Composers
- Katherine Balch
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- Bernard Rands
- Katharina Rosenberger
- Joseph Schwantner
- Howard Shore
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- Stanislaw Skrowaczewski
- Elijah Daniel Smith
- Kate Soper
- Gregory Spears
- Morton Subotnick
- Dobrinka Tabakova
- Karen Tanaka
- Ken Ueno
- Stewart Wallace
- Shelley Washington
- Kurt Weill
- Scott Wollschleger
- Katherine Young
- Ellen Taaffe Zwilich
Blog Archive
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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
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(5 posts)
- Andrew Norman's "Play", Revised & Ready for Action at the LA Phil
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- Contemporary Piano Video Library features Lei Liang's "Garden Eight"
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- Ethan Iverson interviews Alvin Singleton on "Do The Math"
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- New Works by Kate Soper and Mario Diaz de Leon at the LA Phil
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- Lei Liang: Deriving Worlds
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(8 posts)
- Hannah Lash at the New York Philharmonic Biennial
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- World Premiere of Mario Diaz de Leon's "O Ignis Spiritus" by the TAK Ensemble
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- Awards Season for PSNY Composers
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- Alex Mincek Portrait Concert at Miller Theatre
- Ted Hearne Premieres "Baby (an argument)" with Ensemble ACJW
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- Marilyn Nonken Debuts Richard Carrick's "la touche sonore sous l'eau"
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- 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)
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- Ted Hearne's "Law of Mosaics" in Chicago; "The Source" CD Release
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- 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
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- New Works on PSNY: Wollschleger, Ueno and Cerrone
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- JACK Quartet and ACO Premiere New Alex Mincek Concerto
- Rufus Wainwright's "Prima Donna" on Deutsche Grammophon
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- Vijay Iyer Joins PSNY!
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- Opera News from PSNY Composers
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Newsletter
Weekly Playlist: Alvin Singleton
The music of Alvin Singleton, in the words of Kyle Gann, "glows with warmth, hovers in the air, paces itself with a glacial but palpably intuitive momentum." Coming of musical age in New York in the 1960s, Singleton emerged as a singular compositional voice, befriending fellow composer Carman Moore and attending New York University and Yale. After living and working in Europe for much of the 1970s, Singleton returned to New York where he continued to compose for orchestras, chamber ensembles, choral ensembles, and solo musicians. As Gann observes, Singleton's music often plays with speed, texture, and atmosphere, contrasting angular, frenetic voices with graceful, ethereal sections that often explore the extended range of musical instruments.
This kind of interplay is exemplified by Singleton's 1970 work for solo cello Argoru II, which forms part of Singleton's Argoru series of compositions for solo instruments. "Argoru", in the Twi language spoken in Ghana, means "to play". As Carman Moore writes,
"In Argoru II the composer constructs a world of "strange characters" for whom he seems to have created an original language which they use to scream out, cajole, shout, mumble, and chuckle. Single powerful shots alternate with long phrase ultra-soft scramblings. This is the theatre of sound."
Another standout work in the Argoru series is Argoru V/a, for bass clarinet, composed in 1978 for Harry Sparnaay and later revised in 2011. In an interview with the jazz pianist and composer Ethan Iverson, Iverson hears a resonance between this work and the soloing style of Eric Dolphy—one of the few Jazz greats that Singleton missed meeting at the Five Spot in the 1960s.
The breadth of Singleton's compositional imagination can be heard in his 1978 work for solo harpischord, Le Tombeau du Petit Prince. Dedicated to the eponymous protagonist of Antoine de Saint-Exupery's novella, this work was motivated by Singleton's desire to compose his music that "speaks equally to the humanity of all its listeners."
We'll end this composer playlist with Singleton's 2011 work for solo piano, In My Own Skin, whose title, to Carman Moore, "lets us know clearly where the composer is comfortable." But "Within that skin," as Moore notes, "are two competing sonic worlds." One graceful, glacial, almost chorale-like; the other "wild and quicksilver, both in tempo and rhythmic variety."