Without risk, one does not accomplish anything; one remains mediocre. When I left Hungary, I had no idea what was going to happen; perhaps I was going to be shot at the border… (György Ligeti, interview with Pierre Gervasoni, 1997) In June of last year, we were saying our goodbyes to Ligeti. Sometimes it seems very distant now, sometimes like yesterday… And sometimes it can feel like he’s still around. The folks at UBUweb recently posted Michel Follin’s excellent 1993 Ligeti documentary, so for an hour you can revisit the man any time. It’s in French (with a few German subtitles),
Read moreOur regular listen to and look at living, breathing composers and performers that you may not know yet, but I know you should… And can, right here and now, with so much good listening online: sound. from SASSAS (Los Angeles) In 1998, L.A. artist Cindy Bernard and friends started a series of concerts and installations that became the non-profit organisation SASSAS, the Society for the Activation of Social Space through Art and Sound. Their goal is “to serve as a catalyst for the creation, presentation, and recognition of experimental art and sound practices in the Greater Los Angeles area”. Most of
Read moreOur regular listen to and look at living, breathing composers and performers that you may not know yet, but I know you should… And can, right here and now, with so much good listening online. Time to leave our standard classical composers and performers behind for a second, to hear what the writers can do: Liesl Ujvary – Ann Cotten – Hanno Millesi (Austria): “Ghostengine – Speech without Language” (2005) Liesl Ujvary (1939-, Pressburg/Slovakia) moved to Austria in 1945 and spent her childhood in Lower Austria and Tyrol. She studied Slavonic, old-Hebrew literature and art history in Vienna and Zurich.
Read moreOur regular listen to and look at living, breathing composers and performers that you may not know yet, but I know you should… And can, right here and now, with so much good listening online: Virgil Moorefield (b. 1956 — US) With not only an M.F.A. and Ph.D. in composition from Princeton, but a B.A. and an M.A. in Comparative Literature from Columbia (with a bit of Juilliard thrown in), you might expect some “high-concept” mixing with the music in Virgil Moorefield’s work, and so there is. But Virgil has a powerful weapon for keeping that ivory tower from becoming
Read moreSo that’s what’s wrong! (nudge-nudge, wink-wink…): Pitchfork Gives Music 6.8 Music, a mode of creative expression consisting of sound and silence expressed through time, was given a 6.8 out of 10 rating in an review published Monday on Pitchfork Media, a well-known music-criticism website. According to the review, authored by Pitchfork editor in chief Ryan Schreiber, the popular medium that predates the written word shows promise but nonetheless “leaves the listener wanting more.” “Music’s first offering, an eclectic, disparate, but mostly functional compendium of influences from 5000 B.C. to present day, hints that this trend’s time may not only have
Read moreOur regular listen to and look at living, breathing composers and performers that you may not know yet, but I know you should… And can, right here and now, with so much good listening online: Fuhong SHI (b. 1976 — China / Canada) Official blurb: “A native of Shenyang, Fuhong learned to play the piano at the age of eight, and began to study composition at fourteen. She graduated from the music school affiliated with the Shenyang Conservatory of Music in 1995, where she received the highest entrance exam score on the National Examinations for admission to the Central Conservatory
Read moreOur regular listen to and look at living, breathing composers and performers that you may not know yet, but I know you should… And can, right here and now, with so much good listening online: Mayke Nas (b. 1972 — Netherlands) Mayke studied piano and composition with Martijn Padding, Gilius van Bergeijk, Daan Manneke, Alexandre Hrisanide and Bart van de Roer at the conservatories of Amsterdam, Tilburg and The Hague. In 2004-2006 she was composer-in-residence with the Nieuw Ensemble. During the summer of 2005 she spent three months as artist-in-residence in Aldeburgh, England supported by a scholarship from Arts Council
Read moreOur regular listen to and look at living, breathing composers and performers that you may not know yet, but I know you should… And can, right here and now, with so much good listening online: The British — reserved wet-blankets all, right? Ha! There’s an ecstatic light that burns in each of these composers’ work, though in very different ways: The laser: Brian Ferneyhough (b. 1943) “Brian Ferneyhough is a composer whose every work probes afresh and ex nihilo the extremes of the musically and technically feasible and stretches the limits of notation. His music is conceived as an ongoing process of transcendence,
Read moreA quick addendum to my recent “click pick” visit to the Eastern Front: My good and long-time i-friend Rudy Carrera pointed me in the direction of the young Russian composer Dmitry Subochev (b.1981), who’s posted a couple frenetically fun (and challenging) Moscow performances on video at YouTube. Cheglakov and His Shadow was made in collaboration with Subochev’s fellow composer and cellist Dmitry Cheglakov: [youtube]AhrU-CEk4uk[/youtube] As well, Subochev teams up with Tatiana Mikheeva to terrorize the inside of a piano in Pandora’s Box: [youtube]gbzi3LCQ1so[/youtube] Whether as something integral or as optional accompaniment, my very really grand prediction is that video will become ever-more essential to both performers
Read moreOur regular listen to and look at living, breathing composers and performers that you may not know yet, but I know you should… And can, right here and now, since they’re nice enough to offer so much good listening online: Let’s go a little further east, via a couple netlabels (online labels that offer freely downloadable, full-length MP3 “CD”s, usually with accompanying notes and cover artwork) Nexsound (Ukraine) They’ll tell you: Nexsound has been dedicated to the unusual and experimental music, both acoustic and electronic, that could be of any style and trend released on CDs and MP3 files. The term
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