Talking about his work The Horse with the Lavender Eye (1997), composer Stephen Hartke writes, "I've always been fascinated by non-sequiturs, and the way that sense can suddenly appear out of nonsense. I also find imagery derived from words and pictures to be a great stimulus to my musical thinking, even if the relationships between the images I seize upon are not necessarily obvious or logical. The sources for the titles of this trio are quite disparate [Music of the Left; The Servant of Two Masters; Waltzing at the Abyss; Cancel My Rumba Lesson], ranging from Carlo Goldoni to Japanese court music to the cartoonist R. Crumb, as well as 19th century Brazilian novelist Machado de Assis and Looney Tunes. A bewildering array of references, to be sure, but one that somehow whets my musical appetite." Watch a performance of Stephen Hartke's The Horse with the Lavender Eye, played by clarinetist Jerome Simas, violinist Anna Presler, and pianist Eric Zivian . . . one of this week's FEATURED NEW MUSIC VIDEOS.

Parthenia, hailed by The New Yorker as "one of the brightest lights in New York's early-music scene," is a quartet of viols dedicated to the performance of ancient and contemporary repertoires. Parthenia has presented concerts across America, produced its own concert series in New York City, collaborates regularly with the world's foremost early music artists and ensembles, and has been featured on radio and television as well as festivals and series as wide-ranging as Music Before 1800, the Pierpont Morgan Library, Columbia University's Miller Theatre and the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, the Yale Center for British Art, the Harriman-Jewell Series in Kansas City, and the Tage Alter Musik Festival in Regensburg, Germany. Parthenia's unique variety of performances range from its popular touring program, "When Music & Sweet Poetry Agree", a celebration of Elizabethan poetry and music with actor Paul Hecht and mezzo-soprano Jacqueline Horner-Kwiatek of Anonymous 4, to the complete viol fantasies of Henry Purcell and complete instrumental works of Robert Parsons, as well as commissions and premieres of many new works by composers such as Phil Kline, Richard Einhorn, Brian Fennelly, Will Ayton, Max Lifchitz, Kristin Norderval, David Glaser, and Frances White. Read more about Parthenia and the new music they have commissioned . . . they're our FEATURED ENSEMBLE, and the subject of our FEATURED THOUGHTS & IDEAS.

Hailed as a "virtuoso" by the New York Times, "unique sound" by the Daily Star, and "engagingly flamboyant" by the L.A. Times, clarinetist and composer Kinan Azmeh is one of Syria's rising stars. His utterly distinctive sound is now fast gaining international recognition. Born in Damascus, Azmeh is a graduate of New York's Juilliard school, and the first Arab to win the premier prize at the 1997 Nicolai Rubinstein International Competition, Moscow. A Sad Morning, Every Morning (2012), Azmeh's collaboration with visual artist, Kevork Mourad is "a little prayer for home. Dedicated to all those who have fallen in Syria in the past year." Listen to Kinan Azmeh's perform his A Sad Morning, Every Morning, with visuals by Kevork Mourad . . . it's one of our PYTHEAS EARFULS for the week.

American composer George Tsontakis composed the movements of his Four Symphonic Quartets as follows: Other Echoes (1996), Perpetual Angelus (1992), The Dove Descending (1995), and Winter Lightning (1993). The title of each is based on one of the Four Quartets by T. S. Eliot, but not in the order of his cycle of meditative poems. Tsontakis does not attempt to set Eliot to music, either impressionistically or programmatically. In fact, he says he scarcely consulted the poems while writing his pieces. Instead, he sought to create aural landscapes that were somehow Eliotic in expanse and depth. This is much the same relationship as between Eliot's poems and the late Beethoven String Quartets, from which the poet sought to create in language a depth of meditative introspection and breadth comparable to the composer of the previous century. Whatever one may think of Eliot's craving for spiritual absolutes and his sometimes slippery mysticism, The Four Quartets are one of the most aurally sonorous and reverberant works of 20th century poetry in the English language. And any reader who has read them with absorption aloud must have found their rhythms and phrases impressed on the aural memory indelibly. The third Quartet, The Dove Descending, concerns potentiality in reserve - conservation and expectation. This is why Tsontakis says that even though it is the gentlest and most consoling movement it also hides a kind of terror. How it is able to hold potentiality together for such length without collapsing into exhaustion or erupting into climax is the mystery the ear revisits with each re-hearing [notes thanks to Don Mager/Making Time]. Listen to a performance of George Tsontakis' The Dove Descending (1995) . . . this week's FROM THE PYTHEAS ARCHIVES.

Like many of music history’s traditional classical music composers, Lowell Liebermann doesn’t only compose, but he also performs. Not limiting himself to playing his own compositions, he also dedicates some of his time to the works of other composers. To my mind, this informs Liebermann’s attitude towards composing, and shows his deep connection to classical music in general. "I understand what pianists go through, so I am very sympathetic, and the exchange with the performer of my compositions becomes much easier and more meaningful. Due to the emphasis on specialization in America, we have unfortunately created the phenomena of composers who are not active performers themselves. I think that this often results in losing touch with the physical joy and the direct connection to the active process of performing," says Liebermann. "Most performers of my premieres have adhered to extremely high performance standards, but I don’t really write for a specific performer, otherwise it won’t fit anyone else. Ida Kavafian, renowned violinist and violist and member of the piano quartet Opus One, who also serves as Artistic Director of the Angel Fire Festival in New Mexico, says about Liebermann: "Mr. Liebermann is not only an extraordinary composer, but also an outstanding pianist. It has been wonderful playing his music in groups with him, and in our piano quartet, Opus One. This summer, we premiered his Quartet for Piano and Strings, op.114 (2010), at Angel Fire; my festival had commissioned him to write a work of his choice as part of his composer-in-residence participation" (notes thanks to Ilona Oltuski/Get Classical). Watch a performance of Lowell Liebermann's Quartet for Piano and Strings (2010) played by pianist Joyce Yang, violinist Giora Schmidt, violist Lily Francis, and cellist Felix Fan . . . one of this week's FEATURED NEW MUSIC VIDEOS.

R. Murray Schafer is Canada's pre-eminent composer and is known throughout the world. In an era of specialization, Schafer has shown himself to be a true renaissance man. He has won national and international acclaim not only for his achievement as a composer but also as an educator, environmentalist, literary scholar, visual artist and provocateur. A prolific composer, he has written works ranging from orchestral compositions to choral music as well as musical theatre and multi-media ritual. His diversity of interests is reflected by the enormous range and depth of such works as Loving (1965), Lustro (1972), Music for Wilderness Lake (1979), Flute Concerto (1984), and the World Soundscape Project, as well as his 12-part Patria music theatre cycle. His most important book, The Tuning of the World (1977), documents the findings of his World Soundscape Project, which united the social, scientific and artistic aspects of sound and introduced the concept of acoustic ecology. The concept of soundscape unifies most of his musical and dramatic work, as well as his educational and cultural theories. Schafer was the first winner of the Glenn Gould Prize for Music and Communication as well as the Molson Award for distinctive service to the arts. In 2005 he was awarded the Walter Carsen Prize, by the Canada Council for the Arts, one of the top honours for lifetime achievement by a Canadian artist. Listen to R. Murray Schafer talk about soundscapes and composing . . . it's our COMPOSER PORTRAIT for the week.

According to Francois Couture (All Music Guide), "No matter how you present it, composer/guitarist Gyan Riley's Food for the Bearded is one beautiful, heartwarming album. Gyan Riley comes through as a sensible instrumentalist and a composer as unclassifiable as his father, Terry Riley. Elements of Spanish classical, contemporary, French jazz, and Indian classical music all become part of [his] style. Gyan Riley emphasizes musicality over novelty without sacrificing creativity in the process." Listen to Quasitremelodo, from the Sonata Quasifantokastica (2001) - a selection from Gyan Riley's Food for the Bearded  . . . it's one of our PYTHEAS EARFULS for the week.

Alexandra Gardner is stirring up modern music circles with her innovative blend of instrumental and electronic music. Her mixed ensemble works have been championed by groups such as the SOLI Chamber Ensemble, Contemporary Music Forum, Percussions de Barcelona, Duo Levent and the Aspen Contemporary Players. Her music has been featured at festivals and performance spaces throughout the US, Europe and Japan, including the Akiyoshidae International Art Village, Centro de Cultua Contemporania de Barcelona, The Corcoran Gallery of Art, Joyce SOHO, CrossSound Music Festival, The Library of Congress and The Kennedy Center. She has worked extensively with modern dance choreographers, including collaborations with Liz Lerman Dance Exchange, Sharon Mansur, and Deborah Riley Dance Projects. In addition to her residency in Barcelona, Gardner has been a composer-in-residence at Harvestworks Digital Media Center, The Atlantic Center for the Arts, and The MacDowell Colony. Listen to Alexandra Gardner's Luminoso (2003) performed by guitarist Enrique Malo . . . this week's FROM THE PYTHEAS ARCHIVES.

Composer Lawrence Dillon writes about his new piece Poke (2011): "Poke, subtitled 'a bagatelle on anti-social media', is scored for cello and double bass, with a running (spoken) dialogue between the two musicians as they play - an argument taking place across various social media. Over the course of the piece, the two 'text', 'friend' and 'like' one another with increasing fury, as their virtual exchanges completely obliterate their real lives in a comic turn on the dark underbelly of our online politesse." Watch a performance of Lawrence Dillon's Poke played by the duo Low & Lower - Brooks Whitehouse, cello, and Paul Sharpe, double bass . . . one of this week's FEATURED NEW MUSIC VIDEOS.

Phil Kline makes music in many genres and contexts, from experimental electronics and sound installations to songs, choral, theater, chamber and orchestral music. Raised in Akron, Ohio, he came to New York to study English Literature and music at Columbia. After graduation, he became part of the downtown New York arts scene: founding the rock band The Del-Byzanteens with Jim Jarmusch and James Nares, collaborating with Nan Goldin, and playing guitar in the notorious Glenn Branca Ensemble. His early compositions grew out of his solo performance art and often used boombox tape players as a medium, most notably Bachman’s Warbler for harmonicas and twelve tape loops (1992), and the Christmas piece Unsilent Night, which debuted in the streets of Greenwich Village in 1992 and is now performed annually in dozens of cities around the world. Other compositions include Zippo Songs, a song cycle based on poems Vietnam vets inscribed on their Zippo lighters, The Blue Room and Other Stories, written for string quartet Ethel, and Exquisite Corpses, commissioned by the Bang on a Can All-Stars. Watch and listen to Phil Kline talk about his life and his music . . . it's our COMPOSER PORTRAIT for the week.

Tadeusz Baird began to study composition during the German occupation of Poland during World War II. After the war (1947-51) he continued his studies with Piotr Rytel and Piotr Perkowski at the State College of Music (now the Music Academy) in Warsaw. He was one of the initiators and creators of the Warsaw Autumn International Festival of Contemporary Music, first held in 1956. In 1974 he began to teach composition at the State College of Music/Music Academy in Warsaw; then promoted to full professor, and becoming head of the composition department in 1977. Baird won numerous distinctions for his achievements in Poland and abroad, and among Polish composers of contemporary music, Baird's music is distinguishable for the deep respect he retained for tradition. This is manifested in his highly subtle referencing of the music of past ages – he demonstrated special admiration for Romantic, Baroque, and Renaissance music. The composer rendered his own compositions archaic by using early melodic phrases, but nevertheless created works that are highly effective in less tangible spheres – through emotion, impression, expression. His precisely and meticulously structured chords ring with exceptional beauty and his juxtaposition of musical timbres demonstrates unparalleled taste. Far from abandoning a modern compositional language, he rather deftly combined it with traditional musical elements. The entirety of Baird's music is very strongly lyrical, a trait that is most clearly manifested in the fully developed melodic lines, which are song-like in the best sense of the term [Thanks to culture.pl for these notes]. Listen to a performance of Tadeusz Baird's Epiphany Music (1963) . . . it's one of our PYTHEAS EARFULS for the week.

From notes by composer Andrzej Panufnik: "My Second String Quartet is an abstract work, with no literary programme. However, the idea behind it is very personal and is connected with a memorable experience from my childhood. When I was 7 or 8 years old, on holiday in the country, my favorite pastime was to put my ear to the wooden telegraph poles and listen to sounds produced by the wires vibrating in the wind. After a while I became convinced that I was listening to real music - which retrospectively I think was my first experience of the creative process, as for the first time I made use of my musical imagination. When I came to compose my Second String Quartet, I decided I would try to draw upon those childhood fantasies, allowing them to suggest to me both design and musical material. The work is composed in one continuous movement, and is based on two cells only: a tetrad (4-note cell) and a triad (3-note cell) with all their reflections and transpositions. It is almost like a secret code, as if the message perhaps was written not with words, but with squares and triangles replacing ordinary letters. Although I have designed a framework with  a most rigorous structure, my main intention was to compose a fantasy-poem, with real musical substance, and to convey to the listener some of the mysterious messages which I used to over-hear in my imagination from the telegraph poles. The work starts exactly as I remember from my childhood: from total silence, through to a hardly audible chord (tetrad), gradually transformed into melodic lines, which weave throughout the work into various shades of poetical expression, returning finally to the first chord, which eventually dissolves into silence. Listen to a performance of Andrzej Panufnik's StringQuartet No. 2, subtitled "Messages" (1980) played by the Chilingirian Quartet . . . it's this week's FROM THE PYTHEAS ARCHIVES.

Ernest Bloch wrote a considerable amount of music for string quartet under descriptive titles so that you would not necessarily know what medium the pieces were written for unless you heard them. In the Mountains is a 1925 diptych, its two movements meant to evoke, in the first instance, dusk falling over the peaks of the Haute Savoie near Geneva and, in the second instance, a folk dance somewhere in the Swiss Alps. Bloch, of course, was far from Switzerland and its mountains when he wrote the first of these two pieces in Cleveland and the second in Santa Fe, New Mexico (thanks to Jerry Dubins/Fanfare Magazine). Watch the Galatea Quartet perform  Ernest Bloch's In the Mountains . . . one of this week's FEATURED NEW MUSIC VIDEOS.

Fallen Angel (1945) is a rarity among films noir, a picture that comes very close to capturing the slightly seedy, morally ambiguous tone of hardboiled writers like James M. Cain. It was conceived as a followup to the previous year's smash hit romantic mystery Laura, reuniting the director, one of the stars and even the celebrated composer David Raksin, who had jumped to national fame with his wistful theme for a portrait. (Glenn Erickson). Watch the opening of Otto Preminger's Fallen Angel with music by David Raksin . . . it's our PYTHEAS SIGHTING for the week.

An avid student of art and architecture, Lowell Liebermann has long been intrigued by the strange, ornate carvings called gargoyles, which embellish many old churches and palaces; often exceedingly bizarre in appearance, they were thought to help repel evil spirits. Demons seem to hover around Liebermann's own Gargoyles (1989), a set of four highly contrasted etudes, which maintains an eerieness and sense of mystery even in its more placid moments. The title is meant simply to characterize sharply drawn sketches of a florid and macabre nature, rather than to suggest any actual musical depiction of these ornamental grotesqueries (thanks to Michael Boriskin/New World Records). Listen to a performance of the first of Lowell Liebermann Gargoyles [no. 1] (1989) by pianists Timothy Durkovic . . . it's one of our PYTHEAS EARFULS for the week.

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.

Elizabeth Vercoe has been a composer at the St. Petersburg Music Festival in Russia, the Cité International des Arts in Paris and the MacDowell Colony, and held the Acuff Chair of Excellence at Austin Peay State University in 2003. She has received numerous awards and commissions, along with grants from the Artists Foundation and the National Endowment for the Arts. To Music (2003) is a short, atmospheric solo for flute in four contrasting sections. At times the music is virtuosic, occasionally calling for multiphonics and other special effects. The titles of the four sections are taken from the haunting poetry of the Russian writer, Anna Akhmatova, a poet deeply interested in music. The work was commissioned by flutist Lisa Vanarsdel and written for her and the Laurels Flute Project. Watch a performance of Elizabeth Vercoe's To Music played by flutist Peter Bloom . . . one of this week's FEATURED NEW MUSIC VIDEOS.

American composer Dominick Argento is best known as a leading composer of lyric opera and choral music. Among his most prominent pieces are the operas Postcard from Morocco (1971), Miss Havisham’s Fire (1979), and The Masque of Angels (1963), and the song cycles Six Elizabethan Songs (1957) and From the Diary of Virginia Woolf (1974), the latter of which earned him the Pulitzer Prize for Music in 1975. In a predominantly tonal context, his music freely combines tonality, atonality and a lyrical use of twelve-tone writing, and Argento is particularly well-known for his sensitive settings of complex, sophisticated texts. As a student in the 1950s, Argento divided his time between America and Italy, and his music is greatly influenced both by his teachers in the United States and his personal affection for Italy, particularly the city of Florence, where he spends part of every year and where many of his works have been written. He has been a professor (and, more recently, a professor emeritus) at the University of Minnesota in Minneapolis, and he frequently remarks that he finds that city to be tremendously supportive of his work. He has also developed close professional relationships with several prominent singers, notably Frederica Von Stade, Janet Baker, and Hakan Hagegard, and some of his best-known song cycles were tailored to their talents. Hear Dominick Argento talk about his life and his music - part of Minnesota Public Radio's series The Composer's Voice . . . it's our COMPOSER PORTRAIT for the week.

As a body of music, David Raksin's score for The Bad and the Beautiful (1952) has been lurking around record collectors' circles for decades - Raksin himself recorded a suite distilled down from its most important sections for the RCA Red Seal label in the early '70s, and it has been frequently mentioned as one of the finer instrumental scores to come out of the MGM studios. The music itself varies between deliberate period-style writing, intended to evoke the Hollywood conventions of a bygone age, and some very clever adaptations, such as a Tchaikovsky pastiche entitled "Ilyich All Over". The latter stretches tonality on the reeds, horns, and strings in all manner of unexpected directions without ever losing the audience or releasing you from the irony-laced arc of the story [notes thanks to Bruce Eder @ AllMusic]. Listen to David Raksin conduct his Scherzo, from The Bad and the Beautiful (1952) . . . it's one of our PYTHEAS EARFULS for the week.

The Chamber Concertos are typical of Elliott Schwartz's gleefully eclectic style, the presentation of the many facets of which is facilitated through his espousal of a deep and wide-ranging use of "collage" technique. What this means in practical terms is that the music presents a kaleidoscopically shifting assemblage of layers of material, which can range from literal quotations of classical or romantic models in their original tonal language to reminiscences of the styles of earlier music (of many kinds) to frankly atonal, abstract and complex gestures. The Chamber Concerto II was composed in 1976 and is scored for solo clarinet and nine players. This wonderful little concerto (the shortest of the first six) might remind the listener of an old story with an updated ending. The delightfully puckish clarinet in this work is ultimately subdued by a passing funeral. This story might be titled, "Till Eulenspiegel in New Orleans" [notes thanks to Stephen Guy Soderberg, BMOP/sound]. Listen to a performance of Elliott Schwartz's Chamber Concerto II (1976) played by clarinetist Paul Martin Zonn and the University of Illinois Contemporary Chamber Players, Edwin London conducting . . . it's this week's FROM THE PYTHEAS ARCHIVES.

Alexina Louie is one of Canada’s most highly regarded and most often performed composers. Her uniquely personal style blends both East and West, and draws on a wide variety of influences - from her Chinese heritage to her theoretical, historical and performance studies. Her music has been widely commissioned and performed by Canada’s leading orchestras, new music ensembles, chamber groups and soloists. Louie's mini-opera Toothpaste (2001) was created for television with librettist Dan Redican, and has been broadcast in over a dozen countries. The six-minute opera is about a marriage that crumbles over the wife's mistreating a tube of toothpaste, much to her husband's dismay. Using the power of operatic emotion to express a seemingly innocuous (and hilariously Pythonesque domestic squabble), it slyly demonstrates the powerful, hidden emotions behind the fight, as it quickly transforms itself into a total melt-down of the relationship. Watch Alexina Louie's Toothpaste, with soprano Barbara Hannigan and tenor Mark McKinney . . . one of this week's FEATURED NEW MUSIC VIDEOS.

Bernadette Speach's work as a composer embraces a variety of styles, including solo, chamber and orchestral compositions, and her works have been played by numerous performers in venues across the world. She has performed as pianist throughout her life in a variety of capacities: as soloist; with her husband, guitarist Jeffrey Schanzer as the Schanzer/Speach Duo; and in both improvising and chamber ensembles. She has been the recipient of numerous awards and commissions, and her music is recorded on Mode Records, and published by Kallisti Press. In addition to her composing, Speach's efforts as an administrator, fundraiser, board member, presenter and educator continue to bring the work of a broad range of artists to audiences in the New York metropolitan area and beyond. Watch Tiny Temple (2009), a collaboration between Bernadette Speach and choreographer Anne Burnidge  . . . it's our DANSES PYTHEUSES for the week.


Christopher Marshall was born in Paris, France (of New Zealand parents), educated in Australia and New Zealand, and is currently Adjunct Professor of Composition at the University of Central Florida, in Orlando. Because of his wide cultural background - French, New Zealand, Australian, as well as living several years in Samoa, his music moulds diverse influences into a distinctive personal style marked by memorable melody and rhythmic ingenuity. Marshall’s orchestral, wind ensemble, chamber and choral music has been very widely performed and broadcast particularly in the United States and Europe. It's music that is accessible, idiomatically written and often exhilarating in its rhythmic ingenuity. It also places great emphasis on expressive memorable melody and frequently delights in integrating diverse stylistic elements. Listen to Christopher Marshall's Synergy, from "Three Aspects of Spring" (1995) . . . it's one of our PYTHEAS EARFULS for the week.


Jack Anderson (nytheatre-wire.com) writes of Out of Place (2008), a collaboration between choreographer Wendy Osserman and Czech violinist and vocalist Iva Bittová . . . "Wendy Osserman's choreography and Iva Bittová's music made Out of Place a journey to a haunted place of ghosts, spirits, werewolves, and spells somewhere in Eastern Europe where venerable Slavic and Yiddish traditions mingle and the air is filled with scraps of old ballads and fragments of almost-forgotten, yet still disquieting, folk tales. Bittová did much to maintain a sense of mystery. She can fiddle and sing at the same time, blending folk, classical, and jazz styles, her voice sounding delicate one moment, gruff and throaty the next. Some of her music was live. But she also performed in counterpoint with recordings. And this production revealed that her movements can be as impressive as her music, for her stage presence made her resemble a village story-teller, or clairvoyant crone. Osserman and her dancers collaboratively created what could be described as a plotless suite of musical and choreographic episodes, each with its own neat little title." Watch Sea (2008), from "Out of Place" . . . it's this week's FROM THE PYTHEAS ARCHIVES.