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New Sounds / September 29, 2005

New Sounds

Thursday, September 29, 2005
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  • Monks of Mount Athos
    Monks of Mount Athos

    Lines of Choral Music

    Choral Music of various shapes and sizes is what’s in store for this edition of New Sounds. Hear slow, quiet, and affecting Estonian music by Urmas Sisask from a new CD called Baltic Voices. Paul Hillier leads the Estonian Philharmonic Chamber Choir, as they sing with patiently, perfectly sustained harmonic tension and dead-on intonation in their native tongue. Plus on the CD, they also take on sacred music selections by Alfred Schnittke. There’s also David Fanshawe’s working of the Muslim Call to Prayer harmoniously juxtaposed with a choral setting of the Christian Kyrie (sung in Latin.) Continuing with sacred music, Stephen Micus recreates his experience of Greek Orthodox liturgical services from the monasteries on Mount Athos. In “Third Night,”, a 22-man choir sings a capella choral pieces (using thousand year old texts.) Rounding out the show is music from Ladysmith Black Mambazo, the unmatched masters of the South African a cappella form known as "isicathamiya" or "mbube."

PROGRAM #2332 Choral Music (Mon. 10-18-04)

ARTIST(S)

RECORDING

CUT(S)

SOURCE

Anuna

Cynara

Igitur Servus [1:30]

Danu #012
www.anuna.ie

Estonian Philharmonic Chamber Choir

Baltic Voices 2

Urmas Sisask:Oremus [8:30]

Harmonia mundi #907331** www.harmoniamundi.com *

Anuna

Deep Dead Blue

Nobilis Humilis [4:30]

Danu #007
www.anuna.ie

Stephan Micus

Athos

The Third Night [6:30]

ECM #523-292 www.ecmrecords.com *

Ladysmith Black Mambazo

Classic Tracks

Bamnqobile [3:30]

Shanachie #43074** www.shanachie.com *

Bobby McFerrin

Circlesongs

Circlesong Six [8:00]

Sony #62734** www.sonyclassical.com*

David Fanshawe

African Sanctus

Kyrie/Call To Prayer [3:00]

Silva Classics #6003** www.silvascreen.co.uk

Alfred Schnittke

Psalms of Repentance

Psalm XII [8:30]

ECM #1583 www.ecmrecords.com *

Estonian Philharmonic Chamber Choir

Baltic Voices 2

Galima Grigorjeva: On Leaving [3:00]

See above.

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

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Nico Muhly (www.myspace.com/muhly)

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.

Robert Moran

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.

Duke Ellington - www.dukeellington.com

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.