On Demand
New Sounds
-
Composer Marc MellitsMellits, the "Post-Minimalist"
For this New Sounds episode, listen to “Brick” by Marc Mellits. The Baltimore-born composer wrote the piece for his mother, and most of the piece relates directly to her. Some movements seem to have been drawn from Mellits’ life experiences like “Purple Dandelion,” about the weeds that he’d picked for her when he was small; “Red Hammer,” so named after the Arnold Schwarzenegger of hammers, which was passed to him from his grandfather. Other movements might be entirely play, as Mellits likes to play rhythmic games, of which he says, “in a way, it is they that actually hold the music together, like the bricks in a house that are positioned in certain patterns, and still support the structure.” This new work, co-commissioned by WNYC through the Cheswatyr New Music Initiative, has already been taken on tour by the Orpheus Chamber Orchestra.
PROGRAM #2519, WNYC Commissions (First aired on Tues, 3/7/06)
|
ARTIST(S) |
RECORDING |
CUT(S) |
SOURCE |
|
Steve Reich |
The WNYC Commissions, Vol. 1 |
Know What Is Above You [3:30] |
This CD is not commercially available. It was made for a WNYC fundraiser in 2001. |
|
Philip Glass |
The WNYC Commissions, Vol. 1 |
Now So Long After That Time [5:00] |
See above. This Glass work is now part of Glass’s “Etudes,” recorded on Orange Mountain Music www.orangemountainmusic.com see also www.philipglass.com |
|
Marc Mellits |
Orpheus Chamber Orchestra @ Carnegie Hall, 2/4/06 |
Brick [22:30] |
Not yet commercially available. See www.marcmellits.com for info |
|
Derek Bermel |
Alarm Will Sound on New Sounds Live @ Merkin Hall, 1/16/03 |
Three Rivers, excerpt [10:00] |
Not yet commercially available. A recording by The Kitchen House Blend is on The WNYC Commissions, Vol. 1, above. |
Podcast
Stay up to date.
Subscribe to the Podcast
New Sounds Listener Poll
New Music Releases of 2008
Make your opinion count in the 23rd annual New Sounds Listener Poll. The final tallies will be revealed on the New Sounds Listener Poll show on January 8, 2009. Enter your vote now!
More
New Sounds Live
2008-2009 Concert Season
Bobby Previte's musical miniatures, mystical choral music by Morton Feldman and Arvo Part, peace pieces for piano, and post-rock/post-jazz.
More
New Sounds on Facebook
Befriend us and receive infrequent reminders about show happenings! Oh, and check out our friends!
More
New Sounds Live
Highlights with Audio
An exclusive presentation of New Sounds Live and WNYC Live performances for the website, featuring performances from inside and outside the WNYC studios from over three decades.
More
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.
- Comments [2]

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.