aworks :: "new" american classical music

aworks ordered list :: relevant record labels on rdio

Here are the classically-oriented labels I've listened to on rdio. Quality may not be highly correlated with popularity, of course. And rdio has no musical genre tags, so for example, the Nonesuch count includes Wilco and Ben Folds/Nick Hornby.

Wilco via Wikipedia

1. Nonesuch  (1,300,000 listens)
2. Sony Classical (444,074)
3. Decca (243,756)
4. EMI Classics (196,522)
5. Nonesuch/WBR (107,643)
6. DG (71,008)
7. Signum Records (64,370)
8. Orange Mountain Music (14,856)
9. Readers Digest (10,258)
10. EMG Classical (5,227)
11. Naxos (4,834)
12. Cedille Records (4,205)
13. New Albion Records (3,772)
14. Albany Records (3,175)
15. Sub rosa (2,515)
16. Stradivarius (2,205)
17. Cantaloupe Music (1,100)
18. Materiali Sonori (1,025)
19. Mark Records (521)
20. Ionik Recordings (471)
21. NWCRI (430)
22. OMAC Records (352)
23. New York Philharmonic (349)
24. New Amsterdam (321)
25. Wergo (286)
26. American Symphony Orchestra (229)
27. Starkland (145)
28. NMC (129)
29. Innova (38)
30. Virtuoso Music (20)
31. Somm Recordings (16)
32. Composers Concordance Records (12)
33. Pogus Productions (9)
34. Bulgarian National Radio (6)

Update: additional labels

• Alia Vox (14,329)
• Chrome Dreams (6,437)
• Genuin (250)
• Acheulian Handaxe (22)

aworks five-star links and tracks :: october 29, 2011

Cover of Hilary Hahn

• Sonata for Violin and Piano No. 3. Charles Ives. Hilary Hahn and Valentina Lisitsa. rdio
• "Not to mention Robert Ashley." The Rest Is Noise
• "And it occurred to me … that our architecture might be the imaginary space behind the surface of the television screen. In other words, you look at the television screen, you see whatever you see—red, green, blue—behind that there’s an imaginary space and maybe that’s the place for the music of our time." Robert Ashley from Issue Project Room via Avant Music News
• "Most of this is very quiet as befits an atmosphere where grief has depleted most all energy, although not all the music is dark: Moran allows some hope for a possible future, particularly on the warm if plaintive theme in the final movement, In Paradisum." Lucid Culture on Robert Moran's Trinity Requiem
• Two new recordings of Steve Reich's Different Trains. Q2. Quatuor Diotima on rdio. London Steve Reich Ensemble on rdio (not currently available for streaming in my region).

aworks five-star links and tracks :: october 28, 2011 /to waste SOME time/

Cain image by Getty Images via @daylife

• "[John] Fahey's legacy and reputation among modern guitarists is overwhelming and inescapable." Pitchfork
• "one of the best elvis pics I’ve ever seen." Gacuognol
• "What are Mozart's greatest contributions to the music world?" Quora
• In Memory of Elizabeth Reed. rdio
• First Essay. Samuel Barber. rdio
• "More than anything, Cain shows an affinity and comfort with the particular sense of humor rooted in black American experience." John McWhorter via Andrew Sullivan
• "I’m very proud of the relationship that I have with the Koch Brothers," said Herman Cain. ThinkProgress
• "We stayed for the entirety of Four Tet's set and left shortly after around 2:30 a.m." SFWeekly
• "But I think it’s necessary, in order to cultivate the illusion of immortality, without which it would be difficult to function, to waste SOME time on that which is purely relaxing, that has no tangible use at all, that just signals, OK, you’re not working right now." Mick LaSalle

Related articles

• aworks links :: june 23, 2011 /two minutes/ (rgable.typepad.com)
• aworks top ten "new" tracks :: #1 /the heartbreak of the best-seller list/ (rgable.typepad.com)
• the definitive aworks ordered listening log #2 :: circa oct 1, 2011 /the guitar lives on/ (rgable.typepad.com)
• aworks ordered list :: rdio album popularity (rgable.typepad.com)

Blue in Green (1959). Bill Evans* /playing these six bars over and over/

Ask.Metafiler asks if Bill Evans wrote Blue in Green from Miles Davis' Kind of Blue. This leads to Wikipedia footnotes of note:

^ See page 20 of the Fall 1993 issue of Letter from Evans (http://www2.selu.edu/orgs/34skid/html/23.pdf) where Earl Zindars says "I know that it is [100-percent Bill's] because he wrote it over at my pad where I was staying in East Harlem, 5th floor walkup, and he stayed until 3 o'clock in the morning playing these six bars over and over."

^ http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=92185496 35m30s - On being asked about the issue by the interviewer (Marian McPartland), Evans said "The truth is I did [write the music]... I don't want to make a federal case out of it, the music exists, and Miles is getting the royalties"

The Goat Rodeo Sessions (2011). Yo-Yo Ma et al.

I've never been a big fan of the Yo-Yo Ma Americana recordings. But five tracks into the just released Goat Rodeo Sessions, with Stuart Duncan, Ma, Aoife O'Donovan, and Chris Thile, I'm liking it:

Mint Conditioner (2010). Alexandra Gardner /tangled ball of knots/

The composer on her interesting work Mint Conditioner for double bass and electronics. (I first typed that as "Mint Condition" although my coin collecting days are long past):

True to the title, this piece starts out a tangled ball of knots, and by the end rinses out smooth and silky!

Still and Moving Lines of Silence in Families of Hyperbolas (1972). Alvin Lucier /listen not to sounds/

I'm finishing the John Cage biography by Kenneth Silverman. I like this:

..he [Cage] argued that conventional forms have wrongly taught us to listen not to sounds but to their organization—to automatically anticipate the repetition of a theme, the carrying of the subject through a different key, etc.

Alvin Lucier's Still and Moving Lines of Silence exemplifies this:

My Kindle highlights here.

...and start west (2011). Christopher Stark /harking back to futurist compositions/ #SONiCfest

Thomas Deneuiville's I Care If You Listen reports on the first concert of the Sonic: Sounds of a New Century Festival:

Christopher Stark’s …and start west, for example, began with a sort of off-kilter Broadway-tune style, but with jagged punctuations interrupting. Stark’s imaginative use of percussion, brass, and woodwinds created an industrial sound – harking back to futurist compositions of the 1920s, but updated for this century.

Other works by Stark stream here.

Empty Words (1977). John Cage /buying used MP3s/

Cover of John Cage

I'm buying my first used MP3...

redigi allows you to buy and sell MP3s and tries to remain legal by apparently deleting the seller's copy. To my surprise, there were some John Cage tracks in stock.

You have to start by buying $10 worth of credit or sell enough before buying. Tracks appear to be .59 used and .88 new.

String Quartet No. 4 "Buczak" (1989). Philip Glass /subtle ultra precise/

Brooklyn via Wikipedia

Michael McDonagh talks to Johnny Gandelsman of Brooklyn Ryder:

He’s especially keen on Quartet # 4 (Buczack ), which Glass wrote for his artist friend Brian Buczack (1954-1987), who died of AIDS — his fellow in Fluxus partner Geoffrey Hendricks commissioned it from Kronos who premiered it at NY’s Emily Harvey Gallery on the second anniversary of the artist’s death – the July 4, 1989. The violinist calls the second slow movement — there are three — ” a standalone piece, ” and its floating interweaving gestures, and subtle ultra precise voice leading are high water marks in Glass’ writing for strings. Gandelsman says Brooklyn Rider has concentrated on “color and texture” here, and that it’s as “profound as most Messaien ,and as spiritual as Bach.”

Related articles

• Serenade for Solo Flute (1963?). Philip Glass (rgable.typepad.com)