‘Fifty for the Future’ is now in its second year, and the Kronos Quartet’s founder David Harrington talks about the project and the quartets goals. Read More
Nadia Sirota: New Music's Most Articulate Ambassador
Contemporary classical music’s best friend, violist Nadia Sirota has a residency at Symphony Space and a new album on the way. Porter Anderson in ThoughtCatalog.com’s #MusicForWriters. Read More
#MusicForWriters: Tristan Perich's Percussionists, Human And Not
‘Blur And Back Again’ When composer Tristan Perich puts his work Parallels on its feet, one of the results is something that Q2 Music’s Hannis Brown correctly identifies as familiar to distance runners: the play of endorphins in an athlete’s sensory fields. Brown writes: It’s music to which any runner can relate. Parallels‘s architecture melts from distinct texture… Read More
#MusicForWriters: Laura Karpman ’s ‘Your Mama’
‘A Conversation Between Black And White America’ In one of the most effective instances of a difficult form to pull off, composer Laura Karpman lets you know from the first moment that she’s got this under control. Her full-album 12-part treatment opens with the unadorned sound of an archival recording of Hughes introducing his 1961… Read More
#MusicForWriters: Michel van der Aa’s ‘Hovering’ Flight
‘The Darker Aspects Of Life’ This week’s #MusicForWriters column: Like one of my favorite artists and friends, the music-theater virtuoso Martha Clarke, Michel van der Aa trades deliberately in what you’ll see him call in our interview “the darker aspects of life.” As a kid, we learn, he got into music on a psychologist’s advice, to… Read More
#MusicForWriters: John Supko and ‘Rest’ For Musicians, Human And Otherwise
‘The Algebraic Picture Of My Self And Soul’ In last week’s Music for Writers interview with Bryce Dessner (for his Music For Wood and Strings), the composer told us: I think there’s something counter-intuitive about a lot of innovation in music in the last 20 years, in that so much of it has been driven… Read More
#MusicForWriters: Brad Lubman — An ‘Explosion Of Compositional Languages’
A ‘Gateway Drug’ In Contemporary Music Daniel Stephen Johnson is right when, in his write-up for Q2 Music’s Album of the Week, he refers to Steve Reich’s Music for 18 Musicians as a “gateway drug for a lifelong addiction to Reich’s aesthetic.” I’ve turned people on to this piece more than than to any other,… Read More
Music For Writers: Q2 Music And Nadia Sirota On a Roll — ‘Meet The Composer’, Season 2
Accelerando Toward A Major Stretch Goal As of this moment, only a very small subset of the world listens to it. But if Nadia Sirota and her friends listening to her in 70 countries have anything to do with it, that will change and keep changing. t Sirota is talking about “contemporary classical music,” the most nearly… Read More
Music For Writers: A Royal Welcome For Two Composers
‘I Could Talk About It For Hours’ Even if the Royal String Quartet’s performances of these works of Paweł Szymański and Paweł Mykietyn weren’t exemplary, the sheer enthusiasm of cellist Michal Pepol alone might put these performances right over the top. When New York Public Radio’s free 24/7 streaming service Q2 Music chose the quartet’s new… Read More
Music For Writers: Martin Fröst’s Modern Moves
Dancing To ‘Peacock Tales’ Among books that many of us try to avoid writing — and reading — one of the most familiar offenders is the novel with a crazy ending. Comes out of nowhere. Nothing to do with the story. Sometimes it’s a deluge of magical realism. Or a fortuitous cataclysm arrives to get the protagonist out of trouble.… Read More