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katiskelton on 03/15/2012 at 01:00AM
String Theories: IPR & The String Orchestra of Brooklyn
This Saturday, March 17, St. Ann's Church will host the second installation of String Theories, the joint partnership between ISSUE Project Room and the String Orchestra of Brooklyn that provides artists with an opportunity to premiere new experimental works for orchestra. This year's commission features works composed by Anthony Coleman, C. Spencer Yeh, MV Carbon, and Eric Wubbels, which is awesome, because for most of these artists this is their first opportunity to compose works on such a large scale (check out this interview with Spencer regarding the transition from solo and improvisational work to composing for an orchestra). I'm super excited to see what these guys come up with--what does Burning Star Core sound like with 10 VIOLINS? Will all the musicians be equipped with circuit-bent TV instruments? These and more mysteries will be illuminated on Saturday night.
Until then, listen to this live recording of Katherine Young's composition from last year's program, titled Inhabitation of Time. Young is a bassoonist and composer who received an emerging artist commission from ISSUE last year, and this piece sounds like what it would be like to try to walk in a straight line on the quantum level--variables constantly shifting and rearranging, time stretching and compressing. What kinds of physical laws will this year's String Theories defy? We don't yet know. Get your tickets here.
jason on 04/12/2011 at 02:30PM
Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum's Revamped Website & Spring Selections
This Spring, Boston's Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum launched a revamped website and online music library to accompany their world-renowned classical music podcast, The Concert
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To celebrate, ISGM digs into their vast library to curate this fresh batch of world-class performances of Bach, Beethoven, Brahms, Debussy, Mendelssohn, Mozart, Schoenberg, Schumann, Vivaldi & more for the Free Music Archive and beyond, all available under a Creative Commons Music Sharing license. The Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum is a unique gem of a museum; at once a time capsule and a window toward the future. Recently nominated as Best Museum In Boston, the ISGM houses works by Rembrandt and Michelangelo amongst the thousands in its permanent collection. In her will, Isabella Stewart Gardner (April 14, 1840 – July 17, 1924), stipulated that the museum must be left exactly as she designed and arranged. Even when the museum was victim of a robery in 1990, the frames of the stolen paintings remained on the wall. Through The Concert, a Creative Commons-licensed classical podcast presenting performances from the museum's Tapestry Room (pictured above), the ISGM is able to reach beyond the museum's walls to share incredible performances with a worldwide audience. The Concert launched in 2006, but Music at the Gardner is the longest-running museum program of its kind, and the Tapestry Room regularly plays host to worldclass performers. We hope you enjoy these "Spring Selections!" dig deeper... |
jason on 04/23/2010 at 02:41PM
Excavated Shellac -- Strings LP
Excavated Shellac is an incredible resource for rare international 78rpm recordings. With each post, shellac excavator Jonathan Ward takes great care to ensure that the transfer is as clean as possible. His blog posts always go the extra mile in placing the music within a larger cultural and historical context (on the side, JW is a professional writer and researcher).
With the motto "good music is best when it's shared", JW has done just that for upwards of 100 songs that might otherwise go unheard, and we're honored to be hosting the Excavated Shellac archives here on the FMA.
For those who would prefer to hear this music on vinyl, we're in luck! Excavated Shellac has produced its first-ever LP, titled Strings, in collaboration with Dust-to-Digital's Parlorphone imprint. Strings collects fourteen previously unissued performances on various stringed instruments from around the world, including the fiddle, shamisen, charango, Paraguyan harp, Indian vina, Vietnamese moon guitar, Persian violin, and Lebanese oud,. These recordings -- made between 1920 and 1950 -- are all presented with the detailed liner notes we've come to expect from Excavated Shellac.
Anybody with an interest in historical music might already be familiar with the Dust-to-Digital catalog, which includes releases like the Ian Nagoski-curated Black Mirror: Reflections in Global Musics 1915-1955. Here's one of my favorite tracks from that compilation -- a rare performance by the Irish uilleann piper Patrick J. Touhey:
Black Mirror is available here, and you can pick up a copy of Excavated Shellac's Strings LP here. The new LP featured tracks that are not otherwise available -- not even from the Excavated Shellac blog -- but after the jump there's a fantastic mix of other stringed tunes from Jonathan Ward's archives.
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