Thank you, Med - That's a good, strong word. I like it!

Composed in 1963, James Iliff dedicated the score 'For George Self and the pupils of Holloway School, London'. James conducted the Holloway School orchestra and the new piece was performed twice in the concert. We hear the second of the performances. 
The score can be viewed on the British Music Collection website under 'James Iliff'.

Landscape

Cloud-Like (2014), Kirsten Broberg (5:56)

Ali Wright, alto saxophone
Dylan Ward, alto saxophone

Joe Tesoro, audio engineer
Colin Mosely, artwork and design
Recorded August 2019 at the University of Missouri–Kansas City

Cloud-Like, Kirsten Broberg

Dutilleux was known to be kind and painstakingly patient, working on compositions for many years was of no concern to him. Trois Strophes is a piece beloved of many cellists, very virtuosic but full of light and dark and indecision and seeming in the beginning to come from nowhere, to have been there all along.

Henri Dutilleux - Trois Strophes Sur Le Nom de Sacher (1)

Toybox for solo piano and teddy bear 

Composed 2020 by Raymond Brien 
Performed by Joe Howson

Music and cover art - Raymond Brien copyright 2021

toybox

Octo20 for bass clarinet and fixed media, composed, performed and recorded by Raymond Brien 2020.

Inspired by Varèse’s chamber music. 

Copyright 2021

Octo20

Johnna Wu, violin
Issei Herr, cello
Simon Kanzler, electronics

Special thanks to the trio (members of Pink Noise Ensemble: https://www.pinknoiseensemble.com/about) for their dedication to making made this experimental piece possible. Simon even built a number of special software instruments to play and improvise in sixth tones!

Brightly Drawn (2021) for Pink Noise Ensemble

This percussion quartet combines standard percussion instruments like marimba and vibraphone with the sounds of objects like paper, a take-out container, a wire music stand, and tuned glass bottles. The title came to me from rock-climber Emily Harrington, who repeated "slow is smooth, smooth is fast" like a mantra during her record-setting climb of El Capitan. This phrase struck me as oddly musical and I wanted to capture a sense that within any larger sweep of time, there are an infinity of instants being articulated. In the quartet, sudden tempo changes in are often smoothed over with complex rhythms; polymetric mutterings in different instruments coalesce as their timbres blur together. I hope the quartet captures something of the slipperiness of time.

percussion: Jonathan Collazo, Gabriel Costache, John Ferrari, Daniel Matei
conductor: Scott Allen Miller
recording and sound engineering: Jacob Sachs-Mishalanie
Recorded at LeFrak Concert Hall, Queens College, CUNY. Special thanks to George Katehis and Jeff Nichols.

(NYT article on Emily Harrington: https://www.nytimes.com/2020/11/09/sports/emily-harrington-free-climb-yosemite.html )

Slow is smooth, smooth is fast (2022) for percussion quartet

Composed and performed by Scott Allen Miller.
Recorded at the CUNY Graduate Center by Itzá Garcia and Tobias Fandel.

This solo bass piece is my first completed composition that uses 31 equal divisions of the octave. The title, which (as usual) I applied to the work after completing it, comes from Kim Stanley Robinson's novel The Ministry for the Future. It wonderfully describes the simultaneous force and fragility of so many things, from our political institutions to our tuning systems. I also love the layered imagery of a lacy gossamer net, somehow still and steady, overlaying a veiny block of impossibly animated granite. I hear a similar restlessness in the music's slippage across 31EDO's small steps (dieses) and the expressive variety of intervals this produces.

Granite of the careening world, held in gossamer nets of words (2023) in 31EDO for solo double bass

Monique Gabus - Déploration pour une Amie défunte

Dedicated to my friend and composer, Jason Eckardt.

This is a timecode-supported polytemporal ensemble piece.

the unimportance of things for 17 players

Instrumentation:

alto flute
clarinet in Bb
bassoon
tenor trombone 1
tenor trombone 2
percussion (1)*
piano
violin
string quartet 1
string quartet 2
Double Bass

Duration: 12.02

Performers: Rarescale (Carla Rees - Flutes, Ashley Myall - Bassoon, Marie Schreer - Violin), Geert Calleart (piano), Dirk Amrein (trombones), String players from the Royal Northern College of Music featuring the Karski Quartet and the Viridis Quartet, players from the Bristol Ensemble (Roger Heaton - clarinet)and Caleb Herron - percussion.

The Unimportance Of Events (2020) Extract

The "breath" in English, or "ruah" in Hebrew, or "qi" in Chinese, or "pneuma" in Greek, is the energy that gives life, the creative energy, but it is also music. Contrary to what one might think, it is not classifiable with absolute uniqueness as a nodal sound: although in fact a noise nature may be evident, it is actually in effect a grooved sound, it is sufficient to try to perform a long breath by hinting a scale whistled to realize it. Blowing the trumpet sound, it is sufficient to try to perform a long breath by hinting a scale whistled to realize it. Blowing the trumpet face of this sound object onto the trumpet of a trumpet becomes even more evident: we can indeed perceive the heights proper to the true fundamentals of the instrument! In the present acousmatic piece phonemes of the human voice and trumpet sounds interact (with techniques of crossed synthesis and not only) in a path marked by multiple orders of subrogation aimed at highlighting the multiple affinities between singing and brass playing: the human voice is the result of vibration, and the trumpet has its voice.

Ruah

Marc Yeats is an internationally renowned composer and visual artist whose compositions have been performed by the most noted of orchestras and ensembles across the globe. These include UK companies such as The London Sinfonietta and The Scottish Chamber Orchestra, the BBC Philharmonic and the Halle Orchestra and Chorus. Further afield, Marc’s work has also been performed by the Tokyo City Philharmonic, the Atlanta based, Chamber Cartel, and many others. His compositions have gained great acclaim through many radio broadcasts for the BBC and also been broadcast in many other countries including the US, Germany and New Zealand.

Marc’s relationship with the BBC is both strong and enduring, starting with a BBC Scotland performance by the Edinburgh String Quartet more than 20 years ago. His first orchestral work – I See Blue – conducted by Martyn Brabbins, received much acclaim when first performed around the same time. This led to specific BBC commissions, including a piano concerto to open Piano 2000 in Manchester, with Kathryn Stott as soloist, and a solo harpsichord piece ‘Rhema’, performed by Mahan Esfahani and broadcast in 2010 by BBC Radio 3 from the Clothworkers’ Centenary Concert Hall in Leeds.

Selection as one of just 10 to attend the legendary Hoy Summer School in 1994 brought Marc into contact with the late Sir Peter Maxwell Davies. At the completion of the course, Max was keen to support and promote Marc’s work, and conducted his first commission with the Scottish Chamber Orchestra at the St. Magnus Festival in 1997. He and Marc continued to share ideas, and Max took a great interest in Marc’s visual art and compositional work with mobile technologies and a range of asynchronous structural approaches to composition.

Marc is excited to have recently been appointed composer-in-residence to Yeovil District and Dorchester County Hospitals, a position he has also held with other UK and US organisations. Work such as My Blood Is As Red As Yours’ (an orchestral and choral piece commissioned by the Halle to celebrate World Aids Day in 2008 and performed at the Bridgewater Hall) and recent work, such as ‘shapeshifter’ and ‘the observation quartets’ continues to enhance his reputation as a leading contemporary composer.

The Unimportance Of Events (2020) Extract

Marc Yeats

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