“Why don’t you come by my place and I can sell you the CDs you’re seeking,” said the voice on the phone. It was the spring of 2005, I was in Amsterdam and looking for recordings from the Dutch label Unsounds. The voice on the other end of the line was that of Dutch-Cypriot composerContinue reading “Yannis Kyriakides”
Genre Archives
Nicole Lizée invites us to hear things her way
Nicole Lizée is a huge fan of Alfred Hitchcock, science-fiction films, and Lars von Trier, the maverick Danish director whose Dogme (dogma), about film, inspires her own reflection on how to compose music. She says composers should be just as bold and inventive about creating music as von Trier is about making films. The director,Continue reading “Nicole Lizée invites us to hear things her way”
Spring 2012
Spring 2011
Winter 2010
Cathy Lane, ed. Playing With Words: The Spoken Word in Artistic Practice.
“There are no more powerful things in the world than words,” says Laurie Anderson in an interview with editor Cathy Lane in Playing With Words, where the primacy of language in art and politics is discussed in a clear and compelling manner. With over thirty-five artist contributors at various stages in their careers, Playing WithContinue reading “Cathy Lane, ed. Playing With Words: The Spoken Word in Artistic Practice.”
Big Ears Festival. Knoxville, Tennessee. March 26–28, 2010.
Clean, tidy, and walkable, downtown Knoxville feels more like Europe than America. Unlike the Next Big Thing-chasing club crawl of that other Southern-U.S. fest, South by Southwest, in Austin, the Big Ears Festival is a carefully curated festival driven by an artistic mandate to showcase cutting-edge artists from a wide variety of practices. This moreContinue reading “Big Ears Festival. Knoxville, Tennessee. March 26–28, 2010.”
Densités Festival. Fresnes-en-Woëvre, France. October 23-25, 2009.
A rural French hamlet in the Lorraine countryside isn’t the setting you would imagine for a world-class festival of unadulterated Electronic and Free Jazz music. Yet the Densités Festival in Fresnes-en-Woëvre—population five hundred—about eighty kilometres from Nancy, is just that. During three days in late October, the sixteenth edition presented a sonic banquet of unstoppableContinue reading “Densités Festival. Fresnes-en-Woëvre, France. October 23-25, 2009.”
Yannis Kyriakides. ANTICHAMBER.
Dutch-Cypriot composer Yannis Kyriakides is better known for his extended multimedia and music-theatre works, but the ten pieces collected on this double-CD demonstrate that writing for smaller ensembles affords him equally fertile ground for creative exploration. The album offers listeners a unique opportunity to follow the composer’s rich field of inspirations and intentions as theyContinue reading “Yannis Kyriakides. ANTICHAMBER.”
Lori Freedman. Bridge.
Bridge largely emulates the pattern of one of Freedman’s solo clarinet concerts, exploring the relationships between composition, interpretation, and improvisation. If composition and improvisation were once separated by a gulf, here they’re constructed as a continuously variegated field. Pascal Dusapin’s through-composed piece Itou, has the feel of improvisation, driven along by its rhythmic momentum andContinue reading “Lori Freedman. Bridge.”