Caroline Shaw’s “Blueprint”: Imagining Structure

Born in Greenville, North Carolina, composer Caroline Shaw (b. 1982) has been called “a musician who moves among roles, genres, and mediums, trying to imagine a world of sound that has never been heard before but has always existed.” She is active as a violin soloist, chamber musician, and ensemble singer in the group, Roomful of Teeth. At the age of 30, Shaw became the youngest composer ever to be awarded the …

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Remembering Pavel Karmanov

Pavel Karmanov, the Russian post-minimalist composer and rock musician, passed away suddenly and unexpectedly last Saturday, November 23. The cause of death was heart failure. He was 54 years old. Born in Siberia, Karmanov was once described as “a romantic dressed in a minimalist gown.” A flutist and pianist, he was a permanent member of the alternative band, Vezhlivy Otkaz from 2000 until 2017. In past posts at The Listeners’ Club, we have explored …

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Osvaldo Golijov’s “Tenebrae”: Melismatic Echoes of Couperin

In Western Christianity, Tenebrae occurs in the final days of the Holy Week, and commemorates the sufferings and death of Christ. It involves the gradual extinguishing of candles, leading to a void of darkness. Metaphorical darkness, light, and space formed the inspiration for Tenebrae, a 2002 chamber work by Argentine composer, Osvaldo Golijov (b. 1960). (The piece was originally scored for soprano, clarinet, and string quartet, and later adapted for strings alone). …

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Michael Torke’s “Bloom 2, Morning”: Music for Percussion Ensemble

Bloom, the newest album by American composer Michael Torke (b. 1961),  will be released on August 30. The eleven movement work was written for, and recorded by, Sandbox Percussion. With an exuberant, infectious rhythmic groove, Bloom develops over three musical “days,” with movements titled “morning, noon, night.” With repeating patterns, it rides the visceral pulse of the contemporary dance floor. In his program note, the composer writes, BLOOM uses interlocking rhythms which, when …

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“Dark Pastoral” for Cello and Orchestra: David Matthews’ Completion of a Vaughan Williams Fragment

A four-minute fragment of music, sketched by Ralph Vaughan Williams in 1942, is all that exists of a cello concerto the composer intended to write for Pablo Casals. In 2010, contemporary English composer David Matthews (b. 1943) developed the fragment, which would have become the concerto’s slow movement, into the elegiac Dark Pastoral for cello and orchestra. Vaughan Williams’ original two-stave short score set out the movement’s A section, with only a few instrumental …

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Steve Reich’s Quartet: Music for Two Vibraphones and Two Pianos

In his 1968 essay, Music as a Gradual Process, Steve Reich (b. 1936) wrote, “I am interested in perceptible processes. I want to be able to hear the process happening throughout the sounding music.” An American composer at the forefront of minimalism, Reich’s early process music involved repeated fragments of recorded conversation played on tape loops, one of which gradually moved out of sync in a phasing technique. Later came instrumental phase …

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Jennifer Higdon’s Oboe Concerto: Majesty, Beauty, and Grace

Regarding her Oboe Concerto, composed in 2005, American composer Jennifer Higdon writes, “I have always thought of the oboe as being a most majestic instrument, and it was a pleasure to be able to create a work that would highlight its beauty and grace.” Unfolding in a single movement, the Concerto begins with the nostalgic, pastoral voice of the solo oboe, emerging on an extended B-flat over a serene, searching chorale in …

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