21st century classical music

[San Antone]

I'm only negative about the present and future though- every day I explore further the great period of recorded performance of the core repertory, roughly the middle fifty years of the last century.

So you are "negative about the present and future"?  Enjoy what you like and be negative about whatever you want.  It's not as if your opinion in this matter is definitive.  If you are unable or unwilling to appreciate the new music being written today, or for the last 25 years, no biggie.  There is no mandate for you to do anything other than follow your bliss.

[Rinaldo]

it's just so many notes on a stave to shuffle around, and is thence inherently limited- this is obvious.

Is it?

[torut]

https://www.youtube.com/v/kVxy-_aS0N4

That is very beautiful. I love Clyne's music, especially acoustic works with strings.

[Rinaldo]

That is very beautiful. I love Clyne's music, especially acoustic works with strings.

Yes, the emotions are direct, the writing is not. The more I hear from Clyne, the more I consider her one of my contemporary favourites.

[San Antone]

https://www.youtube.com/v/viiHz-NybXs&feature=em-subs_digest

Moscow Contemporary Music Ensemble, Maria Boulgakova, Alexei Vinogradov, cond.

At the core of this work are three characteristics of man revealed by Platonov in his novels Chevengur and Kotlovan. Each of these characteristics is given its own musical material, and it is the border collisions and interpenetrations between them that bring to light the essence of Platonov's man. One of the work's significant aims is to attempt the expression in music, by way of graphic parallels, of the 'awkwardness' and deliberate 'inappropriateness' of Platonov's language. The musicians are obliged to 'battle with' the text, in an effort to overcome not only the limitations of their instruments but also their own physical strength.

[San Antone]

https://www.youtube.com/v/SMZ0lU0PWBk&list=PLUSRfoOcUe4YkqCplwaCc7XBPO9sI-7Eg

In this collection of work Móvil, Alejandra Hernández exposes her passions and obsessions as a composer through the use of innovative instrumental techniques performed on traditional acoustic instruments that are then manipulated electronically. In her music the two sonic areas or domains – the acoustic and electronic – intersect, and have a dialog with each other, and ultimately generate and share a new and original sound space – a space that the poet José Gorostiza accurately defined with elegance and beauty in these verses: "No es agua / ni arena / la orilla del mar" (seashore is neither water nor sand). It is in this thin line or sound border where Hernández fully sets loose her imagination and fantasy.



Composer and sound artist interested in articulating research, exploration, technology, and actual instrumental techniques in order to find methods and materials for the creation of her compositions, focusing mainly on electroacoustic music.

She studied music in Mexico and at the Berklee College of Music, earning a scholarship of this institution and a Fulbright-García Robles grant. Since then, she has taken several courses in contemporary music and new technologies.

[Sean]

Deleted.

It's easier.

[San Antone]

https://www.youtube.com/v/lwtQ3hliVTo

Nomi Epstein, D.M.A, is a Chicago-based composer, curator, performer and music educator. Her compositions center around her interest in sonic fragility, where structure arises out of textural subtleties.

[San Antone]

2001 : Vibrafonietta, for vibraphone and strings - Ivo Malec

https://www.youtube.com/v/zE_d9kHvl1o

[San Antone]

Wilderness of Mirrors (2014)
Lawrence English



Wilderness of Mirrors is the new album from Lawrence English. It is two years in the making and the first album created since the release of his 2011 ode to J.A Baker's novel, The Peregrine. It is English's most tectonic auditory offering to date, an unrelenting passage of colliding waves of harmony and dynamic live instrumentation.

The phrase, wilderness of mirrors, draws its root from T.S Eliot's elegant poem Gerontion. During the cold war, the phrase became associated with campaigns of miscommunication carried out by opposing state intelligence agencies. Within the context of the record, the phrase acted as a metaphor for a process of iteration that sat at the compositional core of the LP. Buried in each final piece, like an unheard whisper, is a singularity that was slowly reflected back upon itself in a flood of compositional feedback. Erasure through auditory burial.

Wilderness Of Mirrors also reflects English's interests in extreme dynamics and densities, something evidenced in his live performances of the past half decade. The album's overriding aesthetic of harmonic distortion reveals his ongoing explorations into the potentials of dense sonics.

"During the course of this record," English explains, "I was fortunate enough to experience live performances by artists I deeply respect for their use of volume as an affecting quality, specifically Earth, Swans and My Bloody Valentine. I had the chance to experience each of these groups at various stages in the making this record and each of them reinforced my interest in emulating that inner ear and bodily sensation that extreme densities of vibration in air brings about."

The album is moreover a reflection on the current exploitation of the ideals of the wilderness of mirrors, retuned and refocused from the politics of the state, to the politics of the modern multiplex. The amorphous and entangled nature of the modern world is one where thoughtless information prevails in an environment starved of applied wisdom. Wilderness Of Mirrors is a stab at those living spectres (human and otherwise) that haunt our seemingly frail commitments to being humane.

"We face constant and unsettled change," English notes, "It's not merely an issue of the changes taking place around us, but the speed at which these changes are occurring. We bare witness to the retraction of a great many social conditions and contracts that have previously assisted us in being more humane than the generations that precede us. We are seeing this ideal of betterment eroded here in Australia and abroad too. This record is me yelling into what seems to be an ever-growing black abyss. I wonder if my voice will reflect off something?"

Wilderness Of Mirrors is reflection upon reflection, a pure white out of absolute aurality.

[Rinaldo]

Wilderness of Mirrors (2014)
Lawrence English



Wilderness of Mirrors is the new album from Lawrence English. It is two years in the making and the first album created since the release of his 2011 ode to J.A Baker's novel, The Peregrine. It is English's most tectonic auditory offering to date, an unrelenting passage of colliding waves of harmony and dynamic live instrumentation.

English is a favourite of mine, how on Earth did I miss this? Never considered him 'classical' before. Thanks for the tip!

[San Antone]

English is a favourite of mine, how on Earth did I miss this? Never considered him 'classical' before. Thanks for the tip!

Glad you found the post helpful.

I don't like to box up music into categories, which places me a bit out-of-step at GMG.  But, for those composers whose work does not easily fit into jazz or pop categories, which will be most electronic or soundscape artists, I find the "classical" stamp as good a fit as any.

Lawrence English is a good example of what I am describing.

[Rinaldo]

Glad you found the post helpful.

I don't like to box up music into categories, which places me a bit out-of-step at GMG.  But, for those composers whose work does not easily fit into jazz or pop categories, which will be most electronic or soundscape artists, I find the "classical" stamp as good a fit as any.

Lawrence English is a good example of what I am describing.

I hear you. The line is quite blurry / isn't really important at all, but I admit I still have a tendency to draw it somewhere. Old habits die hard.

[Neoclassical]

Elizabeth Fawn "Fairy Rings".  I'm particularly fond of the prepared piano stuff she does.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sygmMG4Q7Ro

[torut]

Tyshawn Sorey: Trio for Harold Budd (2012)
https://soundcloud.com/tyshawn-sorey/trio-for-harold-budd
World premiere @ Roulette - 12/12/12.
Margaret Lancaster (alto flute) Russell Greenberg (vibraphone) Dave Broome (piano)

[San Antone]

https://www.youtube.com/v/jH5pTtJWJy8

[San Antone]

Willy Merz

https://www.youtube.com/v/uAT5UbMSeoY&list=PLUSRfoOcUe4bLze9TV0hn-vFwY5pGQvir

[San Antone]

Evan Ziporyn

[Rinaldo]

ALL THESE ARE THE DAYS MY FRIENDS: OSTRAVA DAYS 2015 by George Grella.

"Everything about Ostrava Days is broader and deeper than not only the ordinary concert-going experience, but the average festival experience as well: the music stakes out territory from tonality to unpredictable experimentation, from acoustic to digital instruments, from absolute music to opera. It is a rare night when there is only one concert; the norm is at least two different events, and across the nine days, I sat, stood, and strolled around, across, and through forty hours of music."

[Brian]

By the time he's done with that, I should be back in Barcelona, where my internet connection will be more powerful (and more reliable) than it is here in Andorra.

I know this is an old post, but...how did you like Andorra?