These chamber works from 1994 to 2002 include many of my favorite concert works, and represent a cross section of approaches I've taken and musical media I've utilized in concert music recently. By the end of 1993, I had spent the better part of 12 years focusing on composing for opera/music theater and for modern dance, involving live music with other performing disciplines. The success of many of these projects led to more and more similar commissions. However, the kind of problems encountered in creating music for opera, music theater, or for dance are often not of a purely musical nature, but are rather more the result of the collaborative process and aesthetic goals that are not specifically musical. I felt, at the end of this period, that my own musical vocabulary was in some sense stagnating, and felt a need to devote the next period of work to creating works exclusively for the concert stage. This coincided as well with a desire to return, as I had done regularly throughout the 1970's, to performing works by other composers. To meet both this and the goal to compose primarily for the concert stage, I decided to form the Electro-Acoustic Band, a new chamber ensemble that would offer to composers (including me) a group of virtuoso musicians able to use the extraordinary advances in music technology of the past 15 years and who possessed the ability to genuinely perform music possessing roots in very diverse traditions including contemporary classical, rock and roll, jazz and various world musics.
Most of the works on this CD were premiered by or on concerts performed by the Electro-Acoustic Band. - New Albion
Eve Beglarian - Tell The Birds - (New World Records 2005)
Lisa Bielawa, voice; MATA Ensemble; Roger Rees, voice; Jessica Gould, soprano ("Gloria"); Paul Dresher Ensemble Electro-Acoustic Band; Corey Dargel, voice; Margaret Lancaster, piccolo; Eve Beglarian, voice and electronics; Bill Ware, vibes solo; FlamingO Ensemble, Brad Lubman, conductor.
"One of new music's truly free spirits" and a "remarkable experimentalist," Eve Beglarian (b. 1958) is a composer and performer whose music has been described as "an eclectic and wide-open series of enticements." Tell the Birds is her latest sampler plate of ideas, a set of pieces both cohesive and pleasingly eclectic. Four of the six pieces here deal with texts, from such disparate writers as William Blake, Polish poet Czeslaw Milosz, and American poets Linda Norton and Stanley Kunitz. Musically, Beglarian charts her progress in finding ways to combine her use of samplers and electronics with breathing, real-time musicians, extant new music ensembles and an orchestral showpiece for good measure.
The compositions contained here-The Marriage of Heaven and Hell (1994), Creating the World (1996), Robin Redbreast (2003), Wonder Counselor (1996), Landscaping for Privacy (1995), FlamingO (1995, revised 2004)-represent a range of ideas and vintages in the Beglarian oeuvre, from the mid-nineties forward, with some revision of older works and a generally gleaming account of her continuing artistic saga. Beglarian continues to carve out a path in music not quite like any other in contemporary music, not so much breaking rules as ignoring the ones she has no use for, and nurturing ideas or combinations she finds useful and appealing. - New World.
Interestingly, I find "Sun" to be one of the weaker tracks on the album. "Odessa" on the other hand will have a prominent place on my Best of 2010 mix cd.
@thom, yup I have all of her work except for her first band, Noise For Pretend, which I'm grabbing with some of my 20 "i lurv u" credits from eMu. So, yeah, I say grab Juno. :-)
Comments
how is that BXI? I totally missed that yesterday.
Poss not coincidental though...
Funky, jazzy, energetic ear candy for a hot day.
Fantastic.
Craig
Embroiled in a one-sided and torrid aural love affair at the moment.
Craig
Paul Dresher - Cage Machine - (New Albion Records 2004)
Eve Beglarian - Tell The Birds - (New World Records 2005)
Lisa Bielawa, voice; MATA Ensemble; Roger Rees, voice; Jessica Gould, soprano ("Gloria"); Paul Dresher Ensemble Electro-Acoustic Band; Corey Dargel, voice; Margaret Lancaster, piccolo; Eve Beglarian, voice and electronics; Bill Ware, vibes solo; FlamingO Ensemble, Brad Lubman, conductor. Eve Blegarian website
- Wow ! - A must have for Laurie Anderson fans.
At work we played this album 6 feet under when it hit the street.
Gotta get the new Esperanza @elwoodicious - do you have Junjo? Should I d/l it?
Interestingly, I find "Sun" to be one of the weaker tracks on the album. "Odessa" on the other hand will have a prominent place on my Best of 2010 mix cd.
Craig
Morning ADHD radio continues...
@thom, yup I have all of her work except for her first band, Noise For Pretend, which I'm grabbing with some of my 20 "i lurv u" credits from eMu. So, yeah, I say grab Juno. :-)
...before I have a seizure from all the cut-copy-paste.
I get high on Highlife.
Craig
Out of Africa, the right way.
Craig
"I hope you know, that this will go down on your permanent record!"
Craig
Esperanza Spalding's bass lines wrap around my ears like a pair of legs.
Edward Ka-Spel - Burning Church - ( Beta-lactam Ring Records 2008)
Rolling the clock back 10 years to reminisce about running around NYC with my then fiance and now wife.