In the late 1950's and early 60's, Xenakis worked with GRM (Groupe de recherches musicales) in Paris to produce several pieces for electromagnetic tape, including Orient-Occident, a piece often overshadowed by works like Concrete PH and Bohor, which are rightly considered more groundbreaking pieces in Xenakis's early oeuvre, particularly Bohor, with its unique source material, ...
One of the participants in this event has just sent me a link to a soundfile of the entire group improvisation directed by Urs Leimgruber. http://soundcloud.com/jonathansielaff/urs-large-ensemble-cmg Enjoy!
Barney Childs died of Parkinson's disease ten years ago in Redlands, California. Although an important figure in contemporary music, Barney was in no way a self-promoter. I don't remember hearing any of his music at concerts of the Redlands New Music Society, which ...
Erdem Helvacioǧlu’s most recent album, Wounded Breath, is quite different from his earlier Altered Realities, reviewed here. Wounded Breath is entirely electroacoustic, and quite strong, various, and enjoyable electroacoustic at that. The title piece is perhaps the most “traditional” one, though with Helvacioǧlu a genuinely ...
The report on Urs Leimgruber's visit to Portland has been updated with some videos and with the names of all the musicians who took part in the group imrovisation. Take a look at the other Leimgruber videos on YouTube, too, as they're better quality than the ones I did with my little Canon PowerShot.
Asymmetry recently visited Halberstadt, where a 639 year performance of Cage's Organ2/ASLSP is playing. The clip, taken inside St. Burchardi's, features the chord being played on the fifth of May, 2009. (This chord has been playing since 5 February 2009 and will change on 5 July, 2010.) There's a CD for sale there of a performance that ...
The five pieces on Barry Truax's most recent CD are all from this century, 2001 through 2006. Given the similarity of dates and the thematic unity suggested by the album title, one might unwarily conclude that these five are similarly similar. They're not. If I wanted to ...
Pacific Fanfare(1996) Like all such, Pacific Fanfare is a short piece; unlike other fanfares, this one has no stirring licks by the trumpet section. Instead, there are some very nice foghorns, as befits the Pacific part of the title. Sadly, short here means three minutes, which is not just ...
Truax: So here we are in the gardens of the Archevêché in Bourges, with its formal gardens and its walkways and roses. Asymmetry: Maybe we should just talk about this, then, and forget about music for awhile.... Or perhaps this is just the place to talk about soundscape and ...
Clozier’s La Discordatura, his contribution to the IMEB Opus 30 series, is made up largely of voices, but voices so altered that the sounds one hears in this piece are never more than vaguely recognizable as having started out in human throats. ...
