‘When Inspiration Flows’ The opening tone — lonely and anticipatory — is the last serene moment of the late Allan Pettersson’s Symphony No. 4. Whether he has his strings rush up to a precipice and hold while the woodwinds dither on the edge — or sends whole sections of his orchestra chasing each other, repeating… Read More
Music For Writers: Playful Andrew Norman
‘Every Now And Then, I Just Want To Throw A Wrench In’ Imagine the orchestra as this sort of complicated 19th-century futurist machine, all moving parts and cogs and gears, and little people. I find that sort of fascinating. But every now and then, I just want to throw a wrench in and see what… Read More
Music For Writers: Martin Bresnick And The Terrible Beauty Of Sorrow
‘We Will Always Sing Such Songs Of Longing’ Each time I visited, my grandmother wept bitterly about the murder of her parents, her brother, her two sisters, and all their children. Can a child comfort a grandmother, a grandfather? I became a witness, a musician, and a composer. Martin Bresnick is a native New Yorker.… Read More
Music For Writers: When Florent Ghys Watches ‘Télévision’
Forget Your Writing Prompts This is the album of the future, and it’s fast becoming a hit. So says a pert, authoritative voice in the opening of the second track on composer-performer Florent Ghys’ new album Télévision from Cantaloupe Music. It’s called a CD. That’s short for compact disc. The music on one of these is… Read More
Music For Writers: Donnacha Dennehy’s New Chapbook
A Sonic Anthology: The Abstract Gone Narrative There’s a kind of single-composer album that’s a lot like a writer’s collection of short stories or poems. So much of this ilk is the composer Donnacha Dennehy’s new album for RTEthat it arrives without an over-arching title of its own. It’s simply Donnacha Dennehy: Crane/O/The Vandal/Hive. Those… Read More
Music For Writers: In Not-So-Dire ‘s_traits’
‘A Sentence Swimming In Uncertainty’ A generous and “generative” heart beats at the conceptual center of composer John Supko and media artist Bill Seaman’ssweetly addictive new release, s_traits, on the Cotton Goods label. The work is among the most writerly studies yet in our series on contemporary composition for authors. The work stands, almost imperceptibly, on a vast… Read More
Music For Writers: Agata Zubel ‘On Both Sides’
‘The Most Beautiful Place Where The Two Professions Meet’ In earlier #MusicForWriters columns here, I’ve mentioned how many of our contemporary composers are also performers. Caleb Burhans, a composer and multi-instrumentalist, is one. His Excelsior is one of the works in our series. As the notes from Kairos Music on Agata Zubel’s new release, however, point out, the… Read More
Music for Writers: Krakauer The Klezmer On 'Isaac The Blind'
Boys Who Have Seen Stonehenge Klezmer struck me as the voice of my grandmother in music. So even though I consider myself to be an atheist, I’m deeply culturally plugged in as a Jew. For me the “spiritual” aspect is a sense of this deep cultural connection that goes back thousands of years, and a sense… Read More
Music for Writers: JACK Quartet + Four áltaVoz Composers
‘The Ride Of Our Repertoire’ “What was that term you used? ‘Screechy?’” John Pickford Richards is laughing at me as he takes a question about how reachy — “not at all screechy, John,” I assure him — some of the music on the JACK Quartet’s new album may be for these artists. As personable a… Read More
Music For Writers: Caleb Burhans’ Leap Of Faith
Thinner Air “Between 1959 and 1960, Joe Kittinger went to the top of the atmosphere in a helium balloon three times and performed record-breaking sky dives.” So what were you expecting composer Caleb Burhans to talk about? Music? Actually, he is talking about music. His newly released Excelsior is named for Kittinger’s 1960 Project Excelsior. What Burhans has done… Read More