21st century classical music

[snyprrr]

Just listened to this again after almost a year since the first time. Did nothing to me.

Wasn't it supposed to be 'happy' music?

HAPPY MUSIC??

We'll have NONE of that thank you. ::)tap tap tap...

[petrarch]

Wasn't it supposed to be 'happy' music?

HAPPY MUSIC??

We'll have NONE of that thank you. ::)tap tap tap...

Yes, it's supposed to be happy, easy and accessible. I can only think of a word: superficial.

[petrarch]

Oh that's what it's 'supposed to be' .. right.

You are right--I should have written "claims to be" instead. Quoting the composer, "I try very seriously to write unserious music".

[San Antone]

I had posted this in another thread but wanted to put it here as well.  I had forgotten about this thread, it is probably the best place to post about new music.

I just listened to a fantastic work from 2003 by Michael Gatonska from a CD called First Takes.  The work was "Transformation of the Hummingbird"



I also discovered another interesting composer, Allen Brings, whose music can be found on this site: New Music Online

This site seems to be connected to New Music Box and it also sponsors a 24-hour streaming radio site called Counterstream Radio.

[San Antone]

A good introduction recording to an interesting composer: Lucia Ronchetti ~ Portrait

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[San Antone]

Gadenstätter: Comic Sense (Concerto for Piano and Keyboard solo and ensemble)

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Interesting work.  I don't think the title is irrelevant.

[San Antone]

Aribert Reimann : Cantus, for clarinet and orchestra (2006) | Jörg Widmann



Aribert Reimann (born 4 March 1936 in Berlin) is a German composer, pianist and accompanist, known especially for his literary operas. His version of Shakespeare's King Lear, the opera Lear, was written at the suggestion of Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau who sang the title role.  His commissioned work, Cantus for Clarinet and Orchestra, dedicated to the clarinetist and composer Jörg Widmann, was premiered on January 13, 2006, in the WDR's Large Broadcasting Hall in Cologne, Germany, in the presence of the composer, who claims the work was inspired by Claude Debussy's compositions for clarinet.

[San Antone]

Lisa Lim : Ochred string, for oboe, viola, violoncello, double bass (2008)



Liza Lim (born 30 August 1966 in Perth, Western Australia) is an Australian composer.

Lim writes concert music (chamber and orchestral works) as well as music theatre and has collaborated with artists on a number of installation and video projects. Her work reflects her interests in Asian ritual culture, the aesthetics of Aboriginal art and shows the influence of non-Western music performance practice.  Since 1986, Lim has worked extensively with members of the ELISION Ensemble; she is married to Daryl Buckley, its artistic director. In 2005, Lim was appointed the composer-in-residence with the Sydney Symphony for two years. Among other works, the orchestra commissioned—jointly with the radio station Bayerischer Rundfunk—her work The Compass; in its premiere performance on 23 August 2006 at the Sydney Opera House it was conducted by Alexander Briger, William Barton played the didgeridoo.

The work, Ochred String, was commissioned by Bayerischer Rundfunk with funds provided by Ian Potter Cultural Trust.. Commissioned for the Musica Viva Festival 2008, Munich.  First performance: by Stefan Schilli, Nimrod Guez, Sebastian Klinger, Philipp Stubenrauch — 10 Feb 08. Musica Viva Festival, Munich.

[San Antone]

James Dillon : La Navette (2001)



From the BBC Proms

James Dillon's La navette (2001) for its 26 minutes (longer than the 20 suggested) engrossed the listener in its hallucinatory effects. Scored for a large but not extravagant orchestra, Dillon enthrals with his fastidiously worked textures and timbres and the densely weaved yet luminous soundworld. This slow if varied (and logically organised) processional – recalling such immortal 'moderns' as Birtwistle's The Triumph of Time, Boulez's Rituel and Stockhausen's Trans (and maybe too George Lopez's Landscape with Martydom, which Michael Gielen has recorded) – extends a lot of information to the open-eared and alert listener, all of which fits microscopically into a large expanse of inexorable growth and rhythmic automata. In this pristinely executed performance (antiphonal violins serving a new work just as revealingly as the nineteenth-century ones, Dillon's writing for them sometimes Baroque in figuration), La navette (shuttle) moved like clockwork and fitted together transparently. The composer embraced the conductor for a job well done and certainly worth doing.

James Dillon, born October 29, 1950 in Glasgow, Scotland, is a Scottish composer often regarded as belonging to the New Complexity school. Dillon studied art and design, linguistics, piano, acoustics, Indian rhythm, mathematics and computer music, but is self-taught in composition.

Honors include first prize in the Huddersfield Contemporary Music Festival in 1978, the Kranichsteiner music prize at Darmstadt in 1982,[1] and three Royal Philharmonic Society composition awards; most recently for his Fourth String Quartet. Dillon taught at Darmstadt from 1982–92, and has been a guest lecturer and composer at various institutions around the world. He has taught at the University of Minnesota School of Music in Minneapolis, Minnesota since 2007.

[bhodges]

Gadenstätter: Comic Sense (Concerto for Piano and Keyboard solo and ensemble)

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Interesting work.  I don't think the title is irrelevant.

Thanks for this. Of the many interesting things you posted in this thread, this is the one that I would like to hear first. Last year the JACK Quartet played the world premiere of Gadenstätter's String Quartet No. 1, and I thought it was a remarkable debut in the genre.

--Bruce

[petrarch]

Thanks for this. Of the many interesting things you posted in this thread, this is the one that I would like to hear first. Last year the JACK Quartet played the world premiere of Gadenstätter's String Quartet No. 1, and I thought it was a remarkable debut in the genre.

--Bruce

I made a couple of comments about my listening experience of that work a few months ago. I didn't find it at all engaging, but rather bland and superficial.

EDIT: I see it was on this same thread, and just 10-15 replies ago (!).

[San Antone]

I made a couple of comments about my listening experience of that work a few months ago. I didn't find it at all engaging, but rather bland and superficial.

EDIT: I see it was on this same thread, and just 10-15 replies ago (!).

That is why I said I didn't think the title was irrelevant.     But, I wouldn't say the work was a failure.

[San Antone]

This is probably not news for New Yorkers, but for those of us out in the hinterlands, I consider this a real find:

WQXR Q2: Living Music, Living Composers

Right now I'm streaming Duo for Violin and Piano, R. Murray Schafer Duo Concertante.

[San Antone]

YANN ROBIN - Vulcano . Art of Metal I+IIII

The major pieces of the record, Art of Metal I and Art of Metal III, both belong to a cycle devoted to the metal contrabass clarinet. The cycle's connecting thread, the driving idea, is a metaphorical approach to what metal brings to mind, this alloy often synonymous with strength, power, solidity, energy, brilliance, shine... The instrument itself is totally made of metal; Selmer designed a special metal mouthpiece for the piece to replace what is usually made of ebonite. The sound of both pieces is full of explosive moments and phrases of furious virtuosity. "Vulcano", a piece for ensemble, fits perfectly in those metallic soundscapes of the "Art of Metal" pieces. Inspired by ancient myths on Vulcanos and the volcanos themselves the piece is about buried and erupting powers. Different definable volcanic states and volcanic activities – from lava flows to earthquakes - stimulate the imagination and provide directions, trajectories, for what can be done with sound.

I am listening to it right now and finding it rather intriguing.  I had not heard anything by this composer until now, and am not even sure how much else has been recorded.  But judging from this issue, more investigation would be worthwhile.

[San Antone]

Anne LeBaron (1953) : Sacred Theory of the Earth



Telluris Theoria Sacra (1990)
Devil in the Belfry (1993)
Sachamama (1995)
Solar Music (1997)

David Rosenboom (conductor); Amy Porter (flute/piccolo) Ted Gurch (clarinet/bass clarinet); Christopher Pulgram(violin) Paul Murphy (viola); Brad Ritchie (cello); Michael Cebulski & John Lawless (percussion); Anne LeBaron (harp); Paula Peace(piano)

(CRI Recordings) 865, November 2000 Release

She has another release on Mode Records:

Composer/harpist Anne LeBaron has had an interesting career in both classical and jazz genres. As a Fulbright scholar, she studied with Gyorgy Ligeti. Her active career as a harpist has led to collaborations with Derek Bailey and Anthony Braxton, and her own Anne LeBaron Quintet in the jazz fields as well as solo and chamber works, including a recent commission for a Double-Harp Concerto.

A description of Anne LeBaron's sound world can best be told by the composer herself: "These works respond to diverse stimuli in my life, ranging from the sounds of frogs, birds, and preachers--the sonic geography of the American South--to the writings of Artaud and the vocal and dramatic art of Korea and Japan."

Some of her music is very tuneful and tonal, while other works exhibit more complex and atonal organization.  An interesting find.

[San Antone]

Chaya Czernowin (1957)

Chaya Czernowin was born on 7 December 1957 in Haifa and was brought up in Israel. She commenced studies in composition at the Rubin Academy in Tel Aviv and from the age of 25 has lived in Germany, Japan, the USA and Austria. Thanks to her teachers Abel Ehrlich, Dieter Schnebel, Brian Ferneyhough and Roger Reynolds and also a series of scholarships and prizes, she was able to devote herself intensely to the development of her musical language. Czernowin's compositions have been performed at more than fourty festivals throughout the world including the 20th Century Music Festival in Mexico, at the Wien Modern in Vienna, the Asia Pacific Triennial in Australia and in Huddersfield. She has been in great demand as a teacher due to her profound knowledge of experimental contemporary music. She taught composition at the Yoshiro Irino Institute in Tokyo in 1993/94 and at the International Summer Courses for New Music in Darmstadt between 1990 and 1998. She was professor for composition at the University of California San Diego from 1997 to 2006 and taught at the University of Music and Performing Arts in Vienna from 2006 to 2009. She received invitations to attend as a guest professor in Göteborg and Seoul. She has been the director of the International Summer Academy for young Composers in Schloss Solitude near Stuttgart since 2003 and was appointed professor for composition at the University of Harvard in 2009.

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Shifting Gravity is a collection of works that combines the three sections of Anea Crystal with the compositions Sheva and Sahaf. The second part of the CD consists of the cycle Winter Songs III for 10 instrumentalists and electronics. Wergo s recording shows a different side of Czernowin, who, up to now, has been appreciated mainly for her stage works, in particular for the music theatre play Pnima ... Ins Innere or her adaptation of Mozart s Zaïde / Adama. The instrumental works heard here were all created after the music-theatre plays, and focus on metaphysical themes of paralysis, adherence and proliferation.

[San Antone]

Richard Barrett (born 7 November 1959) is a British composer.

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Barrett was born in Swansea, Wales. He began to study music seriously only after graduating in genetics and microbiology at University College London in 1980 (Warnaby 2001). From then until 1983 he took private lessons with Peter Wiegold. There followed fruitful encounters at the 1984 Internationale Ferienkurse für Neue Musik with Brian Ferneyhough and Hans-Joachim Hespos. In the 1980s he became associated with the so-called New Complexity group of British composers because of the intricate notation of his scores. However, he is equally active in free improvisation, most often in the electronic duo FURT with Paul Obermayer, formed in 1986, and a voice/electronics duo with Ute Wassermann since 1999, but also since 2003 as a member of the Evan Parker Electro-Acoustic Ensemble. Since 1990 about half of his compositions have been written for the ELISION Ensemble, most notably the extended works Opening of the Mouth, DARK MATTER and CONSTRUCTION. In 2005 he and Obermayer formed the electroacoustic octet fORCH.

Many of Barrett's works are grouped into series, and have extra-musical associations—particularly with the writers Samuel Beckett and Paul Celan, but also the Chilean painter Roberto Matta, and ideas from physics, mythology, astrology and philosophy (in the texts of DARK MATTER). Barrett's compositional techniques, which derive equally and indistinguishably from serial, stochastic and intuitive methods, have since the mid-1980s made extensive use of computer programs he has developed himself (Warnaby 2001). He regards free improvisation as a method of composition rather than as a different or opposed kind of musical activity (Gilmore 2009). He has often been politically outspoken (Whittall 2005), and in 1990 joined the Socialist Workers Party (Britain). While no longer an active member he remains aligned with revolutionary socialism (Lenz 2005).

His codex series of compositions explores diverse ways of using composed frameworks as a point of departure for improvisation, particularly with larger groups, while the fOKT series extrapolates some of FURT's characteristic forms of texture and coordination into the octet context of the fORCH ensemble. The results of these more experimental and collaborative projects have exerted an increasing influence on Barrett's other compositional work, which remains mostly fully notated, although several compositions (for example transmission, Blattwerk and adrift) alternate between precise scoring and free improvisation for part or all of their duration. However, these different strategies are used in order to maximise the musical potential of the whole, rather than drawing attention to the distinction between improvisational and notational methods of composition—as Barrett himself puts it (2009): "As a listener I generally prefer to concentrate on what music is doing rather than how it was done".

I share that sentiment.

[ibanezmonster]

Just watched this:

http://www.youtube.com/v/5pNo0PoP3sg

Good opera, and very disturbing.

[San Antone]

Josef Bardanashvili  (b. 1948, Batumi). Georgian composer, now resident in Israel, of stage, orchestral, chamber, choral, vocal, and piano works that have been performed throughout Europe and in the USA.

Mr. Bardanashvili studied with Aleksandr Shaverzashvili at the Music Academy in Tbilisi, where he graduated with a DMus in composition in 1975.

Among his honors are the title of Honored Artist of Georgia (1988), the Paliashvili Award (1997), the ACUM Composer of the Year Prize (1998), the Margalit Prize (1999, for Dybbuk [incidental music]), the Award of the Israeli Prime Minister (2000), and the ACUM Mifal Khaim Prize for Life Achievement (2002).

Listening right now to his work for full orchestra. With What Do We Light? from the Tel Aviv 2007: Israeli Philharmonic Anniversary Concert set



His music is tonal with some aspects reaching outside that system and he appears to be interested in the use of folk or ethnic material from Georgia (Eastern Europe).

[San Antone]

Amos Elkana (1967)

Amos Elkana was born in Boston but grew up in Jerusalem. At the age of 15, he picked up the electric guitar and began to study music which soon became his primary occupation in life. In 1987, aged 20, he returned to Boston to study jazz guitar at the Berklee College of Music and composition at the The New England Conservatory of Music. In 1990, he moved to Paris where he studied composition with Michele Reverdy. He also took composition classes with Erik Norby in Copenhagen, and with Paul-Heinz Dittrich and Edison Denisov in Berlin. In 2007 Elkana received his MFA in music/sound from Bard College, New York. While at Bard, he focused on electronic music and took lessons with Pauline Oliveros, David Behrman, Richard Teitelbaum, George Lewis, Maryanne Amacher and Larry Polansky among others.

Elkana's music is a bit different from most Israeli composers who seem to prefer to work with folk melodies, etc., in a generally tonal environment.  His music is more in the soundworld of Ligeti and he has received the endorsement of Israel's grandfather of serialism, Josef Tal.

I am listening right now to a work for orchestra, Tru'a included in the compilation Perspectives 2

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