Notes on Field Recording
(My recent work on Doubting All Things Aligned, a collaboration with Chris Lynn that combines field recordings with composed and improvised music, stimulated these thoughts on field recordings—the part of the collaboration I was...
Friedrich Cerha: Nacht/Drei Orchesterstucke
The two orchestral compositions included in this long-awaited new CD of work by the composer Friedrich Cerha have a deep tie with the astrolabe and the oriental mystic. To give more detail, both Nacht...
Gato Barbieri (1932-2016)
Although probably best known for his soundtrack to the 1972 Bernardo Bertolucci film Last Tango in Paris, tenor saxophonist Leandro “Gato” Barbieri, who died on April 2, was an innovator in fusing elements of...
Christopher Shultis & the Experimental Music Tradition
The 1920s and 1930s were a fertile time for experimental music in America. Composers such as Henry Cowell, George Antheil, William Russell—and very soon after, John Cage—explored...
After All, Saxophone is a Metal Instrument: Ulrich Krieger’s “Acoustic Electronics”
By most accounts, one of the most perplexing rock albums ever released was Lou Reed’s Metal Machine Music. Was it a taunting prank directed at Reed’s fans, the grudging fulfillment of a contractual obligation...
Marcio Mattos: “Cello Is the Bit of the Bass That Was Missing”
The relationship between the cello and double bass isn’t quite as straightforward as it might seem. More first cousins than siblings—the double bass is thought to derive from the old viols, while the cello...
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...
Notizie
Mike Ratledge
Chi ama il free jazz non può dimenticarsi di Mike Ratledge. Innamorato di Cecil Taylor, Ratledge ha traslato nel mondo del rock alcune qualità...
