“That the Night Come – The Night Birds” by Donnacha Dennehy
Grá agus Bás
Nonesuch

“Stories of the Unknown” by Lukas Ligeti
Afrikan Machinery
Tzadik

“33 Samra Zabobra” by Carlos Stasi
The Persistence of Past Chemistries (Ethos Percussion Group)
The Orchard

“Tower” by Maryanne Amacher
Sound Characters
Tzadik

“Requiem” by Gavin Bryars
Cadman Requiem
Philips

“Black Angels – Return” by George Crumb
Black Angels: Kronos Quartet
Nonesuch

“September Canons” by Ingram Marshall
Ingram Marshall: September Canons
New World Records

“In Time Of” by Steven Sametz
Chanticleer: Colors of Love
Teldec

Minimalism is a frustratingly incorrect term for a compositional approach that developed in the second half of the 20th century and that, in hindsight, turns out to be the most important contribution the United States has made to the field of composition. “Minimalism” is a flawed term because most of the composers associated with it — notably Steve Reich and Philip Glass — reject it.

(from Today’s Zaman)

Well, that’s one way to look at it.

Composers are the last ones to want to be reduced to a label of any kind, so I’d be reluctant to base the validity of a label on their good opinion. I find that most composers reject *any* label put on them. Everyone wants to be a special flower, right?

“Ontslaan” by Larry Polansky
The World’s Longest Melody
New World Records

“Soundings for a New Piano” by Ann Southam
Ann Southam: Soundings for a New Piano
Irritable Hedgehog

“What a computer is to me is it’s the most remarkable tool that we’ve ever come up with, and it’s the equivalent of a bicycle for our minds.” – Steve Jobs

The world told you yesterday many times over that Steve Jobs has resigned his role as CEO of Apple. I couldn’t tell you anything about his legacy that hasn’t been already said, but I remember reading this quote many years ago and it has stuck with me. At first I took it as a clever phrase about how great technology is, but it’s really about an approach to your work.

When I think of what to achieve when creating something, this is my compass. I work to make bicycles for our minds.

It’s odd to think back on the time—not so long ago—when there were distinct stylistic trends, such as “this season’s colour” or “abstract expressionism” or “psychedelic music.” It seems we don’t think like that any more. There are just too many styles around, and they keep mutating too fast to assume that kind of dominance.

As an example, go into a record shop and look at the dividers used to separate music into different categories. There used to be about a dozen: rock, jazz, ethnic, and so on. Now there are almost as many dividers as there are records, and they keep proliferating. The category I had a hand in starting—ambient music—has split into a host of subcategories called things like “black ambient,” “ambient dub,” “ambient industrial,” “organic ambient” and 20 others last time I looked. A similar bifurcation has been happening in every other living musical genre (except for “classical” which remains, so far, simply “classical”), and it’s going on in painting, sculpture, cinema and dance.

We’re living in a stylistic tropics. There’s a whole generation of people able to access almost anything from almost anywhere, and they don’t have the same localised stylistic sense that my generation grew up with. It’s all alive, all “now,” in an ever-expanding present, be it Hildegard of Bingen or a Bollywood soundtrack. The idea that something is uncool because it’s old or foreign has left the collective consciousness.

I think this is good news. As people become increasingly comfortable with drawing their culture from a rich range of sources—cherry-picking whatever makes sense to them—it becomes more natural to do the same thing with their social, political and other cultural ideas. The sharing of art is a precursor to the sharing of other human experiences, for what is pleasurable in art becomes thinkable in life.

(from Prospect magazine)

Unless he means the established classical literature, he’s way off base here.

“Music for Horns, Pianos and Cymbals” by John McGuire
John McGuire: Works for Instruments
Edition RZ

“Lush Intrinsic” by Dan VanHassel
The Electro-Acoustic Piano, Volume I
self release by pianist Keith Kirchoff

“Dream” by John Cage
3 Compositions by John Cage
Winter & Winter

1. “September Canons” 13:17
by Ingram Marshall
September Canons
New World

2. “The Planets – Venus” 7:03
by Kyle Gann
The Planets
Meyer Media

3. “Apple Blossom” 7:17
by Peter Garland
The Persistance of Past Chemistries
The Orchard

1. “Earth Seen From Above” 7:35
by Meredith Monk
Atlas
ECM

2. “The Durham Strike” 5:25
by Howard Skempton
Pianoworks
Legacy Recordings

3. “A Traveller’s Dream Journal – Setting B” 9:30
by David Behrman
Leapday Night
Lovely

4. “The Channel” 9:25
by Christopher Roberts
Last Cicada Singing
Cold Blue