Anton Batagov - Where We Are Not. Letters of Mother Seraphima
- "This composition can in a sense be regarded as a continuation of Selected Letters of Sergei Rachmaninoff,
a piano cycle written after visiting Rachmaninoff’s grave. The starting
point for the new piano cycle was as strong an impression, also in the
US and also Russia-related: visiting the Novo-Diveevo Convent and
Cemetery. It is a Russian Orthodox convent, and about seven thousand
people are buried in the cemetery – mainly those who left Russia after
the 1917 revolution, and their families.
However, while the idea of the Letters of Rachmaninoff was
totally my invention, that is to say, such letters never existed in
“reality”, the new composition builds on a non-fiction plot and excerpts
from original letters of Natalia Janson (1895 – 1988). After the death
of her husband, Mikhail Alekseevich Janson (1887 – 1953) – biologist,
teacher, religious writer and social activist – Natalia Janson became
ordained under the name of Mother Seraphima. In the last years of her
life she was the Mother Superior of the Novo-Diveevo Convent. Her
letters reflect the history of Russian emigration, the history of the
country that died in 1917 and continued to live in those people, who
forever preserved in themselves the light of Russian culture and
spiritual traditions. . . . ."
Featuring: Mark Hopkins, conductor; Derek Charke, flutes; Eileen Walsh, clarinets; Gillian Smith, violin; Susan Sayle, viola; Norman Adams, cello; Max Kasper, bass; Simon Docking, piano; Mark Adam and Naoko Tsujita, percussion.
In Sonorous Falling Tones features the music of Derek Charke, the
WIRED! Ensemble conducted by Mark Hopkins, and Derek Charke as flute
soloist. The music in this album spans the fullest range of Derek’s
output, from a work written fifteen years ago while he was finishing his
doctoral studies in composition at SUNY Buffalo, to the title track—a
work from 2015 that features his considerable talents as a flutist.
Derek creates new and complex musical worlds, always searching for some
kernel of truth and beauty.
Derek Charke is a JUNO and three-time East Coast Music Association
award winning composer and flutist. Commissioned by an impressive list
of performers and organizations including the Kronos Quartet and St.
Lawrence String Quartet, Dr. Charke is currently a professor of
composition at Acadia University.
WIRED! is the resident ensemble of the Acadia New Music Society, and
the brainchild of conductor Mark Hopkins and composer Derek Charke. With
a flexible instrumentation, WIRED! is comprised of professional
musicians from the Maritimes who are dedicated to the excellent
performance of quality chamber music of our time. This CD features:
Eileen Walsh, Gillian Smith, Susan Sayle, Norman Adams, Max Kasper,
Simon Docking, Mark Adam, and Naoko Tsujita, and was produced by John
D.S. Adams of Stonehouse Sound.
The project from the Michigan powerhouse GVSU New Music Ensemble features new work from the slashsound collective, Adam Cuthbért, Matt Finch,
& Daniel Rhode, on the Innova label:
The New Music Ensemble at Grand Valley State University
(Allendale, MI) has established itself as an innovator and incubator
within the new music community. Founded in 2006 by Director Bill Ryan,
the ensemble has commissioned over 60 new works, toured extensively,
and received wide recognition for its recordings of both Steve Reich’s Music For 18 Musicians, and Terry Riley’s In C. These albums have been on year-end best-of lists at WNYC, Time Out Chicago, the Washington Post, the New York Times, LA Weekly, and many others.
In
its 11 years, the program at GVSU has developed a proud and supportive
culture. Realizing a longtime goal of an “100% homegrown project,” Ryan,
who also teaches composition at GVSU, turned to program graduates: Adam Cuthbert, Matt Finch, and Daniel Rhode after continuing to follow the work of the three composers on their recently formed experimental collective, slashsound.
Returnis
a forward-looking electro-acoustic vision. The 15 tracks are a lush and
explorative marriage of electronic and acoustic sounds and gestures, in
what Cuthbert describes as “electronic chamber music.” While rooted in
the initial notation provided by the composers to the ensemble,
recordings of this material were then used by the composers as the raw
material (or “samples”) for the album. Despite creating something
completely new out of the source material, the traditional
composer/performer foundation provides an undeniable intimacy and
warmth.
John Potter tenor Morgan Goff viola
James Woodrow electric guitar
Nick Cooper cello
Gavin Bryars harmonium
Bryars is inspired by the landscape and unique character of
Holderness - the area of East Yorkshire between Hull and Spurn Head
landscape, and at the same time the life and poetry of Andrew Marvell
(1621-1678), the metaphysical poet who was born and raised in the
Holderness region. When a young man of just 19, Marvell witnessed his
father drowning as he was crossing the Humber by ferry. In its original
form this new work took several iterations, the first being a
performance by his ensemble of four musicians and tenor in the Church of
St Germain, Winestead, where Marvell was baptised and where his father
was rector. The second involved a sound installation in Hull and the
third, concert performances in Hull and London, with harmonium replacing
the tiny Winestead organ heard in this recording.
This piece is part of New Music Biennial 2017. For more information
about the project and to download the New Music Biennial album, please
visit our project page: http://www.nmcrec.co.uk/new-music-biennial-2017
A performance of 'Winestead' by The Gavin Bryars Ensemble - 22nd June 2017
John Potter's multifarious musical collaborators include lutenists Ariel
Abramovich and Jacob Heringman, the Dowland Project with John Surman
and Milos Valent, the composer Ambrose Field and the Conductus Ensemble
with fellow tenors Christopher O'Gorman and Rogers Covey-Crump. A writer
and scholar as well as a singer, he has published four books on singing
and is a former British Library Edison Fellow. He is Reader Emeritus in
Music at the University of York, having left the university in 2010 to
focus on his portfolio of freelance projects. His non-performing
activities have included publishing articles and research papers,
examining doctoral theses in Europe and the UK and coaching ensembles in
Europe and the USA.
Grammy winning ensemble Third Coast Percussion releases a recording of
two landmark works by French composer Philippe Manoury, Le Livre des
Claviers and Metal. The otherworldly sonic landscapes created in these
works come from a selection of keyboard instruments, including
"sixxen", a set of six metal instruments built from scratch. Manoury's
fascinating blend of chaos and precision is interpreted with virtuosic
commitment by the musicians of Third Coast Percussion.
- (born 1952, Tulle) is regarded as one of the most important living
French composers and a forerunner in the field of live electronics. His
work as a composer and researcher at IRCAM in Paris included
collaboration with mathematician Miller Puckette on the development of
Max/MSP, a widely-used programming language for interactive live
electronics. Manoury has held teaching positions for the Ensemble
Intercontemporain, Conservatoire de Lyon, Festival d’Aix-en-Provence,
and Académie Supérieure de la Haute École des Arts du Rhin, and
served as Composer-in-Residence for the Orchestre de Paris and the
Scène nationale d’Orléans. He is professor emeritus of the University
of California San Diego where he taught composition from 2004 to 2012,
and has held his own academy of composition as part of the Festival
Musica in Strasbourg since 2015. Manoury was named Officer of Arts and
Letters by the French Ministry of Culture, and is a member of the
honorary committee of the French- German Fund for Contemporary
Music/Impuls Neue Musik and the Berlin Academy of Arts.
Third Coast Percussion
- More Third Coast Percussion at Emusers here and here.
Composers: Christopher Cerrone, Anna Thorvaldsdottir, Ellen Reid, Daniel Bjarnason, Andrew McIntosh
. . . . . For
years LAPQ has been known for its skill in both championing and
cataloging works by West Coast composers, with a specific focus on Los
Angeles. With Beyond they explore the deep knowing that comes from
making work with old friends. And broadly, the project signals a move
for the Los Angeles contemporary music scene, a scene burgeoning out
with global significance, and overflowing with artists actively seeking
to create community.
Beyond
is a remarkable epic in which space and time are stretched on and on,
over and past the horizon. Bjarnasson’s “Qui Tollis" spans an incredible
arc, emerging from the contemplative space of the works around it,
brimming with the bashes and tumbles of bass drums, and then seemingly
too early, vanishes again into a lull and rhythmic groan. With
“Fear-Release,” Reid takes us into a world of metallic voices, as if
we’re listening to a rubbed piece of crystal from inside the gem itself.
It’s rare that a piece of music seems to truly sonically shine, and
Reid’s piece accomplishes this brilliance early and often.
Thorvaldsdottir’s “Aura” is the wind, the sand in the wind, and the wind
chime hanging from the wood on the old falling-apart porch all at once.
It speaks multitudes, and miraculously all upon the quiet edge of
audibility. The expanse of McIntosh’s “I Hold the Lion’s Paw” is that of
a twelve-hundred page novel, in which each page has less than a half
dozen words. Its sprawl is scrolled out like a web in air, as the
quartet communicates effortlessly with one another across a cavern of
distance. In one moment they sit still in space, another they rattle
endlessly like the earth; they arrive where we are, simply putting
musical puzzle pieces together. With “Memory Palace,” Cerrone creates
rooms of sound, each drenched in a subtle hue. In the rooms of this
ever-expanding house we find ourselves drinking different air, buzzing
with pop, hiss, and click, and lingering with a guitarist who could be
inside the guitar itself.
"There
are more languages spoken in Los Angeles than in any other city in the
world. It’s a transitive city. Most residents have come here to
contribute to its cultural identity and have ended up calling it “home.”
Los Angeles is a city where every industry, creative or otherwise, is
fueled by the pursuit of personal creative dreaming. It’s clear then how
the Los Angeles Percussion Quartet (LAPQ) created a community of
composers and made them all local to the group’s music making and to Los
Angeles itself, regardless of each composer’s city of origin.
Is it
language that makes someone at home in a given place? If so, the
compositional languages of Anna Thorvaldsdottir,Christopher Cerrone,
Ellen Reid, Daníel Bjarnasson, and Andrew McIntosh appear as interwoven
and complex as Los Angeles itself. Their music similarly courses with
chiming repetition, spectral near-silence, and the wearing away of time
on objects so barely touched that they appear, in moments, as fragile as
paper. These composers — from two drastically different continents —
are brought together by LAPQ, despite their differences in origin, under
one banner: friendship."
"Up to XVIII century European music was mostly built over theological
texts and chants. To acquire new musical forms the contemporary
composers continue doing something similar to what their colleagues did a
few centuries ago. The basis of these compositions is not only the
Christian doctrine, but also ideas and texts from other traditions. The
75 minutes long rock cantata "The One Thus Gone" is based on the ancient
Buddhist texts.
To set off on this journey, one doesn’t have to be a Buddhist. These
words are extremely universal. They are akin to physical laws and have
no religious affiliation. The more so music. Tibetan chants are similar
to Gregorian plainsongs and Old Believers’ tones, tensons and Russian
epics, blues ballads and hard rock riffs. And, of course, they are
minimalistic. As always Batagov uses minimalist compositional techniques
and imprints of different ages, traditions and styles."
Alexander Manotskov: lead vocals, guitar, dryna
Asya Sorshneva: electric violin, electronics
Sergey Kalachev “Grebstel”: bass guitar, electronics
Vladimir Zharko: drums
Anton Batagov: piano
Featuring Lama Sonam Dorje [2]
Ensemble N’Caged:
Olga Rossini: soprano, Arina Zvereva: mezzo-soprano, Alena Parfenova: mezzo-soprano
The one thus gone (Tathagata in Pali and Sanskrit) – that’s how Buddha
called himself instead of “I”. The name refers to liberation from
samsara, a cycle of death and rebirth. Not only the Buddha, who lived
2,500 years ago, but any person can become “thus gone”. Those who have
“thus gone” explain to the rest of us how everything works, and what
kind of problems and obstacles keep us in samsara.
My composition is based on three ancient texts.
“The Last Words of Senge Wangchuk”, a great yogin and meditation
master who lived in the 11th and 12th centuries. This text is
constituted of the words he pronounced at the moment of his death as his
body was dissolving into a cloud of rainbow light.
“The Prayer of Samantabhadra”. This text was hidden in the 9th
century by the great master Padmasambhava, and revealed in the 14th
century by another great master Rigzin Godem (1337-1408). The authorship
of this text is attributed to primordial Buddha Samantabhadra.
Samantabhadra embodies enlightened mind which is present in everyone’s
mindstream. After having heard our true voice we start to wake up from
ignorance. In the conclusion of this text it is said that all beings who
hear this prayer will attain enlightenment within three lifetimes.
“Prostration to the 35 Buddhas”. In Buddhist tradition there is a
practice of confession of sins: pronouncing the 35 names of “The One
Thus Gone” while doing prostrations (full bows).
It is not at all necessary to be a Buddhist to set off on this
journey. These words are universal. Like the laws of physics, they do
not belong to any religion. Neither does music.
The text of the 4th (final) movement contains just one letter: A. It
is said that the most profound wisdom that needs hundreds of volumes for
its detailed explanation can be transmitted through one single letter
A. When we sing the sound Ah for a long time and listen to it we become
that sound. We become who we really are, and all the knowledge of the
universe and that of ourselves enters our mind without any words and
philosophy.
River of 1,000 Streams (2016) is a complex,
slowly growing, densely textural piece for solo piano and up to 11
layers of “cascading echoes” (which are created in a live performance
via a computer running a MAX patch). Each of the piece’s hundreds of
“echoes” is a short moment (generally one to a few bars in length) of
the piano solo that may reappear anywhere from a half-second to 25
minutes after the pianist first plays it. Floating sparsely amid the
piece’s rich primary texture of tremolos, and appearing quietly,
spectrally, are short moments of a more melodic, or less textural,
nature.
This work, “conceived one early morning on the banks of the
Yellowstone River” (Lentz), is more purely textural than most of Lentz’s
recent work. Yet, like so much of his work over the past 40-plus years,
its structure is that of a complex, almost kaleidoscopically woven
tapestry of new and recurring fragments of music.
- "has been a fixture on Southern
California’s new-music scene for more than 45 years, prolifically
creating a very personal music that has either embraced or tipped its
hat to a number of experimental and post-experimental styles. His music
can be wild and relentless in its propulsion and juxtaposition of
contrasting material, or simply lushly beautiful. Sometimes it hints at
pop and jazz harmonies and rhythms, sometimes it toys with late Romantic
gestures, and sometimes it offers Lentz’s distinct musical visions of
Southern California—both the brightly lit, bustling urban landscape and
the desolate, calm, expansive desert—while always reveling in a basic
joy of music-making". . . . . .
Vicki Ray
- "who has been described as “phenomenal and
fearless,” is a leading interpreter of contemporary piano music. A
longtime champion of new music, she has worked with some of the most
prominent composers of our time, including György Ligeti, Pierre Boulez,
Steve Reich, Elliot Carter, Esa-Pekka Salonen, Oliver Knussen, Louis
Andriessen, Steven Stucky, David Lang, Julia Wolfe, Michael Gordon, and
Chinary Ung. Ray has commissioned and premiered numerous works from both
emerging composers and such established artists as John Adams, Morton
Subotnick, Stephen Hartke, David Rosenboom, Paul Dresher, Rand Steiger,
Kamran Ince, and Eric Chasalow". . . . .
Daniel Lentz - River of 1,000 Streams ALBUM REVIEW
First Terrace Records is honoured to present The Beacon Sound
Choir singing Sunday Songs - a project conceived by Peter Broderick and
brought to life through collaborations with a number of Portland-based
individuals including David Allred, Holland Andrews (Like a Villain),
Branic Howard and Heather Woods Broderick.
Beacon Sound Choir is one of Broderick’s most ambitious and avant-garde
projects to date. Utilising the harmonies of a 35 strong choir, Sunday
Songs plays out with an almost religious undercurrent; the product of
individuals inspired to commit a divine act of collaboration, recalling
the rare splendour of a community in seamless alliance.
This is not to place the choir in an unattainable bracket however. As
Peter explains, the aim of the project was simply to get as many people
singing together as possible, regardless of musical experience. The
relaxed demeanour of the singers and the occasional unguarded moments of wonder and excitement betray the true
nature of the recordings, that they were not made to be works of art in
their own right, but rather to serve as a snapshot of a glorious
phenomena; documents of a small miracle occurring on Sunday mornings at
the Beacon Sound record shop in Portland, Oregon, where for Peter the act of singing became “nothing short of a magical teleportation to another realm”.
As well as the original choir recordings, the album also features a
sprawling ambient rework from the endlessly inventive Machinefabriek,
which he describes as “a patchwork, connecting and expanding the more
dreamlike parts of Sunday Songs into a sea of voices, where it’s unclear
where one voice stops and the other
begins.” His jaw-dropping reinterpretation of the source material is
informed in some ways by the work of Renaissance composer Josquin des
Prez. “When I discovered his choir music not so long ago I realized that
ambient music already existed around the 1500s”.
Well, I now have 176 albums in My Wish List and another 216 in the old Save for Later list. I couldn't resist this one for 98 cents (less 63% ?). 2 Drones Emusic
Cornelius Dufallo, Jennifer Choi, violins; Ljova Zhurbin, viola; Yves Dharamraj, cello; with John King, oud
- "Even before you've heard a single note of Free Palestine by the composer and instrumentalist John King (b. 1953), the work may well have made an impact for its title alone: a seeming reference to one of the more daunting, divisive sociopolitical conditions in modern global history.
For King - who became politically active during his late teenage years in Minneapolis during the Vietnam War era, participating in labor actions and protests, and later wrote music inspired by the anti-apartheid movement in South Africa - the question of Palestine has been an issue of particular interest. It follows, then, that Free Palestine, a unified sequence of relatively brief string quartet pieces composed from May 2013 to August 2014, is to some extent politically motivated.
Crucially, though, the work - wholly instrumental and essentially abstract in nature - does not convey a specific agenda. It is neither overt protest, nor a rallying cry. Instead, what Free Palestine ultimately represents is a kind of personal idealism, expressed in the action of a North American composer in the twenty-first century negotiating a new personal relationship with traditional Arabic music: experimenting with melodic modes (maqam'at) and rhythmic cycles (iqa'at), and transforming those elements for conventional Western instruments - personalizing the music, in a very real sense, in order to embed it within his own cultural milieu.
The work's lesson is not a blunt statement urging some particular form of action, but rather a simple acknowledgement of the invisible strands binding us in common humanity and intrinsic dignity, couched in a musical idiom invented not just to accommodate that commonality but to celebrate it."
- composer, guitarist and violist, has received
commissions from the Kronos Quartet; the Belgrade Philharmonic
(co-commission with Aleksandra Vrebalov), Ethel;
the Albany Symphony/“Dogs of Desire”, Bang On A Can All-Stars; Mannheim
Ballet; New York City Ballet/Diamond Project, Stuttgart Ballet, Ballets
de Monte Carlo; as well as the Merce Cunningham Dance Co.
His string quartets have also been performed by the Eclipse Quartet
(LA) and the Mondriaan Quartet (Amsterdam), in addition to the Secret
Quartet which has premiered many of his compositions at The Stone (June 2007, May 2015), The Kitchen (April 2009), Lincoln Center Festival (July 2011); and Roulette (Oct. 2014). . . . .
Well, I now have 176 albums in My Wish List and another 216 in the old Save for Later list. I couldn't resist this one for 98 cents (less 63% ?). 2 Drones Emusic
Drones 3 is on the Sundays Songs and is very much related. - and @Germanprof (and others), I wholeheartedly recommend to spend 15 min. in company with with: Sea Of Voices (Machinefabriek Rework)
- Back to the new stuff (released December 21, 2017):
. . ."The idea for the project began in the summer of 2016, when Roomful of
Teeth artistic director Brad Wells learned of an intriguing venue in the
high desert of Colorado. The space, located in the small town of
Rangely, was a 65-foot-tall, 40-foot-wide steel water tower from the age
of steam engines publicly known as The TANK.
The structure has long been an underground destination for experimental
musicians from around the country due to it’s rich acoustics and
swirling reverberations of up to 40 seconds" . . .
The foundation of composer Alexander Sigman’s fcremap project is a
collaborative piece with Korean visual artist and animator Eunjung Hwang
called Future Creatures. Sigman’s approach to these pieces, all
reconceptualizations of the original materials for Future Creatures in
some form, is appropriately multi-disciplinary. He explores
non-traditional scores including real time scrolling electronic graphic
notation, experimental methods for triggering electronic tracks,
unconventional ways of playing back electronic sounds, and image to
sound analysis of the Future Creatures animation to draw fundamental
connections between the materials in use in both medium. The overall
result, from a musical perspective, is a sophisticated palimpsest, with a
conceptual template serving as the frame upon which several variations
are layered. Sigman reinforces the relationship of the pieces to each
other with his titles — “fc” stands for “Future Creatures”, “remap”
represents the “remapping” of the material, and the suffix indicates the
instrumental combination. While the opening track, and the first piece
in the series, fcremaperc, is austere and sonically exploratory,
fcremapercremaflvln for alto flute, violin, electronics, and video is
more whimsical, capturing the character of the animated score in the
instrumental sounds. Through his innovation in score generation,
integration of audio and video elements, and layering of material to
create a set of related pieces, this release demonstrates Alex Sigman's
place at the forefront experimental compositional aesthetics.
Two albums from Canadian Music Centre's Centrediscs imprint:
The MUSIC4EYES+EARS CD/Blu-Ray project presents new solo piano +
electronics + video works written especially for Megumi Masaki. These
works are designed to explore diverse concepts, performance techniques
and technologies in live piano and multimedia performance. Central to
this project is how the interaction of image, movement, text and sound
can create new expressive potentials as a whole. This exciting
multimedia project features the music of Canadian composers Brent Lee, Keith Hamel,T. Patrick Carrabre, and Nicole Lizee. Award-winning
pianist Megumi Masaki's innovation and breadth of her artistic activity,
dynamic temperament and "riveting and mind-expanding" performances have
earned her a reputation as a leading interpreter of contemporary music.
She specializes in exploring how sound, image, text and movement can be
integrated in live performances of multimedia works.
In this exciting new CD, The Winnipeg Symphony Orchestra (WSO)
performs two monumental works by critically acclaimed composer Vincent
Ho – The Shaman: Concerto for Percussion & Orchestra, and Arctic
Symphony. Recorded live by CBC Radio and digitally re-mastered, these
world premiere performances highlight Ho’s creative achievements during
his years as the WSO’s composer-in-residence (2007-2014).
The Shaman is a tour-de-force concerto inspired by the traditions of
shamanism and written for renowned percussionist Dame Evelyn Glennie.
Arctic Symphony is Ho’s heartfelt musical portrait of the Northern
region and features the Nunavut Sivuniksavut Performers. Together, they
form two of Ho’s most important works from his orchestral oeuvre. Also
included: a special “Forward” by Oscar-winning composer John Corigliano.
Vincent Ho is a multi-award winning composer of orchestral, chamber,
vocal, and theatre music. His works have been described as “brilliant
and compelling” by The New York Times and hailed for their profound
expressiveness and textural beauty, leaving audiences talking about them
with great enthusiasm.
- "Aboard this cruise liner of a record production you experience an
unprecedented encounter of the western big band tradition with chamber
music and the classical musical culture of northern India. Here musical
idioms combine in a colourful world of melodies and rhythms which also
plumbs the emotional depths of human life.
The saxophonist,
composer and arranger Lars Møller (b. 1966) stands at the head of a
dazzling collaboration of Aarhus Jazz Orchestra and The Danish
Sinfonietta with the two stars of Indian music, the violinist Kala
Ramnath and the tabla player Abhijit Banerjee; a cultural encounter
borne up by mutual admiration and empathy which is perhaps best
explained with a reference to a video montage made by the photographer
Ole Udengaard in connection with a visit to India in 2016 in the company
of Lars Møller and several of the Danish musicians.
We travel
with the camera aboard a boat on its way down the Ganges as it winds
through the ancient, sacred city of Benares, also called Varanasi. As a
viewer one is confronted by both the alien and the exotically
fascinating: thick smoke drifts across the water, birds flutter against
the warm glow of the afternoon sky, which soon becomes twilight, and
along the banks people have gathered at blazing bonfires in front of
temples and residences. You can almost smell
"The Danish saxophone player, composer and conductor Lars Møller (b.
1966) is a leading Scandinavian jazz figure. After living in New York
1987-89, playing with a number of legendary jazzmusicians, Lars Møller
spend several prolonged periods in New Delhi in the early 90´s
assimilating the highly emotional Indian classical music. As a composer
he delicately combines his knowledge of the American jazz tradition with
the melodic Nordic tradition and a very broad awareness of European
classical music. He is a truly contemporary jazz composer and musician,
who easily includes electronica, choir and world infuences in his music.
The result is a unique lyrical and forceful personal expression. As
artistic director of Aarhus Jazz Orchestra fom 2012 to 2015, he
successfully developed this professional bigband (supported by the
Danish arts Counsil) in to a creative voice of the 21st century - most
notably on the “ReWrite of Spring” CD feat, David Liebman and Marilyn
Mazur". . . .
Composers: Lee Hyla, John Adams, David Rakowski, Bernard Rands,
Chen Yi and Augusta Read Thomas
If it is possible for a group with over three decades of pioneering work to reintroduce itself, then that’s what Paradigm Lost
does for the PRISM Quartet. After a string of important and
boundary-busting releases on Innova, ECM, and many other labels, this
collection firmly establishes PRISM’s own XAS label, and offers a kind
of “State of the Union” address for the saxophone quartet.
The album title is also well-considered. If there ever was a paradigm
for a saxophone quartet, PRISM has long since dispensed with it,
through a radical re-examination of what the saxophone can do…and who it
can do it with. The quartet has worked with choirs, chamber ensembles,
jazz bands, and the weird and wild instrumentarium designed by Harry
Partch. As it happens, the works on this album, whatever their origins,
are simply for saxophone quartet, but they all come from a place of
collaboration, with composers who reflect the musical and cultural
diversity of 21st century America. . . .
Raindamage
is the fruit of artistic collaboration, a kind of a micro lab exploring
the creative possibilities and processes involved in the making of an
album. It is an attempt to unpack the ‘tacit processes of musical
collaboration’ and immediately raises the question: how do you crack
them open in order to gain a further insight, which in return can lead
to new ways of doing?
At the heart of Raindamage are the most valuable systems of all: the collective and the collaborative. The Raindamage
narratives are of course as many as the participants. In my instance,
the continual tossing of the creative ball between my generous friend
and colleague Valgeir Sigur›sson and myself, led to the creation of V A R
P, an installation room which invites you into the nesting site of Raindamage:
a space for ecological navigation. V A R P had its premiere already in
November 2016 in Sweden, before the album release. This only goes to
show the fast changing work paradigm here at the cusp of the 21st
century. An unreleased album had already become a new work.
Icelandic
ensemble Nordic Affect has been hailed for its “affectionate
explorations” (BBC Music Magazine) and “commitment to their repertoire”
(Classical Music). Founded in 2005, Nordic Affect was formed by a group
of period instrument musicians who were united in their passion for
viewing familiar musical forms from a different perspective and for
daring to venture into new musical terrain. In 2013, the ensemble was
nominated for the Nordic Council Music Prize and was named Performer of
the Year at the Iceland Music Awards in 2014.
Believing
that music knows no boundaries, Nordic Affect has brought its
music-making to contemporary and rock audiences alike and performed to
critical acclaim at festivals such as TRANSIT festival (BE), Dark Music
Days (IS), November Music (NL), BRQ Vantaa Festival (FI), Estonian Music
Days (EE) and Iceland Airwaves (IS). Its members have individually
performed and recorded with artists and groups such as The English
Concert, Concerto Copenhagen, Anima Eterna Brugge and Björk.
Valgeir Sigurðsson is an Icelandic composer and producer. As the editor and
curator of the Bedroom Community label he founded in 2006, his work with
the likes of Nico Muhly, Ben Frost, Paul Corley, Sam Amidon and Daníel
Bjarnason features a constantly evolving appreciation of the diversity
of music in the world. His collaborators have included Björk, Bonnie
‘Prince’ Billy, Feist, Damon Albarn, CocoRosie, Sigur Rós, Jóhann
Jóhannsson, Brian Eno, Tim Hecker, Anohni, Oneohtrix Point Never and
Alarm Will Sound.
Hlynur Aðils Vilmarsson has enjoyed a diverse career in music, be it as a
member of Icelandic rock bands or the composers’ collective s.l.á.t.u.r.
Infused with a passion for experimentation, his work has also extended
to the realm of technology within the platform of LornaLab (Reykjavík
Media Lab).
Úlfur
Hansson made his mark on the music scene as an electronic music
producer, live-improviser, orchestral composer and sound artist. Hansson
graduated in composition from Mills College (CA), and his work earned
him a win as young composer at the 2013 International Rostrum of
Composers. Commissions have included works for the Tectonics festival
curated by Ilan Volkov and the Kronos Quartet’s project Fifty for the
Future.
The form of both freeHorn and ii-v-i consists of a continuous modulation between three different harmonic series.freeHorn weaves together the live interaction of acoustic instruments and computer software written by Polansky and Phil Burk. ii-v-i,
a reverberant cloud of moving intonation, gradually drifts from one
natural harmonic series to another. Only open strings, 2nd, 3rd and 4th
harmonics, and notes stopped at the 7th and 12th frets are used, and the
guitars are audibly retuned from one “section” to another—each section
having a new fundamental and a new tuning.
minmaj is Polansky’s unique arrangement/“translation” for two electric guitars of Carl Ruggles’s 1921 work for muted brass, Angels. (It is the first movement of Polansky’s 3 Translations for Electric Guitar.)
- is a composer, theorist, performer, editor, writer and teacher. He is the Emeritus Strauss Professor of Music at Dartmouth College, the co-founder and co-director of Frog Peak Music (A Composers’ Collective), and is currently Professor of Music at UC Santa Cruz. He has also taught at Bard College and several other schools. His solo CDs are available on New World Records, Artifact, and Cold Blue, and his music is widely anthologized on many other labels. His works are performed frequently around the world. Polansky is the recipient a number of prizes, commissions, and awards, including Guggenheim, Fulbright, and Mellon New Directions Fellowships (the latter for work in American Sign Language performance). He was the inaugural recipient (with David Behrman) of the Henry Cowell Award from the American Music Center. As a performer (primarily as guitarist and mandolinist), he has premiered and recorded important contemporary works by Christian Wolff, Barbara Monk Feldman, Michael Parsons, James Tenney, Lou Harrison, Lois V Vierk, Ron Nagorcka, Daniel Goode, David Mahler, and many others.
Composed by David Lang, the day was commissioned in 2016 by cellist Maya Beiser as a “prequel” to world to come (2003), which Lang also wrote for Beiser in response to the tragic events of 9/11. Both pieces are meditations on life, but from very different perspectives.
“'the day' looks at ways we review our lives,” Lang explains, “exploring remembered moments as a chronicle of a life.” Lang sourced the text from the internet by searching for the phrase “I remember the day that I...,” and then cut and compiled lyrics based on his findings. The spoken word accompaniment by actor Kate Valk lends an emotional charge to Beiser’s poignant cello lines, which gradually build in multi-tracked layers to emulate a small string ensemble.
In 'world to come', Beiser echoes the cello with her own voice, with the separation between the two growing more pronounced as the piece progresses. It’s a metaphor for the separation of the soul from the body at the moment of death, and their struggle to reunite in a peaceful, post-apocalyptic spiritual world.
^^^ It is great to see Cantaloupe releases on release date. Back in october I bought: - That turned out to be a bad file and never got replaced.
Elliot Simpson, Chaz Underriner, Cristián Alvear, Vicente Araya, guitars; Brian Parks, virginal; Colleen Potter Thorburn, harp
The immersive sonic textures that characterize Michael Winter's
(b. 1980) music are crafted from comprehensive lists of data, with each
composition encompassing a musical question that is addressed
algorithmically. A performance lasts for as long as it takes to "answer"
the question, expressing all results as efficiently as possible.
Winter
leaves room for unanticipated results by keeping things open, notably
in the instrumentation, which, rather than specifying instruments, tends
to designate certain properties such as "plucked strings," or
"sustaining instruments." In this way, each performance offers a
different manifestation of the same underlying structure. For Winter,
beauty is the experience of something new, and to experience something
new is to evolve. Even though he allows for a great many possibilities,
the recordings here evince a highly tuned aesthetic filter. All of the
five works included in this collection use plucked string instruments
(guitar, virginal, and harp) and pure tones (ebowed guitar and pure
tones). Together, they form a metacomposition, bound together by two
versions of necklaces.
The titles describe the processes that form each work: necklaces represents picking patterns with aperiodic necklaces (strings of data with specific constraints of rotational and symbolic permutation), and in mass and band a constraint akin to a band pass filter is applied to an Ockeghem mass. Likewise, in chorale and finely tuned resonators, instruments resonate the harmonics of a chorale, and quieting rooms makes use of phase cancellation to quiet a room. The title of the piece lower limit refers
to Winter's intention to use the smallest amount of code possible - in
other words, to find the lower limit for programming a composition. This
idea, in fact, applies to all of the pieces here, since all are
concerned with how to express ideas in a maximally efficient way.
This collection of new works by six talented young composers – Emma
Wilde, Peter Wilson, Jack Sheen, Joanna Ward, Robin Haigh and Alex J
Hall – is the end result of a 9-month artist development programme
involving workshops with multi-instrumentalist Quinta (Bat for Lashes,
Penguin Café), mezzo soprano Lore Lixenberg ('a rich and powerful voice'
Metro) and accordionist Luke Carver Goss. Joining them are soloists
from the Royal Northern Sinfonia.
Each composer explores a unique and extraordinary sound world. Emma
Wilde warps time with the help of the Mayan ‘secret calendar’; Peter
Wilson captures sudden shifts of landscape via the work of novelist
Richard Smyth; Alex J Hall evokes 17th century experiments in light and
illusion; Jack Sheen’s Found emerges from found material by
himself and other composers; Joanna Ward takes images from the poetry of
Allen Ginsberg to create music that “shift in and out of focus”; and
Robin Haigh re-imagines material by Mozart and from an English folk
ballad.
Their new compositions were recorded by NMC Recordings in November
2017 at Sage Gateshead. The project culminates in an album launch and
premiere performances at Sage Gateshead on 27 January, 2018.
This collection of new works by six talented young composers – Emma
Wilde, Peter Wilson, Jack Sheen, Joanna Ward, Robin Haigh and Alex J
Hall – is the end result of a 9-month artist development programme
involving workshops with multi-instrumentalist Quinta (Bat for Lashes,
Penguin Café), mezzo soprano Lore Lixenberg ('a rich and powerful voice'
Metro) and accordionist Luke Carver Goss. Joining them are soloists
from the Royal Northern Sinfonia.
Each composer explores a unique and extraordinary sound world. Emma
Wilde warps time with the help of the Mayan ‘secret calendar’; Peter
Wilson captures sudden shifts of landscape via the work of novelist
Richard Smyth; Alex J Hall evokes 17th century experiments in light and
illusion; Jack Sheen’s Found emerges from found material by
himself and other composers; Joanna Ward takes images from the poetry of
Allen Ginsberg to create music that “shift in and out of focus”; and
Robin Haigh re-imagines material by Mozart and from an English folk
ballad.
Their new compositions were recorded by NMC Recordings in November
2017 at Sage Gateshead. The project culminates in an album launch and
premiere performances at Sage Gateshead on 27 January, 2018.
^^ Thanks guys, it sometimes feels a bit lonely here ^^
- The Allegory of the Three Suns is
inspired by the natural phenomenon of the refulgent verisimilitude of
the optical illusion of three suns over the skies of Chelyabinsk near
the Urals, the temperature was -23 to -25, the winter sunlight refracts
through tiny hexagonal crystals which are invisible, thus creating the
appearance of three suns.
The pastoral elegance and eloquence of
the music reciprocates the above anomaly, albeit with a peripatetic
disposition in the form of ambient soundart using narratives from the
Changpa: a semi nomadic Tibetan tribe found mainly in Jammu and Kashmir
and Changtang in Ladakh.
Metastasizing into an expansive veritable
atheneum of ambient sanguine dialectics; music for the fjords in
solstice, detritus of rhodes harmonies in juxtaposition with coruscating
strings, trumpet playing the Himalayas, decorous yet delphic
ruminations, a stirring porphyry of impressionistic post second Viennese
school piano interjections and string sonatas, an eclectic smorgasbord
of atmospheric discourse that soothe a pensive penchant.
Ascending the pergola to a pagoda, we
thus enter the vestibule to a star chamber of contemplative
enlightenment, chaste nymph, lion and the unicorn, we venerate in homage
at the obelisk talisman to the last sentinel
Leilei Tian (田蕾蕾) : Le discours d’une larme perdue (淚之語 2012) for erhu and guitar Wei-Chieh Lin (林煒傑) : Ruins (古墟 2017) for erhu and two performers Lin-Ni Liao (廖琳妮) : Le train de la vie III – WE (浮生III, 2012) for erhu and electronics Heng Chen (陳珩) : Aide-mémoire C (備忘錄 C, 2017) for erhu, accordion and piano Juan Camilo Hernandez Sanchez : Aquelarres (神秘的聚會 2012) for erhu and accordion Christian Eloy : Fold-in (折疊 2017) for acousmatic music
Erhu virtuoso Wang Ying-Chieh was born in Taipei, Taiwan. She first
began her studies in piano, violin, and composition under the Western
classical music tradition, then moved to Erhu and Traditional Chinese
music. After graduating from the Chinese Culture University with a major
in Chinese music, she obtained a master’s degree in erhu performance in
the same university in Taipei. She served as the concertmaster of the
Taipei Chinese Orchestra. Starting from 2012 she began her solo career,
collaborating with artists from various fields and establishing Erhu as a
solo instrument in diverse and non-traditional contexts. She was
invited numerous times as a soloist and performed with ensembles such as
Regensburg Philharmonic Orchestra in Germany, Ensemble KNM in Berlin,
Hong Kong Sinfonietta, Shanghai Chinese Orchestra, Chinese Traditional
Orchestra of Jiangsu Performing Arts Group, National Chinese Orchestra
Taiwan, Taipei Chinese Orchestra, and the Kaohsiung Chinese Orchestra.
She has also collaborated with the improvisation group MAFIA ensemble,
and was the feature artist of the French contemporary music association
TPMC’s Erhu Contemporary Repertory project. She was chosen by the Taiwan Music Institute for its innovative Mentor and Partnership
program. She has also been awarded by the Ministry of Culture in Taiwan
for a residency at the Cité Internationale des arts in Paris. Currently
she is a member of the Pan Project Ensemble, an ensemble featuring
traditional instruments from Chinese, Korea, and Japanese cultures;
moreover, she serves as the artistic director of Yunshuyach Ensemble in
Taiwan.
Comments
- Anton Batagov at FANCYMUSIC - Emusic
- http://adamcuthbert.com/return/ - Emusic - Innova Recordings
"Cello Peace" is 32:39.
that this was a new release. Anyway, interesting recording.
Latest purchase:
sample with sound alterations.
John Potter tenor
Morgan Goff viola
James Woodrow electric guitar
Nick Cooper cello
Gavin Bryars harmonium
Thanks for the heads up on those last two posts. More great music to throw my bonus credits at. :-)
How could I forget about this one ?
- Sono Luminus - Second Inversion review
Alexander Manotskov: lead vocals, guitar, dryna
Asya Sorshneva: electric violin, electronics
Sergey Kalachev “Grebstel”: bass guitar, electronics
Vladimir Zharko: drums
Anton Batagov: piano
Featuring Lama Sonam Dorje [2]
Ensemble N’Caged:
- Cold Blue Music
Daniel Lentz - River of 1,000 Streams ALBUM REVIEW
list. I couldn't resist this one for 98 cents (less 63% ?).
2 Drones Emusic
- New World Records
- and @Germanprof (and others), I wholeheartedly recommend to spend 15 min. in company with with:
Sea Of Voices (Machinefabriek Rework)
- Back to the new stuff (released December 21, 2017):
Best of Bandcamp Contemporary Classical: November 2017
- New Focus Recordings - Emusic
Alexander Sigman
Two albums from Canadian Music Centre's Centrediscs imprint:
- hbdirect.
Megumi Masaki
_________________________________________________________________________________________________
- Centrediscs - Arctic Symphony (excerpts) - The Shaman: Concerto for Percussion & Orchestra (excerpts)
Vincent Ho
http://www.alfaaudio.dk/2017/11/17/dpa-case-study-glow-of-benares/
- John Schaefer at XAS Records
Prism Quartet at Emusers here, here and here
- Cold Blue Music
Composed by David Lang, the day was commissioned in 2016 by cellist Maya Beiser as a “prequel” to world to come (2003), which Lang also wrote for Beiser in response to the tragic events of 9/11. Both pieces are meditations on life, but from very different perspectives.
“'the day' looks at ways we review our lives,” Lang explains, “exploring remembered moments as a chronicle of a life.” Lang sourced the text from the internet by searching for the phrase “I remember the day that I...,” and then cut and compiled lyrics based on his findings. The spoken word accompaniment by actor Kate Valk lends an emotional charge to Beiser’s poignant cello lines, which gradually build in multi-tracked layers to emulate a small string ensemble.
In 'world to come', Beiser echoes the cello with her own voice, with the separation between the two growing more pronounced as the piece progresses. It’s a metaphor for the separation of the soul from the body at the moment of death, and their struggle to reunite in a peaceful, post-apocalyptic spiritual world.
Cantaloupe
Back in october I bought:
- That turned out to be a bad file and never got replaced.
Elliot Simpson, Chaz Underriner, Cristián Alvear, Vicente Araya, guitars; Brian Parks, virginal; Colleen Potter Thorburn, harp
This collection of new works by six talented young composers – Emma Wilde, Peter Wilson, Jack Sheen, Joanna Ward, Robin Haigh and Alex J Hall – is the end result of a 9-month artist development programme involving workshops with multi-instrumentalist Quinta (Bat for Lashes, Penguin Café), mezzo soprano Lore Lixenberg ('a rich and powerful voice' Metro) and accordionist Luke Carver Goss. Joining them are soloists from the Royal Northern Sinfonia.
Each composer explores a unique and extraordinary sound world. Emma Wilde warps time with the help of the Mayan ‘secret calendar’; Peter Wilson captures sudden shifts of landscape via the work of novelist Richard Smyth; Alex J Hall evokes 17th century experiments in light and illusion; Jack Sheen’s Found emerges from found material by himself and other composers; Joanna Ward takes images from the poetry of Allen Ginsberg to create music that “shift in and out of focus”; and Robin Haigh re-imagines material by Mozart and from an English folk ballad.
Their new compositions were recorded by NMC Recordings in November 2017 at Sage Gateshead. The project culminates in an album launch and premiere performances at Sage Gateshead on 27 January, 2018.
- NMC Recordings
The pastoral elegance and eloquence of the music reciprocates the above anomaly, albeit with a peripatetic disposition in the form of ambient soundart using narratives from the Changpa: a semi nomadic Tibetan tribe found mainly in Jammu and Kashmir and Changtang in Ladakh.
Metastasizing into an expansive veritable atheneum of ambient sanguine dialectics; music for the fjords in solstice, detritus of rhodes harmonies in juxtaposition with coruscating strings, trumpet playing the Himalayas, decorous yet delphic ruminations, a stirring porphyry of impressionistic post second Viennese school piano interjections and string sonatas, an eclectic smorgasbord of atmospheric discourse that soothe a pensive penchant.
Ascending the pergola to a pagoda, we thus enter the vestibule to a star chamber of contemplative enlightenment, chaste nymph, lion and the unicorn, we venerate in homage at the obelisk talisman to the last sentinelLeilei Tian (田蕾蕾) : Le discours d’une larme perdue (淚之語 2012) for erhu and guitar
Wei-Chieh Lin (林煒傑) : Ruins (古墟 2017) for erhu and two performers
Lin-Ni Liao (廖琳妮) : Le train de la vie III – WE (浮生III, 2012) for erhu and electronics
Heng Chen (陳珩) : Aide-mémoire C (備忘錄 C, 2017) for erhu, accordion and piano
Juan Camilo Hernandez Sanchez : Aquelarres (神秘的聚會 2012) for erhu and accordion
Christian Eloy : Fold-in (折疊 2017) for acousmatic music