Composers
- Marcos Balter
- Robert Beaser
- Gavin Bryars
- Richard Carrick
- Christopher Cerrone
- Anthony Cheung
- Ann Cleare
- Douglas J. Cuomo
- Mario Diaz de Leon
- Joe Duddell
- John Duffy
- David Felder
- David Brynjar Franzson
- Beat Furrer
- Erin Gee
- Annie Gosfield
- Ted Hearne
- Michael Hersch
- Lee Hoiby
- Kamran Ince
- Vijay Iyer
- Pierre Jalbert
- Phil Kline
- Adrian Knight
- Mary Kouyoumdjian
- Joan La Barbara
- Hannah Lash
- Fred Lerdahl
- Lei Liang
- Wang Lu
- Keeril Makan
- Steve Martland
- Alex Mincek
- Andrew Norman
- Gabriela Ortiz
- Stephen Paulus
- George Perle
- Tobias Picker
- Matthias Pintscher
- Bernard Rands
- Katharina Rosenberger
- Joseph Schwantner
- Howard Shore
- Alvin Singleton
- Stanislaw Skrowaczewski
- Kate Soper
- Gregory Spears
- Morton Subotnick
- Karen Tanaka
- Ken Ueno
- Stewart Wallace
- Scott Wollschleger
- Katherine Young
Blog Archive
20192018- ▼December (2 posts)
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- Alvin Singleton's "Sweet Chariot" at the National Museum of African American History & Culture
- Joan La Barbara Performs "Music for Merce" in Minneapolis & Chicago
- Praise for Kate Soper's "Ipsa Dixit"
- Æolus Quartet Performs Keeril Makan's "Washed by Fire"
- Mario Diaz de Leon Premieres "Sacrament" with Talea Ensemble
- Ann Cleare's "eyam v (woven)" Premieres at RTÉ National Symphony Orchestra
- Music from Copand House: Pierre Jalbert, "Secret Alchemy"
- Kettle Corn New Music Presents Scott Wollschleger's "Brontal Symmetry"
- Third Coast Percussion Premieres Christopher Cerrone's "Goldbeater's Skin"
- Anthony Cheung in Residency at 113 Composers Collective
- Kate Soper's "Ipsa Dixit" Premieres at Dixon Place
- ▼January (4 posts)
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- ▼October (5 posts)
- Andrew Norman's "Play", Revised & Ready for Action at the LA Phil
- Ann Cleare's "eyam ii" Premiered by Argento Ensemble
- Contemporary Piano Video Library features Lei Liang's "Garden Eight"
- Ted Hearne's "The Source" in Los Angeles and San Francisco
- Ethan Iverson interviews Alvin Singleton on "Do The Math"
- ▼September (6 posts)
- New Works by Kate Soper and Mario Diaz de Leon at the LA Phil
- Lerdahl and Carrick Performed by Sound Icon in Boston
- Yale Choral Artists Perform Hannah Lash's "Requiem"
- Ann Cleare's "Mire |...| Veins" at the Festival of New Trumpet Music
- Ted Hearne: Sounds from the Bench
- Erin Gee Featured at the Resonant Bodies Festival
- ▼August (1 posts)
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- Lei Liang: Deriving Worlds
- Pierre Jalbert's "Howl" Recorded by Pro Arte Quartet
- Gregory Spears' "Fellow Travelers" Premieres at Cincinnati Opera
- New Releases of Morton Subotnick's Works for "Ghost Electronics"
- Timo Andres' "Comfort Food" in New York
- Anthony Cheung's "Dystemporal" Now Available from Wergo
- ▼May (8 posts)
- Hannah Lash at the New York Philharmonic Biennial
- Jennifer Koh's "Shared Madness"
- World Premiere of Mario Diaz de Leon's "O Ignis Spiritus" by the TAK Ensemble
- Hannah Lash's "Beowulf" Premiered by Guerilla Opera
- Josh Modney in the PSNY Greenroom
- Alex Mincek: "On The Outside, Looking Out"
- Awards Season for PSNY Composers
- Upcoming Performances of Wollschleger, Cerrone
- ▼April (4 posts)
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- Christopher Cerrone's "High Windows" on Q2 Music's "LPR Live" Podcast
- "In The Chamber" with Kamran Ince, Pierre Jalbert, and Christopher Cerrone
- Alex Mincek Portrait Concert at Miller Theatre
- Ted Hearne Premieres "Baby (an argument)" with Ensemble ACJW
- Kate Soper's OITOITOI Premiered by Ogni Suono Duo
- Marilyn Nonken Debuts Richard Carrick's "la touche sonore sous l'eau"
- ▼January (7 posts)
- Kate Soper Profiled on NewMusicBox
- Timo Andres at the Phillips Collection
- Sleeping Giant at Carnegie Hall and Le Poisson Rouge
- Josh Modney Performs at Spectrum NYC
- Lei Liang Performed by the Mivos Quartet
- Gregory Oakes Performs Ken Ueno at the 2016 New Music Gathering
- PSNY Remembers John Duffy (1926-2015)
- ▼December (3 posts)
- ▼November (7 posts)
- Ted Hearne's "Law of Mosaics" in Chicago; "The Source" CD Release
- "The Branch Will Not Break" at Present Music
- Two New Works by Timo Andres
- Soper, Lash, and Pintscher Performances on the East Coast
- Sound Icon Performs Ken Ueno's "Zetsu"
- Andrew Norman Premieres "Switch" at Utah Symphony
- PSNY Around America
- ▼October (8 posts)
- New Works on PSNY: Wollschleger, Ueno and Cerrone
- New Works and Performances by Ann Cleare
- Hannah Lash Premieres Two Works with ACO and Ensemble Intercontemporain
- Keeril Makan's "Persona" Premieres at National Sawdust
- JACK Quartet and ACO Premiere New Alex Mincek Concerto
- Rufus Wainwright's "Prima Donna" on Deutsche Grammophon
- New Works by Timo Andres on PSNY
- Vijay Iyer Joins PSNY!
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- Opera News from PSNY Composers
- Introducing the PSNY Greenroom
- "Invisible Cities" named 2014 Pulitzer Prize Finalist!
- New Works from Evan Ziporyn, Lei Liang, René Leibowitz, Christopher Cerrone, and Hannah Lash
- The British Are Coming! To PSNY!
- A Keeril Makan Premiere, Conducted by Richard Carrick
- Tobias Picker on Tzadik Records
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Newsletter
Scott Wollschleger's "American Dream"
What is an American dream? Blue skies, the open road, a sense of freedom, optimism for the future? Those are the objects of desire in so many American narratives; but in a dream, the valence of those objects, their interrelation, is radically called into question. Indeed, we might ask: what is an American dream—what is the American dream—in 2019? What can it tell us about ourselves? What makes a dream different from reality? Or: how are the two alike?
Scott Wollschleger's forthcoming album on Canteloupe Music, American Dream, is a recording of that eponymous work along with two related pieces, performed by Bearthoven (Karl Larson, piano; Pat Swoboda, double bass; Matt Evans, percussion). Wollschleger began composing the piece in the winter of 2017, responding directly to the political upheavals of the previous November; he felt, he says, like he was suddenly and violently removed from the bubble in which he was living. Responding to that adjustment, he turned to abstraction: pitch pipes became the goofy, campy, cheap representation of national politics; in his studio, Wollschleger explored the piano, bass and a variety of percussion instruments to notate the feelings of political abjection, expressed in cinematic, short sections, each flashing like a semi-conscious aural dream.
Part of the affective power of American Dream is that its affect is radically undefined: is it mournful? Hopeful? What do its repetitions mean? What does it mean to be embraced by a strange new world of pitch and timbre, only for it to immediately evaporate and re-appear in slightly altered form?
American Dream is book-ended by Gas Station Canon Song and We See Things That Are Not There, two works that emerged from the compositional material of American Dream. In this sense, this is at once a work and a kind of "concept album:" the album art, beautifully created by photographer Jamie Boddorf and designer Mariah Tarvainen, evokes the blues and oranges of the American Dream, the horizon that signals both beginning and end.
As Wollschleger's frequent collaborator Anne Leilehua Lanzilotti writes,
Is it a love song? A mis-remembered nostalgic anthem? A quiet, hopeful fanfare? A frightened obsessive meandering? In allowing ourselves to be truly vulnerable we can connect with each other, even if only for a moment. Or perhaps we see things that are not there.
American Dream will be released on February 8th, and will be celebrated with an album release performance at the Tenri Cultural Institute in New York. Preview the first movement of this work below:
Katharina Rosenberger's "Folds" at National Sawdust
Katharina Rosenberger has had a busy winter: in December, her Modules was performed by the Ensemble KNM Berlin at the Heroines of Sound Festival; and in January, Rosenberger, the violinist Miranda Cuckson, and the media artist John Burnett premiered Folds at National Sawdust's FERUS Festival.
Folds begins from the cantata "Sino alla morte," composed by 17th-century composer-performer Barbara Strozzi, and interweaves that composition with new music for violin and electroacoustic sounds made by Rosenberger, accompanied by Burnett's projection work; the sounds are "folded" together, often quite literally, with the sounds of paper—manuscripts, sculptures, scraps, sometimes placed between the violin's strings themelves.
Continuing this busy season, Rosenberger will see her 2013 work Gesang an das noch namenlose Land [Song for the yet nameless land] performed by Ensemble Contrechamps in Geneva and Sion, Switzerland. This work, made in collaboration with New York-based artist Abdolreza Aminlari, explores Amerigo Vespucci's 1503 publication, "Mundus-Novus," written discussing his travels to the "new world." Check out a recording of the work below.
Vijay Iyer Premieres "Crisis Modes" at LA Phil
Vijay Iyer has long questioned the stylistic, disciplinary, and political boundaries between the worlds of classical music and jazz—boundaries that have been in flux for nearly a century. It's no surprise, then, that Iyer was asked by none other than Herbie Hancock to contribute a new composition for a concert program entitled "The Edge of Jazz," to be performed on January 15th by the LA Phil New Music Group as a part of the LA Phil's Green Umbrella Series. Iyer's contribution to this concert, entitled Crisis Modes, compliments other new works by other luminaries such as Hermeto Pascoal, Tyshawn Sorey, Kamasi Washington, Billy Childs, and Hitomi Oba.
To compose Crisis Modes, Iyer began with a piano improvisation, which he then orchestrated for strings and percussion. This is unusual for Iyer, although he has spent his career both improvising, composing and orchestrating; in this work, he writes that he hopes to make music both for "now" (improvisation) and "tomorrow" (composition). Iyer writes:
Crisis Modes offers a version of the present in which we call each other to action, push through a haze of denial, and organize ourselves as a coherent, constructive oppositional force. I don’t exactly know what that sounds like, but I can at least imagine how it feels, so this piece is my attempt to trace that affective landscape.
For an intimate look at Iyer's writing for strings and piano, check out his Mutations I–X, which he originally composed for the ETHEL string quartet, here performed by Iyer and the Brentano Quartet in 2014: