Cooking Up New Music with Timo Andres

by Ted Gordon on April 9, 2015, noon

Cooking and composing are more similar than you might think; in fact, a major treatise on Indian music, the Natyasastra, describes the quality of music as rasa, or taste—which is also the same word for gravy. 

Timo Andres is no stranger to cooking. As a composer of celebrated works for solo performers, chamber ensembles, and even orchestras, Andres is comfortable working with the instrumentalists—or ingredients—at hand. Andres was recently featured on xoxo cooks, a YouTube channel hosted by Adrienne Stortz, cooking up a delicious-looking steak salad, which is a great metaphor for his music: healthy and fresh, but also complex and satisfying. 

With that in mind, we'd like to feature four of Andres' works that have all been recently published on PSNY, all of which call for different ingredients. Mooring, for violin, viola, cello, and piano, is a short amuse-bouche, written as a musical offering for a wedding. Fast Flows the River, for cello and Hammond Organ, is a flowing, lyrical setting of the folk song, "Call John the Boatman," a healthy appetizer for what's to come. 

And now for the entrées: Austerity Measures, a percussion quartet, was commissioned and premiered by Third Coast Percussion; call it Andres' experimentation with molecular gastronomy. Freed from his "faithful anchor" of harmony, Andres experiments wildly with the possibilities of timbre, texture, and large-scale form, while still exploring echoes of J.S. Bach and other Western composers in the process. Andres' Piano Quintet, premiered by Jonathan Biss and the Elias String Quartet, is really the main course: a 22-minute reimagining of the Romantic piano quartet, here posed as a five-part, continuous development of characteristic ideas, reminiscent of Schubert's Piano Quintet. A meal-within-a-meal, this piece exemplifies Andres' impeccable taste in exploring the possibilities of classical instrumental ensembles within the context of contemporary music. 

Kamran Ince: Wild Territories

by Ted Gordon on April 9, 2015, 12:02 a.m.

Kamran Ince is no stranger to the classical: his music explores threads that are woven between both past and present, and also between America and Europe—a Europe that knows no boundaries between "East" and "West", but rightly includes Turkic and other Eastern cultures into its fold. His operas, such as "The Judgment of Midas," are a flowing, eloquent expression of the contemporary possibilities of classical form.

Felix Mendelssohn's "Songs Without Words" may be considered the height of German Romanticism: an attempt to distill the pure spirit of music down to melody, rhythm, and harmony, without the need for text. Ince has re-imagined this song cycle as "Songs In Other Words," which premiered in Germany in 2014; now, the German "Classical Band" Spark has released a new album that contains many of these reimaginings, arranged for their small ensemble. The album, entitled "Wild Territories", was released on Berlin Classics, and is widely available online. On PSNY, two versions of this song cycle are available: one for flute and clarinet, the other for recorder and melodica, both accompanied by violin/viola, cello, and piano.  

Anthony Cheung at the Cleveland Orchestra

by Ted Gordon on March 31, 2015, 9:57 a.m.

The Cleveland Orchestra, youngest of the "Big Five" American orchestras, has recently announced that PSNY composer Anthony Cheung will hold their 2015-2016 Daniel R. Lewis Young Composer Fellowship. Cheung, who recently moved to the midwest to be an Assistant Professor of Music at the University of Chicago, will not only be composing a new orchestral work for the orchestra—but will also be involved with educational programming throughout northeast Ohio. In addition, the Cleveland Orchestra will perform Cheung's Lyra in early 2016. 

Cheung's work shows a deep commitment to exploring the boundaries of pattern, form, and cohesion in composed music, while remaining intuitive, affective, and profound. Several of his works published by PSNY for ensemble showcase his intricate part-writing for small groups—such as Enjamb, Influse, Implode, and Centripedalocity. We look forward to seeing (and hearing!) how Cheung will use the forces of the Cleveland Orchestra to explore even further. 

For a peek into Cheung's compositional process for working with large ensembles, check out this 2012 interview with WNYC's John Schaefer: