Although she calls it ‘a violist’s Book of Job,’ founding and leading the Momenta Quartet is a longtime labor of love for Stephanie Griffin, as she tells us in Music for Writers. 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: 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: 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