wnyc.org / 93.9fm / am 820

New Sounds

Saturday, March 19, 2005
  • Varttina Photo by Tuomo Manninen
    Varttina

    Global Voices

    Unusual vocal works from far-flung locations take center stage on this edition of New Sounds. The Bulgarian Women's Choir is steeped in a sound world that was born somewhere between the medieval Byzantine church and the Eastern European mountains, where the origins of Western musical scales developed. No less unusual is the female-led Finnish ensemble Värttinä, which is known for its trademark speed-singing. Also, hear folk songs of the Dong people of China, and music by English composer Jocelyn Pook.

PROGRAM #2161 Global Voices (First aired on Wednesday, 6/4/03)

ARTIST(S)

RECORDING

CUT(S)

SOURCE

Le Mystere des Voix Bulgares

Melody, Rhythm & Harmony

Kalimankou Denkou [5:00]

Mesa #R2-79058
Available for purchase at Amazon.com*

Jocelyn Pook

Private recording

Essential Ingredients [4:30]

Not commercially available. Info about Pook's music is online at www.jocelynpook.com

Värttinä

Vihma

Kylan Kävijä [4:00]

Wicklow/BMG #63262**
www.wicklowrecords.com

Le Mystere des Voix Bulgares

Vol. 2

Dragana I Slavei [3:00]

Nonesuch #79201**
www.nonesuch.com*

Dong Folk Songs

People And Nature In Harmony

Cicadas Are Crying [4:00]

www.ffmm.com/ecd
To order, write to service@ffmm.com

Meredith Monk

Dolmen Music

Dolmen Music, excerpt [9:30]

ECM #1197
www.ecmrecords.com

Albania

Vocal And Instrumental Polyphony

Legend of the Walled-In Women [5:00]

Chant du Monde #274 897. Out of print.

Tenores di Bitti

S'amore 'e mama

Lamentu [5:00]

Real World #62362
www.realworld.co.uk

Bo Holton & Ars Nova

Orfeo

Orfeo-fragmenter, #2 [4:30]

Ex Libris #30055.
Check Ars Nova's site to order the CD www.arsnova.dk/eng

Lisa Gerrard

Mirror Pool

Celon, excerpt [1:00]

4AD #5009. Available for purchase at Amazon.com*

*, ** - Find the recordings you've heard - go to the New Sounds Recordings Information page

Leave a Comment

Please stay on topic, be civil, and be brief.
Email addresses are never displayed, but they are required to confirm your comments. Names are displayed with all comments. WNYC reserves the right to edit any comments posted on this site. Please read the WNYC.org Comment Guidelines before posting.

Your comment


* required
The information entered into this form will not be used to send unsolicited email and will not be sold to a third party.
 

Twitchy Renaissance-Infused Minimalism

New Sounds

From the New Sounds Live concerts at Merkin Hall, Nico Muhly presents a series of new electroacoustic ensemble works, combining “twitchy Minimalism” and Renaissance polyphony. Hear brand-new works from "Mothertongue," along with other works, recorded live.

In Robert Moran's Kitchen

New Sounds

From October 30, 1989, the infamous "cooking show" with composer/raconteur Robert Moran. Recorded while cooking an Indian dinner in John Schaefer's kitchen, for reasons still not entirely clear. Along the way, we hear an "acoustic" version of Cage's 0:00 - for amplification of chopping vegetables and blender. And don't miss the teary conversation as onions are chopped. View the the recipes.

Michael Hedges and Michael Manring

New Sounds

The incredibly gifted and astonishingly original guitarist Michael Hedges left the planet much too soon in 1997. Avant-folk and ever-entertaining, Hedges made brilliant music with alternate tunings, harmonics and was known for striking the guitar’s body and strings with his fingers, palms and knuckles. His close friend and sometime collaborator, electric bass virtuoso Michael Manring, was a genre-bender, before music writers ever discovered that hyphenated term. He started out in the New Age bins, but moved all over with various projects, including the very first New Age-death-metal-jazz-funk-fusion record, among other things, with his “hyperbass”, (a fretless instrument which makes re-tuning mid-piece a little easier). On this October 10, 1987 edition of New Sounds, the two artists visited and played at the WNYC performance studios.

Caravan Variations

New Sounds

Like camels slogging through the sand, the exotic strains of “Caravan,” by Duke Ellington and his sometime trombonist Juan Tizol (with rarely heard lyrics by Irving Mills), have been played loose, fast, swinging, and/or slow by just about everyone. For this New Sounds program, it’s another of the occasional series of programs of Theme and Variations, where the premise is simple: take a single piece of music and explore what a number of musicians have done with it, through arrangements, deconstructions, and revisions of the original theme. This time around, it’s Duke Ellington’s “Caravan.” Listen to arrangements by Romania’s Fanfare Ciocarlia, Hungary’s Kalman Balogh & The Gipsy Cimbalom Band, the California Guitar Trio, the ska group Hepcat, banjoman Bela Fleck, Lebanese composer Rabih Abou-Khalil, and trumpeter/composer Jon Hassell, among others.