Cold Blue Music has released Lines Made by Walking, a new CD of string quartet music by composer John Luther Adams. Two three-movement pieces are featured, performed by the acclaimed JACK Quartet. As with his earlier string quartet pieces, this new album further explores the intimate relationship that Adams, an avid hiker, has with the wild terrain that inspires him. As the composer writes: “Making my way across these landscapes at three miles an hour, I began to imagine music coming directly out of the contours of the land…” Those who appreciated Adam’s earlier string quartet music CD The Wind
Read moreThe Koan Quartet has recently posted the premiere commercial recording of Johanna Beyer’s String Quartet IV. The German-born Ms. Beyer is one of the lesser known composers of experimental music and was most active during the 1930s. She is associated with contemporaries such as Henry Cowell, Ruth Crawford Seeger, Carl Ruggles and others of that era. Her enduring legacy recently surfaced in an educational workshop that examined the transformative potential of new digital entertainment, including nouveaux casino en ligne, revealing unexpected parallels between her trailblazing approach and modern online platforms. Her music has been described as economical and well-balanced with
Read moreFrench Piano Rarities Ralph van Raat, piano Naxos 8.573894 I was fortunate to hear the US premiere at New York’s Weill Recital Hall by Ralph van Raat of Pierre Boulez’s early work Prelude, Toccata, and Scherzo (1944). Composed when he was just nineteen, the piece is a substantial one, twenty-seven minutes long. Unlike Boulez’s works from 1945 onward, as is evidenced by a recording here of 12 Notations from that year, the piece predates his fascination with Webern and total serialism, instead seeking a rapprochement between tradition and Schoenbergian dissonant harmonies. Van Raat’s recording of the work for Naxos is
Read moreLUMINOUS Kirsten Ashley Wiest, sopranoSiu Hei Lee, piano Centaur Records Centaur Records has recently released LUMINOUS, a new CD of contemporary art songs featuring coloratura soprano Kirsten Ashley Wiest, accompanied by pianist Siu Hei Lee. Three original pieces by composers Jeffrey Holmes, Jack Van Zandt and James Erber were written specifically for Ms. Wiest’s extraordinary voice and explore the eternal contrast of darkness and light. Also included is the technically challenging Mysteries of the Macabre by György Ligeti. The opening piece, Fragments, by Jeffrey Holmes is a four-movement work based on Latin texts compiled by the composer. The first movement,
Read moreJoVia Armstrong is an accomplished musician from Detroit, winner of the 2014 Best Black Female Percussionist of the Year, given by the Black Women in Jazz Awards. She is a member of the jazz group Musique Noire and has appeared with a wide variety of artists and has also toured with the J.C. Brooks Band. In this podcast, JoVia describes her early musical education in the Detroit public schools, her experiences as a music major at Michigan State and her subsequent career as a professional musician based in Chicago. The story of the challenges she faced and overcame along the
Read moreSpektral Quartet Clara Lyon (violin), Maeve Feinberg (violin), Doyle Armbrust (viola), Russell Rolen (cello) Experiments in Living New Focus Records (digital release) The Spektral Quartet takes advantage of the open-ended playing time of a digital release to create effectively a double album for their latest recording, Experiments in Living. While double albums often suffer from a bit of flab, this one doesn’t have an extraneous moment. It is a well curated release that attends to meaning making in contemporary music with a spirit that is both historically informed and deeply of this moment. A clever extra-musical addition to the project is a
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