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New Sounds

Sunday, March 30, 2008
  • Eric Whitacre
    Composer Eric Whitacre

    New Choral Works

    Composer Eric Whitacre purports to be influenced by Depeche Mode, Bjork and seventies prog rock as much as he is by Bartok, Barber and Monteverdi. Whitacre, who published his first choral work at 21, has shrewdly centered his oeuvre around choral writing, since those works are more likely to get premiered and then have continuing performances. But his electric chilling harmonies and tone-clusters have also been transcribed for concert band, and electronics have recently made their way into his work as well. On this edition of New Sounds, sample some of Whitacre’s new record, “Cloudburst,” along with music by Gyorgy Ligeti. Plus, the latest from the group Chanticleer and more.

PROGRAM # 2531, New Choral Music (First aired on Wednesday, April 5, 2006)

ARTIST(S)

RECORDING

CUT(S)

SOURCE

Voices

A Compilation of the World’s Greatest Choirs

Ligeti: Lux Aeterna, excerpt [1:30]

Mesa/Bluemoon #79026 Out of print, but other recordings of the piece are available. Try Sony Classical’s Ligeti Edition, Vol 2: Sony #62305, www.sonyclassical.com or Amazon.com B0000029OX

Eric Whitacre

Cloudburst

Lux Aurumque [4:00]

Hyperion #67543** www.hyperion-records.co.uk*

Björk

Medulla

Vökuro [4:30]

Atlantic #62981** www.bjork.com*

Eric Whitacre

Cloudburst

Cloudburst [8:00]

See above.

Ingram Marshall

Savage Altars

Savage Altars [20:30]

New Albion #130 ** www.newalbion.com

Chanticleer

Sound In Spirit

J. Jennings: Sound In Spirit [1:00]

Warner Classics #61941 ** www.chanticleer.org*

Voices

A Compilation of the World’s Greatest Choirs

Ligeti: Lux Aeterna [7:00]

See above.

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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.