Not a celebration of Sagittarius A* our galaxy's supermassive black hole (45 million times the size of the sun) recently photographed ..but a general reflection that these collapsed stars are quite common in the universe (1 per 1000 stars) and gobble up everything near them including light. As our nearest black hole is reckoned to be 1500 light years away, the chances of us being lunched by super gravity is pretty much zero. Cause for celebration?....being swallowed by a near neighbour is still a possibility...

Track:
Clarinet bass drones / clarinet figures
Flute trio with clarinet bass chords and synth
Soprano saxophone improvisation.....
..Clarinet bass section...reprise drone/figures
Soprano sax trio with alto sax bass chords, beats and oboe.

(Image c/o Pinterest)


Black Hole Party

Magnificent din of heavy industry....declining in the Steel City.

(photo 'Meltdown' by Entropic Remnants c/o Pinterest)

Racket Blues

A massively bombastic attempt at a blues/stride Hammerklavier style virtuoso piano extravaganza.  The main theme is derived from a hip-hop bass line and funk rhythms drive the composition throughout. It's been performed by virtuosi such as Nadia Shpachenko and Paul Hoffman. Written in 1994, its world premiere was by Andrew F. Anderson, Ann Arbor, November 21, 1997.  

It was one of the first widely-shared piano MIDI's: in 1994 it was actually hosted on http://ircam.fr/midi/bs.mid.  The title was inspired, in part, by Kandinsky's painting, The Blue Rider.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Der_Blaue_Reiter

Score + MIDI: https://imslp.org/wiki/Category:Harrington,_Jeffrey_Michael

Piano Music 

BlueStrider for Piano - Interpreted by Steve Layton

Started out as a funky tango, got dramatic, slowed it down, turned it into a new prelude.

Prelude #23 for Piano

Karen Bentley Pollick, Violin
Jonathan Salzedo, Harpsichord

Second performance, Grass Valley, CA, Nov. 23, 2014.  

Program Notes;

Chasse Infernale was written to showcase the talents of two virtuosi, violinist, Karen Bentley Pollick and harpsichordist, Jonathan Salzedo. The music was inspired, in many ways, by the experience of living in the walled city of Avignon, France. Looking to the east from my music study, 100 yards away, are the remains of the cathedral where Petrarch first saw Laura, in 1327, which would later inspire the Humanist Renaissance tradition. Looking towards the west, 200 yards away, is the Collégiale Saint-Didier where Messiaen was baptized and where in the 1200's as part of the Inquisition, thousands of Chatars were burned at the stake. Walking through the narrow streets in Avignon, one is exposed to all of the contradictions of Western history. Avignon had a rich history of musical innovation during the Ars subtilior movement, one of the most complex musical periods prior to the 20th Century. And although the title was chosen after the piece was completed, it could be said to be in the form of the Renaissance composition, the caccia (or chasse), a canonic form with onomatopoeic exclamations that make reference to hunting.

Chasse Infernale relishes in a muscular approach to the harpsichord informed by pop cultural tropes from The Addams Family or the hallucinatory vision of the Beatles' Strawberry Fields and by the manic music of the French Baroque composer, Pancrace Royer. The violin part was inspired by East-European and Spanish dance musics, utilizing dramatic unisons and seconds for rhythmic fervor. Both instruments engage in this dramatic hunt with flourishes, scales and pounding ostinati throughout the piece. 

Score and parts are available at http://parnasse.com/pdf or at my IMSLP page - http://imslp.org/wiki/Category:Harrington,_Jeffrey_Michael



Chasse Infernale for Violin and Harpsichord by Jeffrey Harrington - Live Recording

from the recording, "Opus Contra Naturam"
Dan Stearns - instruments/etc

Daniel Stearns - Silvered Alar Rise!

First Coast Groove (2008) Piotr Szewczyk (b.1977)

In 2005, violinist and composer Piotr Szewczyk developed the Violin Futura Project, a collection of commissioned miniatures for solo violin that highlights over thirty international contemporary composers and how they are re-imagining the solo violin. “The purpose of the Violin Futura Project,” says Szewczyk, “is to sample the creative environment of our times by showcasing the wide variety of styles present in the 21st century, and to create a body of new solo violin repertoire.” Navona Records presents the album release of Szewczyk’s project, VIOLIN FUTURA.
The miniature format acts as a foundation for a self-contained concert program, in a way crafting a larger meta-piece comprised of movements written by different composers. Each piece in this collection stands on its own, yet as a group, an enthralling musical landscape of the 21st century emerges. The project’s focus on the solo violin miniature gives insight into how composers are implementing the aesthetic eclecticism of today, incorporating material from popular music, using extended techniques, and including written materials such as tabloid articles and poetry. With a group of international composers that crosses multiple generations, the listener is offered a variety of approaches to style and diction that are evolving concurrently.

0:00 / 4:09 VIOLIN FUTURA - Piotr Szewczyk

Philomel (1964) - Milton Babbitt

Liz Pearse, live voice
Bethany Beardslee, recorded voice
Mark II synthesizer, 4 channel sound
John Fielder, sound engineer


Recorded live 7/9/2015 at Bancroft Street Market as part of the Omaha Under the Radar Festival. 



Milton Babbitt- Philomel

Jesse Langen, guitar; Mabel Kwan, piano and toy piano; Meret Bitticks, piccolo; Shanna Gutierrez, bass flute

Ich ruf zu dir (I call to thee) is a musical collage in constant metamorphosis. The musical material begins with my own work then slowly incorporates two pieces by J.S. Bach, his church Cantata BWV 177, Ich ruf zu dir Herr Jesu Christ, first performed in Leipzig, July 6, 1732, and Ich ruf zu dir, Herr Jesu Christ, BWV 639 from his Orgelbüchlein collection of 46 chorale preludes for organ composed from 1708-1717. The chorale preludes are a collection of organ music for church services, a treatise on composition, a religious statement and a pedagogical manual. Rolled chords heard in the guitar part are derived from the chords in the chorale. Rhythmic motives, gestures, and ornamentation are derived from the cantata. The kaleidoscopic and dense textures, and the rhythmically frenetic moments in a low register slowly traverse through rough terrain to reveal recognizable fragments of Bach’s works.  A more literal quotation of the organ chorale at the end with piccolo, bass flute and toy piano acts as a calming force, a call, perhaps from a lost child, is heard and answered.

Ich ruf zu dir for guitar and piano; piccolo, bass flute and toy piano

This is the 1st movement of a three movement duo for cello and piano. composed between 2011 and 2014, commissioned, premiered and recorded by TwoSense: Ashley Bathgate - cello, Lisa Moore - piano

Catch & Release - 1st movement of Family Matters - Dresher, 2014

Plectra, performed by the Chicago Harp Quartet in Chicago, October 2016.

Chicago Harp Quartet

Plectra

Jeffrey Harrington was born and raised in the Deep South, spending most of his formative high school years in New Orleans, Louisiana, where he became personally familiar with many great blues artists with his work at the New Orleans Jazz Festival. While he has studied with many famous composers at Juilliard and Tulane, including Elliott Carter and Roger Sessions, he attributes his musical education to self-study.

Jeffrey Harrington's music is characterized by New Orleans-influenced rhythms, and intense counterpoint and climaxes. A noted microtonalist and electronic experimentalist, he was also one of the first musicians to adopt the Internet for music distribution and promoting, starting in 1987 with RelayNet emails and BBS downloading. He is likely the first composer to utilize the Internet to further his career, and probably invented the free music distribution model. By employing pre-web computer systems he distributed his music (both scores and all recordings) to musicians and listeners around the world free of charge garnering worldwide performances and attention. He continues to do so to this day at his site: http://parnasse.com/jh/blog/. Harrington moved to Avignon, France in 2010 after his home on Sanibel Island was threatened by the oil spill. In November 2011, Harrington had 4 world premieres across the globe in 20 days, two in Germany by Duo Ahlert und Schwab and The Twiolins, one in London, by Camilla Hoitenga, and one in Southern California by The Hutchins Consort.

More music: http://parnasse.com/jh/blog/
http://open.spotify.com/artist/1SlRSnxbcQTZfiUOgGH2zA
http://parnasse.com/jh/mp3/

Chasse Infernale for Violin and Harpsichord by Jeffrey Harrington - Live Recording

jeff_harrington

Recent comments

All Signs Point North

Related tracks