aworks :: "new" american classical music

Wind Quintet No. 4 (1984). George Perle /in search of/

Patti Mitchell is looking for American chamber music using oboe and other instruments. A quick check of "oboe" in the title of my iTunes tracks only reveals the following:

• Pastorale For Oboe, Harp And Strings. Howard Hanson
• Changes for Three Oboes. Barney Childs
• Quartet for Flute, Oboe, Cello, and Harpsichord. Henry Cowell
• Concerto for Oboe, Clarinet and Strings. John Harbison

I happen to like all these but I don't think they meet her requirements. A similar search for tracks with "woodwind" in the title turns up:

• Suite for Woodwind Ensemble. Gunther Schuller
• Summer Music for Woodwind Quintet. Samuel Barber

Summer Music is one of Barber's best but no piano, though.

A quick google search turns up a CD that includes the Schuller piece, two works I'm not aware of, by Walter Piston and David Diamond, and finally, Elliott Carter's 8 Etudes and a Fantasy, for woodwind quartet. I have a recording of the latter and I find it interesting how woodwinds soften modernism. I"ll leave it to you to decide if that is good or bad.

Finally, although I haven't ripped it to MP3 yet and I can't find my CD, George Perle's Wind Quintets used to be a favorite. From the liner notes of that recording (PDF here), Kyle Gann writes this about George Perle:

Only gradually has the music world come to realize how individual his music is, what a flexible musical language he has developed, and how different that language is from serialism. Thus the 1986 Pulitzer Prize Perle received for one of the works on this record, the Wind Quintet No. 4, seemed not so much an award for an isolated achievement as an overdue tribute to someone who has upheld the highest musical standards for over a quarter-century.

Note to self: get more American woodwind music; find Perle CD.

links for 2007-06-28

• YouTube - Einstein On The Beach
  Somehow I've managed to never see this Lego version of the Philip Glass opera.
• Entangled Voices: Genre and the Religious ... - Google Book Search
  "These are the days my friends..." - "Einstein on the Beach reveals that dramatic conflict comes from three aspects of dramatic voices: their opacity, multiplicity, and situation in a context."
• Civic Center: The Pallid Prokofiev Piano Festival
  'The best and most exciting festival was...called "American Mavericks," that started with an audience participation version of Terry Riley's "In C" and included huge chunks of wild American music that is rarely heard in American concert halls.'

In Spite of All This (2005). Missy Mazzoli /...new music continues/

I've started to explore the music of the composers in the upcoming Stephen S. Taylor's documentary The End of New Music. The first MP3 is from Missy Mazzoli (click on the main page's listen to get to the MP3 page). From the composer's website:

MISSY (Melissa) MAZZOLI is a delinquent tap dancer turned insomniac composer, whose influences range from Beethoven to Balinese Gamelan. She writes for melodicas, out-of-tune guitars and electronics as well as orchestras and string quartets to create a truly unique sound.

I was in London once with some time to kill so I went shopping for a melodica. I didn't find one at the time but I still like the instrument. Calling Augustus Pablo...

While Ms. Mazzoli's piece In Spite of All This lacks melodica, it does sound fresh with its combination of clarinet, electric guitar, vibraphone, drum kit, piano, violin, and cello. From the composer's program notes (via NewMusicBox) for the work:

I sought to describe not only the vulnerability and anger but the compassion, optimism and renewal that marks these otherwise destructive times.

Why Generation Xers are inherently more pragmatic than boomers I only partially understand but there it is. (and some classic boomer pessimism can be found here).

Note also her composition These Worlds in Us (streaming here) will be conducted by Marin Alsop at the Cabrillo Music Festival's In the Works concert in Santa Cruz, CA later this summer.

links for 2007-06-27

• the end of new music - a new documentary film by stephen s taylor
  Premiering next month in NYC. The title alone is provocative enough but the subject matter of striving young American composers and musicians in a not particularly receptive culture sounds fascinating. i also appreciate the lower case website...
  (tags: theendofnewmusic film documentary stephentaylor)
• stephen taylor - documentary films
  "...is collaborating with free speech zone productions on the creation of a documentary opera, combining elements of documentary film with live music performance and staging."
  (tags: theendofnewmusic)
• American Beat Documentary Films
  "documenting the changing american landscape"
  (tags: theendofnewmusic)
• + FREE SPEECH ZONE PRODUCTIONS +
  "Founders Judd Greenstein, David T. Little and Missy Mazzoli are united in their belief that music can inform, provoke, and inspire change, and seek to present music that speaks directly to the human experience in an era marked by anger and fear."
  (tags: theendofnewmusic juddgreenstein davidlittle missymazzoli)
• Anthology Film Archives
  "...an international center for the preservation, study, and exhibition of film and video with a particular focus on American independent and avant-garde cinema and its precursors found in classic European, Soviet and Japanese film."
  (tags: theendofnewmusic)

links for 2007-06-26

• Metromix. 'Sopranos' not only end that left us hanging
  Einstein on the Beach: 'At the end of a nearly five-hour music-theater piece without plot in any conventional sense..., two lovers are sitting on a park bench. "Kiss me, John," the woman implores. He does. Curtain.'

links for 2007-06-24

• objects found / A little less music please
  'But the whole idea of the “great” Hollywood film score is just an extension of nineteenth century aesthetics–those ideals long dead in most other corners of Western musical culture during the “golden” era of the American film score.'
• new humans
  via counterstreamradio.org
• Amazon.com: Disassociate New Humans: Music
  'No results match your search for "Disassociate New Humans" in Music.' I've spent my entire life getting ready for that error message.
• YouTube - West Side Story versión Zombie
  Ok, that's an imaginative interpretation...

Citizen Kane (1941). Bernard Herrmann

yorktowncmdr points out on the Bernard Herrmann email list that the composer has scores for five films on the latest American Film Institute Top 100:

• #1 Citizen Kane
• #2 Vertigo
• #14  Psycho
• #52 Taxi Driver
• #55 North By Northwest

North by Northwest is my nominal favorite of both score and film among those five, even if Indiana doesn't really look like the crop dusting scene supposedly set there. Citizen Kane's Xanadu on the other hand could pass for Hearst Castle.

links for 2007-06-23

• Mingle2 - What's My Blog Rated? Find Out Your Film Rating
  aworks is rated "PG" due to "death" + "bitches" (brew). Via Renewable Music.
• San Jose Mercury News - Driver in David Halberstam death to face manslaughter charge
  "It was negligence that caused the death of another human being and that warranted a criminal charge."
  (tags: menlopark)
• Insiders: Confessions Of A Starbucks Barista - Consumerist
  Suggestion for those seeking a blander Starbucks experience: 'An Americano is espresso and hot water to dilute it to the flavor strength of brewed coffee. It's milder in body and won't seem as "burnt."' Plus the post commenters argue over"burntness."
• if charlie parker was a gunslinger,
  there'd be a whole lot of dead copycats: From the Sketch Book of Lawson Wood # 17
  "The power of the dog" : disconcerting and interesting.
• YouTube - The Ukulele Orchestra of Great Britain ownage: Smells Like Teen Spirit
  ten word review: i thought this would be a novelty act but no. /b/
• Fafarazzi.com - White Stripes re-open Tower Records - Fantasy Celebrity Leagues
  'But White seemed oddly in awe of the the place, as if they were playing the Ryman Auditorium: During the show, he alluded to the store's storied history, and, in regard to playing there, assured everyone that "We don't take it lightly."'
• Pitchfork: Smashing Pumpkins to Fans, Indie Stores: F* You
  "Billy and company would like you to know that they fully support the extinction of the American independent record store at the hand of large, faceless, little-guy-crushing big boxes."

links for 2007-06-22

• Pat Metheny & Ornette Coleman - Song X – Music at Last.fm
  10 word review: Faux cool and cool meet up to stretch faux cool. /a/
• Jim Hall and Pat Metheny - Summertime – Music at Last.fm
  10 word review: Tasteful and faux tasteful meet up to stretch faux tasteful. /a/

links for 2007-06-21

• oboeinsight : oboeinsight.com -  Wouldn't This Be Super?
  "Appomattox Public Casting Call Press Release" - for the new Philip Glass opera in SF this fall.
• Patti Smith Covers "Smells Like Teen Spirit" | Line Out | The Stranger's Music Blog | The Stranger | Seattle's Only Newspaper
  I like the music but it's definitely weird. Video has cats, kids, CDs, drive-by photography, emotive banjo player etc and is also appropriately weird. Patti looks fierce, unkempt and happy.
• Glass Notes: les animaux amoureux....
  Three more film scores from Philip Glass.
• YouTube - Feinsmith Quartet: NAME from Feinsmith's ELOHIM
  From the Other Minds Festival. Cello and electric bass sound good together; acoustic piano and electric bass not so much.
• YouTube - John Coltrane & Stan Getz: Rifftide (Hackensack)
  Coltrane, Getz, Oscar Peterson, Paul Chambers, and Jimmy Cobb! I've never heard (or seen) this before. The blurred background shot of Getz vaguely reminds me of Frank Gorshin.
• frank gorshin - Google Image Search
  Some of us remember the Batman tv series.
• Song That Comes From the Words of Friends - New York Times
  David Del Tredici's "Gay Life"
• Carlos Dengler - Carlos D - Music - New York Times
  “Clarity,” said Daniel Kessler, the lead guitarist [of Interpol], “becomes more and more attractive.”
• cyberinsekt: Philip Glass - 'Akhnaten's Hymn to the Aten'
  Sure, there have been some embarrassing moments along the way - I'm looking at you, Songs for Liquid Days - ...But there's no denying the power and the scale of his imagination (and talent).""