Contemporary Classical

Chamber Music, Classical Music, Composers, Concerts, Contemporary Classical, Festivals, New York, Premieres

TIME:SPANS 2022 – Interview with Thomas Fichter

In the doldrums of summer, it seems like 80 percent of the population in New York City is away, presumably biding their time in cooler and/or more restful locales. That goes for both musicians and their audiences. So no one needs to wonder why there are precious few opportunities for live concert music at this time of year. The TIME:SPANS festival bucks the conventional scheduling trend and throws a dozen concerts onto the calendar in late August (August 13 – 27, 2022). What’s more, the performances are all held in the air-conditioned comfort of the DiMenna Center (450 West 37th

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by Gail Wein
CD Review, Cello, Chamber Music, Composers, Contemporary Classical, File Under?

Gity Razaz – The Strange Highway (CD Review)

  Gity Razaz The Strange Highway Francesca de Pasquale, violin; Katharine Kang Litton, viola; Ingbal Segev, cello; Scott Cuellar, piano All-American Cello Band; Metropolist Ensemble, Andrew Cyr, conductor BIS Records   Born in Iran and now residing in New York, over the past fifteen years composer Gity Razaz has created a number of well-crafted works. The Strange Highway, her first portrait CD, includes chamber music, ensemble works, and electronics in live and studio recordings.   The title piece, composed for cello octet and played by the All-American Cello Band for Dutch radio, was inspired by Chilean writer Roberto Bolaňo’s eponymous

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by Christian Carey
CD Review, Contemporary Classical, File Under?

Bryan Senti – Manu (CD Review)

Bryan Senti Manu Naive   Violinist/violist and composer Bryan Senti currently lives in LA, but his connections range widely. He’s scored films and television for the BBC and played on post-classical releases by Dustin O’Hallorn and Peter Gregson. Senti’s recording Manu demonstrates musical versatility and arranging talent.   Given his background, it is little surprise that there is a cinematic quality to Senti’s approach to scoring. That said, the pieces on Manu aren’t sound files from the cutting room floor; they hold together as post-classical compositions. The recording’s pieces use a cohort of strings. The title track at its outset

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by Christian Carey
CD Review, Chamber Music, Contemporary Classical, File Under?

Psappha Commissions (CD Review)

Psappha Commissions Psappha, 2022   Contemporary ensemble Psappha has commissioned both emerging and established composers. This recording chronicles works the group has brought to life by John Casken, Ninfea Cruttwell-Reade, Tom Harrold, Mark-Anthony Turnage, Tom Coult, George Stevenson, and Alisa Firsova.    The selections provide a diverse array of styles, displaying the confidence with which Psappha assays musical challenges. Some of the pieces are by longtime associates, such as John Casken, whose Winter Reels, written for the group’s core “Pierrot plus percussion” instrumentation, depict three different aspects of the season. The first two open with chiming percussion before the rest

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by Christian Carey
CD Review, Chamber Music, Contemporary Classical, Experimental Music, File Under?

Bozzini Quartet plays Bryn Harrison (CD Review)

Bryn Harrison Three Descriptions of Place and Movement Quatuor Bozzini Huddersfield Contemporary Records, 2022   Composer Bryn Harrison writes about temporal organization and experience in music. Coauthored with Richard Glover and Jennie Gottschalk in a collaborative spirit, Being Time (Bloomsbury, 2018) examines the experiences of the three authors listening to music built in different time spans, from the longest works of Morton Feldman to micro music. Harrison explores these concerns in his own music, particularly subtle variations over significant durations. Three Descriptions of Place and Movement, his first string quartet, written for Quatuor Bozzini and recorded for Huddersfield, is both

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by Christian Carey
CDs, Cello, Contemporary Classical, File Under?

Ivan Fedele – Works for Violoncello (Review)

Ivan Fedele Works for Violoncello Michele Marco Rossi, cello; Francesco Abbrescia, electronics Kairos CD Ivan Fedele (b. 1953) has created a large catalog of compositions. Like J.S. Bach, he has written six French suites, “Suite Francese.” Unlike Bach, Fedele’s six suites are for different instruments. His latest recording on the Kairos label focuses on the suites for cello, a solo Partita, and a reworking of Suite Francese VI that incorporates electronics.  Suite VI uses traditional baroque dances as movement titles, further underscoring the question: how closely related are Fedele’s pieces to their progenitors? It is a similar problem to considering

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by Christian Carey
Contemporary Classical, Review

Gene Pritsker – Cloud Atlas Symphony

NEscapes Records has released Cloud Atlas Symphony, by Gene Pritsker, performed by the MDR Leipzig Radio Symphony and choir, conducted by Kristjan Jarvi. Some ten years in the making and based on music from the film ‘Cloud Atlas’ by Tom Tykwer, Jonny Klimek and Reinhold Heil, Cloud Atlas Symphony is a re-imagining of the film music into the wider context of a contemporary symphonic performance. As the composer writes in the liner notes: “I wrote this symphony because I was inspired by this story, by this movie and by a new concept of taking music, that was created specifically for

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by Paul Muller
Contemporary Classical, Deaths, File Under?

RIP Ryan Muncy

We at Sequenza 21 are saddened to share that Ryan Muncy, saxophonist, curator, and administrator for the International Contemporary Ensemble, has passed away. Ryan was formidable in all of the aforementioned roles. Moreover, he was a much-admired and beloved person; a bright light in the new music community. Our condolences go out to all of Ryan’s friends and family, in particular to his community at International Contemporary Ensemble. You may read more about Ryan from the ensemble here.

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by Christian Carey
CD Review, Contemporary Classical, File Under?, Opera

Kronos Quartet – Mỹ Lai (CD Review)

Mỹ Lai Kronos Quartet Smithsonian Folkways   In one of its most ambitious projects to date, Kronos Quartet has recorded Mỹ Lai, an opera by composer Jonathan Berger (Professor at Stanford University) and librettist Harriet Scott Chessman, who has also written a libretto for Georg Friedrich Haas’s next opera. Vocalist Rinde Eckerdt and multi-instrumentalist Vân-Ánh Vanessa Vo ̃ joined Kronos to create an East/West musical hybrid, with t’rưng, đàn bầu, and đàn tranh, traditional Vietnamese instruments, being added to the string quartet instrumentation.   The story of Mỹ Lai is one of brutality against civilians, over 500 killed by the

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by Christian Carey
CD Review, Contemporary Classical, Electro-Acoustic

John Luther Adams – Houses of the Wind

Cold Blue Music has released Houses of the Wind, a new album of electro-acoustic music by Pulitzer Prize-winning composer John Luther Adams. This was inspired by a 1989 recording of Alaskan arctic winds blowing through an aeolian harp. In listening to that original recording again, John Luther Adams writes: “The voices of the wind singing through the strings of the harp brought back vividly the clarity of light, the sprawling space, and the sense of possibility I had felt.” The recent pandemic lock down presented Adams with the studio time to electronically reshape the recording and the result is a

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by Paul Muller