Living Composers

[hopefullytrusting]

Composer: John Scott

Piece: Black Rainbow
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=EjVLJWHSoCw

"Scott turned for inspiration to the concert music of composer Edgard Varèse's for the dense, colorful orchestrational language found herein, and even borrowed a motif from Strauss' "Salome", which fans of James Horner might recognize also (see "Humanoids from the Deep", another score that inexplicably recontextualizes the same motif from that masterful opera into a horror-score fabric).

The resultant work is one that was particularly taxing on Scott due to its composition falling concurrent with the care of his mother, who was dying of Alzheimer's at the time. As such the score teems with darkness, paranoia, anger and loneliness - emotions the man himself was redolent with at the time.

This is highly accomplished and rigorous music; while a recurring oboe motif provides a few respites of tonality, there are certainly no "rainbows" to be found here.

This recording derives from two sources: The composer's own first-generation album master of select highlights that never got released (0:00 - 15:15) and then a somewhat compressed-sounding backup copy of the complete score with somewhat limited dynamics (15:15 to end). The score was recorded by Peter Kramper with the Munich Symphony, and has to date never been released in any capacity."

[hopefullytrusting]

Composer: Mari Esabel Valverde
Piece: Earth, Mother (2024)

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=EGJGTD8a2wQ

[hopefullytrusting]

Composer: Tyler Taylor
https://www.tylertaylorcomposer.com/
https://www.instagram.com/tylertaylorcomposer/
https://m.youtube.com/@tylertaylorcomposer/videos



Piece:Out of Dust for Chamber Orchestra (2024)
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=Yhw3IOpywgU

This piece was commissioned by the Chicago Composers Orchestra. Many thanks for their performance of this piece!

The piece started as an attempt at whimsy that came to a halt when I realized I didn't care for the material I had come up with. With the deadline fast approaching, I salvaged the material by opening it up and expanding it in several ways. While the initial impulse wasn't quite a success, the process of writing this piece reminded my to trust my intuition and to not fix what's not broken – I'm quite pleased with the result!

Note from the Score:

"Out of Dust" is an exploration of how memories can transform as they cycle back and forth between the conscious and subconscious mind. Oftentimes, I find myself struggling to decipher whether the feeling of a memory is the authentic original, or if it is a version influenced by my current state of mind. I like to think that the music of this piece undergoes similar transformations – maintaining integral aspects while the surrounding context is greatly altered. Is it familiar at this point, something new, or perhaps a sense of déjà vu?

[hopefullytrusting]

Carlos Gardels
https://www.instagram.com/carlos_gardels/

Shakespeare Cycle for Soprano and Piano:
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=sEbZYE4CE_U

Tonal music gone the way of the dodo? Nay, I say. Composed in 2023, one of the most beautiful song cycles I've ever heard. Here, One does not dominate the other, as I see in many cycles, but each are rather perfect complements, a rare win-win-win.

[Crudblud]

I will recommend Kate Soper, composer (and performer) of Voices From the Killing Jar.

[San Antone]

Two favorite living composers:

Alexandra du Bois — String Quartet: Oculus pro oculo totum orbem terrae caecat

Katherine Balch — drip music

[hopefullytrusting]

JJJJJerome Ellis, a revelation for me, an artist through and through, a poet saxophonist by trade, a multimodal wiz, an improv-er.

https://www.jjjjjerome.com/

Piece: Ode to Joy #1
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=oOhh3XUnuqU

A pianistic drone-like ripple that transforms into a wave of sustained sound. Interleaved with saxophone that conforms to expectations until it is overcome with ecstasy.

It feels like an intersection between Satie's Vexations and Scriabin's Vers la flamme. Extraordinary.

[hopefullytrusting]

Composer: Georg Hajdu
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Georg_Hajdu

Piece: Norden (2020) for soprano, guitar, accordion, and electronics
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1x5o84pdYfQ

I am always blown away by what gets recorded and what doesn't. Like book publishing I get, sort of, but composers getting their pieces played is a hill I've not gotten over yet.

This piece reminds me of troubadours inspired by Brechtian singspiel. It is not unappealing, but is disjointed enough that it will likely bother those who expect near-immediate coherency from their listening. This one requires a work, some stretching of the ears, and historical contextualization, perhaps, more than it is worth - I cannot speak for anyone but myself.

[hopefullytrusting]

Composer: Leo Chadburn
https://leochadburn.com/

Pieces: The Primordial Pieces
https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=OLAK5uy_mo4kH2iHoflI8FhX-Rc_QvTLsaOKLpsiw

This music is hypnotic (droning, extending, suspending, trancing). I love that it goes just long enough to drag you with it, and never beyond that point; I feel a lot of "bad" minimalism fails at recognizing the necessity for this balance. Superb dynamics, everything just as, never quite reaching - feels like it would be part of an A24, "horror" soundtrack.

[hopefullytrusting]

2024 Chicagoian of the Year in Classical Music: Shawn Okpebholo

"Shawn Okpebholo's music sings of Chicago. Its waterways ("Fractured Water," recently orchestrated for the San Francisco Chamber Orchestra). Its architecture ("City Beautiful," for the Lincoln Trio). Its ugly history ("Redlin[ing]," for Picosa Ensemble).

I'm hard-pressed to think of another local composer who has become so ubiquitous, so quickly. The Chicago Symphony, Lyric Opera, Chicago Opera Theater, Ravinia Festival, Eighth Blackbird, ~Nois saxophone quartet and Fulcrum Point have all featured Okpebholo's music on their programs, along with others I'm surely forgetting. He's been championed by Cedille Records: Debut recordings of "City Beautiful" and "Two Black Churches," a shattering diptych that was also recently orchestrated, were both put out by the label. His song cycle "Songs in Flight" follows them on Feb. 14, 2025." (Chicago Tribune)

https://www.shawnokpebholo.com/bio

Piece: Two Black Churches for Baritone and Orchestra
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BFi201qB7m0

The two churches are, of course, Birmingham and Charleston, or the two sparks of the Civil Rights Revolutions, and revolution is the right term, as William Strannix pontificates in Under Siege (to be black one is nearly constantly under siege): "Revolution gets its name by always coming back around in your face. You tried to kill me you son of a bitch, so welcome to the revolution."

[Karl Henning]

[Cato]

Thanks for the link: I need to check this and some of the others mentioned above.

[Karl Henning]

[Karl Henning]

The composer in an interview:

[Karl Henning]

This is a link from Facebook, so I don't know how it will behave outside of that ecosystem, but this is the MIDI demo of a Symphony by my friend Avrohom Leichtling, kind of in the spirit of the Prokofiev "Classical" Symphony. That is: What kind of Symphony would Haydn write, if he lived in our day? The piece is fearless and beautiful, and as is true of many a Haydn Symphony, the Adagio is especially rewarding.

https://www.facebook.com/share/v/14oMGTfYeV/

[Karl Henning]

This is so retro/reactionary as (for me personally) to beg the question, why even write such a piece? But I respect Carson for giving it such a fine presentation. Also, considering how slow my organ music is to go anywhere, in one important sense this piece is much more successful, because it will likely make its way to more consoles sooner. What are your thoughts?

[Karl Henning]

Not at all a new piece, but Maestro Lansky is yet with us:

[Karl Henning]

I hope I may be forgiven for posting a piece of mine own.

[Cato]

This is so retro/reactionary as (for me personally) to beg the question, why even write such a piece? But I respect Carson for giving it such a fine presentation. Also, considering how slow my organ music is to go anywhere, in one important sense this piece is much more successful, because it will likely make its way to more consoles sooner. What are your thoughts?

I will try to listen tomorrow morning!

Your remarks made me think of the Piano Sonata #6 by Carlos Chavez, which is sooo 1780's that it could stump experts in a "Name That Composer" quiz!

[Cato]

This is so retro/reactionary as (for me personally) to beg the question, why even write such a piece? But I respect Carson for giving it such a fine presentation. Also, considering how slow my organ music is to go anywhere, in one important sense this piece is much more successful, because it will likely make its way to more consoles sooner. What are your thoughts?

I often judge a story by the simple technique of "Can I guess what the next plot point(s) will be?"  With a  cliched work, of course, the guessing is easy, as are the longueurs.   

With a musical work, the game is "Can I guess the next note(s)/chord(s)?"

I suppose with Paul Fey's Concerto in C the point might have been to imitate earlier styles: e.g. how many 18th-century composers could have cranked out the Allegretto with no problem?  (Answer: all of them!      )

Schoenberg once wrote that C Major still held possibilities, that good things could still be composed in the traditional system of keys.

To do so in an original way however, after centuries and centuries have passed, becomes more difficult, yet not impossible.

In Thomas Mann's novel, Doctor Faustus, the devil remarks to the composer Adrian Leverkuehn that composing has become "fiendishly difficult," that e.g. the melody one thinks is original suddenly sounds like Rimsky-Korsakov, and so one tosses it away.

Herr Fey's 9-minute concerto proves that composing in an original manner in C Major does indeed remain fiendishly difficult.