aworks :: "new" american classical music

aworks list :: year-end bests via itunes

• best track added in 2004: Ann Street. Charles Ives. Susan Graham/Pierre-Laurent Aimard, Susan Graham. wikipedia
• best track added in 2005: Endangered Species. Alvin Curran. Bruce Brubaker. aworks
  
• best track added in 2006: April 18 1971 Los Angeles pt 1 - Persian Surgery Dervishes. Terry Riley. sonoloco
  
• best track added in 2007: Choo Choo. Duke Ellington. aworks

• best "beyond" track added in 2004: Everywhen. Massive Attack.
• best "beyond" track added in 2005: Backdrifts (Honeymoon Is Over). Radiohead.
  
• best "beyond" track added in 2006: From the Ritz to the Rubble. Arctic Monkeys.
• best "beyond" track added in 2007: 1 2 3 4. Leslie Feist. (despite Apple co-opting the video).

• most listened to album added in 2004: Wizards & Wildmen - Piano Music Of Charles Ives, Henry Cowell, Lou Harrison. Anthony De Mare. 27 hours.
• most listened to album added in 2005: Inner Cities. Bruce Brubaker. 30 hours.
• most listened to album added in 2006: Multiples. Keith Fullerton Whitman. 14 hours.
• most listened to album added in 2007: Music in the Shape of a Square. Alter Ego. 11 hours.

• most listened to "beyond" album added in 2004: 100th Window. Massive Attack.
• most listened to "beyond" album added in 2005: Hail to the Thief. Radiohead.
• most listened to "beyond" album added in 2006: SXSW 2006 Showcasing Artist. 712 file bit torrent.
• most listened to "beyond" album added in 2007: Jump In!
• most listened to "beyond" album added in 2007, after the local seven-year-old got her own iPod: Bruckner: Symphony No 1. Royal Scottish National Orchestra.

• most listened to composer since 2004: Philip Glass. 282 hours.
• most listened to artist since 2004: Radiohead. 131 hours.

aworks list :: mind-bending recordings this year

10. A Ballad for Many. Don Byron. Bang on a Can. This cuts across genre better than anything I've heard in awhile.
9. Steve Reich at the Whitney 2006. For this non-New Yorker, the website downloads offered a refreshing glimpse into Reich's 70th birthday celebration and his music.
8. Birdy Nam Nam. French turntablism via the SXSW bit torrent. I still have a long way to go to listen to all 711 tracks.
7. numerous tracks via cacophonous.org.
6. Charlie Parker With Strings: The Master Takes. This recalibrated my ear for Bird's music.
5. DG Concerts - Minimalist Jukebox. Music available while buzz was still in the air --  what an idea.
4. Player Piano 1: Conlon Nancarrow Vol. 1. Jurgen Hocker. Probably the best CD of the year.
3. Rockabye Baby!: Lullaby Renditions Of Radiohead. Michael Armstrong. Thom Yorke channeled through kiddie gamelan turns out to be delightful.
2. Music in Twelve Parts - Philip Glass. Watching nidrian via YouTube grapple with this music was the moment I "got" YouTube.
1. The Soundtrack Of A People, The Encyclopedia Of Native Music. I thought this would be interesting for social and cultural reasons but I ended up liking it as music. The traditional tracks were vibrant and sometimes raucous and I only now realize Led Zeppelin and Metallica owe a debt to Native American music, specifically Link Wray's heavy metal Rumble.
   

aworks list :: most played "beyond aworks" tracks of 2006

10. Abbesses. SXSW 2006 Showcasing Artist. Birdy Nam Nam.
9. 01 You And Whose Army? Live @ The Greek Theatre, Berkeley 6.23. Radiohead.
8. Imidiwaren. Songlines 33 2005/11+12. Tinariwen.
   
7. The Harmless Dust (Excerpt). The Wire Tapper 12. David Grubbs & Nikos Veliotis.
6. Harrowdown Hill. The Eraser. Thom Yorke.
5. Best of Both Worlds (Album Version). Best of Both Worlds - Single. Hannah Montana.
4. I've Got Viking in Me. My Angel Rocks Back and Forth. Four Tet.
3. ITSM-2006-01-24-18-48-37.iTunes Signature Maker via Jason Freeman.
2. From The Ritz To The Rubble. Arctic Monkeys.
1. 9. Buddha Machine. fm3.

Only #2 and #4 came from a traditionally purchased CD (although #9 has a dubious origin). Au revoir Tower Records.

Out There (1960). Eric Dolphy

I listened to a large amount of jazz and then in my mid-twenties, for no apparent reason, I just stopped. Two years ago, I heard some Dexter Gordon which reminded me of what I was missing and ever since, I've been trying to fill in the gaps of classic jazz I hadn't heard. One artist I listened to this weekend was Bill Evans, but maybe I'm still not ready for him. On the other hand, I just heard Eric Dolphy's Out There for the first time and it's a good song, has some great soloing (Ron Carter on cello!) and provides an overall sound and aesthetic that still sounds new 45 years after it was recorded.  This BBC review points out that unlike Ornette Coleman, Dolphy managed to push the "envelope" of bebop without overthrowing its basic conventions. It also describes Dolphy's solo as a series of variations as if Philip Glass arranged a Charlie Parker solo. Now that would be interesting.

In another interesting intersection with minimalism, La Monte Young beat out Eric Dolphy for the second-alto chair in a Los Angeles City College dance band. Young:

I had to compete for the second alto saxaphone chair with Eric Dolphy. I ended up getting the chair, although I thought Eric really sounded great and I was surprised that I beat him out. However, people who heard me play at the time said I just sounded like an explosion. In the orchestra Eric and I played together and he played first clarinet and I played second.

Didjeridoos and Don'ts (1992). Phill Niblock

Drones played on didgeridoos, this work has some of the most interesting timbral qualities I've heard in a while. From the Young Person's Guide to Phill Niblock CD liner notes:

What is extraordinary about this, is that the principles of his music have not changed much over the years; that with the long time span covered by each piece and the sparseness of the musical material and its elaboration, one could be forgiven to think that it is at odds with contemporary hasty tastes. In fact, just because of that, it has the power to draw attention to itself. The apparently immobile string of tones that is basic to his compositions, has a singular mes­merizing quality.

MP3 of this work here via The Wire. Philip Sherburne writes an introduction to drone music ("Drone Rangers") on eMusic. New feature article on Niblock here. Young Person's CD on eMusic here.

Amazon sales rank of the CD: #313,084 (with John Prine at #2 and Petra Haden/Bill Frissell at #38).
 

Three Dances for Two Prepared Pianos (1945). John Cage

Top Ten Tracks of the Week:

1. "En Gallop." Joanna Newsom.
2. First Gamelan. Lou Harrison. Keith Jarrett.
3. Endangered Species. Alvin Curran. Bruce Brubaker.
4. Dirty Love. Frank Zappa.
5. 3 Dances for Prepared Piano. John Cage. Patrick Moraz.
6. Everywhen. Massive Attack.
7. Summerland. Paul Bailey Ensemble.
8. In Limbo. Radiohead.
9. Necessity. Rick Cox.
10. Nuclear War. Sun Ra.

I bought the Joanna Newsom CD last weekend at Amoeba/SF but I'm afraid to listen to it because I'll be disappointed if it is not as phenomenal as this track ... Hearing the Lou Harrison makes me want to join a gamelan orchestra similar to my twenties when I heard Little Walter and learned blues harmonica ... I only classify Frank Zappa songs as "classical music" if they have been played by a European music ensemble ... Patrick Moraz being a former keyboardist of the rock group Yes (and who also plays on a Yes tribute album). And I forgot John Cage's father was an inventor ... The Paul Bailey Ensemble track from the work Music from Summerland captures the sense of forward motion that mimimalism does so well ... Did I already blog about Sun Ra? If not, this is Sun Ra's humorous take on the entirely serious business of the devastation of nuclear weapons.

Quartet for Percussion (1988). William Kraft

Like Belle Waring, here's what's rockin' my iPod.  Although for me this week, I'm apparently living in a kinder, gentler world:

1. Mists (from Quartet for Percussion). William Kraft.
2. Equinox. John Coltrane.
3. En Gallop. Joanna Newsom.
4. From the Morning. Nick Drake.
5. Know. Nick Drake.
6. Everything in Its Right Place. Radiohead.
7. Wenn wir in höchsten Nöten sein. Bach. Wolfgang Rübsam.
8. My Very Empty Mouth. David Lang.
9. Blues for Piano. Conlon Nancarrow.
10. Souvenir. John Cage. Teodoro Anzellotti.

I've listened to the colorful Mists a handful of times and it acts as good ambient music, floating in and out of my consciousness. I find Joanna Newsom's harp and quirky vocal blissful and full of despair. David Lang is on Canteloupe Records, which has released their catalog to eMusic this month; this is promising minimalism. In the bottom ten would be Neil Young, the group Madness, and Steve Mackey's Cairn, although I like other works from Joan Jeanrenaud's CD.

Be-In (1991). Evan Ziporyn /favorite/

I've gotten a little ahead of myself in ripping CDs to MP3 format. As a result, according to iTunes, I had about 1300 tracks I'd never listened to. I have listened to four hundred of those; I'm now a little dazed but keeping at it.

Although not new to me, Be-In is probably my favorite of the first four hundred. I blogged some about it last year. Note that Ziporyn's Melody Competition (prior aworks post) will be played Saturday at the Other Minds Festival (although I won't be able to attend).

Brief notes on other music I've just heard:

• That CD of Allen Ginsberg is better than I expected. Alain Neveux playing Schoenberg also exceeded expectations as well (albeit low ones).
• Why I don't listen to Eric Dolphy more I'm not sure. Some concentrated listening of Hat and Beard among other tracks was enlightening. Definitely on my list of eMusic downloads for next month.
• More Pixies, less Boulez please.
• I need to listen more closely to the music I have of Barney Childs (or was that Donald Martino, I may have them confused).
• The Early Music CD by the Kronos Quartet was consistently interesting.
• Without any liner notes handy, I couldn't make sense of Evan Ziporyn's Shadow Bang. What's the significance of that long frog track?
• Finally, why did I recently rip Journey's Greatest Hits? Did a recent article in SF Weekly about Journey's star being added to the Hollywood Walk of Fame get the best of me? The wheel in the sky keeps on turnin'...

Update: Back in town. However, I fear I've ruined my brain. I don't dare mention it as I am worried about permanent imprint, but song "x" by Journey keeps going through my head on a daily basis. I've tried to erase it from my recall by listening to other Journey songs, some Walter Piston flute music, Hans Zender's orchestrated Winterreise, e.e. cummings, anything. If this doesn't stop, I'll end up as a Oliver Sacks neurological case study, "The Man Who Can Only Remember the Song Stylings of Steve Perry"...

Our Town (1940). Aaron Copland

 
paperhearts thinks Barber's Adagio is both the saddest music ever and also hard to play, or at least, sight-read.  I, at age eighteen, would have agreed, at least about the former (for the latter, Chick Corea's La Fiesta was harder).  Now, at age whatever, I'd say Aaron Copland's Our Town is the "saddest," or at least most melancholic. Pearl Jam's Small Town is probably next.

Robert on Amazon says Our Town is "moving, surreal, profound."

Eleazar Gutwirth in an abstract for a Jewish Scholarship and Philosophy in the Renaissance conference mentions the 16th century attribution by Amatus Lusitanus of bad diet causing "jewish melancholy." Lusitanus wrote numerous medical case studies:

Following the scholarly practice of his time, Amatus was concerned with the reliability of classical medical texts and distinguished between text, translation and commentaries. He does not care whether a text comes “from the Romans, Arabs or the Christians”; what matters to him is its quality...His medical ethics and his adherence to Judaism are demonstrated in a special oath in the name of the Ten Commandments.

imdb on the Our Town film. Amazon Real sample of Our Town conducted by Copland. PearlJam.com iTunes links.

Souvenir (1984). John Cage

2004 was about an hour too short for me to finish the aworks Top 10 Tracks of 2004 in 2004. I knew that hour I spent last summer watching Dr. Phil would come back to haunt me.

John Cage's Souvenir, for organ, is #2 on the aworks Top 10 Tracks of 2004 with a play count of 96. The work, in a performance by Stephen Drury, is simple, short, and profound.  Back when I listened to CDs in their entirety, this CD was a favorite.