aworks :: "new" american classical music

Ionisation (1929-31). Edgard Varèse /yet another generational perspective/

Darcy James Argue has an excellent post about an all-Varèse concert. Among other pieces, he likes the Manhattan School of Music performance of the percusion piece Ionisation, making an interesting generational comment:

Having grown up surrounded by hiphop, industrial, and electronica, these kids find nothing unusual in the idea of a piece which is all about sirens, noise and thunderous percussion.

It's hard to call the music of Varèse "normal," but here's hoping...

The alexbach.dk/klingklang page has an Ionisation MP3.

Also, in preparation for my February composer of the month, I bought two CDs at Amoeba today of Pierre Boulez conducting Varèse. And no, Boulez is not the composer du mois although I am reading The Cage/Boulez Correspondence.

Deception (1950). Miles Davis /friday pandora 10/

Another web music gadget, this time, a pandora/emusic mashup. Play Pandora tracks and the artist's emusic page is also displayed.

I hadn't tried Pandora for awhile but here are the first set of tracks on my Quick Mix station:

1. Giant Steps. John Coltrane. I like it (obviously) and Steven Rubio happens to mention the album today as he blogs about music in my birth year.
2. No Cigar. Millencolin. New to me.
3. Deception. Miles Davis. I like it.
4. Question Everything. 8Stops7. New to me.
5. The Instantaneous Mobilization of All the Resources in the BURROW and All the Forces of My Body and Soul. Melk The G6-49. New to me and I like it.
6. First Hits. Don Caballero. Sorry, no.
7. The Seven Samurai. Photek. Pandora played it because "it features idm influences, use of modal harmonies, intricate rhythims. a slow moving bass line and extensive studio production. Pandora's right, I like it.
8. Nannou. Aphex Twin. I'm not going to show the album cover here but that picture of Richard D. James is disturbing. The music is good, though, due to its "idm influences, electronica roots, use of modal harmonies, intricate rhythms, and emphasis on instrumental performance."
9. Itsuko. Richard Divine. Via my Four Tet Pandora station, this has the "idm influences, busy beats, off beat style, a unique form, and thickly layered production" you might expect from Four Tet. I'd download this if I hadn't exhausted my emusic quota last week.
10. The Last Year. Stiv Bators. This track bears no relation to the previous nine ("mild rhythmic syncopation, extensive vamping, electric guitar riffs, and many other similarities identified in the music genome project").

Shaker Loops (1978). John Adams /father knows best/

Here's a promising concert tomorrow night in San Francisco by Formerly Known as Classical - the San Francisco Bay Area Teenage New Music Ensemble:

My Father Knew Olivier Messiaen - our musical heritage

Clapping Music by Steve Reich
Theme & Variations by Olivier Messiaen
A Ceremony of Carols by Benjamin Britten
Bantu by Andrew York
Shaker Loops by John Adams

The program's title is of course a play on John Adams' My Father Knew Charles Ives and is also some good-natured generational pretending. I suppose if I were a composer, I'd write My Father Knew Cole Porter. But given my current musical interest centers around Terry Riley, Albert Ayler, and Clap Your Hands Say Yeah, I suspect my honorees might have struggled with my hypothetical piece. I also wonder what Charles Ives would make of John Adams' work.

I'll also claim Shaker Loops was the apex of true minimalism before that aesthetic fragmented into post-modernism like everything else. It's a stretch to make this claim since I haven't heard this piece live since I heard the late Iona Brown lead a performance last century (coupled with Barber's Adagio). Unfortunately, I can't attend tomorrow night, but I'll at least imagine it still has the same impact.

Their next concert A previous concert also has an interesting theme:

Since We've Been Born - a program of music written since 1988.

Hmm, in the past, I've thought of focusing my listening on exactly that, music written in my time. Fortunately or not, my time has more candidate music than their time.

Tim Rutherford-Johnson, although off by one year, has some blogging about this slice of contemporary music. And a quick check shows I need to revise my list of favorite works since then,  especially those of the Bill Clinton era. How tastes and preferences change.

Note I'm also grapping with the idea of these musicians not being around when Nixon in China debuted. Why, it seems only yesterday that PBS was showing this on television.

Thanks to Matthew Cmiel and musicians for some stimulating and clever thinking and good luck with the concerts. It's nice to see our next "Greatest Generation" off to a collective good start.

And here's hoping we Boomer prophets do a better job of stewardship.

mark swed: john adams is about to turn 60

Piano Three Hands (1957). Morton Feldman

Rodger Coleman at NuVoid didn't get Morton Feldman at first but it was the composer's Piano Three Hands that triggered the understanding this music has soul.

I never had that struggle with Feldman's music -- I either liked individual pieces or didn't. I did have to work to see that at least some of Elliott Carter's music was beyond just "interesting."

You're Nogood (1968). Terry Riley

Another oddity on Streampad, this time from Music for Maniacs/Dinosaur Gardens, it's Terry Riley augmenting Harvey Averne's You're No Good with tape manipulation in an early proto-remix circa 1968. Sock it to me:

The result is 12 minutes of tape-looped lunacy, with sine-wave and Moogs thrown in here and there as well. Was this actually played at the disco? And did anyone dance?

Soul Sides on the original Averne song:

It's those moments, when the women are seeking their revenge that every element in this song: the arrangement, production and vocals, all come together beautifully.

Steve Reich has talked about how his musical aesthetic was influenced by vernacular music; here Riley literally uses pop for his source material. The Streampad player follows:

wikipedia: terry riley. remix. laugh-in. 1968. organ of corti: terry riley releases.

Plastics (1972). Carl Stone

More Streampad fun, it's Carl Stone's 1972 soundtrack from the film Plastics, as hosted on the WFMU site. It has a seventies timbre but not in a cliched way. Streampad link here.

For Philip Glass (2006). David Toub /metadata courtesy aworks/

An ex-del.icio.us developer has created streampad, a web searcher/player/audio YouTube thingie. Using it to find music of this month's aworks composer, I get maybe 15 streamed Philip Glass tracks. In the middle of this, an old friend -- "For Philip Glass." Streampad link here.

Metadata is a problem as there's no indication that this is David Toub's For Philip Glass. But it's good to again hear this work even if metadata has to be supplied via aworks.

And while I'm not yet ready to abandon "collection management," I find Mike at Avant Music News' idea of only listening to Internet-accessible music provocative, in these post-Tower Records times.

aworks list :: charles ives according to google

1. Symphony No. 2. Redlands Symphony performance. web:63,700 blog:21 news:2
2. Symphony No. 4. Those who insist that all classical music is dull and lifeless will find a challenge in this work. web:36,300 blog:17 news:0
3. Symphony No. 3. web:33,400 blog:19 news:0
4. Symphony No. 1. Maazel delved into the iconoclastic Charles Ives. web:29,700 blog:18 news:2
5. Sonata No. 2. 20,700:web  blog:12 news:0.
6. Central Park in the Dark. Tim Pfaff reviews a Dallas Symphony CD on Hyperion. web:17,900  blog:18 news:2
7. Ann Street. It might interest you to know that there is a famous song about an Ann Street by the composer Charles Ives. You should look it up. web:3,460 blog:6 news 0
8. Like a Sick Eagle. Last night I was in rapture listening to baritone Gerald Finley and pianist Julius Drake on a recent Hyperion recording with an impressively chosen group of 31 (of the 114 that exist), including outstanding versions of Memories (1897), Ich Grolle Nicht (1898), Like a Sick Eagle (1920) and the rarely done Slugging a Vampire (1902). web:2,720 blog:4 news 0
8. The Children's Hour. web:2,720 blog:1 news 0.
10. Gyp the Blood’ or Hearst - Which is Worst?. Sigh, aworks is the top web link on a favorite Ives work. Worse, my trivial last.fm tag is the twenty-ninth result. web 438 blog:1 news 0:
    

The Year's at the Spring (1900). Amy Beach /deborah!/

Out West Arts correctly suggests we focus on Deborah Voigt's singing rather than her weight (or more precisely, her weight control). And then he gets to the important aspects of her recent recital:

The best parts were the American songs from Amy Beach and Leonard Bernstein, which finally seemed to kick things in gear after a rather uneventful hour and a half...A lot was missing last night, but there is no doubt that Voigt continues to be a stunning talent in the right places at the right times.

Related, Mark Swed has this to say about the singer:

She also needs musical substance. Strauss and Wagner might be her meal ticket, but her soul is in American music and music of our time.

My attitude is that anyone who sings Charles Ives is to be worshipped. Above and beyond is unexpected bonus...

(For the record, I own two different pressings of the CD to the right).

Concerto for Saxophone (1999). Michael Kamen

I haven't heard this concerto written by Michael Kamen and played by jazz musician David Sanborn. But it gives me the chance to link to, via Ask Metafilter, a YouTube video of Kamen conducting his orchestral accompaniment to Aerosmith's Dream On. The band is as ugly as always but the tympani is a nice touch. Couldn't really hear the trombones though...