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New Sounds

Friday, October 03, 2008
  • Iva Bittova
    Iva Bittova at the Bang on a Can Marathon 2007 www.feastofmusic.com

    Bang on a Can 2007 Marathon

    Music from the 2007 version of the annual Bang On A Can Marathon. Part 1 of 3 from the 27-hour-long event, which featured music by a range of artists from literate indie-rockers The Books, Clogs and Dälek to Uzbeki traditionalists Mashriq, along with new music purveyors Eighth Blackbird and the NOW Ensemble.

    PROGRAM #2703 The 2007 Bang on a Can Marathon, Pt. 1 (First aired on Tuesday, 7/24/07)

    ARTIST(S)

    RECORDING

    CUT(S)

    SOURCE

    The Bagpipe Orchestra

    Bang on a Can Marathon, 6/2 and 6/3, 2007 @ the World Financial Center

    Julia Wolfe: Lad [9:00]

    Not commercially available, but see www.bangonacan.org for info.

    The NOW Ensemble

    Missy Mazzoli: Magic With Everyday Objects [9:00]

    Info at www.nowensemble.org

    The Books, with Todd Reynolds

    The Future, Wouldn't That Be Nice? [5:00] The Classier Penguin [4:00] Eight Frame [4:00]

    www.thebooksmusic.com

    Iva Bittova

    Improvisation, excerpt [3:00]

    www.bittova.com

    Ethel

    John King: Lightning Slide, Pt. 3 [4:00]

    ethelcentral.org OR www.myspace.com/ethelcentral

    Iva Bittova

    Improvisation, excerpt [3:00]

    See above.

    Mashriq

    Traditonal Music of Uzbekistan [4:30]

    Some info at www.classicmusic.uz

Podcast: Inadvertent Songs (originally aired Sept. 16, 2008)

Be careful what you say – it could wind up as lyrics to a song. Just ask Donald Rumsfeld, Miss Teen USA, President Bush, and the anonymous posters on Craigslist, all of whom found their way into songs. For this New Sounds, hear Donald Rumsfeld's words as lifted from various Pentagon briefings, and skillfully set by Phil Kline - about the looting in Iraq, known unknowns and near-perfect clarity. Also, listen to Ted Hearne's "Katrina Ballads," where "Brownie, You're Doin' a Heck of a Job," the infamous sentence spoken by George W. Bush, gets cut up and delivered in a rapid-fire repeating staccato. Not to be outdone, Sam Sadigursky's "Miss Teen USA" - is a setting of 2007 pageant contender Miss South Carolina's answer to "Recent polls have shown 1/5 of Americans can’t locate America on a world map. Why do you think this is?" to like, such as - music. Plus, Gabriel Kahane's "Craigslistlieder," yes, based on unedited posts from Craigslist.org. And more!

Inadvertent Songs

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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.