PSNY

Weekly Playlist: Ann Cleare

by Ted Gordon on May 22, 2020, 2:01 p.m.

This week we're turning our ears to the music of Ann Cleare, a composer whose work explores new possibilities in instrumental, natural, musical, and experimental sound. Cleare works in concert music, opera, extended sonic environments, and hybrid instrumental design, often collaborating with performers to develop new modifications and techniques that probe the boundaries of musical performance.

1. I should live in wires for leaving you behind, Cleare's 2014 work for piano (two players) and percussion, evokes what the composer calls a "ball of wire": a "mammoth, tangled, metallic motion that spins relentlessly":

2. Dorchadas, Cleare's 2007 work for ensemble which takes its title from the Irish word for "darkness", here performed by the International Contemporary Ensemble:

3. Moil, Cleare's 2010 string quartet, which the composer describes in her program note as "of brittleness, of memory, of shards, of light, of changing, of seismology":

4. i am not a clockmaker either, Cleare's 2009 work for accordion and electronics, which "sets into motion a physical force which dissects the instrument into acute shards or material and reconstitutes it in a completely restructured manner."

Tags: Ann Cleare

Weekly Playlist: Kate Soper

by Ted Gordon on May 15, 2020, 9:09 a.m.

We continue our new Weekly Playlist series this week by featuring the work of Kate Soper, whose work often explores the sonic, narrative, and instrumental possibilities of the human voice. Soper's work is brimming with possibilities, and although her recent project The Romance of the Rose has been put on hold by the COVID pandemic, she has been producing weekly "Unwritten Operas", speculative works that are exemplary of her unbound imagination.

1. We start with Soper's IPSA DIXIT, which Alex Ross has called a "philosophy-opera." Translating roughly as "she, herself, said it," IPSA DIXIT is an evening-length work that contains many of Soper's foundational works from the 2010–2016, all of which can be performed individually or as a complete cycle.

2. Cipher, a 2011 work which forms the sixth movement of IPSA DIXIT, is often performed as a standalone piece. Originally composed for Soper herself and the violniist Josh Modney, Cipher is a fantastic example of Soper's interest in the narrative, instrumental, and sonic possibilities for the human voice. Soper has also made an instructional video with tips and techniques for the performance of this unique work.

3. Here Be Sirens, Soper's "brainy, baffling, consistently astounding" 2013 opera for three sopranos and piano. Also available in a shorter suite, this work "presents the daily life of three sirens, who kill time on their island as they await an endless procession of doomed sailors."

4. Wolf (2010) is one of Soper's instrumental works, for two pianists, serving as what she calls "a vivisection of the piano," commissioned by Yarn/Wire in 2010.

Tags: Kate Soper

Weekly Playlist: Michael Hersch

by Ted Gordon on May 8, 2020, 3:22 p.m.

PSNY continues its new, weekly Composer Playlist series this week by featuring the work of Michael Hersch, which the Baltimore Sun describes as having "great originality, daring, and disturbing power." Indeed, Hersch's works often explore the profound depths of human experience—as the New York Times describes it, Hersch's work is “viscerally gripping and emotionally transformative music ... claustrophobic and exhilarating at once, with moments of sublime beauty nestled inside thickets of dark virtuosity.” Hersch's music evokes many emotions particular to the current world crisis—and offers, perhaps, a necessary meditation on grief, loss, and ultimately the resilience of the human spirit.

1. Hersch's 2015 Violin Concerto, commissioned and premiered by the Saint Paul Chamber Orchestra and violnist Patricia Kopatchinskaja:

2. Das Rückgrat berstend, also commissioned and premiered by Hersch's longtime collaborator Kopatchinskaja in 2017, in which the violnist also speaks fragment of the poetry of Christopher Middleton, accompanied by cello:

3. Images from a Closed Ward, Hersch's 2010 string quartet commissioned by the Blair String Quartet, which responds to etchings by the artist Michael Mazur: