For this New Sounds, hear the concert recording of the world premiere of violinist vocalist Carla Kihlstedt's "At Night We Walk In Circles And Are Consumed by Fire."  The work is a collaborative commission with the International Contemporary Ensemble (ICE) and inspired by dreams - dreams collected from the band, some of her own, and some solicited through Facebook.  Comprised of nine song-parts, the topics range from meeting one's younger self, to having all of your teeth fall out, and a flying dream.

A beloved addition to the NYC festival circuit, the multi-dimension and ultra-collaborative Ecstatic Music Festival kicks off this Friday. Q2 Music is its proud digital partner, and this week on Hammered!, to get into the mood, we not only survey music from the festival's composers, musicians and ensembles, but more generally embrace all things ecstatic.

For this New Sounds, listen to selections from Sarah Kirkland Snider's epic song cycle, Penelope. From a New Sounds Live recorded in March of 2011 at Merkin Hall as part of the Ecstatic Music Festival, hear composer/vocalist Shara Worden (My Brightest Diamond.  together with the versatile sextet yMusic.  Also, yMusic performs Snider's instrumental piece, "Daughter of the Waves."

From the New Sounds Live Concert Series, we'll hear part of Bobby Previte's "Terminals," a set of five pocket concertos for five different soloists and orchestra, which had its premiere exactly one month ago tonight at Merkin Hall as part of the closing concert of the Ecstatic Music Festival.  So Percussion is the "orchestra" for these works, which left space for the soloists to bring their own improvising voices to the work — voices that Previte knows well from years of collaboration with each.

Composer Darcy James Argue thinks big.  His band, The Secret Society, is a 17- or 18-piece ensemble (there were 18 this time) brass-heavy big band, with electric guitar, bass, keys and drums.  The band was formed to play Argue’s music, but in our New Sounds Live concert at Merkin Hall, on February 24, 2011, that changed.  In an appropriately big way.  The band presented world premieres by three different composers – none of them named Darcy James Argue.  Tonight, we’ll hear the first performances of “Three Fragments” by award-winning, big-brained jazz pianist and composer Vijay Iyer, and “Lock The Door, Swallow The Key,” a stomping work from the gifted young Canadian composer Nicole Lizee.

Recorded live at Merkin Hall as part of the New Sounds Live concert series, together with the Ecstatic Music Festival mere weeks ago, listen to premiere works by the 8-piece ensemble Newspeak and Darcy James Argue’s Secret Society, the 18-piece big band.  Mind control experiments and conspiracy theories are the subject matter for these brand-new pieces, and there might be works by Vijay Iyer and Nicole Lizée as well.

This New Sounds program explores the impact that the subgenre known as “glitch” music has had on the new music world.  Listen to Daniel Wohl’s piece, “Glitch,” as performed by the Calder Quartet interacting with electronics from a New Sounds Live in collaboration with the Ecstatic Music Festival. 

For this New Sounds program, we’ll listen to part two of the New Sounds Live/Ecstatic Music Festival concert with Dan Deacon.  Hear  Deacon’s “An Opal Toad with Obsidian Eyes,” as an entire movement of the work is set to a wooden block click track.  The performance / classical instrument dance party features the NOW Ensemble, the Calder String Quartet, and Deacon's live processing.

For this New Sounds program, we’ll listen to some more highlights from the New Sounds Live concert series at Merkin Hall, collaborating with the 2012 Ecstatic Music Festival.  Hear Dan Deacon’s large-scale work for the NOW Ensemble, the Calder String Quartet, and live processing, “An Opal Toad with Obsidian Eyes.” 

From the New Sounds Live concerts, we'll hear “The Miners’ Hymns,” a film score from the Icelandic composer Jóhann Jóhannsson.  The work is a brass-heavy elegy to the coal mining culture in Northeast England, with the brass elements hearkening back to the colliery bands, which used to be the local entertainment.