitar quartet. His numerous writings on music reveal a profound understanding of his art [note from GuitarDaily.com]. Watch a performance of Rodrigo's Tonadilla (1959) played by guitarists John Williams and Julian Bream . . . . one of this week's FEATURED NEW MUSIC VIDEOS.

The ballet Maa (1991) [the word "maa" in Finnish can mean "earth", "land" or "country", possibly even "world"], with music composed by Kaija Saariaho, was the response to a commission from the ballet of the Finnish National Opera. The ballet does not have a plot as such, rather it is built around thematic archetypes such as doors, gates, stepping into new worlds, journeys and the crossing of waters. Both scenography and music are shrouded by deliberate mystery and characterized by a lucidity and minimalism of gesture. The work's openness and approachability make it an ideal introduction to the poetry and poeticism of Saariaho's music. The approach taken by original choreographer Carolyn Carlson and Saariaho when producing Maa was not one of close collaboration, rather they chose to let their differing artistic personalities encounter one another and spark off tensions and syntheses. Carlson's methods rely heavily on improvisation and the development of ideas whose outcome cannot be known a priori, while Saariaho's conceptual process makes active use of deterministic solutions and carefully planned temporal frameworks. In no sense did these contrasting, if not conflicting approaches lead Saariaho to neglect the dramatic requirements of the different sections of the ballet. In working a weave of textures which progress and change at a leisurely and gradual, almost minimalistic pace, she has clearly been attentive to finding a balance for the whole work which takes the listener into account. Saariaho's compositions are laid out in such a way that they encourage us to imbibe and dwell in the timbral detail. The sensuous calm which permeates the music for Maa inevitably affects our mood and senses, turning them to higher levels of sensitivity and awareness [note by Juhani Nuorvala]. Watch an excerpt from the ballet Maa, performed by Works & Process and the International Contemporary Ensemble, with new choreography by Luca Veggetti . . . it's our DANSES PYTHEUSES for the week.

The music of Puerto Rican composer William Ortiz-Alvarado depicts the Latino culture in the United States, mainly that of New York City. Raised in Manhattan and Brooklyn, the composer's musical roots are a mesh between the metropolis' own imposing and crowded socio-culture of the oppressed, with those unemployed and marginalized Latinos who gather in the streets in search of a musical outlet in order to forget their life condition. Ortiz-Alvarado is not deaf to this reality; he grasps it and makes a fascinating musical graffiti through his craft as a trained classical composer. He calls his musical canvas "graffiti sonora" or "streetlore" where elements of the two cultures collide to create a new authentic and legitimate musical language. Within the last three decades,  Ortiz-Alvarado has written over 130 compositions for almost all types of musical genres; from song to opera, from chamber music to symphonic works. Among his numerous awards, grants and commissions is the 2001 Latin Grammy Nomination for the CD Tango mata danzon mata tango by the Baja California Orchestra, which includes his Guitar Concerto Tropicalizacion. Listen to a performance of Ortiz-Alvarado's Urbanización (1985) . . . it's one of our PYTHEAS EARFUL for the week.

A self-taught composer, Don Dilworth's career has encompassed both folk music and contemporary concert music, ballet, and opera. An aspiring composer from grade school, he was proficient in both folk and classical guitar by the time he entered college at M.I.T. as a physics major. This coincided with the late '50s folk music boom, which was particularly vibrant in Boston. While attending M.I.T., he was a regular patron at Club 47, a venue that became one of the leading showcases for new folk music talent, including Joan Baez, Noel Paul Stookey, Eric Von Schmidt, and the Charles River Valley Boys, and he later started playing guitar there on occasion. Baez became a particularly big fan of Dilworth's playing and later asked him to perform at her sister's wedding. Shortly after Baez signed with Vanguard Records and left Boston, Dilworth gave her the gift of a song, Annabel Lee, based on the poem by Edgar Allan Poe. Baez later recorded the song in an arrangement by Peter Schickele on her album "Joan" (1967). Apart from some instruction from Gregory Tucker at M.I.T. and Nicolai Martinov of the St. Petersburg Conservatory in Russia, Dilworth has remained almost entirely self-taught as a composer and musician. Based in Maine, he has written seven operas, several songs cycles, and a considerable body of chamber music, as well as works for synthesizer and cello. Listen to Don Dilworth's The Sick Rose (1994) performed by soprano Nancy Ogle and pianist Clayton Smith . . . this week's FROM THE PYTHEAS ARCHIVES.

Just listening to Kaija Saariaho's Fall (1991). She's one of Finland's leading composers. Very haunting and hypnotic. And I just can't get enough of Dmitri Tymoczko's Eggman Variations (2005). He teaches at Princeton University and has written on The Geometry of Musical Chords.

Kaija Saariaho's ballet "Maa" (1991) was commissioned by the ballet of the Finnish National Opera and the work's mixing and manipulation of sounds was carried out in the Finnish Radio Experimental Studio. The ballet does not have a plot as such, rather it is built around thematic archetypes such as doors, gates, stepping into new worlds, journeys, and the crossing of waters. Both scenography and music are shrouded by deliberate mystery and characterized by a lucidity and minimalism of gesture. Its openness and approachability makes it an ideal introduction to the poetry of Saariaho's music. The work's abstract, non-narrative plot is fertile soil for her musical thinking. As in her earlier radiophonic work "Stillen", she avoids telling a story, choosing instead to handle the germinal themes of traveling, remoteness, yearning and communication in a dream-like way through the medium of association. Number symbolism also plays its own role in injecting significance into "Maa" - the group of players numbers seven, and each of the work's seven main movements divides further into seven subsections. The music to the ballet's seventh section, can be performed as a separate piece entitled Fall (1991), and we feature it this week in a performance by harpist Consuelo Giulianelli . . . one of this week's FEATURED NEW MUSIC VIDEOS.

According to Lynn René Bayley (Fanfare Magazine), "No one ever said life was fair, and this is probably truer in the arts field, where name recognition and assessment of quality are engendered more by promotion and institutional affiliation than by talent. A case in point is Nancy Van de Vate, without question one of the most talented and original composers of our time, whose name is barely known in this country though she is extremely well respected in her adopted country of Austria. The composer of pieces ranging from the tone-clusterish orchestral works "Journeys" and "Dark Nebulae", remarkable chamber works such as "Seven Fantasy Pieces for Violin and Piano" and "Music for Viola, Percussion, and Piano", a number of concertos and the superb opera "All Quiet on the Western Front", Van de Vate wrote "Where the Cross Is Made" during a time in her life when she was facing a personal crisis. She was distraught but felt the need to work in order to feel normal, and so she kept returning to the score over a period of time, reworking it as she had time, not really knowing whether the finished product would be as good as she hoped or not. Remarkably, "Where the Cross Is Made" (2003) is a masterpiece, building in rhythm, harmony, and melody through an almost unbroken wave of sound initiated by a syncopated figure, propelling the opera to its inexorable conclusion." Read more about Nancy Van de Vate's Where the Cross Is Made, and listen to an excerpt from the opera . . . it's this week's FEATURED RECORDING.

Swedish composer Anna-Lena Laurin writes complex orchestral music with very strong melodic and rhythmical components. Her music is imbued with a dark, dramatic, as well as a light and lyrical/romantic tone language. She has received numerous grants, prizes and enthusiastic reviews, as well as appreciation from the Swedish Queen Silvia for her 2002 album "Sang till mormor". Born in Halmstad, Sweden, Laurin started playing classical piano at the age of seven and continued with music in different directions and styles on various instruments, but mainly as a pianist and vocalist. She began her professional musical career as a pianist and singer in different jazz ensembles, but now works exclusively as a composer, with a very busy schedule and new commissions coming from symphony orchestras, chamber orchestras or soloists. Upcoming commissions are a concerto for Hakan Hardenberger, Camerata Nordica and Terje Tönnesen. Her works include the much publicized "String Quartet No. 1" (2004) and "Autumn Fields" (2008) for violin and piano (or string orchestra), her "Concerto for Flute, Strings and Harp" (2009), the orchestral "Piece from the Silence" (2006), and "Shards of Time" (2010) for solo piano. Laurin's influences are from composers and musicians of many different genres and epoques and she has composed works mixing different genres - such as "The Painter (2009) for symphony orchestra, trumpet and jazz group, "Iphigenia" (2009) for symphony orchestra and improvising jazz soloists, and "Colours" (1997) concerto for trumpet, jazz trumpet, chamber choir and jazz group - an hour long trumpet concerto specially composed for trumpet soloists Hakan Hardenberger (who commissioned it) and Anders Bergcrantz. Listen to a recording of Laurin's Meadows from her "Piece from the Silence" (2006) . . . this week's PYTHEAS EARFUL.

Even before he finished orchestrating the score, composer Bela Bartok began to doubt that he would ever see his ballet "The Miraculous Mandarin" (1919) staged. In fact, the performance history of "The Miraculous Mandarin" is marked by such formidable struggles that the score didn’t receive the acclamation it deserved until after the composer’s death. The premiere of "The Miraculous Mandarin", in the conservative city of Cologne in November 1926, caused an uproar. Audience members walked out, the conductor was officially reprimanded by the city's mayor, and the work was subsequently banned. But Cologne wasn’t at the heart of the music world, and it wasn’t the composer’s hometown; so the incident passed without making international headlines. The work wasn’t staged in Budapest until 1946, after the composer’s death, and a quarter of a century after the score was finished. A production in Budapest was announced in 1931, as part of the celebration honoring Bartok fiftieth birthday, but it was canceled after the dress rehearsal, when officials got wind of the work’s subject matter. Another performance scheduled for 1941 was opposed by the clergy. The problems were both the graphic, intense music and the story — a violent and erotic tale with implicit social criticism (from comments by Phillip Huscher written for the Chicago Symphony Orchestra). Watch an excerpt from Bartok's ballet The Miraculous Mandarin in a performance by the ballet of Angers Nantes Opera . . . this week's FROM THE PYTHEAS ARCHIVES.

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