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I think composers should study Chopin’s Op. 59 Mazurkas carefully. There are places in which the harmony blows my mind every time.

What are some other works that you can return to over and over again and still find surprising? Other genres are open for discussion too – film, theatre, art…

Hot Chip’s new LP, One Life Stand, will be out February 9th on Astralwerks. It combines indie pop with a fulsome layer of motoric electronica.

They’ve released a video for the title track on their MySpace page. It’s also on YouTube.

Matthew Shipp

4D

Thirsty Ear

For a while around the turn of the millennium, avant-jazz pianist Matthew Shipp threatened to stop recording. One could understand why: he’s prolific beyond belief, and one could understand that an artist in the ‘out jazz’ realm might be fearful that an overly compendious catalog might be harmful to sales and recouping recording costs. Happily for those of us who wanted MORE from Matthew, he decided not to stay away from the studio, and has continued to record prolifically.

Shipp has also served as the curator of Thirsty Ear’s Blue Series, an imprint that has served to blur the boundaries of free and neo-trad jazz, and of jazz with other stylistic categories: electronica, hip hop, and even contemporary concert music. On his latest release, 4D, he’s continued in this vein. A solo outing, it presents both Shipp originals and standards. He even tackles venerable chestnuts such as “Prelude to a Kiss” and “Autumn Leaves,” as well as the gospel hymn “What a Friend we have in Jesus.”

We don’t have audio from the album that’s cleared for posting yet, but here’s a recent video of Shipp performing solo to whet your appetite for 4D.

A lot of folks associate the song “Torn” with Australian soap stay Natalie Imbruglia’s saccharine pop cover version from 1997. There are several more truly saddening renditions by dance/MOR pop artists out there.

But check out the original rendition by Ednaswap – courtesy here of YouTube.

Less hand-wringing, far more post-grunge angst!

Bandmember Anne Preven also recorded a memorable solo version of the song.

Some happy news. I’ve been asked to present my paper on Ralph Shapey’s late music at the 2010 8th annual conference of the Music Theory Society of the Middle Atlantic. The conference is on March 26-27, 2010 at Penn State  University in University Park, Pennsylvania.

My paper is included in a session  titled “Composers at Work after 1945,” scheduled for 9:00-10:30 am on Saturday, March 27. It develops some of the concepts from my article on Shapey which appears in the next issue of Perspectives of New Music, focusing in particular onRobert Morris’ theory of compositional spaces.

I’ve included the abstract below. If any readers are attending the conference, I look forward to meeting you in March!

Abstract

From 1981 until his death in 2002, Ralph Shapey repeatedly employed serial procedures in his works. Shapey’s Mother Lode worksheet contains precompositional elements found in nearly all of the works that date from this time period.  Although Shapey based the Mother Lode’s array on a twelve-tone row, he described the worksheet in hierarchical, harmonic terms, often with a quite traditional sense of voice-leading between verticals. Thus, it displays aspects of both tonal and post-tonal grammars.This paper evaluates the worksheet using Robert Morris’ theory of compositional spaces,  examining Mother Lode deployments found in several late works: String Quartets Nine and Ten, Piano Quintet (2002), and  Millennium Designs.

The Dirty Projectors released a limited edition 7″ today on Domino Records.

Ascending Melody features two previously unreleased tracks, recorded during the Bitte Orca sessions last year.

You can purchase the vinyl from Domino’s webstore.

MP3 versions of the songs are available FREE from the band’s website!

Balmorhea

Constellations

Western Vinyl CD

Balmorhea’s latest LP, Constellations, is out this February on Western Vinyl. It’s one of the best slowcore releases I’ve heard in quite a while. The trick, as I hear it, in slowcore, is to supply primarily lush soundscapes, but with a palpable pulse that is SLOW – slower than a resting heartbeat, slower than can be comfortably conducted. Against that pulse and amidst the sonic sheen reside motivic and harmonic progressions – just like any other good pop song. The tempo forces the listener to really pay attention, to wait for the material to unfold. At its best, in the music of Low, Labradford, and, yes, Balmorhea, the results are well worth the wait and the effort.

Stay tuned for an excerpt of Constellations closer to the release date.