Program Playlists 71-89
with links to the composer/performer's websites and to additional information appear usually within a day after broadcast

R. Murray Schafer: Deluxe Suite for Piano (1995) - Brigitte Poulin, pno - Centredisques CMCCD 12006 (2006)

Daniel David Feinsmith: Solomon (String Quartet #1) (2002) - Alexander Quartet (unreleased)
                                      Leviathan (2003) - David Holzman, pno (unreleased)

Linda Catlin Smith: Through the Low Hills (1994) - Andrew Smith, cello; Stephen Clarke pno - Artifact Music ART 024

Daniel David Feinsmith and the Feinsmith Quartet will be appearing at our Other Minds 12 Festival, December 8-10 in San Francisco.
See box on the right.

Per Nørgård: String Quartet #3 Three Miniatures 1959 - Qtet #4 Dreamscape 1969 ('Dreamscape', originally called "Quartet in three Spheres", is a 12- part composition for three string quartets, two of them recorded and played on tape as close and distant ones.) - Qtet#5 Inscape (1969; rev. 1988) -- Kontra Quartet - Kontrapunkt 32015

Linda Catlin Smith: With Their Shadows Long (1997)- Mark Sabat, vn, Stephen Clarke, pno
      Moi Qui Tremblais (1999) - Mark Fewer vn, Henry Kucharzyk, pno, Richard Sacks perc - Artifact Music ART 024 (2001)

Barbara Benary: Barang II - Steven Silverstein, Peter Thompson, Clarinets - New World Records 80646 (2006)

Per Nørgård: Violin Concerto "Borderlines" (2002) - Rebecca Hirsch, vn; Copenhagen Phil Orch, Girodano Bellincampi, cond - DaCapo 8.226014 (2003)

Per Nørgård: Late Summer Elegy for Cello Solo (1991) - Morten Zeuthen, cello - DaCapo/Marco Polo 8.224007 (1995)

Peter Sculthorpe: Mountains (piano) 1981, Night Song (vn, vc, pno) 1995, Irkanda I (vn) 1955, Djilile (vc, pno) 1986 - Verso CD 2036

Per Nørgård and Peter Sculthorpe will be appearing at our Other Minds 12 Festival, December 8-10 in San Francisco. See box on the right.

Henry Brant: Ghosts and Gargoyles (2001) - New York Flute Club, Robert Aitken cond & soloist - New World Records 80636 (2006)

Morton Feldman: For Stefan Wolpe (1986) -- (Read what Feldman wrote about Stefan Wolpe, his teacher, here).

Stefan Wolpe: Psalm 122 (1955) - Choir of St Ignatius of Antioch, New York City, Harold Chaney, cond. - New World Records 80550 (2000)

Jean-Claude Risset: Saxatile (1992) - Daniel Lientzy, sax. Electroacoustic Music from CCMIX, Paris Mode 98 (2001)

Gerard Pape: Le Flueve du Desir III (1994) for string quartet and UPIC - Arditti Quartet - Electroacoustic Music from CCMIX, Paris Mode 99 (2001)

Hirokazu Hiraishi: A Rainbow in the Mirror (1992) - Satoko Inoue, piano - HAT ART 103 (1997)

Jo Kondo: In Early Spring (1993), Tango Mnemonic (1984), High Window (1996) - Satoko Inoue, piano - HAT ART 135 (2001)

Ingram Marshall: Savage Altars (1991) - The Tudor Choir - New Albion NA 130 (2006)
Neil Rolnick: 3 Songs to poems of Philip Levine: Making Light Of it, Words, The Return - Peter Eldridge, voice - Innova 656 (2006)

Ned Rorem: Songs: Visits to Saint Elizabeth (Elizabeth Bishop) - Regina Sarfaty, mezzo
                             Spring and Fall (G.M.Hopkins) - Donald Gramm, bass
                             Spring (Hopkins) Phyllis Curtin, soprano
                             To You (Whitman) - Donald Gramm, bass
                             Youth, Day, Old Age, and Night (Whitman) - Charles Bressler, tenor
                              O You Whom I Often and Silenty Come (Whitman_ - Regina Sarfaty, mezzo
                             - Other Minds 1009 (1964/2006)

György Kurtag: Der Wahlen Weg, from Kafka Fragments - Juliane Banse, soprano; Andras Keller, violin - ECM New Series 1965 (2006)

Janis Mattox: Canto de Luna Llena - Katia Escalera, soprano; Stephen Harrison, cello; Matthew Edwards, piano recorded live in Pacifica, CA, May 2005 Good Sound

Jean Barraqué (1928-1973): Concerto (1968) - Ensemble 2e2m, dir Paul Mefano - Harmonia Mundi HMC 905199 (1987)

Igor Markevitch (1912-1983): Flight of Icarus (L'Envol d'Icare) (1932) - Arnhem Phil Orch, Christopher Lyndon-Gee cond - Marco Polo 8.223666 (1997)

David Lang: The Passing Measures (1998) for bass clarinet, amplified orchestra, and women's voices -
Marty Erlich, Birmingham Contemporary Music Group, members of the City of Birmingham Symphony Chorus
Paul Herbert, cond. - Cantaloupe CA21003 (2001)

David Lang on The Passing Measures

I think one of the reasons our commercial culture likes all music to be fast and snappy is because in fast music it is much harder to recognize the passing of time. You listen to the tunes, to the catchy phrases, but you are not allowed to feel just how time slips away. Fast music is stirring, optimistic - that is why we are bombarded all day by active, energetic music that tries to make us buy things or do things or think things. Slow music, on the other hand, is good for contemplation but is terrible for business, so you don't get much of it in your daily life. More and more I have become convinced that one of the noblest things you can do in a piece of "serious" music is to allow for an experience that can't happen in your everyday life.

The Passing Measures is that kind of experience.

My piece is about the struggle to create beauty. A single very consonant chord falls slowly over the course of forty minutes. That is the piece. Every aspect of the piece is on display, however - magnified, examined, amplified, prolonged. The soloist's notes are impossibly long, requiring frequent drop-outs for breath and for rest. The players are all instructed to play as quietly as possible, and then are amplified at high volume, in order to make their restraint an issue of the piece. Four percussionists scrape pieces of junk metal from start to finish, as if to accompany the consonance of the chords with sounds of dirt and decay.

The Passing Measures is dedicated to the memory of Bette Snapp

Michael Jon Fink: Veil for Two Pianos (1977) - Duncan Goodrich and Michael Jon Fink - Cold Blue CB0014 (2003)

Conlon Nancarrow: String Quartet #1 (1945),  Piece #2 for Small Orchestra (1986)
  Continuum Ensemble - Naxos 8.559196 (2005)

    String Quartet #1 (movements 1 & 3) - realized by Trimpin, pianola
    Blues (1935) - realized by Trimpin, Conlonpurple  -   Other Minds 1002 (2000)

James Tenney:   Ergodos II with Instrumental Responses (1964),   Chorale (1974)
                        -- Marc Sabat & Stephen Clarke - Hat Art 120 (1999)

Jim Tenney passed away on August 25th. He was 72. Friend and mentor to many composers, artists, musicians, and non-musicians, he was a guiding force in the avant garde since the early 1960's. See Kyle Gann's blog. And, I've got a story to tell too.

Also, video conversations with Jim, recorded last year, at New Music Box.

Melissa Hui:

Common Ground (1993) - Winnepeg Orch, Bramwell Tovey cond - unreleased
Common ground was commissioned by the Winnipeg Symphony Orchestra for performance at the New Music Festival in Winnipeg, Manitoba in 1994.

"It is a loud-hyper-kinetic fanfare, full of boisterous 'sound objects' that jostle for attention and elbow for 'air time'. In using materials that sound, in turn, primal and urbane, I aimed to create a musical quilt, a patchwork of inviolable musical entities whose diverse natures would be united, and by juxtaposition, strengthened, in a single, integrated whole."

Come As You Are (2000) for pipa and 9 instruments - Liu Fang, pipa; Gary Kulesha cond. Studio recording

And Blue Sparks Burn (2002) for violin and piano - Annalee Patipatanakoon, vln; Simon Docking pno

When Soft Voices Die (2000) for piano Lydia Wong, piano

Lacrymosa (1996) for soprano, clarinet, and piano - Aline Kutan, sop; Andre Moisan cl; Louise-Adree Baril, pno

"And blue sparks burn, a CD of my solo and chamber works, is available from the Canadian Music Centre web site. It contains my works: Lacrymosa, From Dusk to Dawn, One Voice, And blue sparks burn, Come as you are, When soft voices die and Changes. Centredisc release [CMC-CD 10605] "

San Rocco (1991) for oboe d'amore and SATB chamber choir and percussion - Lawrence Cherney, ob; Elora Festival Singers, Noel Edison, cond.

"The Charmer, by oboist Lawrence Cherney, is available from the Barnes and Noble or Amazon web sites. It contains my work, San Rocco for oboe d'amore, SATB choir, and chimes. Centredisc release [CMC-CD 5395] "

Barry Guy: FOLIO - Barry Guy, double-bass, Maya Homburger, baroque violin, Muriel Cantoreggi, violin, Munich Chamber Orchestra, Christoph Poppen, cond. ECM 1931 (2006)

Jo Kondo: HAGOROMO - Teresa Shaw, Mezzo, Tomoko Shiota, narrator, Sebastian Bell, flute, London Sinfonietta and Sinfonietta Voices, Paul Zukofsky cond. CP2 117 (2004)

Two significant new releases from ECM Records - New Series:

Giacinto Scelsi: Ave Maria*, Ohoi, Anagamin, Nattura renovatur, Alleluja* - Frances-Marie Uitti, cello solo*, Munich Chamber Orchestra, Christoph Poppen conductor - ECM 1963 (2006)

Tigran Mansurian: from Ars Poetica: Three Night Songs- Night, Insomnia, Anxiety  -  Armenian Chamber Choir, Robert Mikeyan, conductor - ECM 1895 (2006)

Second in a series from OgreOgress featuring previously unreleased works by emerging composers, this 96kHz|24bit Audio DVD (plays in any DVD player) contains 4 world premiere recordings and the only available release of 3 works by Morton Feldman. In this program we sample three works on this Audio DVD:

David Toub: mf (1997/2004)

Morton Feldman: Three Pieces for String Quartet (1956)

         - both performed by the Rangzen Quartet

David Beardsley: as beautiful as a crescent of a new moon on a cloudless spring evening (2004) - all four parts played by Christina Fong. Beardsley writes: "One day after dinner, Morton was sitting at the kitchen table having a taste of water, thinking about a carpet or two, when electricity discontinued. Sun set and awareness gradually changed to wonder as he saw the beauty of the crescent of a new moon on a cloudless spring evening passing by the windows. Many years later, Morton awoke on his couch from an afternoon nap. Venus, the cat, leapt off the window where she was sleeping permitting sunlight to pass through a glass reclining on a table. That is  he thought, as beautiful as a crescent of a new moon on a cloudless spring evening. This piece is tuned to the system known as Just Intonation, rational intervals from the harmonic series."

Remembering György Ligeti - Part Two

Loop - (1991?) Garth Knox, viola - Auvidis/Montaigne MO 782027 (1994)

Ramifications (1969) - Pierre Boulez, Ensemble InterContemporain - DG 423-244 (1988)

Double Concerto for Flute, Oboe, and Orchestra (1972) - London Sinfonietta, Aurèle Nicolet, Flute, Heinz Holliger, oboe, David Atherton, cond. - London 425 623 (1990)

Aventures for 3 singers and 7 instrumentalists (1962) - Pierre Boulez, Ensemble InterContemporain - DG 423 244 (1988)

Melodien for Orchestra (1971) - London Sinfonietta, David Atherton, cond. - London 425 623 (1990)

Remembering György Ligeti - Part One

Lux Aeterna (1966) - Choir of the North German Radio, Helmut Franz dir - DG 423 244 (1988)

Piano Concerto (1988) - Ueli Wiget, piano; Ensemble Modern, Peter Eötvös, cond. - Sony SK 58945 (1994)

String Quartet #2 (1968) - LaSalle Quartet - DG 423 244 (1988)

Further reading: New Yorker music critic Alex Ross's blog entry. Ligeti's publisher, Shott Music. The BBC's website. NPR's program with Alex Ross.