21st century classical music

[San Antone]

Agata Zubel

Shades of Ice, by Agata Zubel

[San Antone]

Martin Smolka ... Semplice (2006) - Part II

http://www.youtube.com/v/06pNqvUMKxg

Metaphorically speaking, Smolka's music oscillates round two poles: 1) Cracked, buoyant conviviality, music of a hobbling orchestrion, symptomatic civilisation sounds, a folk or brass band playing, preferably, out off tune; 2) Melancholic memories, aching desire, the nostalgic echo of the sounds of Point 1. Corresponding to this is the usual structuring strategy of Smolka's compositions: they almost invariably form juxtapositions of inwardly homogeneous and sharply contrasting form segments, which through their opposition (slow – fast, joyous – sad, tumultuous – gentle, etc.) actually correspond to the "sonata" categories: the main theme – the secondary theme. Smolka, however, frequently works with jarring, film-like, cuts, evolutionism is suppressed, seams admitted, dynamic and textural differences foregrounded, with repetition being the basic principle.

The essentially emotional tone of Smolka's compositions also relates to the application of micro-intervals serving the composer, on the one hand, to evoke real sounds, on the other, to "detune" traditional harmonic and melodic formations – the motivation for this fundamentally subversive seizure of the inherited material is further amplification or re-awakening of its emotional potential (e.g. Solitudo for ensemble). In the late 90s Smolka focused his attention on this very "recycling" of elements of traditional music deformed in micro-interval terms and arranged in the collage manner (Remix, Redream, Reflight for orchestra or Blue Bells or Bell Blues for orchestra, awarded by the Foundation Prince Pierre de Monaco). Moreover, over the past decade or so Smolka has taken a keen interest in vocal music, especially that for chorus (Poema de balcones for chorus, Psalmus 114 for chorus and orchestra, etc.).

His website.

[bhodges]

Agata Zubel

Shades of Ice, by Agata Zubel

How did you like this? (I haven't heard it yet.) I had the great pleasure of meeting her last year, when Klangforum Wien did a world premiere by her at the Austrian Cultural Forum.

--Bruce

[San Antone]

How did you like this? (I haven't heard it yet.) I had the great pleasure of meeting her last year, when Klangforum Wien did a world premiere by her at the Austrian Cultural Forum.

--Bruce

I think she is a very exciting composer (and singer).  That piece is a good example of her work, but I could not find a clip of the string quartet  that I actually prefer.

[San Antone]

Levon Chaushyan (b. May 10, 1946, Yerevan). Armenian composer of orchestral, chamber, choral, vocal, and piano works that have been performed in Asia, Europe and North America.

Prof. Chaushyan is the son of the cellist Alexander Chaushyan (b. 1917 – d. 1991) and he began composing in 1957. He studied composition with Edward Mirzoyan and piano with Georgy Sarajyan at the Yerevan Komitas State Conservatory, where he graduated in 1969 and where he had post-graduate studies in composition with Edward Mirzoyan from 1969–72.

Piano Sonata nr.3 ("Pictures without an Exhibition")
Hayk MELIKYAN, piano

http://www.youtube.com/v/5rJRc34QAOI

[San Antone]

Arthur Levering has received many awards for his work including the Rome Prize, the Heckscher Foundation Composition Prize, the Lee Ettelson Composer's Award, commissions from the Fromm Foundation and the Barlow Endowment, as well as fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation, the National Endowment for the Arts, the MacDowell Colony, and Yaddo. His compositions have been performed by various ensembles including the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center, the New Juilliard Ensemble, the Dinosaur Annex Music Ensemble, the Boston Modern Orchestra Project, Boston Musica Viva, Sequitur, Voices of Change, NewEar, Lontano, the League of Composers/ISCM, Musica d'Oggi, and the Rascher Saxophone Quartet. Compact disks of his work include School of Velocity, CRI CD 812, 1999/NWCR812, 2007 ("the best debut album by an American composer I've heard this year"—Robert Carl, Fanfare, July/August, 1999), and Still Raining, Still Dreaming, New World CD NW 80662-2, 2008.

Tesserae (2002)

http://www.youtube.com/v/u18No5Cm0xQ

[not edward]

It seems like Hans Abrahamsen has thoroughly recovered from his barren period in the late 1980s and 1990s. Since the massive ensemble piece Schnee several hours' worth of new pieces and arrangements have shown up, including two string quartets, a large piece for soprano and orchestra and a partially-neo-Baroque double concerto for violin, piano and strings that continues the wintry soundworld of Schnee.

Recent(ish) works on Youtube: the piano concerto (from 2000); some miniatures for accordion and string quintet (2005); the complete Schnee (2008); the UK premiere of 2009's chamber orchestra piece Wald.

http://www.youtube.com/v/FdX1zDqczs8 http://www.youtube.com/v/i5WGcfTekEo
http://www.youtube.com/v/uVP1pP2wXR4 http://www.youtube.com/v/NYfzFI0dgeU

Some pieces from the '70s and '80s: Winternacht (1978); Marchenbilder (1984); Lied in Fall (1987) -- very obviously the same composer.

http://www.youtube.com/v/FF_hAB85xco http://www.youtube.com/v/QoRLAFXPbbE http://www.youtube.com/v/p1J1f5m0mL8

[San Antone]

Wolfgang Mitterer - Music for Checking E-mails: "...giving the illusion of depth" (Col Legno, 2009)



A GMG thread on this composer.

[San Antone]

René Wohlhauser

New CD from Neos comes out March 23rd:

The Marakra Cycle



Something from YouTube

http://www.youtube.com/v/jdB0-jQ7k54&list=PL738231384D69B792

[San Antone]

Ruaidhri Mannion - Broken Flames and Little Wind

http://www.youtube.com/v/a01Z7oHvd3g&feature=em-subs_digest

Ruaidhri Mannion (b.1985) is an Irish composer living in London. As a musician he is fascinated by the entrancing and transcendental properties of sound, music and the act of listening. Drawing on wide range of influences, both musical and extra-musical, his work often combines live instruments and electronics to explore concepts of intuition, deep-listening and theatre.

[Karl Henning]

Sometimes abbreviated to Broken ... Wind, I hope not?

[San Antone]

Sometimes abbreviated to Broken ... Wind, I hope not?

[San Antone]

5:4 has a blog article featuring two string quartets by James Dillon, Nos. 5 & 6.   No. 5 was actually the second of the two to be completed, although begun for the Arditti Quartet's 30th anniversary, it was not finished until the 35th anniversary.  The 6th was written in the meantime.  Each work is approximately 15 minutes in duration and there are FLAC downloads available of each from the blog.

The two works are significantly different and well worth learning.  No. 6 is performed by the Quatuor Diotima in this YouTube clip.

http://www.youtube.com/v/pjl7WlTQDyY

[San Antone]

DAVID FROOM

Turn of Events for alto saxophone and piano

David Froom's music has been performed extensively throughout the United States by major orchestras, ensembles, and soloists, including, among many others, the Louisville, Seattle, Utah, and Chesapeake Symphony Orchestras, The United States Marine and Navy Bands, the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center, the 21st Century Consort, Boston Musica Viva, the New York New Music Ensemble, the Haydn Trio Eisenstadt, the Aurelia Quartet, and violinist Curtis Macomber. His music is available on CD on the Bridge, Navona, New Dimensions, Delos, Arabesque, Capriccio, Centaur, Sonora, Crystal, Opus 3, and West Point Academy labels, and is published by American Composers Edition. Among the many organizations that have bestowed honors on him are the American Academy of Arts and Letters (Academy Award, Ives Scholarship), the Guggenheim, Fromm, Koussevitzky, and Barlow Foundations, the Kennedy Center (first prize in the Friedheim Awards), the National Endowment for the Arts, The Music Teachers National Association (MTNA-Shepherd Distinguished Composer for 2006), and the state of Maryland (four Individual Artist Awards). He had a Fulbright grant for study at Cambridge University, and fellowships to the Tanglewood Music Festival, the Wellesley Composers Conference, and the MacDowell Colony. His biography is included in Groves.

[San Antone]

David Dzubay was born in 1964 in Minneapolis and raised in Portland, Oregon by his parents, architect Dale Dzubay and educator Edith Dzubay. Returning to the midwest for school, he earned a D.M. in Composition at Indiana University in 1991. Additional study was undertaken as a Koussevitzky Fellow in Composition at the Tanglewood Music Center (1990), at the June in Buffalo Festival, and as co-principal trumpet of the National Repertory Orchestra in Colorado (1988, 1989). His principal teachers were Donald Erb, Frederick Fox, Eugene O'Brien, Lukas Foss, Oliver Knussen, Allan Dean and Bernard Adelstein.

Producing For A While
(2012) for soprano and ensemble
text: Julie Choffel
instrumentation:
1*12*1/1111/2pc,hp,pn/2111 + soprano, 2-3 "producers"
duration: 8 minutes
premiere:
Indiana University New Music Ensemble, November 29, 2012
Lindsey McLennan (sop.), David Dzubay (cond.)

http://www.youtube.com/v/Ku8R2QlEhfA

Program Note:
I encountered the poetry of Julie Choffel while working on a project for Voices Up: New Music for New Poetry, a concert at Fordham University - Lincoln Center Campus. Her new book, The Hello Delay, published in March, 2012, won Fordham's annual Poetry Out Loud contest. Choosing three of these poems, I composed a set for soprano, violin and cello. The curiously ambiguous Producing For A While is the third song in the set, and here finds a new home as a work for my favorite sinfonietta, the IU New Music Ensemble.

[Johnll]

Martin Smolka ... Semplice (2006) - Part II

http://www.youtube.com/v/06pNqvUMKxg

Metaphorically speaking, Smolka's music oscillates round two poles: 1) Cracked, buoyant conviviality, music of a hobbling orchestrion, symptomatic civilisation sounds, a folk or brass band playing, preferably, out off tune; 2) Melancholic memories, aching desire, the nostalgic echo of the sounds of Point 1. Corresponding to this is the usual structuring strategy of Smolka's compositions: they almost invariably form juxtapositions of inwardly homogeneous and sharply contrasting form segments, which through their opposition (slow – fast, joyous – sad, tumultuous – gentle, etc.) actually correspond to the "sonata" categories: the main theme – the secondary theme. Smolka, however, frequently works with jarring, film-like, cuts, evolutionism is suppressed, seams admitted, dynamic and textural differences foregrounded, with repetition being the basic principle.

The essentially emotional tone of Smolka's compositions also relates to the application of micro-intervals serving the composer, on the one hand, to evoke real sounds, on the other, to "detune" traditional harmonic and melodic formations – the motivation for this fundamentally subversive seizure of the inherited material is further amplification or re-awakening of its emotional potential (e.g. Solitudo for ensemble). In the late 90s Smolka focused his attention on this very "recycling" of elements of traditional music deformed in micro-interval terms and arranged in the collage manner (Remix, Redream, Reflight for orchestra or Blue Bells or Bell Blues for orchestra, awarded by the Foundation Prince Pierre de Monaco). Moreover, over the past decade or so Smolka has taken a keen interest in vocal music, especially that for chorus (Poema de balcones for chorus, Psalmus 114 for chorus and orchestra, etc.).

His website.

If you say so. This stuff is way over my little nogin and then we got that emotional stuff going on. I do not understand!.

[San Antone]

If you say so. This stuff is way over my little nogin and then we got that emotional stuff going on. I do not understand!.

I did not write that blurb, it came from either his website or a bio made available by his publisher. 

I find it is better to listen to the music rather than get bogged down by how the composer describes his work.  Much like an "artist statement" at a gallery or museum show, they are a necessary evil but (IMO) do not add anything to simply experiencing the art.

[San Antone]

CAROLINE LOUISE MILLER

Tarantella Carbine for violoncello and electronics
Jon Carbin, violoncello

[Karl Henning]

I find it is better to listen to the music rather than get bogged down by how the composer describes his work.

Much to be said for this approach.

[Karl Henning]

This fits the bill, though it won't be everyone's money.