Håkon Thelin’s Folk Music for Double Bass
Any musical instrument represents a certain set of possibilities. Constrained by the instrument’s particular characteristics—both as a unique individual and as a member of a class of instruments—these possibilities offer a range of potential...
The Timbre of Neither/Nor: Morton Feldman’s Clarinet & String Quartet
In the 1972 essay “A Compositional Problem,” Morton Feldman mentioned a contradiction he felt faced him as a composer: The contradiction between instrumental color and the immediacy of sound. For a composer with a...
The 2015 Sonic Circuits Festival of Experimental Music, 18-20 September 2015
The 2015 Sonic Circuits Festival of Experimental Music, the DC area’s fourteenth annual weekend-long program of experimental music and multimedia works, was held at the Pyramid Atlantic Art Center in Silver Spring, MD, the...
Music as Sound as Music: On Making Nostos
Nostos, a collaboration between bassist/electronics artist Cristiano Bocci (Follonica GR) and myself, represents a melding of the organic, acoustic sounds of the double bass with after-the-fact timbres and supplementary compositional structures afforded by the...
An Alternative Modernism: David Diamond’s String Quartets Nos. 2, 9 & 10
The American composer David Diamond would seem to have been something of a master of unfortunate timing. Holding to the indispensability of melody and traditional compositional techniques when both were thought to be in...
Airi Yoshioka & the Violin Alone
Much has changed in Western art music since the modern violin family was developed in Northern Italy in the early 16thcentury. Formal conventions have come and gone, tonality has evolved, broadened and dissolved, and...