aworks :: "new" american classical music

aworks music diary 2012 :: #2 alternatively good vibrations

Mom's

Charles Ives

• Ensemble Modern - A Portrait of Charles Ives: Mists. "Gyp the Blood" or Hearst - Which Is Worst?. Gyp is a long-time favorite; such insistent music.
• Marni Nixon, John McCabe - American Classics: Charles Ives. Ann Street 
• John Adams, Orchestra of St. Luke's - American Elegies: The Unanswered Question
• ASMF - American Music for Chamber Orchestra: Symphony No. 3
• Hillary Hight Daw, Barbara Efird: Americans in Paris: Qu'il m'irait bien. De la Drama Rosamunde. Chanson de Florian
  
• James Sykes - Charles Ives: The Short Piano Pieces: Three Page Sonata. 22. 

Philip Glass

• Signal, Brad Lubman - Live at (le) Poisson Rouge: Music in Similar Motion. Long and swirly (swirley?).
• Bruce Brubaker - Hope Street Tunnel Blues: Wichita Vortex Sutra
• The Smith Quartet - Philip Glass: Complete String Quartets. String Quartet No. 4. String Quartet No. 1. String Quartet No. 5 

Duke Ellington and others

• Charles Mingus - Mingus, Mingus, Mingus, Mingus, Mingus: Mood Indigo. Hora Decubitus.

The Beach Boys

• Good Vibrations 40th Anniversary: Good Vibrations. Good Vibrations (Alternate Take). The alternate take is more instrumentally interesting, even if the vocals aren't as compelling.

Lou Harrison

• Gamelan Music: Philemon and Baukis

Carl Stone

• Mom's: Banteay Srey 1991

Ornette Coleman/Pat Metheny

• Song X. Pat Metheny's finest moment, in service of the crazily delightful creativity of Ornette Coleman?

Aaron Copland

• Arturo Sacchetti - Organ Music in America: Episode. Not obviously Copland-like, this was written in 1940, after his earlier modernist period.

Chas Smith

• Aluminum Overcast: Uncovered the Nest. Gate 5. A Wasp on Her Abdomen. Rubric of Green. A Wasp was used in The Hunger Games.

Carl Davis

• Ben-Hur. Long and noisy.

Charles Wakefield Cadman

• William Parker - Music of American in the 1900s. From the Land of the Sky Blue Water

Charles Thomlinson Griffes

• William Parker - Music of American in the 1900s. An Old Song Resung

Arthur Foote

• Raam - Music of American in the 1900s. Andrantino Grazioso; Alla Siciliano

The October Trio

• New Dream: 1983. Wide. Do Your Thing. 

 

Sonata in Ishartum (1974). Lou Harrison

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best of today's listening:

• John Schneider - Lou Harrison: Music for Guitar. Sonata. Sonata in Ishartum. Serenado for Guitar. Round. Music for Bill and Me.
• David Murray - Windward Passages. It Hurts So Much To See.
• Philip Glass - Einstein on the Beach. Trial 1, Entrance. Building. 
• MONK MIX: Remixes & & Interpretations of Music by Meredith Monk. Astronaut Anthem.
• Cassatt Quartet - Sebastian Currier: Quartetset, Quiet Time. Quiet Time. Quartetset.
• The Toddlers - The Wire Tapper 27. Old Hat.

Related articles

• Listen: Lisa Moore (wqxr.org)
• Einstein on the Beach (1976). Philip Glass /ecstatically dumbounding/ (rgable.typepad.com)
• Music from the US - Philip Glass (xworldmusic.wordpress.com)
• aworks best of today's listening etc. :: ask the ages (rgable.typepad.com)

It Hurts So Much to See (1993). Dave Burrell /metadata talk/

David Murray

Just listening to David Murray playing the splendid It Hurts So Much To See (rdio). 

Just reading the Naxos Blog's fascinating post on music file metadata. I strongly agree with point #4:

4) It’s tempting to fiddle with the fields, but this is risky

Several people have told me they’ve found the solution to classical tagging in digital collections, and then gone on to explain some variation on “use the album field for the work title, use the artist field for the composer and use the composer field for the artist”. A complex version of this scheme is explained in detail here.

At this point in my listening life, I'm roughly 50% rdio, 40% MP3 files, 5% YouTube, and 5% random sounds. This means I'm slowly turning into just a consumer of metadata rather than a metadata maintainer, which in turn means I spend more time tweaking playlists. Arguably, progress...

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best of today's listening:

• A Broken Consort - Box of Birch. Weight of Days
• David Murray - Windward Passages. It Hurts So Much To See
• Larry Coryell - Music of the Sphere - The Thelonious Monk Songbook. Trinkle Trinkle
• Thelonius Monk - The Complete 1957 Riverside Recordings (Disc 2). William Henry Monk. Abide with Me
• Eternal Tapestry & Sun Araw - Night Gallery. Night Gallery IV
• Lana Del Rey - Born To Die (Deluxe Version). Video Games /also at amoeba/haight. is she ironic, romantic, capturing the zeitgeist of her generation and/or just commercially shrewd?/

links

• Metadata changes are not applied during any replica synchronization (esriaustraliatechblog.wordpress.com)
• Blogging 'bout WAYF: Why is the configuration called metadata? (oracleidentity.wordpress.com)
• How to rank well in Google search results (marketing.yell.com)
• Metadata as 'cultural source code' (freshandnew.org)
• Metadata and Its Importance (jaybhart.wordpress.com)

Cello Concerto No. 2 (2012). Philip Glass /#tweetseat/

$20 for a seat in the tweeting section of the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra. Ticket includes a world premiere of Matt Haimovitz playing the Philip Glass Cello Concerto No. 2 "Naqoyqatsi."

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best of today's listening:

• Morton Subotnick. Silver Apples of the Moon.
• Ruth Anderson. New Music for Electronic and Recorded Media. Points
• Holden. DJ Kicks. Triangle Folds. 
• Black Sabbath. Iron Man. (I'm listening to rock radio on the commute, this week).

Related articles

• Concerto for Cello and Orchestra No.1 (2001). Philip Glass /altogether more conventional/ (rgable.typepad.com)
• Music from the US - Philip Glass (xworldmusic.wordpress.com)

Concerto for Harpsichord & Orchestra (2002). Philip Glass /a fuller, more robust sound/

After yesterday's meh, things are picking up today, musically anyway...

Here's a YouTube of Christopher D. Lewis playing the Philip Glass Concerto for Harpsichord & Orchestra with Nicole Paiement conducting. I think the unusual timbre, for Glass music anyway, is refreshing.

The composer on the commission:

I found the invitation intriguing for several reasons. For one, I have always been an admirer of the literature for harpsichord, had studied some of the music from the Baroque period quite thoroughly, and have played a bit of that music myself. Secondly, I knew that the modern day harpsichord was capable of a fuller, more robust sound than was available in "period" instruments and might make a handsome partner to a modern chamber orchestra.

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best of today's listening:

• Christopher D. Lewis. Philip Glass. Concerto for Harpsichord & Orchestra.
• Dennis Russell Davis. Lou Harrison: Solstice/Canticle #3. A Summerfield Set for Solo Piano.
• Christopher O’Riley, Matt Haimovitz. Shuffle.Play.Listen. Pyramid Song.
• Arctic Monkeys. Whatever People Say I Am, That's What I'm Not. A Certain Romance.
• Thelonious Monk. The Complete 1957 Riverside Recordings. Abide with Me. 
• Rebecca Saunders. Musica Viva Festival 2008. Blue and Gray. Via composer Drew Baker.

links

• Music from the US - Philip Glass (xworldmusic.wordpress.com)
• Concerto for Cello and Orchestra No.1 (2001). Philip Glass /altogether more conventional/ (rgable.typepad.com)
• Music Review: Various Artists - The Essential Philip Glass (blogcritics.org)

aworks best of today's listening etc. :: meh

Guitar for Lee Ranaldo of Sonic Youth (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

I didn't hear much music today I particulary liked. And the John Luther Adams work isn't even my favorite from the album. Nice guitar photo, though...

• Lee Ranaldo - Between the Times and the Tides. Waiting on a Dream
• John Luther Adams. Red Arc / Blue Veil

Dolmen Music (1979). Meredith Monk /remixes galore/

 

A new Philip Glass remix recording is coming out in June. Artists include Beck, Amon Tobin, and Memory Tapes.

Similar projects for Glass, Steve Reich, and Meredith Monk are all variable in quality. 

My favorite remix tracks of American composers:

• Dance from Akhnaten (impLOG.). Glass Cuts
• Etude No. 5 (Taylor Deupree). Glass Cuts
• Etoile Polaire (Gigamesh Remix). Philip Glass
• Travellers (King Britt IDM Mix). Monk Mix: Remixes and Intrepretations of Music by Meredith Monk
• Rain (Vijay Iyer Revelation Mix Featuring Latasha N. Nevada Diggs). Monk Mix: Remixes of Music by Meredith Monk
• Megamix (Tranquility Bass). Reich Remixed
• Drumming (Four Tet Remix). Reich: Remixed 2006
• Heroes (Aphex Twin Remix). Philip Glass. 26 Mixes for Cash
• Adagio for Strings (Danjo & Styles Remix). Samuel Barber. Tiesto. 
• Adagio for Strings (Remix). William Orbit
• Echoes of Harlem (Duke Ellington Remix by Justin Sherburn and Jeff Hoskins). Graham Reynolds and the Golden Arm Trio. 

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best of today's listening:

• Black Dice. Load Blown. Kokomo. Roll Up. Gore. Drool. 

links

• Photo credit (last.fm)
• Naqoyqatsi (2002). Philip Glass /the essential/ (rgable.typepad.com)
• A Few New Remixes/Bootlegs (gearslutz.com)
• Amon Tobin, Modeselektor & Radiohead tickets (brooklynvegan.com)
• Music with Similar Parts (1973). Philip Glass /i scoff at people/ (rgable.typepad.com)
• Click here to listen to American singer-composer Meredith Monk speak on music, voice and spiritual practices (theaterofoneworld.org)

Music with Similar Parts (1973). Philip Glass /i scoff at people/

 

After listening to the Hunger Games soundtrack, I found my way to Music with Changing Parts. I scoff at people who listen to classical music to relax, but this was a nice transition after Taylor Swift, Arcade Fire, Neko Case, Maroon 5 etc. Well, at least the first half hour. We'll see if I make it to the hour mark...

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best of today's listening:

• Philip Glass. Music with Similar Parts
• Black Dice - Beaches & Canyons. Things Will Never Be the Same
• The Poet Sings - Lisa Harper-Brown and David Wickham. Dirge. Sweet Rose, Fair Flower
• The Decembrists - The Hunger Games. One Engine
• Atmoshpheric Sounds - Africa Atmosphere. Improvisation kroa, Barnako, Mali

links

• Photo credit:  Wikipedia
• The Hunger Games Soundtrack: Released, Already #1 (thehollywoodgossip.com)
• Taylor Swift Debuts Second Hunger Games Single in Concert (thehollywoodgossip.com)
• Clip Job: Tom Johnson's Original 1972 Voice Review Of Philip Glass's "Music in 12 Parts" (blogs.villagevoice.com)
• [MP3] The Decemberists - "One Engine" (laststopwonderland.com)

aworks best of today's listening etc. :: ask the ages

The late Sonny Sharrock was a fine electric guitarist and Ask the Ages is a great improvisational album.

Wikipedia: 

One of few guitarists in the first wave of free jazz in the 1960s, Sharrock was known for his incisive, heavily chorded attack, his highly-amplified bursts of wild feedback, and for his use of saxophone-like lines played loudly on guitar.

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• Sonny Sharrock - Ask the Ages. Promises Kept. Little Rock. Many Mansions. As We Used to Sing
• Lou Harrison. Benjamin Verdery - Ride the Wind Horse. Serenade
• Lou Harrison. Anthony De Mare - Wizards & Wildmen. Largo Ostinato
• Lou Harrison - A Collection. Suite for Cello and Harp. 
• Nico Muhly - Joshua. Hide and Seek
• Nico Muhly - Speaks Volumes. Hudson Cycle
• Dr. Lonnie Smith - Jungle Soul. Blue Moment

• aworks favorites/sonny sharrock (rdio)
• aworks favorites/lou harrison (rdio)
• Sonny Sharrock (wikipedia)
• aworks best of today's listening etc. :: rock magics (rgable.typepad.com)
• aworks best of today's listening etc. :: smiths, clef tattoos, lou etc. (rgable.typepad.com)

aworks favorites :: this month on rdio

Here's my playlist of the tracks I liked and listened to most on rdio. Some comments:

• These are roughly sorted in decreasing order of favoriteness. The David Murray is by far my favorite for the month; the last track -- George Antheil music narrated by the late Vincent Price -- is novel, if not really lovable.
• This list is not even necessarily representative of what I listened to this month as my MP3 playlists were mostly John Cage, John Fahey, and Wooden Shjips.
• The Philip Glass greatest hits are mostly bombastic and in hindsight, I use John Cage and John Fahey as small-scale antidotes. After I attend all three nights of Einstein on the Beach in Berkeley later this year, I'll need to check into the John Fahey Memorial Rest Home for the Overly Arpeggiated. 
• Thanks to the Big City for reminding me of the contrast between Glass and Cage. And MetaFilter has a Glass birthday-inspired entry today.
• Maura Lafferty touches on my blogs' achilles heel; I spend too much time on "polished, shiny, fancy big names than the new talent." This month's playlist does have music by Steve Peters and Rick Cox, but also probably has too much jazz by dead guys and nothing by hot New Yorkers.
• The list does have a good dose of African tracks including new Amadou & Mariam as well as choice selections from Rough Guide: Desert Blues.