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New Sounds

Wednesday, April 23, 2008
  • Meredith Monk (K. Scott Schafer)
    Meredith Monk (K. Scott Schafer)

    2007 People's Commissioning Fund, Part 1

    From New Sounds Live, the Bang On A Can All-Stars perform with legendary vocalist/composer Meredith Monk, onstage at Merkin Hall. Hear new arrangements of “Panda 1”, “Memory Song”, “Sacred Song”, “Double Fiestas” and “Last Song” by Bang on a Can Artistic Directors, Julia Wolfe and David Lang.

PROGRAM #2656, from New Sounds Live, with Meredith Monk and the Bang On A Can All-Stars (First aired on 3/22/07)

ARTIST(S)

RECORDING

CUT(S)

SOURCE

Bang On A Can All-Stars

New Sounds Live, Symphony Space, 6/14/03

Streetwalker [11:30]

Not commercially available. For info, www.donnachadennehy.com

Meredith Monk and the Bang On A Can All-Stars

New Sounds Live, Merkin Hall, 3/1/07

Panda Chant [2:00]
Memory Song [8:00]
Scared Song [6:30]
Double Fiesta [7:00]
Panda Chant II [3:00]

All of these are available on various Meredith Monk CDs**. See www.ecmrecords.com

Donnacha Dennehy

Private recording

(h)interlands, excerpt [6:30]

Not commercially available, but see above.

Comments

  • [1] Joel Forrester from bowery April 23, 2008 - 06:20PM

    On New Sounds, Monday April 21, I heard songs by John Harbison, sung by Dawn Upshaw. While the music didn't knock me out, I'm very curious about the lyricist; the announcer described her as a 16th (or 17th?) Century Indian who refused cremation at her husband's death, leading to a life on the streets singing and dancing her poetry. I heard or misheard her name as Miribai. I prayed to St.Internet but found no proper match, nor at Harbison's references. Help me find out more?


  • [2] Jonathan Kohrs from Northbrook, IL April 23, 2008 - 11:46PM

    That would be John Harbison's "Mirabai Songs," a wonderful cycle composed originally for voice and piano in 1982 and recorded by Upshaw with chamber orchestra in 1989. Still fresh 20 or more years later!


This thread is closed.


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.