Video: Guided by Voices: “I Am A Scientist,” 30th Anniversary Version Guided by Voices celebrates the thirtieth anniversary of their album Bee Thousand with a remake of one of their early, most-beloved songs, “I Am A Scientist,” via Rolling Stone. In an interview with RS, frontman and principal songwriter Robert Pollard describes “I Am A Scientist” and Bee Thousand as follows:“The song and the album opened the door for me and allowed me to play rock music for a living.” Prior to that, he was a science teacher. Guided by Voices Strut of Kings GBV Inc. (2024) The ever-prolific
Read moreDonald Berman Ives Avie, 2024 Pianist and scholar Donald Berman has made a special inquiry into the music of American hyper-modernist composers, Charles Ives chief among them. This year marks the sesquicentenary of Ives’s birth, and Berman celebrates the occasion with an Avie CD of the original piano version of St. Guadens (“The Black March”), best known as one of the movements of the orchestra piece Three Places in New England, and his own scholarly edition of the totemic Piano Sonata No. 2, Concord Mass., 1840-1860, usually known by its nickname, the “Concord Sonata.” One of the challenges
Read moreMessiaen Barbara Hannigan, soprano Bertrand Chamayou, piano Charles Sy, tenor; Vilde Frang, violin Alpha (ALPHA1033, 2024) Soprano and conductor Barbara Hannigan is an extraordinarily talented and versatile performer. Bertrand Chamayou is a superlative player of the French repertoire. Putting the two together in a recital of vocal works by Olivier Messiaen is inspired programming. The CD’s gestation is detailed in Hannigan’s program note, which describes the two artists’ first meeting and subsequent decision to collaborate. The soprano’s longtime duo partner, Reinbert de Leeuw, was too ill to continue performing, and by the time that Messiaen was recorded, it was
Read moreLukas Foss – Symphony 1 Amy Porter, Flute; Nikki Chooi, Violin Buffalo Philharmonic Orchestra, JoAnn Falletta, conductor Naxos American Classics Lukas Foss (1922-2009) was an omnivorous composer who, over the course of his career, went through multiple style periods. When he was a teenager, he studied with Hindemith at Yale and then made close contacts at the Berkshire Music Center (now Tanglewood) with Serge Koussivitzky, Aaron Copland, and Leonard Bernstein (a lifelong friend and supporter). In the 1940s, his music resembled the Americana and neoclassical styles being pursued by a plethora of American composers. In Ode (1944, revised 1958)
Read moreMimi Hilaire On June 8, 2024 Synchromy presented a workshop reading of My Wings Burned Off, an opera by Jason V. Barabba opera with libretto by June Carryl. This was in conjunction with the 2024 Opera America conference held at various venues all around Los Angeles. The conference is a place for opera musicians, composers, conductors and administrators to meet each year to exchange ideas, techniques and to pitch new productions. This reading of My Wings Burned Off was held in the Grand Rehearsal Hall at the USC Colburn School of Music downtown. A twelve-piece string orchestra was on hand
Read moreMichael Schell reviews the minimalist-informed avant-rock band Horse Lords at Seattle’s Vera Project.
Read moreNiels Lyhne Løkkegaard and Quatuor Bozzini – Colliding Bubbles: Surface Tension and Release (Important) Niels Lyhne Løkkegaard is a composer based in Copenhagen. On his latest EP he joins forces with the premiere Canadian string quartet for new music, Quatuor Bozzini, to create a piece that deals with the perception of bubbles replicating the human experience. In addition to the harmonics played by the strings, the players are required to play harmonicas at the same time. At first blush, this might sound like a gimmick, but the conception of the piece as instability and friction emerging from continuous sound, like
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