Mixing the musical sensibilities of traditional Persian music and the Western canon, Reza Vali arrives at a strange purgatory where counterpoint and spiritual chant sensuously commingle, living in sin, as it were. His rapturous Calligraphy No. 4 combines string quartet and santoor—think cimbalom with a brighter timbre—resulting in nothing less that a sonic orgy. By… Read more »
Iran commissions a Nuclear Symphony, an orchestra sells itself on eBay, and an insurance company offers to shield you from the RIAA for $19. Is it just me, or do you hear Michael Stipe singing in the background, too?
This haunting waltz walks a tightrope between melancholy and exuberance, which is understandable give the tune’s title, Basquiat. Like paintings by the music-obsessed artist, Don Byron’s homage is somewhat oblique, inscrutable even, until the intended vibe finally dawns on you like a ton of bricks. Joining in this random act of masonry is the Bang… Read more »
Should composers write their own bios?
If flashbacks to math class still inspire sweaty palms and dry mouth, no need to worry: John Luther Adams and Steven Schick handle all the beat counting here. Even if you can still solve a quadratic equation, you have to wonder how Schick manages to keep it all straight over the course of this 70-minute… Read more »
Only by taking risks can we transcend our limitations.
The electronically realized microtonal explorations of American composer Warren Burt (who has spent many years in Australia) are frequently triggered by something in the corporeal, non-electronic realm. In the case of the approximately 2-hour composition featured on the present disc, that trigger is a set of self-built aluminum tuning forks tuned to a 19-tone, just… Read more »
Peter Sellars’s remarkable keynote address at the American Symphony Orchestra League Conference is now available for anyone to listen to online, but what will be its ultimate impact.
While so much choral music exploits the wonderful harmonies that result from blending voices together effectively, Avshalomov’s “Flea Circus at Tivoli”—in keeping with the non-linear aspects of his wife Doris’s poem which it sets—eschews these niceties and revels in the wonderful sonic chaos that can result from having a bunch of people singing, speaking, and… Read more »
Last Wednesday my husband and I took our three year old to her first concert—the annual Garden of Memory Summer Solstice Concert in Oakland. There was no rule as to whom or where you listened, and our kid was in heaven.
Selected from among the seven composers who participated in this year’s annual Underwood New Music Readings in May, Fang Man has been awarded a $15,000 commission for a piece that is slated for premiere by the orchestra at Carnegie Hall in 2008.
Having only ever previously heard Michael Sahl’s music in obtusely hysterical songs for the musical theatre, I had no idea what to expect from a disc of his instrumental music. Jungles (1990), a fully-notated score for jazz/rock quintet featuring electric violin, electric guitar, piano, bass, and drums, is a peculiar hybrid. Composed before the instrumentation… Read more »
I’ve got one word for you: sousamaphone. Okay, also “Squeaky-deakey!” That’s right. It’s “awesome music,” baby…
Okay, in a way, I’m almost giving away the goods by showcasing this brief scene just as Golijov’s Ainadamar is beginning its ascent towards the climatic death of the heroine, Margarita Xirgu (sung by Dawn Upshaw). But it this moment of emotion that still haunts corners of my mind even months after seeing the live… Read more »
When it comes to your music, offering performers and presenters a certain amount of flexibility has its advantages. What are you doing to make your compositions more versatile?
A new coalition of 17 different new music ensembles and organizations join forces in the Windy City.
Until I heard this CD, I only knew of Rodney Lister from his often insightful posts to Sequenza21. A Little Cowboy Music, composed in 1980, is a polytonal quodlibet for clarinet, violin, contrabass, and piano which combines seven classic American “cowboy” tunes ranging from “The Streets of Laredo” to the theme song from Roy Rogers’s… Read more »
Every now and then, I run across a piece of information that completely rocks my world, only to find that everybody on my block already knows all about it. I don’t know whether the use of beta blockers in classical music performance is common knowledge, but I find this genuinely alarming.
What is the defining moment in a “successful” composer’s life that could be called a “tipping point”?
According to the composer, Trancelation was inspired by Cuban polyrhythms, and if you listen carefully, you can hear a relentless, clearly articulated clave played on a high B amidst all sorts of admittedly un-Cuban sounding angular figurations scattered throughout the rest of the range of the piano. —FJO
True internationalism begins with an enlightened nationalism which is not prejudicial and therefore quite distinct from xenophobia and jingoistic patriotism.
It was great to hear trumpeter Jon Nelson and his cohorts in the Meridian Arts Ensemble play a 1993 brass quintet fanfare by Milton Babbitt at the American Music Center’s annual awards ceremony last month, as well as Babbitt’s much longer Counterparts (1992) at the benefit concert later that evening. But Babbitt’s ultimate brass behemoth… Read more »
Have you ever encountered a situation where you call for a player to improvise in a piece, only to have them look at you like a deer in headlights?
Slomo Video, the brainchild of video artist Ryan Junell, is made up of one-minute videos, all very slow, made by a total of 85 artists from all over the country.
