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.

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: 

4. On the Threshold of Winter, a 2012 monodrama which saw a recent production at George Washington University, directed and performed by Ah Young Hong:

Weekly Playlists: Christopher Cerrone

by Ted Gordon on April 30, 2020, 11:54 a.m.

Life during COVID-19 has fundamentally changed the landscape of new music: at least for the time being, concerts, rehearsals, recordings, and composing have all been transformed into solitary activities, connected through technology. But in the spirit of connection and collaboration, PSNY wll be publishing weekly playlists of our composers' works, especially those that can be a source of healing, contemplation, and inspiration. 

To kick off our series, we begin with none other than Christopher Cerrone, whose music evokes an unparalelled poetic lyricism, both in his settings of poetry and his instrumental works. 

1. "Swept Up Whole," from The Pieces that Fall To Earth—Cerrone's 2015 song cycle commissioned by the Los Angeles Philharmonic, and recently recorded by Wild Up for New Amsterdam Records:

2. Goldbeater's Skin, for mezzo-soprano and percussion quartet, from 2017:

3. Meander, Spiral, Explode, Cerrone's 2019 Concerto for Percussion Quartet and Orchestra, commissioned and premeired by Third Coast Percussion, with the Civic Orchestra of Chicago:

4. Breaks and Breaks, Concerto for Violin and Orchestra, commissioned and premiered by the Detroit Symphony Orchestra in 2018: