Category: Commentary

Frank J. Oteri Photo by Melissa Richard

For my entire adult life, I have been an uncontrollable record collector. The infinite variety of music available on recordings allows eager listeners an opportunity to hear just about anything. The sad reality of being unable to hear a large amount of American repertoire or new music of any national origin in the concert hall or on the radio is countered by the ecstatic joy of being able to hear anything you want if you’ve got it in your record collection. And recordings allow you to take music into your home and live with it, sometimes turning seemingly impenetrable music into “personal standard repertoire” through repeated listenings.

For our second issue of NewMusicBox, we decided to focus on the record industry and its ongoing importance as a tool in the dissemination of new American music. I had a lengthy discussion with Foster Reed, founder and head of New Albion Records, about the state of the record business and the future. Sprinkled throughout our discussion are 10 RealAudio sound snippets spanning the entire history of New Albion ranging from the very first disc, Ingram Marshall’s Gradual Requiem, to recent recordings by Terry Riley and Daniel Lentz.

We invite you to debate with us about the size of the potential audience for recordings of new music and the best way to reach them. For our second “hyper-history,” Steve Smith has assembled a crash course in American independent record labels specializing in new music. He has spoken with the executive producers of 18 labels across the United States. (For the record, pun intended, he’s no relation to Ken Smith, author of our first “hyper-history“.) We asked Robert Hurwitz, President of Nonesuch Records, Laura Kuhn, Direcor of the John Cage Trust, and composers Aaron Jay Kernis, Elliott Schwartz and Derek Bermel to talk about why they buy recordings and share with us some of their recent finds. This month’s SoundTracks features details about over 40 new CDs featuring American music to further peak curiosity.

Beyond the world of recordings, there are over 200 listings for June and July in our national calendar of American music performances so there are also lots of opportunities to get away from your stereo system as summer approaches. American music continues to be in the news with important award announcements from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, the American Composer Alliance and ASCAP. There are also important changes happening at Meet The Composer, the American Symphony Orchestra League and the Canadian Music Centre.

NewMusicBox wants to continue the crusade of vanguard record companies which have exposed listeners to overwhelming diversity of new American music. We hope to bring information about this music into your home on another level, hopefully offering the same joy of discovery that only comes with tracking down a great record!

I buy records for at least five reasons: professionally (I want to hear people I haven’t heard before, or I want to hear recordings that people I trust are talking about); I buy them for my children (records they want and records I think they might like); I buy them to hear musician friends when they forget to send me a copy of their latest album;  I buy records that I simply want to hear because I still love listening to music; and I buy CDs of LPs I haven’t replaced (because I don’t listen to my old LPs, so unless I replace them, those discs are lost forever).

Laura Kuhn Photo by Betty Freeman

NewMusicBox is terrific, but I confess that what I’m listening to right now doesn’t really qualify as new American music: both CDs available of Dulce Pontes, entitled Caminhos and Lagrimas, and both extraordinarily beautiful.  American audiences may only be familiar with her work from the film “Primal Fear” (Ed Norton, Richard Gere, et al.), where one cut was featured.  She recently is also featured on one cut on a CD with Andrea Bocelli, one of the many current darlings of the opera world, but it’s too much Bocelli and not enough Pontes.  She’s a long-standing and very much revered artist in Lisbon, and for good reason.  Both CDs are available but not easy to find: Eur/Portugal #850101 for “Caminhos” and Eur/Portugal #3003 for “Lagrimas.”

I’m also listening to Mikel Rouse‘s yet unreleased American Dream, the materials for which (eight or so “retro-songs”) form the basis of his in-progress opera (the third in the trilogy) The End of Cinematics (which, coincidentally, is up in a workshop version at St. Anne’s this weekend). Really, really, really wonderful work.

Aaron Jay Kernis Photo by Daniel Vogel, courtesy G. Schirmer, Inc.

Between visiting Tower, Music Boulevard on the Web and BMG Music Service (this is not paid advertising) I’ve recently seen about 6 recordings pass into my consciousness, but only briefly so far , since as I’m busily composing at the moment and can’t listen to anything right now, these will have to wait for my summer listening. So I can’t tell you anything about them yet, but here they are:

J.S. Bach: Cantatas Vol. 7 dir. by Ton Koopman
Pierre Boulez: Repons etc.
Arvo Pärt: Kanon Pokajanen
Michael Gordon: Weather
Ernst Krenek: Symphony # 2
Stephen Hartke: Orchestral Works

I’m very curious about what my colleagues and older composers have written and are putting on disc, jointly out of my own desire to know and my mandate as new music advisor at the Minnesota Orchestra. I’ve always felt it important to hear as much new music in concert and have it at home for future reference.

Elliott Schwartz Photo by Joel Chadabe, courtesy Electronic Music Foundation

As I’m living in England (on resident fellowship at Robinson College, Cambridge University) for the months of May and June, I’ve had a chance to hear some 20th century English music — ranging from the earliest part of the century (Vaughan Williams‘ wonderful song cycle Songs of Travel) to more recent pieces such as Andrew Toovey‘s surreal opera The Juniper Tree, the 2nd Concerto for Orchestra by the wonderfully eclectic Robin Holloway, and a new recording of Libra and Gemini by Roberto Gerhard. I’ve also bought CDs that would have been virtually impossible to find in the states: discs on Scandinavian labels, with pieces such as Sinking Through a Dream Mirror by the Danish collage-quotation artist Karl Aage Rasmussen — and even (on the BIS label) a saxophone quartet by Charles Wuorinen!

In addition, just before I left the USA on May 1st, I had a chance to hear three excellent American recordings: a terrific CD of music by Chen-Yi (recorded for CRI) that I reviewed for the journal “20th Century Music,” a symphony and concerto by Lou Harrison (the concerto for violin, piano and gamelan-like percussion orchestra is a knockout), and a very striking collection of chamber works by Lucky Mosko.

Derek Bermel Photo courtesy Derek Bermel

Last month I found some CD gems, among them Pittsburgh band Don Caballero‘s new album What Burns Never Returns (Touch and Go TG185CD) a minimalist rock album which takes King Crimson’s early 80’s stuff to the next level; the drummer Damon Che weaves some incredible polyrhythmic lines. Listening to the album reminded me of the whole band sleeping on my floor a few years ago during their midwest tour. I bought the young hip-hop group Blackstar‘s first album (Rawkus RWK 1158-2) and especially enjoyed one stellar track, “Thieves in the Night” based on a quote from Toni Morrison’s The Bluest Eye; It’s worth buying the CD just for this lyric. I bought Bun-Ching Lam‘s The Child God opera on Tzadik (TZ 7031), and I’ve already listened to the piece five or six times. She has an uncanny sense of dramatic action in music; her earlier album on CRI also makes good listening. I found Morton Feldman‘s Coptic Light recorded by Michael Morgan and the Deutsched Symphonie-Orchester Berlin (CPO 999 189-2). I studied this score in detail several years ago, but hadn’t heard a recording until last year when I heard Michael Tilson Thomas’ recent version with the New World Symphony; I’m still not sure which one I like better, but I think that every American composer writing for orchestra should at least know the score.

I also picked up a copy of Bill Evans‘ Eloquence (Fantasy OJCCD-814-2) in a used record shop. I’ve been trying to find this one for years ever since I heard it on LP when I was 12; I love the first track “Gone With the Wind”. While I was in Prague I bought the latest album by the Czech violin / vocals / percussion duo of Iva Bittova & Pavel Fajt (Panton 81 0795-2). Pretty wacky stuff, very personal and theatrical. For some reason I bought a second copy of Claude Vivier‘s opera Kopernikus, which I had gotten in Toronto a few years ago at the Canadian Music Centre (Les Disques SRC, MVCD 1047). I can’t even count the number of times I’ve listened to this disc, as well as the newer disc of Vivier’s orchestral music, featuring the Schoenberg and Asko Ensembles conducted by Reinbert de Leeuw and soprano Susan Narucki (Philips 454-231-2). I’ve been enjoying a CD of Gerald Barry‘s orchestral works that I obtained from the Irish Music Centre in Dublin (Marco Polo 8.225006). Worth the work it takes to get it!

I must say that most of the best music comes to my house by mail, sent by friends and fellow composers. Among the CDs which I dug were Jonathan Hart Makwaia‘s unbelievable disc (WOW! Get it!), Susan Botti‘s new release on CRI, Steve Burke‘s juicy disc “Clockwise”, Alejandro Iglesias Rossi‘s CD of his newest electronic works, and Laura Caviani‘s jazz compositions on As One on the Innova label. Most of these are available from smaller labels or directly from the composers themselves.

Dean Stein Photo © Peter Schaaf

Executive Director, Chamber Music America

I’ve always been a bit of a history buff — not so much academically as romantically. For example, I love the theater and try to see the off-off, off and Broadway productions that crowd a typical New York season – experimental works, revivals, classics, “star” vehicles. When I’m at the theater, I feel that I’m part of a vast continuum of emotions. Lately, I’ve been thinking about hearing live, new music concerts in a similar way.

Music written now is also part of a continuum, only the “medium” is different. Beckett’s spare plays challenge audiences (and actors) as the works of Morton Feldman challenge listeners and performers. Writing music, like writing plays, has been happening for centuries. The history buff in me wants to hear what writers and composers have to say about my own time.