Michael Torke’s “Unseen” (No. 7): Embracing an Ecstatic Groove

The first single from Unseen, the newest work by American composer, Michael Torke, was released last week. (The full album will be available on May 10). The excerpt, No. 7 from a piece which unfolds in nine brief movements, delivers a visceral and ecstatic sense of groove. Scored for a larger ensemble, Unseen continues in the direction of Torke’s recent chamber albums, Being (2020), Psalms and Canticles (2021), and Time (2022). The composer writes, Unifying these four projects is the …

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John Adams’ “I Still Play”: Jeremy Denk

Pianist Jeremy Denk describes John Adams’ I Still Play as “a piece about a long friendship, and about connection and farewell.” Adams composed the fleeting set of variations for solo piano in 2017 to commemorate the retirement of Robert Hurwitz, the longtime president of Nonesuch Records. The piece, which the composer has characterized as “Satie meets Bill Evans,” unfolds over a restless chromatic bass line as a dreamy, haunting waltz. Fragments from Bach’s …

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Pavel Karmanov’s “Different…Rains”: Music for Flute, Piano, and Tape

Steve Reich’s Different Trains for string quartet and tape, composed in 1988, is a seminal work of American minimalism. It is music which is simultaneously in motion and at stasis. On one level, we sense the forward rush of passenger trains connecting New York, Chicago, and Los Angeles during the 1930s. On another level, we can imagine the time-altering hypnotic blur of the incessantly passing countryside from the window. The Russian composer and …

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Remembering Ron Nelson

The American composer Ron Nelson, who wrote numerous works for wind ensemble, as well as for orchestra and chorus, passed away on December 24, 2023. He was 94. Leonard Slatkin once called Nelson a “quintessential American composer,” and praised his “ability to move between conservative and newer styles with ease,” adding, “The fact that he’s a little hard to categorize is what makes him interesting.” Born in Joliet, Illinois, Nelson studied with …

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Anna Thorvaldsdottir’s “Metacosmos”: Beauty and Chaos

The music of Icelandic composer, Anna Thorvaldsdottir (b. 1977), has been described as “an ecosystem of sounds, where materials continuously grow in and out of each other, often inspired in an important way by nature and its many qualities…” Primal sound structures form the building blocks of Thorvaldsdottir’s evocative tone poem, Metacosmos, composed in 2017 and premiered the following year by Esa-Pekka Salonen and the New York Philharmonic. Unfolding in a single …

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Roxanna Panufnik’s “Celestial Bird”: Ex Cathedra

Roxanna Panufnik (b. 1968) is one of Britain’s most prominent composers. The daughter of the Polish composer and conductor, Andrzej Panufnik, she has written numerous choral works, including Westminster Mass, premiered by London’s Westminster Cathedral Choir; the oratorio, Faithful Journey – a Mass for Poland; and Across the Line of Dreams, a work for two conductors, two choirs, and orchestra, which was premiered by Marin Alsop, Valentina Peleggi, and the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra. …

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Michael Torke’s “October”: Autumn Music

Although usually free of a literal program, the music of the American composer, Michael Torke, is highly evocative. Even if we don’t share the composer’s experience of synesthesia, in which musical keys are involuntarily associated with specific colors, Torke’s suite of Color Music from the 1980s makes us feel the essence of green, bright blue, and ecstatic orange. Other orchestral pieces such as Run (1992) and Javelin (1994) convey an exhilarating sense of motion, while December suggests …

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