Books, Movies, Music & Entertainment - Avant Garde Music Fans - What Are You Listening To?

Are there are other Avant Garde music fans lurking around here? If so, I'd love to hear about what you are listening to.

Currently I'm hooked on Mauricio Kagel, and have been playing Playback Play and Schwarzes Madrigal a lot. I'm quite fond of the great stuff he's put out on the Winter and Winter label.

What's currently on your Avant Garde playlist?

My favorite of all time is Heittor Villa-Lobos

I'm sure my tastes are dreadfully old hat relative to current avant garde.

But here goes:

Milton Babbitt: All Set
LaMonte Young: The Dream of the Step Down Transformer. This is way cool! An Ensemble of muted trumpets play gradually shifting overtones...sounds like high-tension wires vibrating in the wind.
Stephen Scott: The Tears of Niobe.
Todd Machover: Valis. A chamber opera based on the Dick novel. Really rocks out!
Arvo Part: Fratres
George Crumb: Ancient Voices of Children
Harry Partch: Barstow

Stephen Scott: The Tears of Niobe is great....

Stephen Scott: The Tears of Niobe is great....

Oh, that's a very nice piece! Thanks for the recommendation! Are you familiar with John Zorn's Madness, Love, and Mysticism? You just might enjoy it, as well as Mauricio Kagel, mentioned in the first post.


The Scott piece can be streamed here if anyone is interested: http://www.imeem.com/groups/GxbdU5Bn,stephen_scott//music/QSPcRwH-/stephen_scott_the_tears_of_niobe/

Listen to this short piece by Charles Ives: The Unanswered Question

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5JBfjPO7B8o

This music is 100 years old, but sounds remarkably new.

YouTube - Diego Cayuelas plays Debussy 'L'Isle Joyeuse'

Ástor Piazzolla (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%C3%81stor_Piazzolla)

Rebekah Griffin-Greene: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5QxtPhR5Qlg

Listen to this short piece by Charles Ives: The Unanswered Question

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5JBfjPO7B8o

This music is 100 years old, but sounds remarkably new.

Ives is one of my favorite modern composers. Why he's not more well known, especially in the US, is beyond me......

Ives is one of my favorite modern composers. Why he's not more well known, especially in the US, is beyond me......



Why music is not more well known, especially in the US is beyond me. Ives was genial.


Did you check out the link? Also, if you like Ives I'm sure your Mingus collection must be impressive. Also the other greats, like Philip Glass (obligatory) and this is cool: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PAys8oqAAV0&feature=related

It's a series, be sure to read the notes and investigate.

Edgard Varese: Ionisation, for percussion ensemble
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a9mg4KHqRPw
Varese was France's greatest gift to American music in the twentieth century.

Steve Reich: Music for 18 Musicians
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CHVMVDhC-UA

Arvo Part: Fratres I
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XX7MNMSNUQE
(this music was featured in the movie There Will Be Blood)

Phillip Glass: Organic (Koyaanisqatsi)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LnL5hv_7G3s
I like his slow music a lot more than some of the frenetic stuff.

Steve Reich: Music for 18 Musicians
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CHVMVDhC-UA




Thanks Poppa, that was pure beauty.

YouTube - Diego Cayuelas plays Debussy 'L'Isle Joyeuse' (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5TX7X5OqT8U&feature=related)

Liked it! Have you heard Debussy's Syrinx? I'll try to find a link...
I think you might like some Albeniz:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z1jQ3o718ls

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2ieHZ5qmJZI
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A1vaXBotrAI

Michael Harrison's Revelation is written for a piano using "just intonation." This tuning system is based on the natural overtone series, and is subtly different than our current "equal temperament" system which is a kind of historic compromise.

Once you get past the initial 'out of tune' impression, this makes for fascinating listening.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FutdXQkBvKo

Awe inspiring.

I especially enjoyed the Ornette Coleman/Howard Shore collaboration on the sound track of The Naked Lunch.

I wonder if Reich was influenced by hip-hop, or did he inadverdently stumble upon it's methods with his meticulous tape loops?

04_Steve Reich - City Life - III_ It.mp3 (http://composersforum.ning.com/forum/attachment/download?id=773368%3AUploadedFi105%3A49903), 4.4 MB

Reich's brilliant, infuriating Come Out, 1966
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H6x1co_5F7E

Compare to Captain Beefheart's Moonlight on Vermont, a couple of years later
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PFt8e971Mos
with the repeated lyric "Come out to showed 'em..."

Reich's brilliant, infuriating Come Out, 1966
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H6x1co_5F7E




Thank you. This shows that his work preceeded and forshadowed hip-hop sampling by about 20 years.


Amazing.

So I've been studying Steve Reich for about two weeks now, and have made a breakthrough.


After hearing Different Trains, I noticed that he collaborated with Pat Metheney. Delving deeper, I found that his theory is comprised of African polyrhythms, a method he calls phase shifting.

Rewind to my preteen days as a composer and ECM records. My older brother immersed me in the works of Philip Glass , Metheny, and Ihad the priviledge of acess to the entire ECM catalouge on wax. This would have a profound impression on me as a composer and producer, as I had a cousin who was a hip-hop DJ at the time and I would both emulate Lyle Mays' piano on keyboard and the Baldwin as well as make crude tape loops of my own voice and other souunds as accompianment.


As I developed as a musician, I started to record more and more complex sequences. Metheny's seminal work Phase Dance gave me permission to use serial notes and dissonance in a complex harmonic structure as long as the rhythm was constant. Notice the title of that album and how it relates to Reich's phase hifting theory. I did. And it was a revelation.

Now almost twenty years later as I work toward a grant for musical composition with the goal of hearing my work performed by an ensemble, I have a renewed sense of faith.

It's been a long and difficult path as I am the furthest thing from either a classical composer (though I have proved capale of that with my Opus. 1-3), or a hip-hop producer (though I have proved capable of that with my work at LaFace Records and the development of the Atlanta music scene). I tell you, at times I have almost given up.

I can now say, without irony,that Poppaspoke (real name unkown) has thrown me a life preserver and that I have caught it with success.

Thank you.

So I've been studying Steve Reich for about two weeks now, and have made a breakthrough.


After hearing Different Trains, I noticed that he collaborated with Pat Metheney. Delving deeper, I found that his theory is comprised of African polyrhythms, a method he calls phase shifting.

Rewind to my preteen days as a composer and ECM records. My older brother immersed me in the works of Philip Glass , Metheny, and Ihad the priviledge of acess to the entire ECM catalouge on wax. This would have a profound impression on me as a composer and producer, as I had a cousin who was a hip-hop DJ at the time and I would both emulate Lyle Mays' piano on keyboard and the Baldwin as well as make crude tape loops of my own voice and other souunds as accompianment.


As I developed as a musician, I started to record more and more complex sequences. Metheny's seminal work Phase Dance gave me permission to use serial notes and dissonance in a complex harmonic structure as long as the rhythm was constant. Notice the title of that album and how it relates to Reich's phase hifting theory. I did. And it was a revelation.

Now almost twenty years later as I work toward a grant for musical composition with the goal of hearing my work performed by an ensemble, I have a renewed sense of faith.

It's been a long and difficult path as I am the furthest thing from either a classical composer (though I have proved capale of that with my Opus. 1-3), or a hip-hop producer (though I have proved capable of that with my work at LaFace Records and the development of the Atlanta music scene). I tell you, at times I have almost given up.

I can now say, without irony,that Poppaspoke (real name unkown) has thrown me a life preserver and that I have caught it with success.

Thank you.

May you have great success with your compositions! Please provide us with links to your music, when they become available...

I enjoy Iva Bittova.

I enjoy Iva Bittova.

Thanks for the suggestion...
I like this one:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fPb--BzlEc0

Thanks for the suggestion...
I like this one:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fPb--BzlEc0



Wow. Yeah...plus Bohemian women.:love:

Thanks for the suggestion...
I like this one:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fPb--BzlEc0

I had not heard that one before. It is nice to see an artist unafraid to explore and deviate from an established style.

This is one of my favoties, but I had not seen the video before. The dancing "slug" is...interesting.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZEZg3TX1k_g

I also like the theremin and I think Lydia Kavina is one of the best I have run across so far: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xn4TgYkqdi8

Somehow, this actually makes sense to me:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6qg6f9jbLd4

Hey! Some old time down home Milton Babbitt...old school! Thanks!

This seems strangely apropos to the unsettled times we're in.

Aaron Copland wrote his Piano Variations at the beginning of the Great Depression. This is not the Copland of Billy the Kid or Appalachian Spring. It is bare bones, frighteningly intense, and seething with anger.

Here a student plays the second half for a conservatory exam:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qkpOly5wOGk

Somehow, this actually makes sense to me:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6qg6f9jbLd4


I like it! I had never heard it before(that I remember). I think this will be fun to listen to while tearing through town on the old Raleigh, and not on earphones either...open speakers so people I pass can hear it coming.

I find this quite captivating:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lWsPNXi-1G8

The Bowed Piano Ensemble perform Entrada by Stephen Scott

My second cousin is a machinist, and he got a kick out of this one:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1WSNraCN5Zg