Philip Glass’s opera “Kepler,” about the German astronomer and mathematician who identified the elliptical orbits of our solar system, was written expressly for Landestheater Linz and Linz09. Glass based his compelling and complex score on the astronomer’s conviction that “without genuine knowledge life is dead.”   On this New Sounds, we’ll hear selections from “Kepler” along with music from the Alloy Orchestra.

For this New Sounds, we’ll have at least a double-helping of guitar music, featuring some solo works by Marc Ribot intended as music for films: some are adaptations of music he has actually written for films, others for classic silent movies that he scored for his personal amusement, still others for films of his own imagination.  These haunting and wistful pieces explore, as Ribot says, "the strange area between language and spatiality that exists partly in between music and visual image, and partly as a common property of both."

For this New Sounds program, hear music that falls in the space between classical and pop, as well as in the small hollow between chamber music and folk.  There’s electronic chamber pop music by composer Son Lux (aka Ryan Lott) for yMusic, the versatile composer/performer collective, and some post-rock from the Arcade Fire’s multi-instrumentalist, Richard Reed Parry, in the guise of the  ensemble, Bell Orchestre.   We'll also expand the folk umbrella to include traditional instruments of Korea and Japan making chamber music.

For this New Sounds, John Schaefer catches up with the Irish composer Donnacha Dennehy, who also presents some of his latest music including a bit of his multi-media musical theatre piece, “the Hunger.”  Based on the events of the Irish famine, this opera-in-progress incorporates the unaccompanied Irish vocal music called Sean nós, like Dennehy’s previous work, “Grá agus Bás.” In “The Hunger,” however, Dennehy knits vintage recordings of sean-nós into the piece and uses the writings of American non-conformist Asenath Nicholson to inform the main narrative.  

The Italian keyboardist and composer Ludovico Einaudi joins John Schaefer for this New Sounds program.  Einaudi’s latest effort is “In a Time Lapse,” recorded in a wooden room in a monastery near Verona, Italy.  Listen to selections from that record, as well as a liberal sampling of his music; from solo keyboard works to pieces featuring forward-thinking violinist Daniel Hope, to collaborations with kora player Ballake Sissoko and duduk master Djivan Gasparian from Armenia. 

For this New Sounds, we’ll listen to songs with a twilight feel – that is, evening songs.  We’ll hear songs, both old and new - by Henry Purcell along with songs by Leonard Cohen and Nick Drake-  featuring baroque harp, Swedish Nickelharpa, and viola da gamba on a record called “If Grief Could Wait.”  The project is a collaboration between baroque harpist Giovanna Pessi and the Swedish singer Susanna Wallumrød.

Listen to music from the steppes of central Asia on this New Sounds.  Hear the overtone singing of Huun Huur Tu colliding with the New York folk/world group Hazmat Modine.  There’s also music from the Mongolian group, Hanggai, recorded in the WNYC studios.  Hear music by Russian composer Anton Batagov and a Buddhist monk from Republic of Kalmykia. Plus, listen to other voices from the Eurasian steppes, including a singer from the Russian region of Buryatia, Namgar Lhasaranova, whose 4-person group goes by “Namgar,” and performs traditional Buryat and Mongolian music.

For this second installation of Robert Fripp's Soundscapes as part of New Sounds Live, we present performances that were recorded on the evenings of both Dec. 3 and Dec. 4, 2010.  These performances might possibly have been the last major public outings for the English guitarist, composer, and founder of the prog-rock band, King Crimson.

Hear works for acoustic instruments and electronics, with the combinations of piano and electronics, violin and electronics, or a small ensemble using no electronics at all on this New Sounds program.  We'll listen to Open Graves with Stuart Dempster recorded way down in a water cistern, which sounds very processed, although it was all acoustic.

The late British composer, Steve Martland was one of the more quirky composers heard on New Sounds as long ago as the 1980’s. A refugee from punk rock, he studied with Louis Andriessen, before forming his own ensemble.  He passed away earlier this week, at the age of 53.  For this New Sounds, we remember him by revisiting live performances by the Steve Martland Band from the annual Bang on a Can Music Marathon, recorded at Brooklyn Academy of Music in 2000.  Listen to a piece of English folk music adapted to serve the purpose of being connected to football, “Kick,” along with a major work written for the Bang on a Can All-Stars, “Horses of Instruction,” which sounds like a muscular jazz-funk summit between Reich and Stravinsky.  There's also a performance of a short work, “Re-mix.”  Martland introduced each piece from the stage, as well as conducted his ensemble.