Contemporary/Twenty-First Century

Michael Torke’s “Unseen” (No. 5): A Shifting Kaleidoscope

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Last month, we listened to the first single from Unseen, the newest work of American composer Michael Torke. The piece, scored for orchestra, unfolds in nine brief movements, and continues in the direction of Torke’s recent groove-based chamber works, Being (2020), Psalms and Canticles (2021), and Time (2022). The complete album for Unseen will be released on May 10. Unseen, No. 5, which came out yesterday, emerges from a single pulsating rhythmic pattern in the strings. The piece develops …

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Gabriella Smith’s “Carrot Revolution”: Looking at the World Anew

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Carrot Revolution, an ecstatic work for string quartet by American composer Gabriella Smith (b. 1991), grooves and pulsates with the sounds of the 21st century. It’s an exuberant melting pot which includes music of the past, now available at our fingertips as a result of recordings. Early music strains meet bluegrass, jazz, rock, raspy electric guitar riffs, and the post-minimalist thrill ride of John Adams’ Shaker Loops. The voices of the string …

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

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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

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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

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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

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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

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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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