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10.07.2017
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Meet the Composer (wnycdigital@gmail.com (WQXR))
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Paul Simon’s Curious Mind
Paul Simon has always been attracted to new kinds of sounds. From his early band Simon & Garfunkel in the 1960s through solo albums like Graceland and Rhythm of the Saints in the '80s and '90s, up through his recent albums So Beautiful or So What and Stranger to Stranger, Simon has made music that does what the very best art can do: it resonates with our experience, re-frames it, and introduces new timbres and ideas.Recently, Simon’s curious mind has brought him into the world of contemporar
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12.06.2017
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Meet the Composer (wnycdigital@gmail.com (WQXR))
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Kaitlyn Aurelia Smith's 'Clouds Forming Over Mount Baker'
We began last week’s episode digging into the music of one particular electronic musician - the synthesist, producer and composer Kaitlyn Aurelia Smith.
Today we’re thrilled to bring you a song that you won’t hear on any of Kaitlyn’s albums. Clouds Forming Over Mount Baker was commissioned by the University of Pennsylvania’s Arthur Ross Gallery to accompany a landscape photograph by Eliot Porter.
It’s a fitting collaboration, as Kaitlyn grew up on Orcas Island, where Mt. Baker is a visible featu
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05.06.2017
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Meet the Composer (wnycdigital@gmail.com (WQXR))
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The Producer
What happens when a composer writes music without pen and paper, using machines? How does that change the creative process? How does it morph the art itself?
Today on Meet the Composer, our producer Alex Overington — usually behind the studio glass — takes us on a road trip to unravel the creative process of those composers who write without a score. We meet the synthesists, the samplers, the electronic musicians, and dive deep into the tools they’ve adopted to define their craft.
Join us as w
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22.05.2017
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Meet the Composer (wnycdigital@gmail.com (WQXR))
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Bryce Dessner's 'Wires,' Performed by Ensemble Intercontemporain
For today’s Bonus Track, we’re thrilled to bring you the world-premiere recording of Bryce Dessner’s Wires, performed by Ensemble Intercontemporain!
Last week, we dug into a particularly contentious moment in classical music’s history. This week, however, we’re looking at where we are NOW, a place of, well… niceness.
“I think right now is a really good time to be a composer,” says composer John Adams. “And I tell young composers that. They don't believe me, but they don't know how difficult
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15.05.2017
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Meet the Composer (wnycdigital@gmail.com (WQXR))
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New Music Fight Club
It was composer pitted against composer: uptown vs. downtown, tonal vs. atonal, left brain vs right brain, and these musicians were NOT pulling any punches. Composers were antagonizing each other, questioning each other's validity, and bad-mouthing one another; it was like the second half of the 20th century was when Western Music went through middle school, and it was brutal!
“If you weren't being a constructivist composer, if the music wasn't indeed about its own structure, and its own struct
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08.05.2017
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Meet the Composer (wnycdigital@gmail.com (WQXR))
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Henry Threadgill’s Zooid, Live at the Village Vanguard
Henry Threadgill’s music and community can’t be separated; there is no boundary: challenge and failure and growth in music are the same as challenge and failure and growth in life. This Meet the Composer bonus track shares an exclusive performance by Henry Threadgill's Zooid ensemble of I Never, recorded live by Q2 Music at the Village Vanguard on Oct. 2, 2016.
Throughout his career, Threadgill has led countless ensembles with diverse instrumentations and personalities. And in each of them, he f
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01.05.2017
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Meet the Composer (wnycdigital@gmail.com (WQXR))
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Henry Threadgill: Dirt, and More Dirt
1967, Fort Riley, Kansas. Henry Threadgill is 23 years old. Knowing he’s going to be drafted into the military, he joins the Army Concert Band, hoping to focus on his passion: writing music. As he surrounds himself with new ideas, he works his influences into the music that he's arranging. Then one day, the band plays one of his arrangements of a patriotic song for an inauguration of big-wigs, and from the calm of a quietly confused crowd comes a cry from a cardinal in attendance: “Blasphemy!”
O
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21.03.2017
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Meet the Composer (wnycdigital@gmail.com (WQXR))
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Bonus Track: John Adams' 'Coast,' Unplugged
Today's bonus track is an exclusive arrangement of a nutso, sci-fi-y electronic piece John Adams wrote in 1993. Originally part of a larger work, Hoodoo Zephyr, Coast was never intended to be performed live. However, the 20-person chamber ensemble Alarm Will Sound has often been tempted by electronic works. Violinist, composer, and Alarm Will Sound member Caleb Burhans, who cut his teeth arranging works by Aphex Twin for the group, adapted Adams' work. While Alarm Will Sound has performed this p
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20.03.2017
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Meet the Composer (wnycdigital@gmail.com (WQXR))
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Splitting Adams: John Adams' Chamber Symphonies
What happens when the composer shows up to the first rehearsal of his brand-new piece? Would a living Beethoven sue for intellectual property? Are you the hit, or are you in the hole? For this episode, we collaborated with the 20-member chamber ensemble Alarm Will Sound and its conductor Alan Pierson – with whom we're partnering on the upcoming podcast album Splitting Adams (out April 21 on Cantaloupe Music) – to take a close look at the music of John Adams, specifically his two insanely difficu
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16.03.2017
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Meet the Composer (wnycdigital@gmail.com (WQXR))
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Bonus Track: Pauline Oliveros' 'Tuning Meditation'
Today's Meet the Composer Bonus Track is an extended cut of Pauline Oliveros' Tuning Meditation, recorded live at the Fuentidueña Chapel at the Met Cloisters on Jan. 20, 2017. Recorded in 3D-sounding binaural audio, it's an immersive experience in which we would love you to think about participating while listening. For optimal audio quality, please listen with headphones!