aworks :: "new" american classical music

aworks favorites :: nov 29, 2014

american classical:

• Meredith Monk - Urban March (Shadow); Tower; Railroad (Travel Song). Bruce Brubaker, Ursula Oppens - Monk: Piano Songs []

 

aworks favorites :: nov 28, 2014 #four2 #souvenir #bopknot

american classical:

• John Cage - Four2. Latvian Radio Choir - Mythes Étoilés [Aurora]
• John Cage - Souvenir. Teodoro Anzellotti - John Cage: Cheap Imitation, Souvenir & Dream [Winter &  Winter GmbH]
• Morton Feldman - Trio for Flutes. Dorothy Stone - None but the Lonely Flute [New World Records]

beyond:

• Viderunt Omnes - Pérotin. The Hilliard Ensemble - Pérotin [ECM New Music]
• Antipop Consortium - A Knot In Your Bop. Antipop Consortium Vs. Matthew Shipp [Thirsty Ear]
• Odessa Chen - Small Birds. Winter 2013 Mixtape

aworks favorites :: nov 26, 2014 #ives #electro-magnetic #testosterphone

american classical:

• Charles Ives - Central Park in the Dark. The American Avant-Garde In The 20th Century: Music And Modernism [LTM]. Neither the liner notes nor the Internet indicate performers.
• Alan Tormey - Black Pudding. Theories of Place [New Focus Recordings]. "...an assertion of noise as the mediating force in a dialog between avant-garde classical music and the mechanical & electro-magnetic infrastructures that undergird contemporary American life." Actually, that's an apt description of the music.

beyond:

• White - Spring House; Build a Link. White [Open Note]
• Nau-Zee-auN - Testosterphone. Ikebana: Merzbow's Amlux Rebuilt, Reused and Recycled [Important Records]

links:

• Robert Ashley's music is surprisingly contemplative but few people showed up to listen to a performance by Thomas Buckner. [Boring Like a Drill]
• A Berkeley happening: "The Thingamajigs eventually convened around Oliveros, all clutching cardboard tubes to their ears, like a living sculpture." [East Bay Express via Avant Music News]

aworks favorites :: nov 25, 2014 #yetanothersonatasandinterludes

American classical:

• Nothing today. I did listen to yet another recording of John Cage's Sonatas and Interludes. Yawn.

Beyond:

• Steffen Basho-Junghans - The River Suite. Rivers and Bridges [Strange Attractors Audio House]
  Basho-Junghans' long-form guitar music may even surpass John Fahey's.
• Masami Akita - Looping Jane. Merzbow - Ikebana: Merzbow's Amlux Rebuilt, Reused and Recycled [Important]
• Sir Richard Bishop - Cultured in D Minor (w Ben Chasny at Great American Music Hall). Decompositions
• Michael Stearns - As the Earth Kissed the Moon (excerpt), from 'Planetary Unfolding' (1981). 'I Am the Center: Private Issue New Age in America 1950-1990' [Lita]
• Jimmy Page & Robert Plant - When the World Was Young. Walking into Clarksdale [Atlantic]

aworks favorites :: nov 24, 2014 #guitar #space

American classical:

• Steve Reich - Nagoya Guitars. David Tanenbaum Guitar Recital [New Albion]

Beyond:

• John Fahey - Juana. Sea Changes and Coelacanths: A Young Person's Guide to John Fahey [Table of the Elements]
• Abdel Gadir Salim - Umri Ma Bansa. Desert Blues: Ambiances Du Sahara [Network Medien]
• Weather Report - Mysterious Traveller. Mysterious Traveller [Columbia]
  Funky and spacey, with excellent playing by Wayne Shorter. 
• The Beatles - Eight Days a Week. Beatles for Sale [Capitol Records]
• Led Zeppelin - Four Sticks. Led Zeppelin IV [Atlantic]
• Steffen Basho-Junghans - Blue Mountain Raga. A Raga for Peter Walker [Tompkins Square]
  I also listened today to music from the source, Peter Walker, but nothing particularly compelling.
• Steffen Basho-Junghans - Autumn II. Rivers and Bridges [Strange Attractors Audio House]

Links:

aworks favorites :: nov 23, 2014 #newage #electronic #pioneers #mysticism

American classical:

• John Cage - Williams Mix Forbidden Planets Volume 2 - More Music From The Pioneers Of Electronic Sound [Chrome Dreams]
• Alan Splet - Space travel w/ changing choral textures (1983) An Anthology Of Noise & Electronic Music [Sub Rosa]

Beyond:

• David Emanuel - 4 Arabian Fantasy, from 'Sound Paintings' (1980) I Am the Center: Private Issue New Age in America 1950-1990 [Lita]
• Li Sun, from 'Windscape' (1983) I Am the Center: Private Issue New Age in America 1950-1990 [Lita]
  Dare I say that early new age and early electronic music have in common a pursuit of the mystical. The former sounds better in hot tubs, though.
• Laraaji, aka Edward Larry Gordon - Unicorns in Paradise (Excerpt) I Am the Center: Private Issue New Age in America 1950-1990 [Lita]
• Larkin Stentz - Two Souls Dance, from 'Moments Empowered'  I Am the Center: Private Issue New Age in America 1950-1990 [Lita]
• Karel Goeyvaerts - Komposition Nr 7 Forbidden Planets Volume 2 - More Music From The Pioneers Of Electronic Sound [Chrome Dreams]
• Karlheinz Stockhausen - Etude Forbidden Planets Volume 2 - More Music From The Pioneers Of Electronic Sound [Chrome Dreams]
• Luigi Russolo - Awakening of a City Forbidden Planets Volume 2 - More Music From The Pioneers Of Electronic Sound [Chrome Dreams]
• Radiohead - Dollar and Cents Amnesiac [Capital Records]
• Radiohead - Dollars and Cents  (Live on Canal Plus) [bootleg]

aworks favorites :: nov 22, 2014

American classical

• Martin Bresnick - Ishi's Song
  Lisa Moore. Bresnick: Prayers Remain Forever [Starkland]

• John Cage - The Unavailable Memory of
  Philipp Vandré. Vol. 37: Complete Short Works For Prepared Piano [Mode]
  Simple but exceptionally timbral.

• John Cage - Third Construction
  So Percussion. Cage 100 - Bootleg Series [Cantaloupe Music]
• Alvin Lucier - In Memoriam Jon Higgins
  Crossings [Lovely Music, Ltd.]
• Alan Hovhaness - Fanfare For The New Atlantis
  Stewart Robertson: Royal Scottish National Orchestra. Hovhaness: Guitar Concerto #2, Symphony #63, Fanfare For The New Atlantis

Beyond

• Jon Di Fiore - Live for Tomorrow, Forget Today
  Yellow Petals [Third Freedom Music]
  Jazz drummer in a nicely subdued tune.
• Sir Richard Bishop - Laotian Porch Swing
  Decompositions 
• Weather Report - Boogie Woogie Waltz
  Sweetnighter [Columbia]

Links

Two Instruments for Cello and Horn (1958). Morton Feldman +1 #nuanced

the Strad on music played by Marco Simonacci:

...his superb control of sound comes into its own: in a finely nuanced Two Instruments for cello and horn, it’s sometimes hard to tell the players apart

And Raymond Tuttle's observation:

I admit that the combination of cello and horn in former work is interesting in and of itself. 

aworks listening log :: panorama of works

• Alan Hovhaness - Fanfare For The New Atlantis. Stewart Robertson: Royal Scottish National Orchestra -  Hovhaness: Guitar Concerto #2, Symphony #63, Fanfare For The New Atlantis [Naxos]. 
  For the second time in two years, I've failed to organize my listening by album. So it's back to by "work" (or really, by "recorded performance" as a proxy for work).
• La Monte Young - Sarabande for any instruments. Yvar Mikhashoff - Panorama Of American Piano Music [Mode]. I had to check that this was really a piece by La Monte Young.
• Sufjan Stevens - The Human Plague. yMusic - Balance Problems [New Amsterdam]. I also heard his his cover of Joni Mitchell's A Free Man in Paris. Remixes of Balance Problems below via Q2.
• Alvin Lucier. Music For Piano With Amplified Sonorous Vessels. Hildegarde Kleeb,  Roland Dahinden  - Panorama [Lovely Music]. Music from two albums named "Panorama" in this post.

  ---

• Alan Hovhaness - Symphony #63, Op. 411, "Loon Lake". Stewart Robertson: Royal Scottish National Orchestra - Hovhaness: Guitar Concerto #2, Symphony #63, Fanfare For The New Atlantis [Naxos]
• Jonathan Pieslak - Prednisomnia. Robert Auler - Shards: Piano Music of Jonathan Pieslak [Albany Records]
• Tod Dockstader - Aerial > Song. An Anthology Of Noise & Electronic Music / Second A-Chronology 1936-2003 [Sub Rosa]
• Amando Bayolo - Wide Open Spaces. American Aggregate - inscape [Sono Luminus]
• Dan Visconti - Black Bend. American Aggregate - inscape [Sono Luminus]
• Joseph Hallman - The Extraordinary Gryssandra Wycke. American Aggregate - inscape [Sono Luminus]
• Julia Adolphe - Wordless Creatures. American Aggregate - inscape [Sono Luminus]
• Nathan Lincoln-DeCuasitis - Oblivion. American Aggregate - inscape [Sono Luminus]

The Human Plague (2014). Sufjan Stevens #trippy

yMusic's new recording, Balance Problems, includes this:

Closing the album is a piece composed by Michigan native Sufjan Stevens. "The Human Plague" acts as a trippy reflection of the album's ambitious vision.

I'm not sure the significance of the title but the work is a rhythmic, minimalist pleasure.

PopMatters:

A calming coda, Sufjan Stevens’ “The Human Plague” succeeds in finally putting all of the players’ instruments, heretofore restlessly bouncing off one another, in sync, via a gated effect across the entire track.