aworks :: "new" american classical music

aworks operational note :: aworks temporarily redefined #amadouetmariam

2013-05-23T21:04:21-07:00

I'm spending the upcoming US holiday weekend listening to the music of Amadou & Mariam.

So for now, the "a" in "aworks" stands for "African", "Amadou", and/or "Attractive." This means no music with violin, well, except for Teree La Sebin. Unfortunately,I can't find an online version of that song so here's a recommended album instead:

aworks sentences :: day five #tastemakers

2013-05-23T17:57:35-07:00

Hotel California

"For aspiring tastemakers, especially those who view themselves as evangelists rather than snobs, the good news is that the sheer volume of musical options (and the ease with which we can listen) will always make it possible to stay ahead of people with less free time to do so." Stephen Thompson via Tim Niland
"Much better than I anticipated—but I’m a sucker for this kind of thing:" Lucas Schleicher
'In high school, the only radio stations I wanted to hear were the ones that weren’t playing “Dreams” by Fleetwood Mac or “Hotel California” by the Eagles. I wasn’t in search of well-programmed radio stations that played the hits.' Sean Ross
"I didn’t even go to listen to most jazz groups anymore, because they were only playing the same musical licks that we played way back with Bird, over and over again; that, along with some of the things that Coltrane introduced, and maybe Ornette." Miles Davis via Thomas Patteson
"Godfrey Reggio and Philip Glass make a film together only once every decade, so yesterday's news that Reggio's new film will finally premiere at the Toronto International Film Festival on September 8th is a very exciting development." Richard Guérin

aworks sentences :: day four, bumping heads

2013-05-20T18:08:35-07:00

Milton Babbitt in Juilliard School of Music, 1999 (Wikipedia)

'Polish Folk Songs, inspired by song sung at his grandmother's funeral, juxtaposes fragments of southern Polish folk songs, allowing them to, in the words of the composer, "bump heads as well as to interact peacefully."' WQXR
"In fact, I think that will be its core (though probably implicit) value proposition: interacting with cool people that you don’t know, or don’t know that well." Josh Miller
"Right now, though, I'm all too painfully aware of all those composers who may be on your lists but who didn't make the 50 chapters of the guide, all of whom could have done: Milton Babbitt, Giacinto Scelsi, Mauricio Kagel, Steve Martland, Michael Gordon, Mark-Anthony Turnage, James MacMillan, Henryk Górecki, Krzysztof Penderecki, Howard Skempton, Julian Anderson, Christopher Fox, Michael Nyman, Salvatore Sciarrino, Christian Wolff, Sofia Gubaidulina, Jo Kondo, Richard Barrett, Frederic Rzewski, Paavo Heininen." Tom Service
"Nothing in the Los Angeles Philharmonic's repertoire calls for 135-ton trains." Mike Boehm
"Are there too many jazz/avant releases coming out these days?" Grego Applegate Edwards
"The opening strum is pure Duane Eddy, the deep swelling rumble that summons up vast empty geographic spaces, but the way the tremulous tone continues to reverberate sounds more like something out of Robert Moog’s workshop." Mark Weidenbaum
"Some point to religious fanaticism that sees music as a distraction from single-minded devotion." Sujatha Fernandes

aworks listening log :: the day the music stood still

2013-05-16T17:42:57-07:00

The Day the Earth Stood Still

Philip Glass Ensemble. Music in Twelve Parts (Orange Mountain Music)
Adele Anthony. GLASS, P.: Violin Concerto / Company / Prelude from Akhnaten (Naxos)
Bernard Herrmann. The Day the Earth Stood Still (Classic Records)
William Grant Nabore. American Piano Music of the 20th Century (Doron Music)
Chris Smith. Cabin Fever (Emperor Jones)
Disco Operating System. Ultrasonic Bath (Lotta Continua)
Bruce Brubaker. Glass Cage - Music for Piano by Philip Glass and John Cage (Arabesque Recordings)
Brad Lubman. Glassworks - Signal Live At (Le) Poisson Rouge (Orange Mountain Music)
Andrew Zolinsky. David Lang: This Was Written By Hand (Cantaloupe Music)

Rubhitbangklanghear Rubhitbangklangear (2010). Charlemagne Palestine + Z'ev

2013-05-12T10:48:00-07:00

Palestine: "i met z'ev in amsterdam!! i'd known him for 20 years before he suggested one day that we perform together, which we did at lem barcelona in 2007!! later after seeing and hearing the carillon at my studio in brussels he suggested that we perform and record together there, which we did in 2010!!"

Long and either unique or commonplace, not sure yet:

aworks sentences :: day three, now with italics

2013-05-10T19:26:10-07:00

Ocean's Eleven (Wikipedia)

"The party will begin with an announcement that our beloved Dave Skidmore, of Third Coast Percussion, has been (fake) murdered and it is up to the attendees to solve the mystery of his death."Arlene & Larry Dunn
"But from the orchestra's point of view, however, it's Sheherazade that's the delicate work." Daniel Wolf
"It’s a tribute to that wonderful Hollywood blockbuster Ocean’s Eleven (2001)." Sally Whitwell
" It seems reasonable, though, given the limits of human activity, that for every one of those plays there must be hundreds and thousands that have shorter runs." Charles Shere
" Both recently passed away and I’m very grateful I got a chance to speak with them about their music for Signal to Noise." Christian Carey
"We have so many choices and so much control over what we want to listen to and when, it’s sometimes hard to imagine a time when if you wanted to hear for favorite song, you stayed on alert waiting for it to come up in rotation." Evan Tucker
"Notable tracks I'm currently listening to. Newest additions at the top." Robert Gable

Italicization courtesy of aworks.

aworks sentences :: day two

2013-05-09T18:22:22-07:00

"In total, there are 53 channels now courting for cash, with very limited music content (for now)." Paul Resnikoff
"Musicians will now be able to collect gold plaques for songs that log 500,000 or more streams, platinum for those that top the 1 million mark and a multi-platinum honor for any that hit the 2 million figure." Randy Lewis
"Rdio New Releases by Genre 2013-05-06 · 360 genres." Glenn McDonald
"So I spent years just doing like picking exercises with a metronome just trying to get that hand up to speed because it was weaker." Mary Halvorson via Rodger Coleman
"Thick electronic tension that drones and seethes." Experimedia
"It was really a turning point for me, having the opportunity to really get inside Philip Glass’s music." Sally Whitwell

aworks sentences ::

2013-05-08T19:03:02-07:00

Ferruccio Busoni

'As the British critic Edward Dent wrote, “Busoni sits at the pianoforte, listens, comments, decorates, and dreams.”' Alex Ross
"That is to say that Strandberg often creates complex landscapes of rhythmically bracing music." Grego Applegate Edwards
“The world-class status of the Minnesota Orchestra is in serious jeopardy." Graydon Royce
"The crux of his corrective hinged on the proliferation of campiness as a default mode in current pop culture, ushered in by the near-simultaneous death of irony and the homogenization of the homo set and evident in the rise of various (implicitly inferior) camp mutations: reactionary camp, quasi-camp, conservative camp, bad straight camp." Eric Henderson
"This is especially the case for anyone who wants to know a lot about the human larynx." Chloe Veltman
"Even iTunes now has a "composers' view", albeit a clunky one, which they probably sourced from ASCAP and BMI." Helienne Lindvall
"Jesse Eric Schmidt does not use the scan button on his radio to search for something to listen to." Marc Weidenbaum

aworks listening log :: #nowwithhashtags

2013-04-28T17:56:27-07:00

Alvin Lucier

Jon Nakamatsu - Gershwin: 3 Preludes (harmonia mundi) #yes
Alvin Lucier - Still Lives (Lovely Music, Ltd) #humm
Kenneth Fuchs - String Quartet No. 5, 'American' - Falling Canons - Falling Trio (Naxos) #christopheroriley #delraystringquartet
Arditti Quartet - Lucier: Small Waves; Navigations For Strings (Mode) #stringy
Michael Gordon, David Lang, Julia Wolfe - Shelter (Cantaloupe Records) #dunno
Michael Daughterty - Mount Rushmore - Radio City - The Gospel According to Sister Aimee (Naxos) #americana
The Brian Jonestown Massacre - Food for Clouds ('a' Records) #preview
Christine McVie - Christine McVie (Warner Bros.) #disappointing

Baby Einstein on the Beach (2013). Philip Glass & Brooklyn Academy of Music

2013-04-26T18:56:28-07:00

Via Tyler Cowen, I'd pay to see this: