Ok, I'm back...
I bought a CD today of American-born, UK-residing Arlene Sierra's music at the Campbell, CA Rasputin Music. Via rdio, this led me to a recent release on Bridge Records of her music.
This is notated, acoustic music but her electronic background gives it a different feel:
"Electronic music was a way of getting ideas down, manipulating musical materials without having to worry about notation,” she says. ” For someone who studied piano, and didn’t study composition, that was really a relief and a wonderful opening to ways of manipulating sound and making new things without all the business of getting the notation right.”
Fanfare has an interview of the composer where she talks about Oberlin, how focusing on composition as a Master's student was a good thing rather than more electronic music or Chinese cultural study, and why Stravinsky was a great composer. I'll ignore that last one.
Coincidentally, I'm off to China later this week for a business trip
The composer's twitter account: @asie.
And my South Bay journey (with my 92-year-old Mom who patiently sat in the car while I shopped) reminded me that the Campbell branch, with the store in Berkeley, are the only Rasputins' that still have a decent stock of classical CDs.
- Surrounded Ground - Charles Neidich
- Birds and Insects - Vassily Primakov
- Piano Concerto - BBC National Orchestra of Wales
- Moler - BBC National Orchestra of Wales
- Two Neruda Odes - Susan Narucki
- Aquilo - BBC National Orchestra of Wales
- Colmena - International Contemporary Ensemble
- Game of Attrition - BBC National Orchestra of Wales
- Cicada Shell - International Contemporary Ensemble
- Ballistae - International Contemporary Ensemble
