aworks :: "new" american classical music

Describe You (2009). Nico Muhly, Teitur Lassen #youtube-inspired music now on #spotify

• "Teitur (IPA: [ˈtaitʊɹ]; born Teitur Lassen 1977 in Hoyvík) is a Faroese musician, singer-songwriter and producer based on the Faroe Islands." Wikipedia
• The Faroe Islands are somewhere north of the UK. Wikipedia
• "The two musicians began work on the project when Muhly was composer-in-residence at Muziekgebouw Eindhoven in the Netherlands. The songs' lyrics were inspired by or culled from video and commentary the pair found on YouTube." Nonesuch

Cairn (1994). Steve Mackey @newalbion @BridgeRecords @mackeysteven #listeninglog

• Joan Jeanrenaud - Metamorphosis [New Albion Records - 2002]. Cello version.
• Steve Mackey - Lost & Found [Bridge Records - 2006]. Guitar version, as played by the composer.
• For electric guitar and looping sampler
• 'A cairn is a small hill of rock used as a place marker or a burial landmark and was written for Jeanrenaud when her child was stillborn."Cairn" consists of small repetitive motives with simple lines suggesting a lament.' MusicTAP

Boomerang (1974). Nancy Holt and Richard Serra

aworks listening log :: september 11, 2016 #notablewomen @CedilleRecords

Notable Women - Lincoln Trio [Cedille 2011]

• Piano Trio (1992/1996). Lera Auerbach
• Seven (1997-98). Stacy Garrop. With some rather intense passages. "Stacy Garrop’s music is centered on dramatic and lyrical storytelling."
• Piano Trio (2003). Jennifer Higdon 
• Ce la Luna Questa Sera? (1998/2006). Laura Elise Schwendinger 
• Moon Jig (2005). Augusta Read Thomas
• Trio Cavany (2007). Joan Tower

Stacy Garrop: Mythology Symphony, Thunderwalker & Shadow - CCPA Symphony Orchestra, CCPA Chamber Orchestra [Cedille 2015]

• Mythology Symphony (2007-13)
• Thunderwalker (1999)
• Shadow (2001)

Augusta Read Thomas: Of Being Is a Bird - Parker Quartet, Third Coast Percussion, Spektral Quartet, Nathan Giem, Claire Booth, Nathan Cole, Nicola Melville [Wyastone Estate Limited aka Nimbus Records 2016]

She's written quite a bit of chamber music.

• Helix Spirals (2015)
• Selene Octet - Moon Chariot Rituals (2015)
• Capricious Toccata (2015)
• Of Being Is a Bird (2015)
• Caprice (2005)
• Rush (2004). Not a medley of tunes from the Canadian rockers. Maybe Christopher Rouse will write that one.
• Love Twitters (2006)

Perkussion NRW - Splash Percussion [ClassicClips 2014]

• Ionisation (1931). Edgard Varese
• Music for Pieces of Wood (1973). Steve Reich
• Bonham (1988). Christopher Rouse

David Lang - The Passing Measures #listeninglog

1. ✔ The Passing Measures (1998)
   • "I think one of the reasons our commercial culture likes all music to be fast and snappy is because in fast music it is harder to recognize the passing of time." David Lang
   • "David Lang, the brilliant young American composer whose music was the subject of the first of this year’s Composer Portraits at Columbia’s Miller Theater, is neither late nor demented but one cannot help feeling that something of a similar test of audience affection must be afoot in “Passing Measures,” a hypnotic Sisyphusian trek in which the 20-person modern music ensemble Alarm Will Sound, the So Percussion Group, the Tarab Cello Ensemble, a Loose Band of Women (a seven-voice choral group), as well as 11 musicians from the Manhattan School of Music, and bass clarinetist  Evan Ziporyn, all led by Alan Pierson, attempt to push a single, painfully slow chord up a very steep hill over and over and over again, only to slide back down, take a few deep breathes and start out all over again." Jerry Bowles/Sequenza21
   • "More elemental that Arvo Pärt's tintinnabuli style, and as expressive in its simplicity as the work of Peter Garland, Lang has given listeners a great gift: to listen with great attention to the passage of time as their hearts are brought into the presence of the great stillness they all hold within them." Thom Jurek/ALLMUSIC
   • "The slowly shifting harmony is basically consonant, but set in the kind of sonic haze (the instruments are amplified, but not otherwise manipulated electronically) which justifies the concentration on middle to lower registers." G RA M O P H O N E
   • "I spent eight months deriving the algorithm that makes it work, and in the end one note at a time changes in a crablike way and the music never goes anywhere and never repeats itself." Justin Davidson/Wondering Sound
   • "solo bcl, 8 alto voices,0000/4331/4perc,2pf,ebgtr,8 or more vc,2 or more db; amp." David Lang
   • The author Daniel Handler aka Lemony Snicket listens to Morton Feldman, The Passing Measures and New Order when he writes. MATADOR REVIEW
   • "Post-minimal jams" e.g. The Passing Measures and Evan Ziporyn's Frog's Eye. The Brothers Balliett/WQXR
   • "Orchestrated by Marty Ehrlich with the Birmingham Contemporary Music Group and members of the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra Chorus". Paul Herbert conducting. Discogs
   • "...there were always pieces in the pipeline that proved Lang’s exceptional talent: the scintillating “Illumination Rounds,” the chilling “Cheating, Lying, Stealing, the eloquent choral work “The Passing Measures,” the recording of which I hailed in this magazine as one of the best of 2001." Russell Platt/THE NEW YORKER
   • David Lang interview where he suggests Bang on a Can were "spiritual descendants" of John Cage although he says he is also a traditional compiler i.e. "I put my notes down on paper." Mark Alburger/21st Century Music. This is a great interview, by the way. I didn't know  Lou Harrison taught for a semester at Stanford. Lang also asks if Berkeley and Stanford are good music schools or not although he learned things at Stanford. He also asks why Philip Glass doesn't play his early compositions. 
   • "Often times if you listen carefully to it you can hear the harmonic sounds under the note—you can hear infinity in the singularity, as in David Lang's The Passing Measures or Sheila Chandra's ABoneCroneDrone series." Kazim Alil/Poetry DAILY
   • Canteloupe Music (2011)

Manhattan Chamber Orchestra - Henry Cowell / Vincent Persichetti / Edward MacDowell ‎ #listeninglog

• Koch International Classics (1994)
  • "The Manhattan Chamber Orchestra has released 30 CDs on the Newport Classic, KOCH International, AVANT, VOX, Helicon, KLEOS Classics, and Mulatta Records labels. It records an average of three new CDs per year." Wikipedia
  • Via Amoeba. I paid $2.99 for a CDR version although I can't distinguish it from a regular CD. Online, the regular CD is $13.99. I suspect the label on the case of mine is wrong.
  • Wikipedia's entry on Henry Cowell has a section on his imprisonment. Wikipedia

1. Hymn & Fuguing Tune No. 10 (1944). Henry Cowell
   •  Not sure how many of these tunes he wrote.
2. Air & Scherzo (1963). Henry Cowell
3. Concerto Grosso (1963). Henry Cowell
4. Fiddler's Jig (1952). Henry Cowell
   • Also known as Flirtatious Jig. Henry Cowell
5. The Hollow Men (1948). Vincent Persichetti
   • "His best-known smaller work, The Hollow Men, is firmly rooted in American symphonic tradition." ALLMUSIC
   • Online score. Theodore Presser
6. To a Wild Rose (1896). Edward MacDowell
   • "To a Wild Rose, one of the European-trained MacDowell's most well-known and loved pieces, is part of the larger Woodland Sketches, finished in 1896 for solo piano." Wikipedia

Natto Quartet - Thousand Oaks #listeninglog

• Philip Gelb (shakuhachi), Shoko Hikage (koto), Tim Perkis (electronics), Chris Brown (piano). 482 Music
• "The Natto Quartet is a San Francisco Bay Area ensemble that explores the possibilities of timbre and group interaction with its unique instrumentation, juxtaposition of cultural traditions and collectively improvised approach." 482 Music
• Philip Gelb - "I am currently teaching shakuhachi in the bay area to over a dozen students." Bay Improviser. How is this the first I've ever seen the Bay Improviser site?
• Via Amoeba. 

• Ume
• Dengaku
• Kinpira
• Genmaicha
• Kuri-ae
• Chawan mushi
• Shochu