(All photos by Brian Smale) Composer and holistic sound artist Matthew Bennett has created some of the most intuitively experienced sonorities that you might never have thought to trace to their origins. As the former director of the Sound + Sensory Design Program at Microsoft, where he was still employed at the time of this interview, he endeavored to render the Microsoft soundscape as a community of audible signatures. His innovations transformed Windows into a tactile user experience in which vibration became substantive. Since then, he has established Acoustic Ecology to expand his aural vision to the tech industry at
Read moreJames Primosch, a dear friend and colleague of mine and one of the finest composers of his generation, passed away on April 26, 2021 at age 64, from complications of pancreatic cancer. Jim was born in 1956 in Cleveland, OH. He studied at Cleveland State University, the University of Pennsylvania (where he joined the composition faculty in 1988), and Columbia University. His principal teachers included Mario Davidovsky, George Crumb, and Richard Wernick. Among the many awards and honors Jim garnered over the years are prizes from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, a Guggenheim Fellowship, a grant from the
Read moreThe {greyfade} recording label has recently released From the Machine Vol. 1, a new digital and vinyl album of contemporary music composed entirely by software employing “…algorithmic processes, generative systems and indetermancy.” A collaboration between Kenneth Kirschner and Joseph Branciforte, the two tracks of this album were composed by computer but performed by conventional acoustic ensembles. This combination of digital composition and traditional performance brings the human touch to music that would otherwise be realized by strictly electronic means. From the Machine Vol. 1 attempts to join the creative efforts of computer-based composition with expressive performance by skilled musicians. Kenneth
Read moreGunnar Andreas Kristinsson Moonbow Sono Luminus CD Caput Ensemble Icelandic composer Gunnar Andreas Kristinsson’s second CD, Moonbow, presents a selection of pieces written during the past decade for sinfonietta and chamber forces. Clarinetist Ingólfur Vilhjálmsson joins Caput Ensemble, conducted by Guðni Franzson, in Sisyphos. Written in 2014, this is the composer’s most acclaimed piece, and one can readily hear why. Based on the mythological tale of the title character ceaselessly rolling a boulder up a hill as punishment in Hades, the concerto features eruptive outbursts, virtuoso solo turns, a middle section of minimal repetitions, and a closing danse macabre.
Read moreFlea Records has released a new CD of vocal music by Peter Thoegersen titled Facebook: What’s On Your Mind? The album is a microtonal song cycle consisting of twelve short cantos sung by mezzo-soprano Lore Lixenberg, accompanied by synthesized piano. Peter Thoegersen is a pioneering composer known for the use of multiple tempi and alternate tuning simultaneously in his works. Ms. Lixenberg is an accomplished vocalist who has performed music by composers such as Karlheinz Stockhausen, Pauline Oliveros and Phil Niblock, among others. The texts for the song cycle are drawn from Facebook postings by the composer between 2016 and
Read moreGiya Kancheli Simple Music Jenny Lin, piano; Guy Klucevsek, accordion Steinway and Sons CD Giya Kancheli died in 2019, leaving behind an imposing catalog that included a number of late large works for orchestra and chorus. The Georgian composer also wrote in a more intimate style, often for films and theater. These pursuits kept his work out of view of the censors of the Soviet era, so eager to hunt down modernist composers. Thirty-three of these pieces, ephemeral but attractive, are collected in Simple Music. Pianist Jenny Lin and accordionist Guy Klucevsek realize these works on a Steinway CD.
Read moreLouis Andriessen The Only One Nora Fischer, soprano Los Angeles Philharmonic, Esa-Pekka Salonen, conductor Nonesuch Records Louis Andriessen is in poor health. The eighty-one year old composer finished his last work, May, in 2019. It received a belated premiere (sans audience due to the pandemic) in December 2020 by Orchestra of the Eighteenth Century and Cappella Amsterdam, conducted by Daniel Reuss (the linked broadcast of the piece starts forty-eight minutes in). The Los Angeles Philharmonic, conducted by Esa-Pekka Salonen, has released another of Andriessen’s final works, The Only One (2018), on a Nonesuch recording. It is a set
Read moreThe Pasadena Conservatory of Music has recently produced The Vexations, a new YouTube video that is an overview of the life of Erik Satie as based on the novel by Caitlin Horrocks. Part of the Conservatory’s Musical Interludes series, this video features narration by actress Jane Kaczmarek in the role of Satie’s sister Louise, along with Nic Gerpe and Kathryn Eames performing on the piano. Filmed in the warm acoustic of Monk Space with a credible staging of Belle Époque Paris, The Vexations is an appealing and accessible way to a greater understanding of the life of Satie and his
Read moreMarco Stroppa Miniature Estrose – Primo Libro (1991-2003, revised 2009) Erik Bertsch, piano Kairos CD Pianist Erik Bertsch’s debut recording for Kairos is of composer Marco Stroppa’s most highly regarded piano works, the first book of Miniature Estrose. Bertsch was the first pianist to perform it in its entirety in Italy. The overall arch of the complete cycle of piano pieces, including a second book, has been sketched but not yet released. Even its partial completion is an impressive hour long demonstration of the capabilities of the piano in the twenty-first century. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zv7hy_QySsA The first selection on
Read moreTulpa Curtis K. Hughes New Focus Recordings “Tulpa is a term appropriated by 20th century theosophists from Tibetan Buddhism to refer to a manifestation of a physical being generated purely by thought, sometimes also likened to an imaginary friend, a doppelgänger, or a shadow version of the self.” Curtis K. Hughes Curtis K. Hughes is Professor of Composition at Boston Conservatory. Tulpa is his second portrait CD and the programmed works span from 1995 to 2017. There is a consistency from the earliest to most recent works, with the principle change being an ever more assured compositional
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