Composers's topics - tribe.net

Feature Length Compositions

j3r3myc — Tue, 15 Apr 2008 17:49:44 GMT

Since my past experience has been dance choreography and short films, I have some technical type questions about how you manage your compositions on a cue-heavy feature length film.
Since this is an indie feature and I am doing ALL sound mixing in post, I have the benefit of having a lot of flexibility in how I manage the process and what I use for software, so there are no inherent platform issues.

I will be doing the compositions in Cubase and then exporting either pre-mix stems (I mean the music broken into parts, i.e. strings on one stem, percussion on another stem, etc) or just a single music stem. I guess my first question would be, which version and why would you use it?
I am leaning towards pre-mix stems to later apply compression or eq'ing during final mixdown to move around dialogue and sfx, etc.

Also, since I am only going to be able to run one system (an older P4, 3.2gHz, 3GB RAM machine) for all sequencing and Gigastudio sessions and audio tracks, would I be okay with having separate sessions for different parts of the composition? Or is there a benefit to keeping the entire film and all compositions in one session prior to mixing stems? I am also wondering (before I get too far in) if it is even manageable to have huge track counts in one project session?

I may need to "break" the film up into sections to avoid too much of a load on my machine. As of today I have only completed the first 5 minutes of the composition and I have used 2 instances of GVI (VST based Gigastudio) fully loaded and a few more VST synths and everything is running well at low latencies. If I rewire in Gigastudio though I think I may hit the ceiling quickly.

I believe the picture is locked at this point and no further edits are being made, but the potential distribution people haven't seen it yet and offered their "input."

And if anyone is curious, it's a small budget independently produced zombie type horror movie, so there will be a lot of sound effects type music as well as strings and percussion and synths.

Thanks!
-Jeremy

posted in Composers - 0 replies

For Composers interested in collaborating with filmmakers

HDFEST — Thu, 13 Dec 2007 05:33:22 GMT

Hi there, we are new here and have a tribe for filmmakers to meet musicians and composers. This is specifically for filmmakers to find music for their works. Join us at the tribe http://tribes.tribe.net/hdfestmusic and discuss what you may be looking for either in terms of getting music for your film or getting your music in a film. some good networking can take place!

We also have a website, HDFEST Music, which is for:

• Musicians- Bands and musicians who are looking to place their music in independent films or tv either by licensing music, lending films music for film festival use and promotion, or composing new music for films.
• Filmmakers- if you are a filmmaker looking for music or composers for your film you can browse through listings at HDFEST's website. HDFEST has music listings on the website with tons of original songs by bands and composers that filmmakers can browse through at their convenience to find music for films.
• Music Video Directors- sign up for a listing to promote your services as a music video director to bands and musicians who visit the HDFEST website

For more information and for filmmaker and musician matching, just visit http://www.hdfest.com/musicpage.html. Filmmakers who sign up at the website can receive some personalized help finding music

posted in Composers - 0 replies

August Playlists: Pushing The Envelope WHUS / Storrs, Connecticut

joelkru — Sun, 09 Sep 2007 23:27:08 GMT

Greetings!

"Pushing The Envelope - Music Decidedly Left Of Center" has spent the past eighteen years bringing you the finest in the avant realms of rock, classical, electronic, jazz, ambient, world music, and just about anything else that catches my ear. All this along with a healthy dollop of new and classic Progressive rock.

PTE now airs on Thursday evenings (EST) from 8 to 10PM. As always, you can get all the information you need to check "Pushing The Envelope", streamed in real time, at our web-site: http://www.whus.org

And finally...... as always, I'm constantly looking for new music to air. (Please note, all play lists are posted to the progressive rock, ambient, electronic, and contemporary classical music newsgroups, the Wire, Prog4U, and avant-classical Maoists, and in addition to all that, e-mailed to you.) If you have something that you'd like to share with our listeners, please sent it along to:

Joel Krutt / Pushing The Envelope
WHYS / University of Connecticut
Box U-8R Storrs, CT 06269
USA

new PTE MySpace page: http://www.myspace.com/pushing_the_envelope
new Joel Krutt MySpace music page: http://www.myspace.com/joelkrutt

e-mail: joelkru@comcast.net

+ free download of my CD "What Next?" at: http://www.soundclick.com/joelkrutt
+ check out some new stuff at http://www.tapegerm.com/jamroom/bands/533/

8/2 PTE Playlist

~ Raga Bhairavi - John Mayer's Indo-Jazz Fusion - Inja - FMR
http://www.indojazz.f9.co.uk/ or http://www.fmr-records.com

~ Philosophy of Perception - Lauri Des Marais - Towards Harmony: Stories In Sound - LDM Classical Technology (2007)
http://www.myspace.com /lauridesmarais

Puppet - Janet Feder - Speak Puppet - ReR
http://www.janetfeder.com or http://www.rerusa.com

~ Study With Handclaps & Voice - Lagos / Mariani / Venosta - Electronic Adventures In Flamenco - ReR
http://www.rerusa.com/Merchant2/merchant.mvc?Screen=PROD&Product_Code=2726&Category_Code=

~ Psychopuls #004 - Lizard - Psychopuls - Metal Mind Records (2004)
http://www.metalopolis.pl

~ The Time Curve Preludes, Nos 1 - 9 - composer: WIlliam Duckworth / piano: Neely Bruce - Lovely Music (1990)
http://www.monroestreet.com/duckworth/wdhome.html or http://lovely.com

~ Bonham - composer: Christopher Rouse / The Robert Hohner Percussion Ensemble - DMP (1991)
http://www.christopherrouse.com/

~ Hope / Birds Of Fire - HR Big Band feat. Billy Cobham - Meeting Of The Spirits: A Celecbration Of The Mahavishnu Orchestra - In And Out Records (2006)
http://www.inandout-records.com

~ Krazy Kat - Steve Beresford - Cue Sheets - Tzadik (1996)
http://www.efi.group.shef.ac.uk/ or http://www.tzadik.com/

~ Rough-Trax - composer: P.Q. Phan / alto sax Debra Richtmeyer / oboe Nancy Ambrose King - Banana Trumpet Games - CRI / eXchange (2000)
http://www.newworldrecords.org/album.cgi?rm=view&album_id=17628

~ Ganamurthy - Autorickshaw - Musicworks #96 - Musicworks
http://www.autorickshaw.ca/ or http://www.musicworks.ca

~ Lumpy Gravy / Marqueson's Chicken / King Kong / Pygmy Twylyte / Hungry Freaks Daddy / The Black Page - composer: Frank Zappa / The Meridian Arts Ensemble - Ear Mind - Channel Crossings (1998)
http://www.meridianartsensemble.com/ or http://www.channelclassics.com/

~ Trois - Michel Ratte - Musicworks #54
http://www.actuellecd.com/en/bio/ratte_mi/ or http://www.musicworks.ca

8/9 PTE Playlist

~ Nude Rolling Down An Escalator - Kyle Gann - Nude Rolling Down An Escalator: Studies For Disklavier - New World Records (2005)
http://www.kylegann.com/ or http://www.newworldrecords.org/album.cgi?rm=view&album_id=80633

~ 2000 - The Jerry Morton X-Perience - Barramundi: An Intro To A Cooler World - Astralwerks (1994)

~ I See Who You Are - Bjork - Volta - Atlantic (2007)
http://unit.bjork.com/specials/albums/volta/

~ Three Encores: I Vocal Ease / II Scatter / III Vocal Angst - soprano: Judith Bettina / piano: James Goldworthy - Songs & Encores - Bridge Records (2007)
http://www.bridgerecords.com/pages/catalog/9199.htm

~ Nickolaievski Soldat (1994) - Annie Gosfield - Brunt Ivory And Loose Wires - Tzadik (1998)
http://www.anniegosfield.com/ or http://www.tzadik.com

~ Carnival! Carnival! - Verchiel Reality - Demo CD-R (2007)
http://www.myspace.com/verchielreality

~ Arnold Dreyblatt And The Orchestra of Excited Strings - Live @ Federal Hall National Memorial, 1981 - Table of The Elements (2006)
http://www.dreyblatt.net/html/music.php?id=&more=242#more or http://www.myspace.com/tableoftheelements

~ Elephant Talk / Larks' Tongues In Aspic II - King Crimson in concert, August 23, 1996 - Hershey, PA

~ Burnt Sunrise - Dark Aether Project - Progday Encore: Disc 7 - http://www.progrock.net/ or
http://www.progday.com/ProgDay-Support.html#EncoreBoxSet

~ The Only Thing She Needs - U.K. in concert, November 9,1978, Agora Ballroom, Cleveland, OH

~ A Grapefruit In The World Of Park - Steven Wilson - Where Stalks The Sandman: An Ambient Collection - Noh Poetry Records (2001)
http://home.earthlink.net/~falcone/sandman.html

~ Philosophy Of Perception 2 from "Towards Harmony" - Lauri Des Marais - Stories In Sound...Towards Harmony - LDM Classical Technology (2007)
http://www.myspace.com/lauridesmarais

~ Beyond The Curve - composer: Elliot Sharp : ensemble: Meridian Arts Ensemble - Brink - Channel Classics (2006)
http://www.meridianartsensemble.com/ or http://www.channelclassics.com/

8/16 PTE Playlist

~ Gospel / Tomorrow Never Knows - Michael Hedges - Oracle - Windham Hill (1996)
http://www.nomadland.com/

~ A Bird Flew In / Leaving Light / Red Drum - Linda Feder - Speak Puppet - ReR
http://www.lindafeder.com or http ://www.reusa.com

~ Manini - Trilok Gurtu w/ Pat Metheny - Guitar Zone (compilation) - Times Square Records (1993/1998)
http://www.trilokgurtu.net/ or http://www.timessquarerecords.net

~ The Mask - Bernie Worrell w/ Buckethead - Guitar Zone (compilation) - Times Square Records (1993/1998)
http://www.bernieworrell.com/ or http://www.timessquarerecords.net

~ Metal Dervish - Brian Scott Bennett - Trance - Directional Space Music (2004)

~ Naked Words - Citriniti feat. Fabrizio Leo - Between The Music & Latitude - Tone Center (2006)
http://www.citrinitimusic.com/ or http://www.shrapnelrecords.com

~ Fire Coming Out Of The Monkey's Head - Gorillaz - Demon Days - Virgin/EMI (2005)
http://www.gorillaz.com

~ Echo I / Prism - Robert Rich - Michael Somoroff's ILLUMINATION - Soundscape Productions (2007)
http://www.robertrich.com

~ 4 Midi Pieces - Elaine Barkin - JKR - Pass 3 - Open Space (2007)
http://www.the-open-space.org or http://yrmusic.com/v2/artists/bios/artist.php?ID=21

~ Oh! Mysterious Magnum, Such Magenta Vintage (1989) - composer: David Mott / ensemble: Sound Pressure - Pressure Points - Soundprints (1993)
http://www.davidmottmusic.com or http://www.jstor.org/view/01489267/ap060066/06a00210/0

~ Healing Piece - Timeless Pulse Quintet - Timeless Pulse Quintet - Mutable Music (2007)
http://www.mutablemusic.com

~ Conducted Improvisation Piece No. 6: Depleted Uranium (2003) - Moe! Staiano's MOE!KESTRA - Two Rooms of Uranium Inside 83 Markers: Conducted Improvisations Vol. II - Edgetone Records (2007)
http://www.moestaiano.com or http://www.edgetonerecords.com

~ Sombre Reptiles - Talkdemonic - Bridging The Distance: a Portland Oregon covers compilation - Arena Rock (2007)
http://www.talkdemonic.com/ or http://www.arenarock.com

~ Ice Monster - Minus The Bear - Planet Of Ice - Suicide Squeeze (2007)
http://www.minusthebear.com or http://www.suicidesqueeze.net

8/23 PTE Playlist

~ Moo Shu Wrap Rap (1996) - composer: Su Lian Tan / ensemble: The Meridian Arts Ensemble - Ear Mind I - Channel Crossings (1998)
http://www.meridianartsensemble.com/

~ Terebellum - Fripp & Eno - The Equatorial Stars - Opal / DGM (2004)
http://www.enoshop.co.uk or http://www.disciplineglobalmobile.com

~ Scurry Flurries - Nick May - Whimwise - AMP Records (2005)
http://www.nickmay.co.uk/

~ Blessed Easter - Holger Czukay - Rome Remains Rome & excerpts from Der Osten Is Rot - Virgin (1987)
http://www.czukay.de/

~ Endless November - Jerry Goodman - On The Future Of Aviation - Private Music (1985)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jerry_Goodman

~ Miracle Ear (1996) - composer: David Lang / toy piano + 3 metal cans: Margaret Leng Tan - The Art of the Toy Piano - Point Music (1997)
http://www.bangonacan.org/about_us/david_lang
or http://www.philipglass.com/html/recordings/the-art-of-the-toy-piano.html

~ Music For Altered Instruments #1 "Melodica" - Steve Kornicki - Transformations & Manipulations - Creative Arts Connections (2007)
http://www.creativeartsconnection.com

~ Larks' Tongues In Apic (Part IV) - King Crimson - Happy With What You Have To Be Happy With - Sanctuary (2002)
http://www.king-crimson.com or http://www.sanctuaryrecordsgroup.com

~ Rideau! - Ex-Vagus - ames vagabondes - Galileo Records (2007)
http://www.ex-vagus.com or http://www.galileo-records.com

~ AK - David Torn - Prezens - ECM (2007)
http://www.davidtorn.net/

~ Forgetting The names Of Trees In The Polish Woods - Jim Connolly & The Gove County String Quartet - pfMENTUM (2007)
http://www.pfmentum.com

~ Fletcher's Blemish - Soft Machine - Fourth - One Way Records (1973/95)
http://calyx.club.fr/softmachine/index.html

~ De Stijl - composer: Louis Andriessen - De Stijl / M is for Man, Music, Mozart - Elektra/Nonesuch (1994)
http://composers21.com/compdocs/andriesl.htm

posted in Composers - 0 replies

The 30 Songs In 30 Days Contest!

bifurcation — Tue, 02 Jan 2007 09:35:12 GMT

Alright, here's the deal:
From Jan 30th till Feb 28th i am going to write, preform, and record a song a day, every day, for 30 days.

seriously

Join me.

Did i mention it's a contest?

Here's the rules:

There are two levels of difficulty, with two levels of prizes.
LEVEL 1 (for those who wish to push their edge):

Write the lyrics and music for a complete song each day (or write 3 songs a day for 10 days... or write 30 songs in 1 day. Whatever. Just as long as you have 30 songs recorded by 11:59:59 pm Feb 28th.)

What is a song?
You decide. Maybe it's a 30 second jingle. Maybe it's a 10 minute epic. Maybe it's you and an acoustic guitar. Perhaps you'll throw down acapella style or a friend will beatbox behind you. Set your own goals, set your own definition.

What is not a song?
No Scatting. At least 70% of your lyrics must be lyrics (yes, "baby, baby, baby" is okay, if it's followed by what you think of "baby")
No free-form poetry set to random noodling. A song has structure. A song has something that resembles singing (at least as much as Lou Reed or Cake.) Sorry. We need some criteria, and the line is drawn just short of William Shatner.

It's a contest? What do i win?
If you slink past the finish line with ye olde sack of 30 songs, you will gain the oh's and ah's of all your friends and family. You will get bragging rights for years to come. You will have a great icebreaker for wooing potential romantic partners...

... AND you will receive (from me) a rare, gold encrusted, PDF certificate naming YOU as the coolest person in the entire multiverse.
LEVEL 2 (for those who wish drive themselves insane):

Same as above.

* But: Each song must be at least 2 minutes long.
* Each song must have a melody and harmony
* Each song must have at least 1 vocal, singing comprehensible lyrics, and at least 3 other elements (like drums / bass / guitar, or deep rezzy bloops / high screechy bloops / sitar, or hand claps / piano / chainsaw... you decide)

...psst, i'm doing level 2.

Is there a better prize for LEVEL 2?
You bet there is! BETTER bragging rights. BETTER wooing potential... and an even BETTER PDF certificate (diamond encrusted, worthy of framing.)
FAQ

Why am i doing this?
'Cause i'm crazy.

It's kinda like NaNoWriMo for music.

It's about the magical power of deadlines. It's about bragging to everyone you know that you are going to do something scary, something impossible.

Why should you do this?
Because life is about doing crazy, scary things that we don't think we can do.

Just to risk looking bad, to risk doing something you thought you couldn't do. Give someone a goal and a goal-minded community and miracles are bound to happen.

It's about pure creativity. It's about abandoning our inner critic, leaving our inner editor at a day-care center for a month. It's about seeing what comes out when we don't have time to worry our dreams into nothingness.

Chris Baty, creator of NaNoWriMo, once said:
The quickest, easiest way to produce something beautiful and lasting is to risk making something horribly crappy.

Great works of art can be created in a month.

One more quote from Chris:
The glow from making big, messy art, and watching others make big, messy art, lasts for a long, long time. The act of sustained creation does bizarre, wonderful things to you. It changes the way you look at art. And changes, a little bit,your sense of self.

Do it because it's stupid.

Do it because it's impossible.

Drop me an email at 30s30d@systemcrasher.com

* Tell me: Your name
* Your email address
* Level 1 or Level 2

...see ya in february

posted in Composers - 2 replies

Hey, check it, guys.

Tracy_W_Bush — Mon, 11 Jun 2007 16:50:17 GMT

I got interviewed by Music4Games.net:

http://www.music4games.net/Features_Display.aspx?id=147

Check it out!

posted in Composers - 1 reply

May Playlists: Pushing The Envelope WHUS / Storrs, Connecticut

joelkru — Sun, 03 Jun 2007 19:14:09 GMT

Greetings!

"Pushing The Envelope - Music Decidedly Left Of Center" has spent the past nineteen years bringing you the finest in the avant realms of rock, classical, electronic, jazz, ambient, world music, and just about anything else that catches my ear. All this along with a healthy dollop of new and classic Progressive rock.

PTE now airs on Thursday evenings (EST) from 8 to 10PM. As always, you can get all the information you need to check "Pushing The Envelope", streamed in real time, at our web-site: http://www.whus.org

And finally...... as always, I'm constantly looking for new music to air. (Please note, all play lists are posted to the progressive rock, ambient, electronic, and contemporary classical music newsgroups, the Wire, Prog4U, and avant-classical. In addition to all that, e-mailed to you.) If you have something that you'd like to share with our listeners, please sent it along to:

Joel Krutt / Pushing The Envelope
WHYS / University of Connecticut
Box U-8R Storrs, CT 06269
USA

new PTE MySpace page: http://www.myspace.com/pushing_the_envelope
new Joel Krutt MySpace music page: http://www.myspace.com/joelkrutt

e-mail: joelkru@comcast.net

free download of my CD "What Next?" at: http://www.soundclick.com/joelkrutt

May 3 PTE Playlist

~ Getoverture / No Mercy - The Tubes - Remote Control - A&M (1979) http://www.thetubes.com/disco/remote.htm

~ Angle of Incidents - David Torn / Geoffrey Gordon - Best Laid Plans - ECM (1985) http://www.davidtorn.net/ or http://www.geoffreygordon.com/

~ fragment (2003) for speaker, two-channel tape, and loudspeaker - Martin Supper -Music Around Benjamin Boretz: Open Spaces 2005 - Open Space (2005)
http://www.the-open-space.org

~ Re-bar-imbau - Savage Aural Hotbed - the Unified Pounding Theory - Innova (2006)
http://www.savageauralhotbed.com or http://www.innova.mu

~ Water Music I / Here Comes The Flood / Water Muisc II / Postscript / Exposure (w/ Daryl Hall vocal) / North Star / Exposure (w/ Terre Roche vocal) - Robert Fripp - Exposure - DGM (1978/2006)
http://www.dgmlive.com/archive.htm?artist=22&show=1096

~ b-side - Antti Saario - Spike: works from BEAST, vol. 1 - Sargasso (2000)
http://www.lancs.ac.uk/depts/music/staff/as.htm or http://www.ea-studios.bham.ac.uk/BEAST/ or http://sargasso.com

~ Wish We Were Here - Robert Anbian and the UFQ: The Unidentified Flying Quartet - Edgetone Records (2007)
http://www.unidentifiedflyingquartet.com or http://www.edgetonerecords.com

~ Anosognosia - K. Leimer( w/ Dwight Ashley) - The Useless Lesson - Palace of Lights (2007)
http://www.palaceoflights.com

~ Nem / Barang - Gregory Taylor - Amalgam: Aluminum / Hydrogen - Palace of Lights (2007)
http://www.palaceoflights.com

~ Post - Bitcrush (Mike Cadoo) - In Distance - N5MD (2006)
http://www.n5md.com

May 10 PTE Playlist

~ Sirius - Daniel Denis - Sirius and the Ghosts - Cuneiform (1991)
http://www.progarchives.com/artist.asp?id=1543

~ Tent of Miracles (1984) - composer: Martin Bresnick / saxophones: Taimur Sullivan - My Twentieth Century - New World Records (2005)
http://www.martinbresnick.com or http://www.newworldrecords.org

~ Entry / Den grimme Kylling - Susanna Lindeborg's Mwendo Dawa - Live at Jazzclub Fashcing in Stockholm - LJ Records (2006)
http://www.lj-records.se

~ Under Pressure - Queen & David Bowie - Hollywood Records (1991/1981)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Under_Pressure

~ Mr. Berwell - Allan Holdsworth - Atavachron - Enigma (1986)
http://www.therealallanholdsworth.com/

~ Selah for guitar & electronics - Michael Vernusky - AlasSeis (2007)
http://www.alasseis.com/

~ Mantra (Praying Mantra Mix) - Material - Big Hard Disk, Vol. 2 (compilation) - Smash (1994)

~ V / Line (1992) for computer - Felix Werder / technical realization: Warren Burt - The Tempest - Pogus Productions (2007)
http://www.pogus.com

~ The Story of OVO / Low Light - Peter Gabriel - OVO - Realworld (2000)
http://www.petergabriel.com/

~ Failing need of more - K. Leimer - The Useless Lesson - Palace of Lights (2007)
http://www.palaceoflights.com

May 17 PTE Playlist

~ Firebird / Birds Of Fire - Don Sebesky - Giant Box - Epic (1973)
http://www.dougpayne.com/ctid7374.htm#giantbox

~ Black / White - Rainbow / Clear (extraction from vol. 6) - Ambient Temple Of I Magi Nation - Mystery School Volume 5 - Mindspore Records (1997)
http://www.a-toi.com/

~ burden - Evidence (Stephan Moore & Scott Smallwood) - IRIS - Deep Listening (2007)
http://www.deeplistening.org

~ Din In Ten - Marlon Cherry w/ Deep Singh - Ancient Sound, Modern Dance - Fang Records (2006)
http://www.fangrecords.com

~ Sunday Ice Cream Sundae - Rick Sacks - Musicworks 97 - Musicworks (2007)
http://www.vex.net/~rixax/index.html or http://www.musicworks.ca

~ The Cherry Blossom Is Only Perfect When It's Falling From The Tree - Steuart Liebig / Minim - pfMENTUM (2007)
http://www.stigsite.com or http://www.pfmentum.com

~ Inca Roads - Zappa's Universe: A Celebration of 25 Years of Frank Zappa's Music - Verve (1993)
http://www.zappa.com

Philharmonie - Philharmonie - Les Elephants Carillonneurs - Cuneiform Records (1993)
http://www.cuneiformrecords.com

~ Aeneas in Strophades ("Attack of the Harpies!") (1990) for four harps and tape - composer/tape: Stephen Rush / harps: Lynn Aspnes, Dawn Watkins-Chou, Lydia Cleaver, & Kirsten Allwin - Murders In The Rue Morgue: The Music of Stephen Rush - MMC Recordings (1997)
http://www-personal.umich.edu/~srush/ or http://www.mmcrecordings.com/detail.asp?id=56

~ Words Of Advice For Young People (Pete Arden Mix) - William S. Burroughs - Big Hard Disk, Vol. 2 - Smash Records (1994)
http://www.spress.de/author/burroughs/

~ Song #6 from Wichita Vortex Sutra - composer/piano: Philip Glass / libretto/narrator: Allen Ginsberg - Hydrogen Jukebox - Elektra/Nonesuch (1993)
http://www.allenginsberg.org/ or http://www.philipglass.com

~ New York Counterpoint, for clarinet and tape (1985) - composer: Steve Reich / clarinet:Alain Demiens - American Clarinet (compilation) - Virgin Classics (1999) http://www.stevereich.com or http://www.chez.com/clarinette/

Declension of need - K. Leimer - The Useless Lesson - Palace of Lights (2007) http://www.palaceoflights.com

May 31 PTE Playlist

~ Heroes - King Crimson - Heavy ConstruKction - DGM (2000)
http://www.elephant-talk.com

~ A Long Drone (excerpt) - Jliat - free mp3 download (2006)
http://www.jliat.com

~ Piece In Gamelan Style - flute / composer : Robert Dick - Photosphere - NEMU Records (2005)
http://www.robertdick.net/ or http://www.nemu-records.com

~ Blue Arcana (unabridged) - Joe Frawley - Tangerine - self-release (2007)
http://www.joefrawleymusic.info

~ Cross Rods / 3 - Tom Nunn - Identity - Edgetone Records (2007)
http://www.edgetonerecords.com/nunn.html

~ Tin-smiths' Ballet - COMA - Ornamental Urban Shrubbery - Edgetone Records (2007)
http://edgetonerecords.com/coma.html

~ Phonemena - composer: Milton Babbitt / soprano: Judith Bettina / piano: James Goldsworthy - Songs & Encords - Bridge Records (2006)
http://www.bridgerecords.com/pages/catalog/9199.htm

~ Selaou - Seven Reizh - Un Voyage En Progressive, Vol. 7 - Musea (2002)
http://www.musearecords.com or http://www.seven-reizh.com/

~ Song 3 - Jon Gibson - In Good Company - Point Music (1992)
http://www.jongibson.com

~ Time Change - Annie Whitehead - Mixup - Jazzprint (1984/2001)
http://www.earthmusic.com/annie.htm or http://www.voiceprint.co.uk/web/Home/

~ Urban Mantra - Loop2.4.3 - Batterie - Music Starts From Silence (2007)
http://www.loop2.4.3.com

~ ProjecKctile - Joel Krutt -
http://www.audiostreet.net/artist.aspx?artistid=6715&mode=music&recordid=29964

~ A Long Drone (excerpt) - Jliat
http://www.jliat.com

~ Hoketus - composer: Louis Andriessen / ensemble: The California EAR Unit - The California EAR Unit - New Albion (1989)
http://www.earunit.org/ or http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Louis_Andriessen

posted in Composers - 0 replies

"Secrets Revealed:" Chord Substitutions, Guitar Fretboard, Scales and Chords

roseberry — Fri, 18 May 2007 04:50:22 GMT

Announcing 3 new $10 eBooks for download:

"Secrets of Chord Substitutions Revealed"
"Secrets of Scales and Chords Revealed"
"Secrets of the Guitar Fretboard Revealed"

Great for piano, keys, bass, guitar, horns, strings, vibes, composers, songwriters, arrangers, and teachers of all that. They are important educational and reference books for all musicians, and especially anyone playing, writing, or arranging scales or chords, and guitarists.

Chord subs make music sound more hip, cool, flowing, melodic, distinctive, challenging or retro. "Secrets of Chord Substitutions Revealed" tells you when, where, why, which and how to use substitute chords. I show you 107 different rules for substituting chords, 64 ways to play a single 5-chord progression, a progression flow chart, review of harmony, cadences and chord progressions, Circle of Thirds, spelling of 74 different C chords, and much more. Go to www.FretboardRevealed.com for more info.

How many scales do you know? I'll show you how to spell 55 scales and 74 chords. Plus 64 Chord Substitution Rules, 7 Modes, 20 Blues Progressions, Circle of Fifths/Fourths/Thirds, 7 General Rules for Chord Progressions, Cadences, Harmony, The 10 Basic Chords, Intervals, Music By The Numbers, and more. See www.FretboardRevealed.com for more.

You just know there's a grand design to the guitar fretboard, tying together all the scales and chords. "Secrets of the Guitar Fretboard Revealed" shows you that design, the 7 modes, Proper Hand Positioning, Linear and Diagonal Exercises, The Numbers Translated To Notes, Circle of Fifths/Fourths/Thirds, Linear and Diagonal Exercises, Home is Where The Root Is, Chords As Numbers, and more. More info at www.FretboardRevealed.com.

Written by me, a professional music teacher/performer/composer/arranger of 33 years who has played guitar and bass for 43, the "Secrets Revealed" series is the result of my decades of study in many settings, from private to master classes to University, ever since I was a teenager (I'm 50 now).

Download it in PDF format for you to print on your own printer. That cuts the costs and I pass the savings on to you.

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posted in Composers - 3 replies

New track incl. on Wandering Ear remix release!

joelkru — Mon, 29 Jan 2007 01:36:06 GMT

Wandering Ear is a net.label dedicated to releasing field recordings from around the world. All Wandering Ear releases are available for free download in 192kpbs MP3 format. http://www.wanderingear.com/we005.html

I've got a new track, "Avian Reduction" included on their latest release! Here are the particulars:

we005
Melt : Minnesota Remixed

In 2006, the net label Wandering Ear debuted with the compilation "Thaw:
Field Recordings from Minnesota". Now, a host of audio artists from around
the world have mined these recordings as source material for remixes,
bending and folding the sounds to their own ends. Ducks, geese, lakes,
waterfalls, boats, helicopters, and answering machine messages are spun
into new and unexpected dimensions. Every track from "Thaw" has been
reworked for this compilation.

Enjoy!
Joel

posted in Composers - 0 replies

New Albion album release - Erdem Helvacioglu

Erdem — Mon, 15 Jan 2007 17:21:10 GMT

Dear Friends,

I am happy to announce that my new solo album has been released by the US label "New Albion"!

Here is the link about the album at New Albion's web site : www.newalbion.com/NA131

This is an album of "solo acoustic guitar and live electronics". The whole album was recorded in real-time without any overdubs. I played the acoustic guitar and controlled the live electronics at the same time.

During the making of this album, Ovation Custom Legend 1869 acoustic guitar, TC Electronic Fireworx multi effects processor, Behringer FCB1010 midi foot controller and the software Audiomulch were used.

If you are interested in contemporary music and the use of live electronics, feel free to check out the album!

Thank you very much and best regards. Looking forward to your comments!

Erdem Helvacioglu

www.erdemhelvacioglu.com
www.myspace.com/erdemhelvacioglu
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
New solo album is out now on New Albion Records:
www.newalbion.com/NA131

posted in Composers - 0 replies

"Atonality"

biomusicologist — Mon, 20 Nov 2006 07:31:07 GMT

I have found that I am increasingly having difficulty with commonly-employed terminology…for example, I had a dialog with a conductor I know, who kept on using the word “atonal” to describe a plethora of composers we were discussing. One of them was Ligeti, and I was taken aback that he would describe a work like “Atmospheres” as “atonal”, when there are obvious tonal centers, tonal motion…just not traditional harmony, per se. So I went to Groves dictionary, and:

Atonality.

A term that may be used in three senses: first, to describe all music which is not tonal; second, to describe all music which is neither tonal nor serial; and third, to describe specifically the post-tonal and pre-12-note music of Berg, Webern and Schoenberg. (While serial music is, by the first definition, atonal, it differs in essential respects from other atonal music and is discussed in the articles Serialism and Twelve-note composition; it is, therefore, not considered here.)

...So in other words, the term is rather meaningless – I mean I’ve heard concertgoers use it to label anything that isn’t Mozart, or anything that employs a little dissonance. The word “atonal” really doesn’t tell you much about the particular piece you are discussing, just as the word “tonal” doesn’t because there are so many types of tonal music. When someone says that a work is written in “the tonal idiom”, I want to vomit. Not because I have anything against tonality, but hey, Dufay wrote music in “the tonal idiom” and so did Brahms. Are they really similar?

If you say the work in question is a “twelve-tone” work, that tells me something of how the work was constructed, but even then it is possible to write a twelve-tone composition that is thoroughly tonal, such as Schoenberg’s Opus 43b, or some works by George Perle. So "twelve-tone" doesn't tell me much about how a particular work will sound.

So if you say a work is “atonal” or “tonal” or “twelve-tone” or "experimental" or "folk music" or "classical" or whatever, just what do you mean?

Of course I could have spared you all these words, and simply pasted this link:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Imprecise_language

posted in Composers - 3 replies

November playlists for "Pushing The Envelope" WHUS/Storrs, CT

joelkru — Mon, 01 Jan 2007 16:17:36 GMT

Greetings!

"Pushing The Envelope - Music Decidedly Left Of Center" has spent the past eighteen years bringing you the finest in the avant realms of rock, classical, electronic, jazz, ambient, world music, and just about anything else that catches my ear. All this along with a healthy dollop of new and classic Progressive rock.

PTE now airs on Thursday evenings (EST) from 8 to 10PM. As always, you can get all the information you need to check "Pushing The Envelope", streamed in real time, at our web-site: http://www.whus.org

And finally...... as always, I'm constantly looking for new music to air. (Please note, all playlists are posted to the progressive rock, ambient, electronic, and contemporary classical music newsgroups, the Wire, Prog4U, and avant-classical mailists, and in addition to all that, e-mailed to you.) If you have something that you'd like to share with our listeners, please sent it along to:

Joel Krutt / Pushing The Envelope
WHUS / University of Connecticut
Box U-8R Storrs, CT 06269
USA

new PTE MySpace page: http://www.myspace.com/pushing_the_envelope
new Joel Krutt music MySpace page: http://www.myspace.com/joelkrutt
e-mail: joelkru@comcast.net

free download of my CD "What Next?" at: http://www.soundclick.com/joelkrutt

11/2 Pushing The Envelope Playlist

~ Frontera - Phil Manzanera w/ Robert Wyatt - The Manzanera Collection - Caroline (1995)
http://manzanera.com/

~ RF (for) - Richard Pinhas - Event and Repetitions - Cuneiform Records (2002)
http://www.richardpinhas.com/ or http://www.cuneiformrecords.com

~ 1994 No. 2 "Dark Crimson" - Larry Kucharz - Unit 25: Dark Red - International Audiochrome (1998)
http://hometown.aol.com/audiochrom/myhomepage/business.html

~ Beating - composer: Henry Kucharzyk / ensemble: Arraymusic - Strange City / Ville Etrange - Artifact Music (1988)
http://www.arraymusic.com

~ Saturn Ski Jump - Harry Breuer / Jean Jacques Perrey - The Happy Moog - Pickwick (1971)
http://www.danacountryman.com/TheHappyMoog/HappyMoog.html

~ The Barbarian - Emerson, Lake, & Palmer - Rhino (1970)
http://www.emersonlakepalmer.com/

~ For Bass Koto with Balloons (2000) - composed & imposed by Judy Dunaway / bass koto: Ryuko Mizutani - Mother Of Balloon Music - Innova (2006)
http://jdunaway.web.wesleyan.edu/ or http://www.innova.mu

~ Latin '98 - Side Steps - Un Voyage En Progressif: Volume 7 - Musea (2002)
http://www.pastelnet.or.jp/users/hiro/sidesteps/en/index.html or http://www.musearecords.com

~ Dimming Hope, Rising Ambition - Christopher DeLaurenti - 3 Camels For Orchestra - American Archive Recordings (1995)
http://www.delaurenti.net/

~ Happiness Is A Warm Gun - Jacob Fred Jazz Odyssey -Tomorrow We'll Know Today:
Live in USA and Europe -
http://www.jfjo.com/

~ Western Swing - compsoer: Neil Rolnick / ensemble: Ethel - Shadow Quartet - Innova (2005)
http://www.neilrolnick.com/ or http://www.innova.mu

~ Thousand Island Park - Mitchel Forman - Perspectives - Marsis Jazz (2006)
http://www.mitchelforman.com or http://www.marsisjazz.com

~ Artifice (on Ferdinand's Reflection) (1975-76) - Paul Lansky - unreleased, mp3 download from website
http://www.music.princeton.edu/~paul/

~ Meditation: Nothing's Changed, Everything's Changed, realization for electromagnetically stimulated piano (1961/2002) - "Blue" Gene Tyranny - Take Your TIme - Lovely Music, Ltd. (2003)
http://www.bluegenetyranny.com/ or http://www.lovely.com

~ untitled work in progress - Joel Krutt - un-released track (2006)
http://www.soundclick.com/joelkrutt

11/9 PTE Playlist

~ Bridge (for David Sylvian) - Alex Cline Ensemble - The Constant Flame - Cryptogramophone (2001)
http://www.cryptogramophone.com

~ Music for Pieces of Wood (1973) - From The Kitchen Archives No. 2: Steve Reich & Musicians, Live 1977 - Orange Mountain Music (2005)
http://www.stevereich.com or http://www.orangemountainmusic.com

~ Tetsuo - Geinoh Yamshirogumi - Akira (Original Soundtrack) - ANIMEtrax (1990)
http://www.animetrax.com

~ "breathe" - Discus - ...tot licht! - Musea (2003)
http://www.discusprog.com/ or http://www.musearecords.com

~ Rainbow Cemetary / The Clock Tower - Michiru Yamane - Castlevania: Symphony of the Night Original Soundtrack - Game Music (1997)
http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_zdgmr/is_200308/ai_ziff107406

~ Old Man Walking - Amir Baghiri / Mathias Grassow - True North - Arya (1998)
http://www.amirbaghiri.de/ or http://www.mathias-grassow.de/

~ Maki Madni - The Derek Trucks Band feat. Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan - Joyful Noise - Columbia (2002)
http://www.derektrucks.com

~ Pozo del Deseo - Ketama / Toumani Diabate / Jose Soto feat. Danny Thompson - Songhai 2 - Hannibal (1994)
http://www.allmusic.com/cg/amg.dll?p=amg&sql=10:gez1z84aoyv6

~ So Close, So Far Away - The Derek Trucks Band - Joyful Noise - Columbia (2002)
http://www.derektrucks.com/

~ The Mouth Parts Overture / The Mind Is The Body - Several Mouth Parts - The Mind Is The Body... -
http://myspace.com/williamcharrington

~ Egocentric Molecules - Jean-Luc Ponty - Atlantic Jazz: Fusion - Atlantic (1986)
http://www.ponty.com/

~ Icarus Ascending - Steve Hackett feat. Richie Havens - Please Don't Touch - Caroline (1978)
http://www.stevehackett.com

~ Behild the Lowly Centipede / In China, Said The Moon / Hail! Son of Heaven - Stephin Merritt - Showtunes - Nonesuch (2006)
http://www.houseoftomorrow.com/merritt_cd_showtunes.php

~ Scream and Run Away (from "The Bad Beginning") / In the Reptile Room (from "The Reptile Room") - The Gothic Archies - The Tragic Treasury: Songs from "A Series of Unfortunate Events" - Nonesuch (2006)
http://www.houseoftomorrow.com/gothicarchies_cd_tragic.php

11/23 PTE Playlist

~ Guru Rinpoche - Lama Gyurme / Jean-Philippe Rykiel - Music For The Spiritual Tourist (compilation) - spring Hill Music (1999)
http://www.springhillmedia.com

~ GO - composer/guitars: Tim Brady - GO (guitar obsession) - Ambiances Magnetiques (2006)
http://www.timbrady.ca/ or http://www.actuellecd.com

~ Do You Hear The Voices You Left Behind? - John McLaughlin - Johhny McLaughlin: Electric Guitarist - Columbia (1978)
http://www.johnmclaughlin.com/

~ Stratus - Stanley Clarke / Larry Carlton / Billy Cobham / Deron Johnson / Najee - Live At The Greek - Slamm Dunk / Epic (1992)
http://www.stanleyclarke.com/

~ Favorite Things - Negativland / Julie Andrews - No Business - Seeland
http://www.negativland.com

~ Virus B - Jah Wobble / Bill Laswell - Radioaxiom: A Dub Transmission - Palm / Axiom (2001)
http://www.30hertzrecords.com/wobble.html or http://www.sacreddub.com/discography/radioaxiom-a-dub-transmission

~ Flintstones - Black Lodge Singers - Kids' Pow-Wow Songs - Canyon Records (1996)
http://www.canyonrecords.com/cr6274.htm

~ Nightbreed - Danny Elfman - Music for a Darkened Theatre: Film & Television Music, Vol. 1 - MCA (1990)
http://elfman.filmmusic.com/filmography/nightbreed.html

~ Dig A Pony / I Me Mine - Laibach - Let It Be - Mute (1992)
http://www.laibach.nsk.si/

~ New York Counterpoint (1985) - composer: Steve Reich / clarinets: Roland Diry - RCA Red Seal (2002)
http://www.stevereich.com

~ Nester - Michael W. Mullowney - Volte-Face - self-release (2001)
http://www.michaelmullowney.com/

~ Pastoral i skogen - composer: Ingvar Lidholm / Trio TribukaitPetterssonBerg - Ricamo - Phono Suecia (2006)
http:www.phonesuecia.com

~ Totem 7 - flutes/shakuhachi: Jerome Bourdellon / voice: Thomas Buckner / sculptures: Alain Krili - Totem: improvisations with the sculpture of Alain Kirili - Mutable Music (2006)
http://www.mutablemusic.com

~ Lion's Tale for sampler (1989) - Pauline Oliveros - Lion's Eye / Lion's Tale - Deep Listening (2006)
http://www.deeplistening.org/dlc/newframe.html

~ 40 Random Numbered Clangs - composer: Daniel Goode / ensemble: Gamelan Son of Lion - The Complete Gamelan in the New World - Locust Music (1978/82 / 2003)
http://www.gamelan.org/sonoflion/

11/30 PTE Playlist

~ Bucepahlus Bouncing Ball - Aphex Twin - Come To Daddy - Warp / Sire (1997)

~ Heterophony (1989) - Stevan Kovacs Tickmayer - the ReR quarterly: vol. 4, no. 2 -ReR (

~ ProjecKctile - Joel Krutt - Projekction (2004)
http://www.projekction.net/p_2004/

~ Ice - Camel - I Can See Your House From Here - Deram (1979/1990)
http://www.camelproductions.com/

~ Africa - Toumani Diabate / Ketama / Danny Thompson - Songhai - Hannibal (1988)
http://www.allmusic.com/cg/amg.dll?p=amg&sql=10:anfwxqtgldfe

~ A Performer's Objective Is To Put Everyone To Sleep - Rich West - Heavenly Breakfast - pfMENTUM (2006)
http://www.pfmentum.com

~ Laser Lens Cleaning Process / Zorbarella / The Mark 666 - Ros Bobos - Uncharterted Universal Euphoria - self-release (2006)
http://www.rosbobos.com

~ Watcher Of The Skies - Genesis Revistied by Steve Hackett - Guardian Records (1996)
http://www.stevehackett.com

~ My Guitar - William C. Harrington - Urban Electronic Music -Angry Vegan Records (2006)
http://www.angryvegan.com

posted in Composers - 0 replies

Last minute info on remix project

joelkru — Mon, 01 Jan 2007 16:15:09 GMT

11.11.06
Thaw Remix Compilation - Remixes Wanted!

we005 will be a compilation of remixes from our first release, Thaw - Field Recordings From Minnesota. We are looking for remixers to contribute to this release. If you are interested, please note our simple criteria and due dates below:

Remixes can only use material from the Thaw release (i.e. no additional drums, samples, vocals, etc.) Only FX and manipulation of the data in any other way is acceptable. Multiple tracks can be used from Thaw to create your track, we only ask that any material used be identified.

Tracks no longer than 12 minutes long.
All material (Audio, Track Info, Bio) due by January 5, 2007
Potential Release Date: January 15, 2007
Email info@wanderingear.com to let us know where we can download your track.

So if you haven't downloaded Thaw yet, do so now and get working on those remixes!

posted in Composers - 0 replies

"Committed Music"

biomusicologist — Mon, 20 Nov 2006 07:22:51 GMT

Well, it’s been kind of quiet here amongst you composers lately, and I’ve been feeling rather cranky after dealing with some other music-related BS (an occupational hazard, indeed). Thus the punk it me for some reason has a burning desire to stir things up a bit, so here goes…..

I’ve been thinking today about so-called “committed music” (and committed literature, political struggle in general, etc.). Reason is I’ve been reading up on Luigi Nono as of late, and found that the following sparked some thoughts that are interesting to ponder (from “Luigi Nono – the suspended song (1924-1990)" published by the Contemporary Music Review – sorry but this is quite long, and I just couldn’t see condensing it):

Through Scherchen (the famous conductor), Nono also became acquainted with the committed art of the 1920s; as he got to know him, Nono states, he:

“…had already been a communist for many years and he ranked among those who knew how to combine their work as artists, with their ideological position seamlessly. Moreover, Scherchen brought me closer to Germany’s history. Through him, I was entrusted with the historical, cultural, and political importance of Berlin in the years before 1933, the world meeting point and the centre for exchanges between the new Soviet culture and the advanced intelligence of the West. But he also opened up the Munich of the Spartacus Revolt for me, with its great political and cultural charisma.”

Scherchen, socialist, anti-fascist and pioneer of committed music, became a model also as a political artist for Nono. That he always stood up for the music of Schoenberg and Webern only served to confirm Nono’s blossoming conviction that politically committed or humanitarian music had to be of the most technically advanced nature. He had Dallapicola’s example in mind, but also both of the above-mentioned works by Schoenberg (Op. 41 and Op. 46). It is not surprising then, that in the 1940s he became familiar with the equation ‘advanced music = twelve tone music = committed music’, by such examples? This is probably a very important point in relation to his artistic and political decision making, which did not only find its expression after his “Il canto sospeso” of 1956, but is also visible in early works, for example in the secret programming of his “Composizione per orchestra” (1951).

In respect to the placing of commitment in music, in his book of 1950 “L’artiste et sa conscience”, the twelve-note apostle Rene Leibowitz, also proclaimed in the same year as Dallapiccola, Schoenberg’s “A Survivor of Warsaw" to be the great example and model. Nono would have probably got to know Leibowitz at the first international twelve-note conference in Milan in 1949. He could of course not follow his ideas – like many of the avant garde at the time – since Leibowitzz was a firm advocate of the 1948 Prague manifesto, which firmly propagated Socialist Realism. During those years there had been controversial debate about it and these discussions could not have passed Nono by. Most importantly though, through knowing Leibowitz’ book Nono must have come to know the theses of Jean-Paul Sartre’s committed literature, which he took up in his own writings.

In 1960 on the occasion of a lecture in Darmstadt about the relationship between text and music, in which Nono among other things makes concrete the model of Schoenberg for himself and discusses Schoenberg’s “Survivor from Warsaw”, he states as follows:

“this masterpiece is the manifesto of our era, due to its creative necessity of the relationship between text and music and between music and listener. That which Jean-Paul Sartre states in his essay “What is Literature?” about the problem of “Why write?”, is proven in a completely authentic way in Schoenberg’s creative necessity.” (he goes on to quote Sartre):

‘And if one presents me with this world and all its injustices, then I am not meant to look at it coldly, but to animate it with my resentment so that I unveil it and create its nature as injustices and abuse…’ (and Nono continues):

“…and if someone refuses to acknowledge Schoenberg’s “docere” and “movere”, especially in his “Survivor frm Warsaw”, he should know that the words which the 19-year old student Giacomo Levi wrote in Modena in 1942, in his 1st letter before the execution by the Fascists are also directed at him:

"Do not say that you do not want to know anything about it anymore. Keep in mind all that has happened is the result of you not wanting to know anything about it anymore.”

At the latest, by the time of his participation in the twelve-note conference in Milan, Nono became confronted directly with the question of whether the advanced method of composition was compatible with political commitment; a central topic of the conference.

.........

Scherchen points out that up until then (1949), no first-rate composer…..

“had returned to a more easily intelligible mode of expression…In short: without the intervention of Marxist theorists, not even one outstanding musician would have attempted to write in such a way, that his work would go back to earlier developmental stages of the musical idiom.”

So, what’s this all about?

First, as a person who considers the political to be part of his work, I found myself thinking….who really writes “committed music” today? I could only think of about three contemporary composers who I’d consider as composers of “committed music” (I’ll name them if you ask). And while Rap is probably the most political art form out there, I'm not sure that most of it is really "committed music" (although some I have heard certainly qualifies, IMHO).

Second, I found myself thinking about the Schoenberg choral pieces for workers choir, the Socialist/Marxist choral works of Charles Seeger, Henry Cowell, and even Copland (the bastard), among others, or the Gerbrauchmusik of Hindemith, Weill and Eiseler, and then the observation that Scherchen made that no outstanding musician would have attempted to write in such a way (going back to earlier styles) without the intervention of Marxist theorists, as opposed to continuing to develop their art in a “progressive” manner. I found myself wondering what the consensus among group such as this would be. Is writing “utilitarian” music an abandonment of artistic ideals? Is only the most “advanced” music capable of being “committed” to political struggle?

Third, this also touches upon a topic I was discussing with a friend of mine lately…namely what constitutes “new” or “advanced” music? I mean is it “new” only if it breaks new ground, innovates? Or if someone (David Cope comes to mind) writes a new computer-generated work in the style of Mozart, is that “new” music? Or is anything that is contemporary “new”? Or is nothing “new”? Does Andrew Lloyd Webber write “new music”? Where is the line drawn?

Is anyone here writing "committed music"? Does anyone give a shit abou politics as it relates to art?

posted in Composers - 1 reply

Yet another new Opera everyone will love to hate

biomusicologist — Wed, 15 Nov 2006 08:16:44 GMT

OK, technically it's an oratorio, but.....

http://www.mackrisvoreilly.com/home.html

posted in Composers - 2 replies

A collection of mastered originals for preview

kingofswords — Fri, 13 Oct 2006 07:00:47 GMT

http://www.soundclick.com/bands/pagemusic.cfm?bandID=151331

enjoy!

posted in Composers - 0 replies

Job announcement

PollyMoller — Tue, 10 Oct 2006 21:00:35 GMT

The Mills College Music Department is seeking applicants and nominations
for the Darius Milhaud Chair in Composition. This full-time
appointment, beginning in August 2007, is at the rank of Full Professor
for a period of three years with the possibility of a three-year
renewal. The candidate must have an outstanding international profile
as a composer, a broad knowledge and interest in all forms of
contemporary musical expression, a strong interest in teaching
composition on both the graduate and undergraduate levels, and a
commitment to the education of women.

The Darius Milhaud Chair in Composition was established in 1979 in honor
of Darius Milhaud, who taught at Mills from 1941 to 1971. Composers who
have held the Milhaud Chair include Betsy Jolas, Lou Harrison, Gordon
Mumma, Kenneth Gaburo, Anthony Braxton, Conlon Nancarrow, Iannis
Xenakis, Annie Gosfield, Joëlle Léandre, Alvin Curran, and Pauline
Oliveros.

The Mills Music Department, which includes the Center for Contemporary
Music, has an international reputation in composition, improvisation,
electronic and computer music, and performance. The Department provides
a broad spectrum of courses for undergraduates, leading to the B.A.
degree in music; and for graduates in three programs, leading to the
M.A. degree in Composition, the M.F.A. degree in Performance and
Literature (with specializations either in improvisation or
solo/chamber music), and the M.F.A. degree in Electronic Music and
Recording Media.

Please send resumes, supporting materials, and three letters of
recommendation by December 15, 2007 to:

Search Committee/Milhaud Chair
Department of Music
Mills College,
Oakland, CA 94613.

Located in the San Francisco Bay Area, Mills is a selective liberal arts
college for women with coeducational graduate programs (see
www.mills.edu). The College is set in a 127-acre wooded campus, with
the surrounding San Francisco Bay area offering a stimulating,
cosmopolitan environment. Persons of color and those committed to
working in a multicultural environment are encouraged to apply. AA/EOE

posted in Composers - 2 replies

September Playlists: Pushing The Envelope / WHUS - Storrs, CT

joelkru — Mon, 09 Oct 2006 01:25:25 GMT

Greetings!

"Pushing The Envelope - Music Decidedly Left Of Center" has spent the past eighteen years bringing you the finest in the avant realms of rock, classical, electronic, jazz, ambient, world music, and just about anything else that catches my ear. All this along with a healthy dollop of new and classic Progressive rock.

PTE now airs on Thursday evenings (EST) from 8 to 10PM. As always, you can get all the information you need to check "Pushing The Envelope", streamed in real time, at our web-site: http://www.whus.org

And finally...... as always, I'm constantly looking for new music to air. (Please note, all playlists are posted to the progressive rock, ambient, electronic, and contemporary classical music newsgroups, the Wire, Prog4U, and avant-classical mailists, and in addition to all that, e-mailed to you.) If you have something that you'd like to share with our listeners, please sent it along to:

Joel Krutt / Pushing The Envelope
WHUS / University of Connecticut
Box U-8R Storrs, CT 06269
USA

new MySpace page: http://www.myspace.com/pushing_the_envelope

e-mail: joelkru@comcast.net

free download of my CD "What Next?" at: http://www.soundclick.com/joelkrutt

9/5 Pushing The Envelope Playlist

~I Was Looking At The Ceiling And Then I Saw The Sky - composer: John Adams / libretto: June Jordan
http://www.earbox.com/

~ Siksha Valli: Part 1 - Gino Foti - Vedic Mantras - Net Dot Music (2006)
http://www.ginofoti.com/

~ Suite for Toy Piano - composer: John Cage / toy piano: Margaret Leng Tan - The Seasons - ECM New Music Series (2000)
http://home.earthlink.net/~margaretlengtan/

~ Suite for Toy Piano - composer: John Cage / Orchestration: Lou Harrision / American Composers Orchestra, Dennis Russell Davies, conductor - The Seasons - ECM New Music Series (2000)

~ The Rubber Forest (2004-2006) - composer/balloons: Judy Dunaway -Mother of Balloon Music - Innova (2006)
http://jdunaway.web.wesleyan.edu/ or http://www.innova.mu

~ Spineless Jelly - The Future Sound of London - Space Daze 2000 - Cleopatra (1996)
http://www.futuresoundoflondon.com/

~ Out of The Blue - Roxy Music - Space Daze 2000 - Cleopatra (1996)
http://www.roxymusic.co.uk/

~ Dream Suite: Asset Stop / Jane / Crunch Granola - Dreams - Dreams - Columbia/Legacy (1970/1992)

~ Birdfingers / The Funky Waltz - The Eleventh House with Larry Coryell - Introducing The Eleventh House - Vanguard (1974)

9/12 Pushing The Envelope Playlist

~ Kind Of A 3 - Vox One - Pure Imagination - Primarily A Cappella (2006)
http://www.voxone.net/

~ Music For Pieces Of Wood - Steve Reich & Musicians, Live 1977 - Orange Mountain Music (2005)
http://www.stevereich.com or http://www.orangemountainmusic.com/

~ I Once Was Vaccinated With A Phonograph Needle - Dead Cat Bounce - Home Speaks To The Wandering: Muisc Of Matt Steckler - Innova (2005)
http://www.deadcatbounce.org or http://www.innova.mu

~ Discrepancy in Flow II (for John Cage) - Nathan Hubbard (compositions 1998-2005) - Circumvention Music (2006)
http://www.castorandpolluxmusic.com/nmhubbard/ http://www.circumventionmusic.com

~ Eternity's Breath, Parts 1 & 2 - Mahavishnu Orchestra - Visions of the Emerald Beyond - Columbia Legacy (1975/1991)
http://www.cs.ut.ee/~andres_d/mclaughlin/

~ My Name is Coco / Yellow Magic (Tong Poo) - Senor Coconut and his Orchestra - Yellow Fever! - Essay Recordings (2006)
http://www.fotolog.com/atom_tm_news

~ Abaddon's Bolero - Emerson, Lake, & Palmer - Trilogy - Atlantic (1972)
http://www.emersonlakepalmer.com/

~ Om Shanti - Janice Giteck - Home (revisited) - New Albion Records (1992)
http://www.newalbion.com/artists/giteckj/

~ Lucid Recollection of an Aquamarine World - Alpha Wave Movement - From Here To Tranquility: Ambient Compilation, Vol. 4 - Silent (1995)
http://www.home.earthlink.net/~alphawav/

9/21 Pushing The Envelope Playlist

~ What A Day That Was / Big Blue Plymouth (Eyes Wide Open) / Light Bath - David Byrne - The Catherine Wheel - Sire (1981)
http://www.davidbyrne.com/

~ meikyu - Curtis Glatter / Nathan Hubbard - Rivulet - Circumvention Music (2006)
http://www.castorandpolluxmusic.com/glatterhubbard/ or http://www.circumventionmusic.com

~ Puttin' On The White Shirt - Trey Gunn feat. Dave Douglas - Untune The Sky - Inside Out Music (2003)
http://www.treygunn.com or http://www.insideoutmusic.com

~ Cloudburst Flight - Tangerine Dream - WIRED: music futurists (compilation) - Rhino (1979/1999)
http://www.tangerinedream.org/

~ Pairi-Daeza - ARSNOVA - Progday 2001 (compilation) - Proglodite Records (2002)
http://arsnova.chocot.net or http://www.progday.com

~ Into The Wild - composer: Cindy Cox / ensemble: Paul Dresher Ensemble - Columba aspexit: chamber works of Cindy Cox - CRI (2002)
http://music.berkeley.edu/Cox.html

~ Lying in grass, gazing upwards at 11:30pm - Matt Davignon - SoftWetFish - Edgetone Records (2006)
http://www.ribosomemusic.com or http://www.edgetonerecords.com

~ Sybdat MSM - Steve Heimbecker - Montreal Sound Matter / Montreal matiere sonore - Pogus Productions
http://www.fondation-langlois.org/flash/e/index.php?NumPage=370 or http://www.pogus.com

~ Ten Tango - Von Zamla - 1983 - Cuneiform Records (1983/1999)
http://www.cuneiformrecords.com

As If - Soft Machine - Fifth - Rewind/Columbia (1972)
http://calyx.club.fr/softmachine/index.html

~ Wind On Water - Robert Fripp / Brian Eno - Evening Star - Editions EG (1975)
http://www.elephant-talk.com

~ Oblivium - Dilate (Victor Wulf) - Space Daze 2000 (compilation) - Cleopatra Records

~ A warehouse collapses in reverse - Matt Davignon - SoftWetFIsh - Edgetone Records (2006)
http://www.ribosomemusic.com or http://www.edgetonerecords.com

~ Lotus Quintet (2002) - Dan Joseph - archaea - mutable music (2006)
http://www.danjoseph.org or http://www.mutablemusic.com

~ Elsewhere - Soft Works (Elton Dean - R.I.P.) - Abracadabra - Tone Center (2003)
http://www.allaboutjazz.com/php/article.php?id=12504

~ Metal Fatigue - Metal Fatigue - Allan Holdsworth - Enigma (1985)
http://www.therealallanholdsworth.com/

~ Mass In Gregorian Chant For Multiple Flutes (Mass For June 16) - composer: Henry Brant / ensemble: The New York Flute Club - Music For Massed Flutes - New World Records (2006)
http://www.jaffe.com/brant.html or http://www.newworldrecords.org/album.cgi?rm=new_releases&year=2006&month=07

~ it's not that easy - Mustard Keanu - Wake Up And Listen - alias frequencies (2001)
http://www.aliasfrequencies.org

~ Rainbows, part I (for piano with ten players) - Stephen Scott - Protraits: A Selection From The New Albion Catalogue - New Albion (1986)
http://www.newalbion.com/NA107/

~ Scatterbrain - Jeff Beck with the Jan Hammer Group Live - Epic 1977)
http://www.jeffbeck.com or http://www.janhammer.com

~ John Doe Number One - Thieves' Kitchen - Argot - self-release (2001)
http://www.thieveskitchen.co.uk/

~ Etudes for Violin and Tape (1994) - composer: Charles Dodge / violin: Miwako Abe - Works For Violin - New World Records (2006)
http://www.newworldrecords.org/album.cgi?rm=view&album_id=15885

~ Kaida - Robert Macht -Vishnu - Robert Macht Productions (1999)
http://www.innova.mu/artist1.asp?skuID=132

~ Where Have You Gone Mr. Squeegeeman? - Gutbucket - Sludge Test - Cantaloupe Music (2006)
http://www.gutweb.com or http://www.cantaloupemusic.com

~ Baby's On Fire - 801 - 801 Live - E'G (1976)
http://www.manzanera.com/801Livealbum.htm

~ Time Crunch / Stone Face - Niacin - Time Crunch - Magna Carta (2001)
http://www.niacinb3.com/
http://www.magnacarta.net/bands_profile.asp?Band_ID=20

posted in Composers - 0 replies

ocupational hazards

David — Fri, 06 Oct 2006 03:52:27 GMT

I whistle a lot at work (small bus) and find myself doing a lot of medleys. You know how one small little interval can trigger another completely different song..

This week has been Ravels' Bolero into Memory from cats...

for another older one, check out my 1813 for brass quintet at http://mysite.verizon.net/resudj3l/wilkinsworks/

posted in Composers - 0 replies

playback on MySpace

David — Sat, 23 Sep 2006 20:31:44 GMT

I've noticed several of you are on MySpace, with music players on your sites. Could someone help me get one set up one my page please??

David

posted in Composers - 4 replies

The new Tribe!

PollyMoller — Fri, 22 Sep 2006 15:00:15 GMT

Hey composers, whaddaya think of the new Tribe?
It's way buggy still, but I think it's exciting.
Kind of like the "old" Tribe.

posted in Composers - 0 replies

Publication

PollyMoller — Thu, 15 Dec 2005 01:38:51 GMT

I've submitted my flute quartet to a publisher that's considering it for their 2007 catalog, and while I'm waiting for their decision (late January or early February), maybe all of you would regale me with your publication adventures and/or misadventures. :)

posted in Composers - 12 replies

uploading more free scores daily

orangeboxman — Fri, 28 Apr 2006 05:54:02 GMT

tell me what you need

http://tribes.tribe.net/freescoresfromjoshbroyles/photos

posted in Composers - 0 replies

Textual language issues

PollyMoller — Fri, 27 Jan 2006 20:58:42 GMT

Celeste, who's on this tribe and who I hope will post about this, is about to present a concert of her text sound music in a country that speaks a language other than English. Anybody else here ever had such an experience -- presenting your music to an audience in a country that may not speak the language your text is in? Did it matter -- to you or to the audience? Did you feel the meaning of the text was integral to the musical experience or not? I'm curious.

posted in Composers - 1 reply

Treasure trove of manuscripts donated to Juilliard

PollyMoller — Tue, 28 Feb 2006 23:50:09 GMT

Tuesday, February 28, 2006 (AP)
Secret Trove of Music Donated to Juilliard
By MARTIN STEINBERG, Associated Press Writer

(02-28) 15:00 PST New York (AP) --

Happy birthday, Juilliard School.

The conservatory, which is celebrating its 100th year, has something more
to cheer about. It has just received a priceless trove of manuscripts of
works by such immortal composers as Mozart, Bach, Beethoven and Brahms,
among many others.

Bruce Kovner, who dropped out of a Harvard Ph.D. program and drove a New
York taxi before starting a hedge fund that helped get him on Forbes
magazine's 400 richest list, secretly amassed the collection during the
past decade of auction hunting.

The self-described music lover and amateur keyboard player who was once
"absolutely terrorized" by a harmony professor at Juilliard's evening
division announced the donation at a news conference Tuesday, two days
after his 61st birthday.

"I started collecting just for the personal pleasure of being close to
these icons of the greatest musical achievements in Western music," said
Kovner, chairman of Juilliard's board and founder of Caxton Associates
LLC. "At a certain point I realized that it would be better to make this
collection available to the rest of the world rather than to keep it under
a mattress."

Works in the Juilliard Manuscript Collection range from the 1680s —
Purcell's opera "Dido and Aeneas" — to Schnittke compositions of the
1990s. Also included are works by Schubert, Schumann, Liszt, Wagner,
Mahler, Copland and Stravinsky.

"It's a historic day at the Juilliard School," said Joseph W. Polisi, the
conservatory's president. "The gift represents one of the finest
collections of musical manuscripts to be amassed in modern times."

It consists of sketches, editions prepared for the printer and original
manuscripts. The neatly printed "Dido" is an 18th century volume that's
one of the oldest surviving manuscripts of Purcell's opera. Other items
appear as uncertain scribbles and include clarifications from the composer
about how the music should sound. Such notations didn't always make it to
the publisher, scholars at the news conference said.

Speaking of the collection's works by Beethoven, musicologist Maynard
Solomon said: "They are reflections of his mind at moments of his supreme
creative achievements. But sometimes they give us an unexpected portrait
of a composer in the midst of doubt and uncertainty."

Among Kovner's acquisitions was Beethoven's 80-page piano transcription of
the "Grosse Fuge," discovered recently at a suburban Philadelphia
seminary. Kovner, the now no-longer-anonymous buyer, purchased it for
$1.95 million late last year at Sotheby's in London.

It also includes the first known sketches and manuscript prepared for the
printer of Beethoven's Ninth Symphony, with corrections handwritten by the
composer, and the autograph score of the final scene of Mozart's opera "Le
Nozze di Figaro."

"When I saw the scope of the collection I was speechless," said Michael
Griffel, a Schubert expert and chairman of the music history department.
"Suffice it to say that life at Juilliard will never be the same. It will
be an expanded paradise for music scholars."

Christoph Wolff, a Bach expert at Harvard University, noted that the
collection includes works for a variety of genres and from many different
European countries and America.

"What I find particularly striking is the richness and balance and the
focus of this collection, which covers 300 years of musical history from
the late 17th to the late 20th century," he said.

The collection will be housed at the school in September 2009, after
construction of a climate-controlled reading room. It will be available to
scholars, performers and the public by appointment. Until then, requests
for access will be considered, said Juilliard librarian Jane Gottleib.

Every item will be microfilmed and digitized and eventually placed on a
Web site, she said. Special care and kid-glove handling will be needed
because of the high acid content of the paper.

Participants at the news conference said the collection should help bridge
the divide between scholars and performers.

"I think that ... the Bach manuscript or the changes that Mozart made in
the score or the markings absolutely unknown and authentic on Brahms' Opus
118 are going to inspire performers, are going to inspire a generation of
students here," Kovner said.

posted in Composers - 0 replies

My website

dludwig — Fri, 27 Jan 2006 21:35:52 GMT

I'm new to this tribe and wish I had known sooner about it! In any case, I wanted to mention my website www.davidludwigmusic.com for anyone interested. I'm a composer living in Philly and teaching at Curtis while getting a PhD at Penn.

I'm also looking forward to getting to know some of your music and becoming familiar with the group.

Thanks,

-David

posted in Composers - 3 replies

Concert Spam

biomusicologist — Sat, 26 Nov 2005 08:31:53 GMT

Yeah, yeah, I know....I should post this under events, but it sure has been rather lifeless here as of late, so I thought I'd post here. My woodwind quintet is presenting a rather interesting program tomorrow evening, should anyone be interested.

So....go ahead, flame me.

The KITCHEN WINDS PRESENT
A CONCERT of WOODWIND QUINTETS

Saturday, November 26, 2005, 8:00 p.m..

Unitarian Universalist Church of Palo Alto

Passacaille (1898)...........................................Adrien Barthe (1828-1898)

“...it was the nightingale” – from Romeo & Juliet (1977)....Ned Rorem (1923- )

Mari Duncan, flute

Arbeau Suite (1942)............................................Philip Weston (1900 -)

1. Tordion
2. Pavane
3. Buffoons

Suite for Woodwind Quintet (1930).............................Henry Cowell (1897-1965)

1. Allegretto
2. Allegro
3. Adagio Cantabile
4. Allegro con Moto

Ballad for Woodwind Quintet (1956)............................Henry Cowell (1897-1965)

Woodwind Quintet, Op. 51 (1952)...................Wallingford Riegger (1885-1961)

Intermission

Alarme (1969)...................................................Åke Hermanson (1923 - )

Michael Henry, horn

Quartet for Winds (1941)......................................Arthur Berger (1912-2003)

1. Allegro Moderato
2. Andante
3. Allegro Vivace e Leggermente

Kleine Kammermusik für fünf Bläser, Op. 24, Nr. 2 (1922)......Paul Hindemith (1895-1963)

1. Lustig. Masig schnelle Viertel
2. Walzer Durchweg sehr leise
3. Ruhig und einfach. Achtel
4. Schnelle Viertel
5. Sehr lebhaft

Polka – from the Golden Age Ballet (1930).................Dmitri Shostakovich (1906-1975)

PROGRAM NOTES

ADRIEN BARTHE (1828-1898), is a pseudonym for the French composer Grat-Norbert Barthe. Barthe began his music studies with piano and composition lessons, and eventually became a student of Leborne at the Paris Conservatory. In 1854 he took first prize in composition at the Rome Institute with a cantata entitled Francesca de Rimini. His later oratorio Judith and opera Don Carlos also won acclaim. After his return from Rome, Barthe attempted to work in the theater, but to no avail. Barthe then took up a career as a teacher, apparently working for the French government as well, in which connection he published a text on musical composition. A Passacaille is both a musical form and the corresponding court dance. Its name derives from the Spanish pasear (to walk) and calle (street), supposedly to denote the music played by wandering musicians.

NED ROREM (1923 - ) was born in Richmond Indiana in 1923. He received his early musical training in Chicago, where he studied with Leo Sowerby. He later took lessons with Virgil Thomson and Aaron Copland. He moved to Paris in 1951, where he entered the circle of modern Parisian and expatriate American composers active at that time. The French influence, particularly in his songs, remains the most pronounced characteristic of his music. He has been regarded as one of the finest song composers in America, with a natural feeling for the vocal line and the prosody of the text.

"...it was the nightingale" is one of the nine pieces which comprise Rorem's 1977 work for flute and guitar, Romeo and Juliet. In this work Rorem focuses on several moments in the Shakespeare play, with the flute at times representing Juliet, and the guitar Romeo. The flute solo movement is reminiscent of a nightingale's song.

PHILIP WESTON (1900 - ) is the pseudonym used by Amedeo De Filippi. De Filippi is a composer, author, conductor, violinist and arranger, who studied at Juilliard with Rubin Goldmark. He has composed and arranged for films, radio, television, recordings, theater, ballet and publishers, and was on the CBS staff. He was chosen as a NY Fellow, and elected to the International Institute of Arts and Letters in 1962. His Arbeau Suite is based on musical themes found in Thoinot Arbeau's Orchésographie, a “treatise in the form of a dialogue whereby all may easily learn and practise the honourable exercise of dancing”, originally published in 1589.

HENRY COWELL (1897-1965) was a remarkably innovative composer. Born in Menlo Park, California in 1897, Cowell is most known for his early experimental work, employing techniques such as striking the piano keys with the fist and forearms. He named such chords “tone-clusters” and at the age of 13 composed a piece entitled Adventures in Harmony, which employed them extensively. Cowell later took lessons at U.C. Berkeley where he studied privately with the noted musicologist and composer Charles Seeger. In 1931 he received a Guggenheim fellowship to study in Berlin with the pioneering ethnomusicologist Erich von Hornbostel. Many of his later works show the influences of his study of the world’s music -- in fact he is often credited for coining the term “world music”. He also worked with Leon Theremin, the inventor of the Theremin, on the construction of an instrument called the Rhythmicon; it made possible the simultaneous production of 16 different rhythms on 16 different pitch levels of the harmonic series.

Cowell’s career was brutally interrupted in 1936 when he was arrested in Menlo Park on a “morals” charge (homosexuality was a heinous offense in California at the time). Using largely contrived and falsified evidence, Cowell was convicted and sent to San Quentin prison for 15 years. He was paroled in 1940. Continuing to compose while in prison, he eventually abandoned his more radically experimental music for more utilitarian and folk-influenced styles, which he continued to employ until his death in 1965. Thus his music tends to fall into two distinct periods; the radically experimental music of his pre-prison years; and the world-music influenced folk style of his later, post-prison years.

Written in 1930, the Suite for Woodwind Quintet, with its mélange of counterpoint and a dissonant chorale, is characteristic of Cowell’s more experimental period. The Ballad, written in 1956, is typical of Cowell’s later folk-inspired style.

WALLINGFORD RIEGGER (1865-1961) was born in Albany, Georgia in 1885. He received his primary education at home: his mother was a pianist; his father a violinist. After moving to New York in 1900, Riegger began serious study with Percy Goetschius at the Institute for Musical Arts. After graduation he went to Berlin where he took courses at the Hochschule für musik, where he studied with Max Bruch. He returned to America in 1917 and held many teaching posts. His earliest works were tonal and romantic, but he increasingly felt that the older compositional techniques did not successfully convey his musical ideas. His music from 1923 onward is of a highly advanced nature; a master craftsman, he wrote in disparate styles with an equal degree of proficiency, employing an aggressive rhythmic sense and free use of possible tone combinations.

His Woodwind Quintet from 1952 is a one-movement work full of many of Riegger’s favorite devices – canonic counterpoint, sharp dissonance, and reiterative rhythms.

ÅKE HERMANSON (1923 - ) is a Swedish composer born in 1923. During the second World War, he worked as a radio telegrapher far out on the Bohuslän archipelago. About his experience, he wrote “Along with, or in the center of, a period of alarm, the fog horns roared in like frightening black sails against the secure calls in Morse code....the fog horn at Vinga sounded, and the one at Böttö came in on the sixth. The ones at Tistlarna, Nidingen and Pater Noster could be heard from the opposite direction in the winter darkness. A stereophonic manifestation of outer reality which, in my loneliness between calls and dreams, was transformed into circling arms of sound, capturing my consciousness in the oscillating waves from elementary sources of sound....”

The composer’s inscription is translated as “Very intensive and almost like a siren.”

ARTHUR BERGER (1912 – 2003) was born in 1912 and raised in the Bronx. After studies at Harvard with Walter Piston, he went to Paris to study composition with Nadia Boulanger. Returning to the U.S. in 1939, he entered Mills College in Oakland, where he studied with Darius Milhaud. His musical idiom reflects the influence of divergent schools of composition, including both serialist and neo-classic styles. Often described as a “new-mannerist”, his works are often characterized by their strong formal structure.

The Quartet for Winds, written in 1941, two years after returning from his studies with Boulanger, is among Berger’s best known works. Virgil Thompson has called it “one of the most satisfactory pieces for wind in the whole modern repertory.” The work is dedicated to Aaron Copland.

PAUL HINDEMITH (1895-1963) was one of the most influential composers and theorists of the 20th century. He was active as a conductor, viola recitalist, and a teacher, holding positions at the Berlin Academy of Music and Yale University. His abundant opus list includes compositions for practically every format and instrument – operas, orchestral works, concertos, chamber music, including a series of sonatas for each orchestral instrument with piano. Hindemith’s style may be described as a synthesis of modern, Romantic, Classical, Baroque and other styles, a combination saved from the stigma of eclecticism only by Hindemith’s mastery of technical means.

The Kleine Kammermusik für fünf Bläser, Op 24:2, was composed in 1922 for the Frankfurter BläserKammermusikvereinigung, during a period when Hindemith was often experimenting with different musical methods. His artisan-like attitude to the process of composition resulted in a large number of utilitarian works he called Gebrauchsmusik (utility music), music composed for a specific, identifiable purpose or use. His Kleine Kammermusik is a good example of such a work.

DIMITRI SHOSTAKOVICH (1906-1975) was the preeminent Russian composer of the Soviet era, whose style and idiom of composition largely defined the nature of Russian Music. His opera The Nose, after Gogol’s whimsical story about the sudden disappearance of the nose from the face of a government functionary, revealed Shostakovich’s flair for musical satire. It was produced in Leningrad in 1930, with considerable popular acclaim, but was attacked by officious theater critics as a product of “bourgeois decadence”, and quickly withdrawn from the stage. Somewhat in the same satirical style was Shostakovich’s ballet The Golden Age (1930), which included the celebrated dissonant Polka, allegedly satirizing a disarmament conference which was taking place in Geneva.

-------------------------------------------

THE KITCHEN WINDS are Mari Duncan, flute; Ben Lloyd, oboe; Susan Macy, clarinet; Rufus Acosta, bassoon; and Michael Henry, horn. The group was founded in 1998 by Ms. Duncan and Mr. Henry. The group takes its name from the room in which they most often found themselves rehearsing. While the personnel has changed (the current members have been playing together for the last four years) and the rehearsal venue has now shifted to the living room, the group still shares the common goal of exploring the breadth of literature for wind quintet. We aim to balance the familiar with the deserving-to-be-more-familiar, providing interpretations that are both true to composer's intent and also fun for the listener.

The members of the Kitchen Winds appear as soloists and perform with orchestral, chamber, jazz, experimental, and pop groups around the Bay Area.

posted in Composers - 1 reply

Premiere woes

PollyMoller — Tue, 11 Oct 2005 15:34:10 GMT

Hmmmm...where to begin in the story of the premiere. It was my flute quartet, and I was one of the performers.

The performance kind of fell victim to bad event planning. It was a big fundraising gala with silent and live auctions. They decided to do the live auction right before the piece was performed. It was loud and raucous. When we took the stage, the 300 guests wouldn't quiet down. Some of them wanted to hear us, and struck their glasses with silverware trying to get the others to shut up. The VP of marketing grabbed a microphone and asked the guests for their attention, but even after that it was so loud in there we couldn't hear each other across the stage.

We started playing but we couldn't hear each other. Eventually I had to stop the first movement and turn to the audience and signal them to quiet down. Quite a few of them tried, and it got 50% quieter, so we tried again, but we still couldn't hear each other. We were playing mostly from visual cues. Somehow we got through the piece. I looked down and saw about half the audience paying attention and the rest ignored us and kept talking.

When we were done there was applause. After we got down off the stage staff members came running to apologize. The development director was apologetic and said she had been out of the office so much she didn't know they had put the live auction ahead of us and that shouldn't have happened. My colleagues were furious that the piece, which they were very proud of, hadn't been heard properly and that the recording was unusable. I was kind of in shock for a little while but then I put it aside.

I'm focusing on not taking it personally. The DD says she wants to have the piece performed again at a major donor appreciation event which she thinks will be a more appropriate venue, quieter, etc. I told her I was open to talking about it.

The whole point of the grant I was awarded was to give new music to an audience that was unfamiliar with it. That goal was certainly accomplished. I've written a good piece which, if I can get it recorded, will probably be published. I've had the privilege of working with 3 very fine musicians, and all may not be lost as regards the museum. It's all a learning experience.

posted in Composers - 12 replies

Mozart's Pet Starling

biomusicologist — Wed, 12 Oct 2005 22:49:48 GMT

Quite fascinating.

(If like me you find yourself looking to turn off the hideous MIDI file of K. 522 that plays, the controls are down at the bottom of the page....)

http://www.starlingtalk.com/mozart1.htm

On 27 May 1784, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart purchased a starling. Three years later, he buried it with much ceremony. Heavily veiled mourners marched in a procession, sang hymns, and listened to a graveside recitation of a poem Mozart had composed for the occasion (1). Mozart's performance has received mixed reviews. Although some see his gestures as those of a sincere animal lover, others have found it hard to believe that the object of Mozart's grief was a dead bird. Another event in the same week has been put forth as a more likely cause for Mozart's funereal gestures: the death of his father Leopold (2).

The scholars who have reported and interpreted this historical incident knew much about Mozart but little, if anything, about starlings. To put the incident into better perspective, we will provide here a profile of the vocal capacities of captive starlings. Mozart's skills as a musician and composer would have rendered him especially susceptible to the starling's vocal charms, and thus we will also propose that the funeral and the poem are not the end of the story. Mozart may have left another memorial to his starling, an offbeat requiem for rebels.

posted in Composers - 0 replies

Modular Compositional Technique

RichBatsford — Fri, 30 Sep 2005 14:22:51 GMT

Hi everyone

thought Id share an essay Ive just written on modular composition in case its of any interest here. Any thoughts anyone?

More about the Like Fxck event and the ongoing Project X team behind it can be found at: http://tribes.tribe.net/projectx please come by.

Modular Compositional Technique - Like Fxck

Brian Wilson has discussed the way he composes in terms of sitting at the piano and messing around until he comes up with something he likes, a little unit of music, which he calls "feels".

During the incredible spate of creative activity during which Wilson wrote what became the album Pet Sounds, the single Good Vibrations and the (then unfinished) masterwork SMiLE, Wilson perfected the art of piecing together this complimentary, yet disparate musical entities.

In the case of Pet Sounds – not only would these feels be moulded into a song, but by (for pretty much the first time in pop history) those songs were then arranged into an album which offered a coherent and holistic piece of art as a totality.

Good Vibrations is perhaps Wilson’s shining example of taking this technique to its limits in terms of the composition of one particular song, and paved the way for SMiLE in which the unit of the song was discarded altogether in favour of organising his many ideas and influences into one holistic work (actually in three movements) which is both a succession of individual parts, and a holistic, seamless whole. There is some degree of narrative structure, but this is not the aim, although a progression of some kind is very much in evidence.

Recently I had the pleasure of seeing the amazing comedian Reginald D Hunter perform five sets of comedy within a 48 hour period. This unusual state of affairs has to do with the fact that Reg was only at the Edinburgh Festival for a short visit (having performed full month long runs of the same show and been nominated for awards at each previous visits) and as well as being a big fan, we are close friends.

In the time that Reg has been performing he has developed a tremendous wealth of blocks of material – more than one liners or simple jokes – rather short pieces of story telling that each represent, challenge or illustrate a particular notion (or meme). Seeing him move from venue to venue, I was able to observe him exploring different paths through each performance, adapting according to his thinking at the time, the type of audience and so on (sometimes out loud) and selecting from his arsenal of modules, to create a flowing progress, at times, a discernable pattern (tho my preference in watching such work is to enjoy it rather than analyse it in the moment – the analysis comes later or not at all).

Another friend who’s work I much admire is Paul Provenza – an American stand up who has spent odd moments over the last few years filming many of the stars of the comedy world telling different versions of the same joke, ending up with over 100 hours worth of footage. The challenge for him then was to cut and edit – organise – these varied tellings into a movie, which in effect has thus become Paul’s own telling of the joke – on a macro scale. Interestingly he has recently been set the challenge of going back to the material to put together the DVD which I await with interest and he has further ideas for the future which will be made public in time.

The notion of modular composition is something which has developed naturally within me to some degree, as my own efforts at composing music have evolved over time. Some of the better parts of my recent work for piano have employed the technique, but I’ve been curious as to how to apply it on ever larger scales.

Lick Fxck represents my efforts to approach a live performance in this way, encompassing a variety of different participants, from many different disciplines, providing a framework within which we can combine those different elements in different ways.

Within each discipline, this works on a smaller scale, eg we have groups of visual artists now relishing the challenges of collaborating in an atmosphere of artistic freedom, to see what new things they can forge together. Likewise musicians that mostly tend to play within their own fields be it jazz, rock, classical, eastern or whatever, are find themselves thrown together in meetings to devise a piece within a piece that may have no more a title or theme than “Quiet ensemble 1” on the proviso that if it ends up being not so quiet, we retain the right to shuffle the programme which is in a constant state of flux.

Hopefully come the time of the first performance, these elements will have combined, via a process of what you might call “intelligent design” (!) (or perhaps “artistic design” would be more appropriate) into a five hour piece that will inevitably be performed in that exact state once only.

Well, if we can do in any tiny way for the gig what Wilson did for the album with Smile, then I’ll be Smiling for sure.

Rich
Xx

posted in Composers - 0 replies

Blogging composers?

PollyMoller — Wed, 28 Sep 2005 23:08:54 GMT

Anybody have a blog on Blogspot or LJ? I've got a Blogspot blog, and I'd like to link to other composers. :)

Polly

posted in Composers - 0 replies

the kitchen sink

lutesaroundtown — Mon, 19 Sep 2005 07:37:50 GMT

I’ve thought a lot lately about how to approach music and respecting just what I do; finding a lack of strength in the music I have written. Pleasing to the ear, but simply not enough. I hear, the free for all in Ives; the degrees of dissonance in Ruggles; even the nuance of Part, and still feel short of a goal.

When you approach music from a clinical point of view, does it inhibit your creative side; like me? I feel the need of Bruchners’ collar, and the lash of Revueletas. Form and freedom entrap me, so tonight, I’ve simply deleted half my oeuvre in disgusted displeasure (each still in hard copy some where about for gleaning). I feel guilty and ashamed of these acts, creation and destruction while trying to find my voice.

At what point do you say creation is enough, regardless of academic and artistic integrity? What is it for you that pleases and deserves to survive?

At times I feel that this thing I do for fun, simply entraps me in the shadow of great things.

posted in Composers - 3 replies

Sibelius Trouble

Fri, 16 Sep 2005 02:37:58 GMT

How do I make Sibelius create a tuplet that cross the bar line? AAAAARRRRRGGGGHHHHH!!!

posted in Composers - 3 replies

The other scene in New Orlenes

lutesaroundtown — Mon, 12 Sep 2005 18:56:36 GMT

With all the talk last week of the great heritage of New Orleans Jazz, I was wondering if anyone even recognizes the music of the ‘Creole Romantics’ anymore? I noticed Naxos with a couple of recordings of Edmond DeDe, Charles Lucien Sr. and Lucien-Leon Guillaume Lambert Jr., but aside from Gottschalk there really is not much available. This just seems to be a part of American musical history assigned to textbook oblivion, much like the back seat taken by the New England Romantic school to their better know European contemporaries. Are there any more of the ‘Creole Romantics’ that you might know available on recordings and would be willing to recommend?

posted in Composers - 3 replies

Just What the Hell is Music, Anyway?

biomusicologist — Sat, 10 Sep 2005 05:59:10 GMT

From the American Heritage Dictionary:

MUSIC mu·sic (noun)

1. The art of arranging sounds in time so as to produce a continuous, unified, and evocative composition, as through melody, harmony, rhythm, and timbre.

2. Vocal or instrumental sounds possessing a degree of melody, harmony, or rhythm.

3.
a. A musical composition.
b. The written or printed score for such a composition.
c. Such scores considered as a group: We keep our music in a stack near the piano.

4. A musical accompaniment.

5. A particular category or kind of music.

6. An aesthetically pleasing or harmonious sound or combination of sounds: the music of the wind in the pines.

-----------------------
What do you think, composers? Agree, disagree? What is music?

posted in Composers - 7 replies

Instrumental hesitation

lutesaroundtown — Tue, 06 Sep 2005 17:15:05 GMT

I wonder how many composers out there are avid musicians, possibly specializing in writing for their instruments as well? Of all the instruments I play, I enjoy Baroque Lute the most; thus far though I find it rather daunting to write for. Though I don't mind writing for a myriad of instruments, the hesitation when it comes to this instrument is quite palpable.

Maybe because I toy with music and don't want anything less than excellent with my name on it to be associated with the instrument? I don’t consider myself a great composer or even a very good composer. Just someone who on occasion produces pieces that make friends and family smile and enjoys doing so. But writing for an instrument I hold in such high regard, while considering the great composers for the lute of the past, just stops me in my tracks.

Any thoughts, suggestions or experiences you could share?

posted in Composers - 13 replies

Societies for Promotion of New Music

Thu, 08 Sep 2005 23:01:19 GMT

In England here we have the SPNM, anything like this in the states? www.spnm.org.uk

posted in Composers - 2 replies

Juvenalia

PollyMoller — Tue, 06 Sep 2005 01:43:21 GMT

So do any of you have "juvenalia"...pieces you wrote as a student, or early in your career...that you hope never see the light of day, or are overlooked by musicologists when they're compiling your body of work? One of the first tunes I wrote and recorded was such a thing...I enthusiastically recorded something else over it. (this was 24-track analog tape)

posted in Composers - 3 replies

Damn.... I'm working for cheap!

biomusicologist — Wed, 31 Aug 2005 16:49:43 GMT

I think we all need to charge more for our music:

Composers With Cash

Mozart famously died penniless. But it's less well known which composers were the wealthiest. A classical music station in Britain set out to estimate the earnings, adjusted for inflation, accrued in a composer's lifetime and came up with a list led by George Gershwin, The Guardian reported on Monday. Gershwin earned millions of dollars from "Rhapsody in Blue," "Summertime" and many other compositions, ranking him ahead of Johann Strauss, who charged more than $50,000 an appearance. Verdi was third on the list; his take included a commissioning fee of nearly $300,000 for "Aida." Rounding out the Top 10 in order were Rossini (who received more than $5,000 a lesson), Handel, Haydn, Rachmaninoff, Puccini, Paganini and Tchaikovsky.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk_news/story/0,,1558446,00.html

Gershwin leads composer rich list
Kirsty Scott
Monday August 29, 2005
The Guardian

I got rhythm, and riches too: George Gershwin

The music of George Gershwin has delighted millions of people across the world and he made a multi-million pound fortune from it. Now the creator of such classics as Summertime, Rhapsody In Blue and I Got Rhythm has topped a list of the richest composers of all time.

Gershwin eclipsed such classical greats as Strauss, Verdi and Handel in the poll for Classic FM.

The classical music station drew up the rich list based on estimates of earnings accrued in a composer's lifetime.

Gershwin made a multi-million pound fortune from hit musicals, including Porgy and Bess and Funny Face. He invested his money in art and left a substantial estate when he died in 1937.

Second on the list is Johann Strauss, who charged more than £30,000 a time by today's prices for public appearances and an astonishing £830,000 for one conducting job in the US.

Verdi came third, taking a commissioning fee of £166,000 for his everlasting opera Aida.

Others on the list include Italian composer Rossini, who charged more than £3,000 for a single lesson, Rachmaninov, Puccini and Tchaikovsky.

Mozart, however, is absent. Despite enjoying fame during his lifetime, financial mismanagement left the composer penniless when he died at 35.

Full details of the composers' fortunes will be revealed in Composers' Notes, a new Classic FM series presented by John Suchet beginning on September 4.

Top 10

1 George Gershwin

2 Johann Strauss II

3 Verdi

4 Rossini

5 Handel

6 Haydn

7 Rachmaninov

8 Puccini

9 Paganini

10 Tchaikovsky

posted in Composers - 5 replies

R.I.P. Luc Ferrari

PollyMoller — Tue, 23 Aug 2005 17:20:17 GMT

This is a google translation with a few changes Jon Raskin and I made to make it more readable.

French composer Luc Ferrari died of a pneumonia in Arezzo, in Italy, where he was for the holidays, Monday August 22. He was 76 years old.

Luc Ferrari was not known to the general public, but his work in the fields of the "concrete music" (a term invented by Pierre Schaeffer, in 1948) for recorded sounds was admired by much for its singularity, its poetry, its variety.

Born on February 5, 1929, in Paris, Luc Ferrari initially studied piano. He studied composition with Arthur Honegger and Olivier Messiaen. But, like many young composers of the post-war period, he attended the summer courses in Darmstadt, Germany, the annual HQ of the serial avant-garde: "the great musical meeting, with John Cage, who exploded all these ideas which already started to become a little institutional."

His direction of humour and the provocation, its interventions in various fields - film, documentary, radio, musical theatre -, will not help to locate the precise place of this creator taken by some for a genious handyman. David Jisse, composer, man of radio and current directing of the center of musical creation the MUSE in circuit, that Ferrari founded in 1981, explains: "In fact, the first impression of ' do-it-yourself ', often raised, is contradicted by the analysis of its works, which reveals a precision diaboliquement rigorous with the service of an abstract and personal world to the doors of reality. It was permeable at its time, but always in a singular way."

In the foreword of the recording of its very beautiful part of 1999, Far-West News episode n° 1 (1 CD Radio-France/INA Signature), the result of a tour with a "micro traveller" in North-American south-west, the type-setter delivers a prayer to insert applicable to its whole work: "It is neither a report, neither a sound landscape, neither Hörspiel (part to be listened), neither electro work, neither portrait, neither an exposure of recording of reality, neither a transgression of reality, neither an impressionist narration, nor... etc. It is a composition (...) Ensuite I called that sound poem around a real voyage as well it may be as poetry plays with reality like accordion, that the composition in certain cases, especially in mine and gradually in my life, is a perverse play with the truth."

FUNDAMENTAL DISSENSION the estrangement between Luc Ferrari and Pierre Schaeffer, the founder of the Group of musical research, in 1958, will be resounding and founded on a fundamental dissension: "Schaeffer made an almost fundamental research task on the sound, it wanted to banish the direction. Ferrari, with its first great composition of music, known as "anecdotic", Hétérozygote (1963-1964), gained by sounds of reality, dismounted the ideal schaefférien ", declares Daniel Terruggi, current directing of Ina-grm. "For him, there were no categories. All the sounds could be useful. Its work is very varied, composed of small gardens, which it sprinkled regularly." The site of the GRM proposes an interactive listening of this fundamental part. Luc Ferrari, who was to write strictly instrumental music initially (in particular for the piano), will continue to associate "concrete" instruments and sounds. He will write also instrumental music "pure", as testifies some for example its History to the pleasure and desolation (1979-1981), a greediness (readily dévoratrice of the music of others) and to a vitality sound properly filling with enthusiasm. The musicologist and man of radio operator Daniel Caux, a close relation of Luc Ferrari, underline: "It was a creator impassioned by the observation of reality: the disorders of the body will be the source of inspiration of its two last works. Created on June 7 at the Lime-of-Bottoms, in Switzerland, the Asynchronous ones take into account its recent cardiac disorders while Morbido Symphony explores the range of the feelings related to the disease. Its last comment on this part is that it was going to be very funny."

posted in Composers - 3 replies

R. Murray Schafer

biomusicologist — Sat, 27 Aug 2005 18:15:04 GMT

From today's NY Times.....in case there are any other Schafer fans here.

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/08/27/arts/music/27patr.html

August 27, 2005

Mystic Composer in a Magical Forest

By COLIN EATOCK

HALIBURTON, Ontario, Aug. 25 - Richard Wagner had his Bayreuth, with its Festspielhaus specially designed to accommodate his music dramas. And now the Canadian composer R. Murray Schafer has the Haliburton Forest and Wildlife Reserve here.

At 72, Mr. Schafer is one of the few Canadian composers to have become known internationally. In the United States, his music has been performed by the Boston Symphony Orchestra and the St. Lawrence String Quartet. His choral music is popular in Scandinavia. He won the Prix International Arthur Honegger for his First String Quartet; and his 10th String Quartet, commissioned by Radio France, is to have its premiere in Paris in February.

These achievements affirm Mr. Schafer's position as a respectable contemporary composer. But beyond his concert works, there is another Murray Schafer: a mystical visionary who inhabits a nameless artistic category of his own creation. For 40 years, he has been writing a huge cycle of 12 music-theater works, collectively titled "Patria." Larger than Wagner's "Ring" cycle or Karlheinz Stockhausen's "Licht," this cycle challenges the boundaries of both music and theater.

Many of the component pieces - like "Patria 9: The Enchanted Forest," which opened a run of eight performances here on Wednesday evening - are unstageable in a theater and must be presented outdoors. To realize his dream of a "wilderness Bayreuth," Mr. Schafer has entered into an agreement with the forester and conservationist Peter Schleifenbaum to mount one "Patria" piece each summer over the next five years in Haliburton Forest, a 60,000-acre tract of land owned by the Schleifenbaum family.

If Mr. Schafer is a modern Wagner, has he found his King Ludwig II of Bavaria? Mr. Schleifenbaum, who was born and educated in Germany, readily grasps the comparison. "Well, first of all, I'm not a madman," he said, laughing. "But to be able to host Murray's work here is an honor. And certainly we'll do what we can to turn Haliburton Forest into the Canadian Bayreuth."

Mr. Schafer explained how the arrangement came about. "I told Peter that I wanted a lake, to start with," he said during a walk in the woods on Wednesday. "And he said, 'O.K., I'll give you a lake.' And I said, 'I want a road into the lake.' And he said, 'O.K., we'll build a road.' And I said that I wanted help creating the infrastructure for some of these pieces that we'll perform. And he said, 'Tell us what you want, and we'll see what we can do.' "

The Haliburton Forest, in central Ontario, is about 200 miles northeast of Toronto, on the southern edge of the vast Algonquin Park. It's far from any major urban area. But to Mr. Schafer, that's the whole point.

"There are some 'Patria' works that are for conventional theaters," he said. "But there are some other works that need a very large space - that make references to nature and that require a quiet environment."

He paused in a clearing and gestured with his hand at the landscape. "If this were to be our playing space, I would say: 'What can you do here? Can we use that shed over there? Can we use those trees over there? Are we going to use the moon? Are we going to use the sun? Where does it rise, and where does it set?' In 'The Enchanted Forest,' when Earth Mother says the sun is setting, it really is."

And so, on Wednesday, about 200 people arrived at Bone Lake, about five miles into the Haliburton Forest. Some were curious locals, some were fans who had driven up from Toronto, and one devotee had traveled from Brazil. "I am so fascinated by Schafer's mythological works," Marisa Fonterrada, a retired professor from São Paulo, said just as the performance began.

Guided along a trail cut through the bush, the audience encounters Earth Mother (Eleanor James, a mezzo-soprano) and other archetypal characters: White Stag (James McLennan, a tenor), Fenris the wolf (Timothy E. Brummund, a baritone) and Murdeth, an evil land developer intent on destroying the forest (Bradley Breckenridge, an actor). Leading the way on the dark, mile-long path is a group of children, seeking their lost friend Ariane (Zorana Sadiq, a soprano). Eventually Ariane is found, transformed into a birch tree.

Magical powers are at work in the forest, protecting it, and Murdeth's plan is foiled. In the final scene, Earth Mother appears on the lake, in a circle of lights, to announce that "the animals want to be your friends, not your slaves." The audience on Wednesday, talkative at the show's opening, left the scene two hours later in silence.

What the audience witnesses is brought about by a team of more than 100 people: singers, actors, musicians (often heard but rarely seen), two children's choruses and a small army of technical workers, operating sophisticated lighting and sound equipment in the wilderness. Mr. Schafer's works are put on by what is, essentially, his own company: Patria Music/Theatre Projects. Joseph Macerollo, the producer and an accordionist, said the budget for "The Enchanted Forest" was about $300,000.

After four decades of creating "Patria," Mr. Schafer has become many things to many people. He has been called an "acoustic ecologist," a sociologist, a visual artist, even a poet. Like Wagner, he writes his own librettos. Musically speaking, he is a stylistic chameleon, with a penchant for delicate and subtle shadings of timbre: in this respect, he could be compared with George Crumb or Toru Takemitsu.

Virtually all of his music is programmatic - "about" something, in some way - and the "Patria" cycle, he has written, is about "the quest for unity and the homeland." For inspiration, he has drawn freely on a wide variety of world mythologies. "Patria 8: The Palace of the Cinnabar Phoenix" (scheduled for performance at the Haliburton Forest next summer) is his "Chinese" piece; "Patria 6: Ra," an "Egyptian" one.

"Patria 7: Asterion," the only part of the cycle not yet finished, is based on the Cretan myth of the Minotaur. When completed, it will be staged in a labyrinth.

Throughout the cycle, characters migrate from one work to another. Sometimes Fenris is simply called Wolf or is thinly disguised as Theseus or Anubis. Ariane is also constantly present, as Ariadne or even the Moon.

The most radical "Patria" work is the cycle's epilogue, "And Wolf Shall Inherit the Moon" (also known as the Wolf Project), a mysterious weeklong event that takes place deep in the forest every summer, attended only by selected observer-participants. This is for hard-core Schaferites, some traveling here from the United States, Europe and South America, and predates the five-year agreement.

On the subject of the epilogue, Mr. Schafer tends to be coy. "What we've done in the Wolf Project," he said, "is what happens when you live in a small tribal society for a short time and create your own culture. You can sit around the campfire and drink beer. Or you can say no beer and create your own song repertoire. Everyone can create a song or a rhythm or something, and that's what we do."

posted in Composers - 0 replies

R.I.P. Robert Moog

PollyMoller — Mon, 22 Aug 2005 19:04:40 GMT

ASHEVILLE, N.C.
August 21, 2005
Bob died this afternoon at his home in Asheville, N.C. He was 71. Bob was diagnosed with brain cancer (glioblastoma multiforme or GBM) in late April 2005. He had received both radiation treatment and chemotherapy to help combat the disease. He is survived by his wife, Ileana, his five children, Laura Moog Lanier, Matthew Moog, Michelle Moog-Koussa, Renee Moog, and Miranda Richmond; and the mother of his children, Shirleigh Moog.

posted in Composers - 3 replies

Happy Birthday, Karlheinz

biomusicologist — Tue, 23 Aug 2005 05:26:10 GMT

Today is Stockhausen's 77th Brithday....so I just had to listen to Kontakte.

http://www.andante.com/article/article.cfm?id=25366

There have been many others which have come to his attention. "An American producer who produces what he calls 'plunderphonics' wrote to me, saying that he had made quite a lot of money by mixing my music with pop music of all kinds and making new CDs. I didn't really know how to react. I didn't want to hurt him."

Stockhausen did write back, though. He told the plunderphonic king it was better to make something new. Other CDs he is sent just make him laugh.

One came from a young Hamburg band who had written a song about him and Bill Gates getting stuck in a lift together. "That's what they sing," he chortles. "They sing about a fight with Bill Gates in an elevator. It was very funny."

Stockhausen has never met Bill Gates and nor, despite repeated attempts, did he ever meet The Beatles. They were all joined in cardboard, however, on the cover of the Sgt. Pepper album. Stockhausen is sandwiched between Lenny Bruce and W. C. Fields, his vacant stare suggesting he might have a hand on Mae West's backside.

"Oh yes, I think they had the discs," he says when I mention the Sgt. Pepper homage and The Beatles' citing of him as an influence. "I would have liked to have met them. I was invited to by their manager. I had a few phone calls with him. We wanted to do joint concerts in London, but then they went to the States. Then John Lennon was shot. So it didn't happen."

However or whenever The Beatles discovered Stockhausen, there's no doubting the influence his music had on them. Paul McCartney has talked about his admiration for the 1955 piece Gesang der Jünglinge and John Lennon openly admitted that 1967's Hymnen ("Anthems") was the inspiration for "Revolution No. 9", from The Beatles' White Album.

Today, of course, Paul McCartney sings "The Frog Chorus" and gets booked as the half-time entertainment in the Super Bowl. Stockhausen, 15 years his senior, appears alongside The Fall at left-field Scottish rock festivals and continues to scrape away at our understanding of sound. So it seems appropriate, in a way, that he should have outlived Sutcliffe, Lennon and Harrison. The modernity of The Beatles faded, but you sense that Stockhausen's never will.

I ask him if he thinks about death.

Every day, he says. What does he think is beyond it? He laughs. "I will see. But this morning I saw, for the first time since last year, about 200 crocuses opening up. I said to Kathinka, who was standing next to me: 'This is how it will be when I die.' " Life is a cosmic adventure, he says.

"This life is like being imprisoned in a body, in a house, in a country. But then after this life, I expect to see a much broader view. A whole new scale of things."

posted in Composers - 0 replies

composition/improvisation/composition

looppool — Sun, 07 Aug 2005 04:40:19 GMT

Schoenberg is credited with saying
"All composition is just very slow improvisation."

for the past five years I've been obsesses with reversing the equation by performing all improv shows without anything preset.

I've been going on the assumption
that

"Improvisation is very fast composition"

I love it when an audience member is astonished that the performance I just made was not thought out ahead of time.

what do you guys think of this approach and it's potential limitations or
assets?

posted in Composers - 9 replies

Something useful, if you exchange files between Sibelius and Finale

biomusicologist — Thu, 11 Aug 2005 21:16:23 GMT

Quite handy if you work in a mixed Finale/Sibelius environment and need to translate files.

Subject: Recordare Releases Dolet 3 for Finale

Recordare Releases Dolet 3 for Finale

LOS ALTOS, CA (August 11, 2005) - Recordare LLC, an Internet music software and publishing company, has released version 3 of its Dolet plug-in for the Finale music notation program. Dolet 3 for Finale read and writes MusicXML 1.1 files for the highest-fidelity translation available between music notation programs. Dolet 3 also includes batch translation features to automate the process of moving music notation files from one program to another. Dolet 3 supports Finale 2000 to 2006 on Windows and Finale 2004 to 2006 on Macintosh OS X.

Recordare's Dolet plug-ins serve as "universal translators" between music notation programs. While Finale 2006 and Sibelius 4 both read MusicXML 1.1 files, Dolet 3 for Finale is the first program that can write MusicXML files that include the new 1.1 formatting features. This provides better file transfer between Finale, Sibelius, and the many other programs that support the MusicXML format.

"Dolet 3 for Finale sets a new standard for high-fidelity exchange of music notation files," stated Michael Good, CEO of Recordare LLC and the inventor of the MusicXML format. "The formatting and batch features in Dolet 3 have long been requested by our customers. We expect the release of Dolet 3 to speed the adoption of MusicXML 1.1 throughout the music software industry."

The MusicXML format works with over 40 different programs running on
Windows, Macintosh, and Linux systems, including:

- Notation programs such as Finale 2006 and Sibelius 4
- Scanning programs such as SharpEye Music Reader and PhotoScore
Professional
- Electronic music stands for organ and piano
- Sequencers
- Algorithmic composition programs
- Programs to create play-along CDs
- Tablature editors

This combined support makes MusicXML far and away the most widely adopted music notation format since MIDI.

Dolet 3 for Finale is available for US $119.95 direct from Recordare at:

http://store.recordare.com/dolet3fin.html

Upgrades from Dolet for Finale 1.5 and 2.0 are available for US $69.95
and $49.95 respectively.

For additional information, please contact Michael Good at:

Recordare LLC
PO Box 3459
Los Altos, CA 94024
USA

Toll-free: (866) XML-NOTE or 965-6683
International: +1 (650) 965-7267
info@recordare.com
www.recordare.com

-----------------------------------------------------------------------
----- To unsubscribe, send a blank message to
recordare-announce-off@recordare.com

posted in Composers - 0 replies

Sibelius question

PollyMoller — Wed, 03 Aug 2005 03:39:43 GMT

Hi gang.
Can anybody help me with repeat bars?
I have a lot of repeated patterns in my flute quartet and the players would like them made into repeat bars.
I can get Sibelius to make a whole bunch of single repeat bars, but no grouped repeat bars (like a repeat bar sign with an 11 over it). If it's in the manual I'm not finding it.
Anybody know how to do it?
Thanks...

posted in Composers - 3 replies

"...but there is only one Henry" (Cowell)

biomusicologist — Wed, 03 Aug 2005 07:06:35 GMT

Lately I've been reading "Henry Cowell: Bohemian" by Michael Hicks, and thought I'd share an interesting passage. As follows:

Cowell's gateway to academia was opened by one man: Lewis Terman, a Stanford psychologist who considered Cowell one of the greatest geniuses he had encountered. Terman was among the first psychologists who tried to document the phenomenon of "genius" itself, an exceptional gift of the intellectual or intuitive insight, the idea of which had a long history in Western Culture. Renaissance writers applied the term "genius" to men fitted by nature to acquire superior knowledge or create sublime art. Successive generations embellished this notion of genius, characterizing a "genius" as a person naturally set apart from his or her peers and unaccountable to common rules of thought and behavior. Such a person needed no schooling, as Edward Young wrote in one of the first books on the subject: "to the neglect of learning, genius sometimes owes its greatest glory" (1759). Rather than needing to study the genius himself should be studied, and in the early twentieth century some scholars undertook to do so in a scientific way.

In 1906 at Clark University, Terman completed his doctoral thesis, "Genius and Stupidity: a Study of the Intellectual Processes of Seven 'Bright' and Seven 'Stupid' Boys." In this work Terman used methods of intelligence testing resembling those developed by Alfred Binet in France. At the conclusion of the thesis, Terman wrote that his work had "strengthened my impression of the relatively greater importance of 'endowment' over 'training', as a determinant of an individual's intellectual rank among his fellows." But during the next four years, Terman virtually retired from such matters. He was weakened from tuberculosis and fit for academic work only in a salubrious climate - like California's. When a former classmate of Terman's was offered an assistant professorship at Stanford in 1910, he declined but recommended Terman. Upon being hired, Terman immediately began a new research project, a study designed to measure the intelligence of hundreds of children.

When Terman asked his colleagues to help him find suitable children, education professor Percy Davidson recommended a neighborhood boy who was a janitor, one who had little parental guidance and was "a very free child." Terman found the boy, Henry, herding pigs in a field next to Terman's garden. He later described Cowell as he came to know him in 1910:

"As a boy of a dozen years, Henry's appearance was odd and interesting in the extreme. His speech was quaint, and rather drawled and stilted; his face was childish, but he looked at you with eyes that seemed utterly void of self-consciousness; his clothes were often ragged and always ill-fitting; his hair his ears and straggled down to his shoulders; his face and shoulders twitched occasionally with choreic spasms."

"Everybody considered Henry as queer, not to say freakish. If employed to weed a lawn he was likely to forget what he was doing while trying to compose and whistle a tune. His janitor work was hardly more successful."

For almost two years Terman and a graduate assistant kept Cowell "under our observation" while they worked on a revision of the Binet-Simon intelligence test scales.

In the fall of 1911, Terman tested Cowell's intelligence. The young man had to demonstrate his vocabulary - which Terman measured at an extraordinary 15,500 words - his ability to make sense of an incomplete story by filling in the missing words, and his skill at interpreting Aesop's fables. He also had to draw in a circle the path he would take to find a missing ball among tall weed. All of these tasks suited Henry well. His knowledge of literature was vast for a boy his age; in interviews with Terman he listed over three hundred books he had read before the age of fourteen. And Clarissa (Henry's mother), as Terman recalled, "talked with [Henry] endlessly, read to him occasionally [and] they discussed religion, politics, and matters of literature and art." In interviews with the boy, Terman made "bulky notes of extensive conversations which we had with him on such questions as socialism, atheism, scientific problems, etc." At the age of fourteen, Terman recalled Henry "discussed these matters with greater breadth of knowledge and much deeper understanding than the average university senior." Meanwhile, Henry was skilled in the art of finding things among weeds.

Nevertheless, Henry's ignorance of some subjects was "striking." He could do arithmetic only meagerly and his spelling Terman considered "wretched." Perhaps ill training in such rote matters led to Henry's somewhat disappointing test results: at fourteen years ten months of age Cowell possessed the "mental age" of just over nineteen. This was disappointing, at least to Terman, who thought that Henry should have scored higher; he remarked that "the limit of the [test] scale was inadequate to measure [Henry's] ability." In 1916 Terman devised the concept of "intelligence quotient," or "IQ," a number equal to the mental age of the child divided by the chronological age then multiplied by 100. Cowell's IQ was 132. "Although [that] IQ is satisfactory," Terman would write, "it is matched by scores of other among our record; but there is only one Henry." When Terman published his first book on the subject, he included his description of the young Cowell under the heading: "Henry, Illustrating the relative independence of IQ and schooling. Scientific ability overshadowed by musical genius. Extreme poverty."

posted in Composers - 0 replies

Ah, those were the days....

biomusicologist — Wed, 27 Jul 2005 22:13:35 GMT

...when people were really passionate about new music. Passionate enough to resort to fisticuffs and proudly sport their dueling scars in support of it.

From:

http://schoenbergseuropeanfamily.org/AS3_Pages/AS3_Chap2.html

One day in 1910, an article by the painter Max Oppenheimer appeared in the Viennese press in which he described how he had worked on his portrait of Arnold Schönberg, and then he went on to speak of a concert he had attended that featured the Maestro’s music. First came a short symphony, which the audience received with profound displeasure. "Aufhören! Gemeinheit! Ist das Musik? Tauber Esel! Schluß mit den Kakophonien! Schwindel! Humbug! Aus! Raus!" they yelled. (Stop it! A lot of cheek! Is this supposed to be music? Deaf ass! No more cacophonies! Fraud! Humbug! Finished! Out!) Then came a selection from the Gurrelieder. When it was finished, everyone began to applaud—gradually at first, but then it swelled into a regular ovation. Schönberg stood there, flabbergasted, as if he couldn’t believe his ears. But then, pushing his shoulder forward as he had done that morning while being painted, as if resisting an onslaught from the world, he said with an air of resignation, "Hörts, die klatschen. I’ glaub’ es is doch schlecht!" (Well, how do you like that? They’re applauding! Perhaps the piece is no good after all!).

Schönberg’s contempt for the Viennese concert-going public was not genuine, however. Actually, he was enormously grateful whenever that public showed even a glimmering of understanding, for in his eyes it meant that they might in time grow to like all of his music. The fact that he used the Viennese dialect in his remark rather than his usual Hochdeutsch (i.e., high or standard German) shows his relief and at the same time his pleasure. I believe I’m reading this correctly because my mother, Trudi, would also break into dialect whenever anything touched her heart.

Usually, though, in those early days, Viennese audiences pretty much rejected Schönberg’s new music outright and gave a somewhat cool reception to works by Berg and Webern as well. It is to Mahler’s credit that he stood up for them and other controversial "new" composers again and again, even though his own idiom was more traditional.

A good case in point is what happened at the Bösendorfer Concert Hall one evening when a work of Schönberg’s was performed and the greater part of the audience began whistling, booing, and shouting invectives. Mahler and some friends nearby countered by applauding as loudly as they could. Suddenly, Mahler became aware of a man sitting behind him who was hissing noisily. Turning around, Mahler shouted at the hisser: "Sie dürfen nicht zischen wenn ich klatsche!" (How dare you hiss when I’m applauding!). The man was quick to respond: "Beruhigen Sie sich, Herr Mahler, ich zische auch bei Ihren beschissenen Symphonien!" (Don’t worry, Herr Mahler, I also hiss at your shitty symphonies!)

Mahler, it should be remembered, was rather on the frail side and not in the best of health, but next to him sat his friend Josef Polnauer, who while not a musician at the time, was an enthusiastic supporter of the "new music" and a giant of a man. As soon as Polnauer heard what the hisser said, he jumped up, whirled round, and socked the fellow in the jaw. Stunned for a moment, the man ran out of the hall but then returned minutes later, brandishing a knife—which he thrust into Polnauer’s left cheek! The result was a huge scar that Polnauer carried—indeed, proudly carried—to the end of his days.

I remember it vividly—a deep cleft in his fleshy pink face—from a visit that my father and I (as a boy) paid him in Vienna in 1935. I also remember his huge, plump hands; it must have been no pleasure being bashed in the face with something like that. No wonder applauders liked to sit somewhere near Josef Polnauer at those early performances of the new music.

But the man was no ruffian. He simply loved music above all else. In fact, he was so intensely interested in "new" music and later in composition according to the Twelve Tone System that Schönberg accepted him as a student even though he had no prior musical training. And once in the Kreis, he learned quickly.

Polnauer was an official with the Austrian Federal Railways. I visited him again in Vienna with my Uncle Görgi in 1962, on one of my frequent trips back to Austria. By then he was wearing glasses with heavy lenses, and behind them his eyes looked like those of a fish peering out from its glass tank. The scar decorated his fleshy pink cheek, unchanged by the years.

Polnauer was a Jew and, like so many others, lost his job after the Anschluss. He remained in Vienna during the war and was able to survive, so he told me, thanks to his English teacher, who hid him in her home and provided sustenance for him with the help of Erwin Ratz, another member of the Kreis, who was a baker and restauranteur. After the war, Polnauer got his job back with the Austrian railroad and married the lady who had hidden him, with whom he lived happily ever after. Following his retirement from the Austrian Railways, he became a highly respected instructor of music theory, even though he had no formal training or certificate from a music school.

posted in Composers - 1 reply

The Great 'Babs' Santini

Fri, 06 May 2005 00:55:30 GMT

It behooves me to mention one of the great unsung geniuses of contemporary music, Babs Santini - Though few are familiar with this radical composer and acoustical theorist, she cast a gargantuan influence over all of 20th Century music, working with Henry Cowell and others - A brief but fascinating online biography (from which the following excerpt is taken) may be found here: http://www.ponderance.org/music/ISP_02.html

"Barbara Carmichaellis Alexandria Santini (1871-197?), known to scholars as Babs Santini, was a tone scientist, composer, theorist and visionary founder of the Institute for Sonic Ponderance. Born in Iowa, Babs moved with her family to Chicago in 1877, began taking piano lessons and reportedly was an instant prodigy (fig. 1), able to play pieces by Rachmaninoff by the age of six. A precocious child, Babs had already begun to look inward for her inspiration. In a letter to her brother, Babs' mother wrote, "The child is beyond the human imagination, she will spend whole mornings and afternoons, ten and twelve hours at a time simply playing notes at will. Notes which do not exist on any page! Her eyes roll back in their sockets as though she were epileptic and she hums uncontrollably in queer tones as she plays. It can sometimes frighten us. But it is the most beautiful, dramatic music I or Shebue [Babs' father] have ever heard." (fig. 2)

"In 1929, Babs embarked on a six year experiment involving giraffes as part of a project she helped to envision and develop for the Smithsonian Institution with composer and writer Henry Cowell. Cowell had planned a series of scientific tonal experiments (with the aim of contributing to the realm of natural science as well as for use in composition) as field recordings on site with various family groups of the animal kingdom. As he stated in his charter proposal for the government-funded project, "Due to her international reputation as a woman of great intensity, sharp scientific knowledge and unsurpassed understanding of the potential use of sound and its phenomena, it is my feeling that Dr. Barbara Carmichaellis Alexandria Santini is the most appropriate candidate for the role of field leader in the Mammalian and Reptilian Tone Study Project."..."

posted in Composers - 3 replies

The way you work...

PollyMoller — Fri, 24 Jun 2005 17:41:14 GMT

Do you crank things out in a matter of hours? Does music come to you slowly, over years, bit by bit? Are you good with deadlines? Do you have a huge collection of sketches that you can develop something out of at the drop of a hat? Do you wait until the last minute? Do you prefer to work in the morning, afternoon, evening, or do you pull all-nighters? What is your composing regimen?

posted in Composers - 6 replies

Any Other Sibelius Users?

Thu, 28 Apr 2005 09:02:01 GMT

So does anybody else here use Sibelius?

posted in Composers - 11 replies

podcast

Celeste — Fri, 01 Jul 2005 00:06:37 GMT

Hey folks,

My friend just started a new music podcast, which he intends to submit to itunes as soon as it hits critical mass. He's looking for interested folks to submit a tune. What he says about it:

"send me links to songs you wouldn't mind being posted on the
interweb in mp3 format. They can be full songs or clips.
The idea is once we have enough to hopefully get noticed on some
blogging forums, and get listed in iTunes, and therefore getting your
music, and your friends music noticed. This is really slick:

http://www.apple.com/podcasting/
http://euplastic.com/podcast/

PASS THE WORD!

david"

I think this is a good way to promote new musics, so FYI.

posted in Composers - 0 replies

A dream I had...

Sun, 24 Apr 2005 21:19:07 GMT

Well, I may get thrown outa this tribe for not taking things seriously, but I can't not mention this dream I had last night, in which Anthony Braxton accidentally ran over a raccoon with his car. Well, the good part is he didn't actually run over it, per se, he hit it and barely injured it and in fact rescued the poor critter. And when he told me about it, he took me out to his garage adjacent his home to show me, where he had the raccoon pent up in his station wagon temporarily. It was a huge beautiful raccoon, mostly white flecked with gray and a black stripe down its back (and the typical raccoon eyes)...

Braxton's Raccoon... Well, La Monte Young had his tortoise, Henry Cowell had his cat (pictured on the cover of one of his records) - So why not?...

But I admire both Braxton and Young for the extravagant titles they give their formidable compositions... We all have encountered the mostly untranscribable (using a conventional typographic keyboard) diagrammatic titles of A.B...

But who can top La Monte's epically poetic-cum-scientific efflorescences, such as...

"Map of 49's Dream The Two Systems of Eleven Sets of Galactic Intervals Ornamental Lightyears Tracery"

or...

"The Tortoise Recalling The Drone of The Holy Numbers as They Were Revealed in The Dreams of The Whirlwind and The Obsidian Gong and Illuminated by The Sawmill, The Green Sawtooth Ocelot and The High-Tension Line Stepdown Transformer"

or...

"The Symmetries in Prime Time from 288 to 224 with 279, 261 and 2 X 119 with One of The Inclusory Optional Bases: 7; 8; 14:8; 18:14:8; 18:16:14; 18:16:14:8; 9:7:4; or The Empty Base (1991-present), including The Symmetries in Prime Time When Centered above and below The Lowest Term Primes in The Range 288 to 224 with The Addition of 279 and 261 in Which The Half of The Symmetric Division Mapped above and Including 288 Consists of The Powers of 2 Multiplied by The Primes within The Ranges of 144 to 128, 72 to 64 and 36 to 32 Which Are Symmetrical to Those Primes in Lowest Terms in The Half of The Symmetric Division Mapped below and Including 224 within The Ranges 126 to 112, 63 to 56 and 31.5 to 28 with The Addition of 119 and with One of The Inclusory Optional Bases: 7; 8; 14:8; 18:14:8; 18:16:14; 18:16:14:8; 9:7:4"

Wrap your mind (or your tongue) around that one!

posted in Composers - 10 replies

What are you working on right now?

PollyMoller — Sun, 24 Apr 2005 20:48:21 GMT

I'm working on a commission from the Hiller Aviation Museum in San Carlos, CA. It's a flute quartet (2 C flutes, alto flute, and bass flute) called "Remove Before Flight". There will be a slow movement called "The Breeze" and a fast movement called "Takeoff".

posted in Composers - 19 replies

Arts in Space!

PollyMoller — Wed, 08 Jun 2005 13:51:51 GMT

Check it out!!!

The Arts Catalyst for the European Space Agency

DEVELOPING A CULTURAL POLICY FOR THE INTERNATIONAL SPACE STATION

The European Space Agency (ESA) has awarded the The Arts Catalyst in London a contract to carry out a 6-month study into possible future cultural utilisation of the International Space Station, in particular the European aspects of the station.

The International Space Station (ISS) - currently in orbit around the Earth - is our only permanent human habitation in space. It is a great achievement of human ingenuity and international cooperation, as well as a cutting-edge research facility. The European Space Agency is interested to open the International Space Station to a new community of artistic and cultural users. This new study sets out to investigate and focus the interest of the cultural world in the International Space Station, to generate a policy for involving cultural users in the International Space Station programme in the longer term and to develop a representative set of ready-to-implement demonstrator projects in arts, culture and media.

Under the lead of the Arts Catalyst (London, UK), the study team also comprises Association Leonardo- Olats (Paris, France) and Delta Utec (Leiden, Netherlands), with the MIR network, including Projekt Atol (Ljublana, Slovenia), SpaceArtOne (Paris, France), V2_Institute for the Unstable Media (Rotterdam, Netherlands), Transmediale (Berlin, Germany) and Mom (Barcelona, Spain).

Artists and cultural practitioners are being consulted on the features of the International Space Station and its ground-based support facilities, including launch sites, astronaut training facilities and national user support centres across Europe that would be of interest to them.

The European Space Agency believes strongly that the cultural world should have a say in the future of space exploration. In order to provide potential future cultural users with a context for their engagement with the ISS programme, the study also aims to examine and articulate the contemporary social and cultural significance of the space station in the broader context of human space exploration.

How to get involved

If you would be interested to contribute your ideas and responses, please email the study leader:

Nicola Triscott iss@artscatalyst.org

You will be sent information on the International Space Station and its ground-based facilities and a questionnaire.

posted in Composers - 1 reply

composer needs housing!!!

Tue, 07 Jun 2005 21:37:55 GMT

hello fellows -

I'm an SF composer, just finished my MM at the SF Conservatory of Music and will be looking for housing in August. I just moved out of my place in the Sunset and am spending the summer in Madison before heading back East for the Bang on a Can Summer Institute.

I'd prefer not to move back to the Sunset, but am interested in hearing about anything you might hear about - in-laws, studios, rooms, etc., preferably in the <$700 range.

thanks so much!!!

Ryan

posted in Composers - 0 replies

Any surprises lately?

Thu, 05 May 2005 19:37:20 GMT

I recently stumbled back into the symphonies of Bohuslav Martinu when part of the Fourth just came into my head after many years absence. I find this isn't uncommon for me, hearing things with new ears after perhaps decades. Then there's the stuff that just seems to roll from one way of hearing to the next without ever really going away.

A similar thing happened with Shostakovich ten years or so ago. Hadn't listened since I was a kid and suddenly... voom!

Anybody discovering or rediscovering something that's exciting the composer in them these days? (Not constant inspirations or models: things that popped out of nowhere.)

posted in Composers - 2 replies

TV themes

PollyMoller — Mon, 02 May 2005 13:46:28 GMT

It's all about setting the mood in a short time.
Has anyone done TV work?
Here are three of my favorites. They really get the job done in a stirring, exotic and sensual way:

The original theme from "Profiler" by Angelo Badalamenti
The theme from "Nowhere Man" by Mark Snow
The theme from "La Femme Nikita", also by Mark Snow

posted in Composers - 5 replies

Extended techniques?

PollyMoller — Wed, 27 Apr 2005 19:43:20 GMT

Have you written extended techniques into your music? By this I mean techniques for producing sonorities on acoustic instruments and the voice that are outside the style expected by common-practice-period classical listeners. (If that sentence isn't so dry as to put you to sleep already.) :)

And if so, did you get performers who were already expert? Did you get performers who weren't, and had to learn the techniques for the performance? Was the audience hip to it, or were they surprised by what they heard?

posted in Composers - 4 replies

Unravelling Ravel

Thu, 28 Apr 2005 13:03:39 GMT

I was listening to Ravel's Piano Concerto (for 2 hands) just now and there's something just sublime about the orchestration. I think it's the fact that when he repeats himself, and he rarely does, it's always been changed somehow. Material is constantly being recycled and re-used. What does anyone else think about this French maestro?

posted in Composers - 0 replies

Varese & Zappa

Sat, 23 Apr 2005 19:43:04 GMT

Frank Zappa used to famously quote Edgard Varese in the liner notes to all the old Mothers of Invention records:

"The present-day composer refuses to die!" - Edgard Varese

So when Frank died, he arranged to have his body cryogenically frozen - And he now lies in cold storage in a casket with a plaque on top which reads:

"The present-day composer refuses to decompose!"

posted in Composers - 0 replies