Edition Peters: New Classics Composers
William Albright
William Albright was an American composer, organist and pianist. His brilliant talents enabled him to do more in his only 53 years than many performers, composers, and educators are able to do in a full career. Upon his graduation in 1970, William Albright joined the faculty at the University of Michigan. He directed the electronic music studio at the university, specializing in what was becoming known as electro-acoustic music, the blending of acoustic instruments with electronic modifications. He was widely hailed by his composition students for the way in which he allowed them to identify and give voice to their own style; he received the Distinguished Teaching Award from the university.
David Amram
‘I learned from my uncle that jazz, like symphony music, was built to last.’
The Boston Globe has described David Amram as the Renaissance man of American music. He has composed over 100 orchestral and chamber works, written two operas, and early in his career, wrote many scores for theater and films, including Splendor in the Grass and The Manchurian Candidate. He has collaborated with such notables as Leonard Bernstein, Dizzy Gillespie, Lionel Hampton, Charles Mingus, Dustin Hoffman, Thelonious Monk, Willie Nelson, Jack Kerouac, Betty Carter, Odetta, Elia Kazan, Arthur Miller, and Tito Puente. Amram has become one of the most acclaimed composers of his generation, listed by BMI as one of the Twenty Most Performed Composers of Concert Music in the United States since 1974. Amram plays over 25 instruments, largely folk related, undoubtedly giving him good understanding of a vide range of styles and forms
John Cage
"Which is more musical: a truck passing by a factory or a truck passing by a music school?"
Cage's most famous musical composition is entitled 4'33''. It is played at the piano and is divided into three movements. All of the notes are silent. The composition takes its name from the fact that it requires four minutes and thirty-three seconds to perform. The pianist uses a stopwatch to control his tempo.
Unsurprisingly not all of Cage’s works were made up of silence, and we have had the good fortune to add a good number of these to our catalogue, courtesy of Mode records. They rang from the unpredictable and quirky Sonatas and Interludes, to the more ambient ‘In A Landscape’ for solo piano, a piece which has been used as a template for many electronic recording projects, some of which can also be found in the New Classics Catalogue. ‘In a Landscape’ is probably Cage’s most accessible work given the depth and variety of his groud-breaking musical output.
George Crumb
After initially being influenced by Anton Webern, Crumb became interested in exploring unusual timbres. He often asks for instruments to be played in unusual ways and several of his pieces are written for electrically amplified instruments. The attributes most frequently cited are: an extraordinarily sensitive ear producing highly refined timbral nuances, a very powerful evocative sense, and a sureness and concision in realizing his musical intentions. In 1995 Mr Crumb became the 36th recipient of the MacDowell medal, an award named in honor of the American composer which is awarded annually to a composer, writer or visual artist who, in the judgment of his/her peers has made an outstanding contribution to the nation’s culture.Jonathan Dove
Dove was presented with the Ivor Novello Award for Classical Music in 2008. In all his music, Dove has a strong desire to communicate, to entertain, and to provoke transformative experiences. His musical language is at once immediately appreciated by listeners new to the concert hall and has provided performers, audiences and directors with rich possibilities for interpretation; several of his major operatic works have been performed in multiple productions all over the world, and his list of commissioners includes some of the world's greatest musicians. He is one of the only living composers able to write successful comic opera, to sustain a company through 150 performances of a single opera, or to captivate a million viewers with a single performance. Morton Feldman
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‘I don't want to wear my compositional tools on my sleeve.’
Lou Harrison was one of the great composers of the twentieth century, a pioneer in the use of alternate tunings, world music influences, and new instruments. Born in 1917 in Portland Oregon, he spent much of his youth moving around Northern California before settling in San Francisco. There he studied with the modernist pioneer of American Music, Henry Cowell, and, while still in his twenties, composed extensively for dance and percussion. He befriended another of Cowell's students, John Cage, and the two of them established the first concert series devoted to new music for percussion.
In synchronisations Lou Harrison’s Nocturne from the Suite For Symphonic Strings played a big part in Matin Scorcese’s Shutter Island alongside pices by John Cage and Ligeti.
‘It's hard for me to think of others because I'm not particularly in sympathy with the music of this century.’
‘I've always regarded nature as the clothing of God.’In 1964 Miles Kastendieck wrote about Alan Hovhaness, "In the present world of musical sophistication with its ivory-towered aloofness, its serial techniques, and its exploitation of atonality, Hovhaness has ventured alone and dared to be himself. His music is markedly different, reflecting primarily an innate love of beauty, spiritual sensitivity, and personal integrity. Untouched by the currents of his time, he has pursued a single-minded course."
Alan Hovhaness is a highly prolific composer, with 65 symphonies at the last count and Opus numbers in the 400s.Having arrived at a similar crisis point in his work as Arvo Part, John Tavener and Henryck Gorecki, except much earlier in 1940, his works bear comparison but are richer, with a more inclusive orchestral brush, and more spiritually poetic.
Hovhaness' music is always positive, uplifting, ennobling and spiritually nourishing. He often introduces unusual meters whilst his music is largely modal and always tonal. Nevertheless, within these self-imposed boundaries he allows himself tremendous creative freedom.
Mauricio Kagel
‘I am interested in ambiguity. Though not because I am a fan of ambiguity, but because it is an essential feature of the external world.’
Mauricio Kagel (born Buenos Aires, December 24, 1931) is an Argentinian composer noted for his interest in developing the theatrical side of musical performance.
Many of his pieces give specific theatrical instructions to the performers, such as to adopt certain facial expressions while playing, to make their stage entrances in a particular way, to physically interact with other performers and so on. His work has often been compared to the theatre of the absurd, and he is often talked of as the musical equivalent of Eugene Ionesco.Kagel has also made films, with Ludwig van (1970) being one of the best known. In it, a reproduction of Beethoven's composing studio is seen. Everything in it is papered with sheet music of Beethoven's pieces. The soundtrack of the film is a piano playing the music as it appears in each shot. Because the music has been wrapped around curves and edges, it is somewhat distorted, but recognisably Beethovenian motifs can still be heard. Kagel later turned the film into a piece of sheet music itself which could be performed in a concert without the film - the score consists of close-ups of various areas of the studio, which are to be interperated by the performing pianist.
Kagel has also written a large number of more conventional, "pure" pieces, including orchestral music, chamber music, and film scores. Many of these also make references to music of the past.
The 'renaissance woman of contemporary British music' (The Observer) - is as respected a singer-songwriter of pop influenced songs as she is a composer of contemporary new music. There are few who have managed to successfully achieve what Errollyn has; writing and releasing albums of soulful art song filled with early blues and jazz, all the while flourishing as a composer of opera and more contemporary genres. Errollyn’s song ‘Daedalus’ appears alongside songs by Björk, Sting, Elvis Costello and Meredith Monk on the Brodsky Quartet’s recent CD 'Moodswings' album. The two solo albums Meet Me at Harold Moores and most recently ‘Errollyn’, feature her songs in her own voice/piano performance and in collaboration with outstanding jazz artists.
