Starting in July (today!), I will post playlists and send newsletters on the 1st and 3rd Fridays of every month (newsletters also contain Find New Music! Map updates and new music shows/events in Arizona). If there are interesting shows that popup between then, I will send out an extra newsletter to those in Arizona, also on Fridays.
On my quest to expand my – and your – listening horizons, I wanted to spend some time looking at instruments that aren’t as common in new music as say, the bass clarinet. This may be due to logistics or trends – or both. This week’s playlist will introduce you to several composer/performers of contemporary organ music.
I give this playlist a Difficult Listening Hour rating of 7/10.
My TMJ Pain Might Be An Abscess by Chaz Knapp. Album: Organ Drunes.
Chaz Knapp is a composer and multi-instrumentalist. From the liner notes, “Created as a kind of “letting go” of over-complex musicality and Chaz’ previous output as a learned composer of sombre piano-and-string elegies, Organ Drunes is an experimental record with an intimately humane sense of humour.”
Wrangham by Claire M Singer. Album: Trian.
Claire M Singer is a composer and performer of acoustic and electronic music, film and installations.
Living Torch I by Kali Malone. Album: Living Torch.
From the liner notes, “Living Torch, through its unique structural form and harmonic material, is a bold continuation of Kali Malone’s demanding and exciting body of work, while opening new perspectives and increasing the emotional potential of the music tenfold. As such, Living Torch is a major new piece by the composer and adds a significant milestone to an already fascinating repertoire.”
For Organ by Chaz Knapp. Album: Withheld.
From the liner notes, “A collection of old pieces that I never intended to release. I abandoned the project for two years only to finish once I began looking at the album in a new light. All pieces composed between 2011 – 2013.”
The Revd Mustard his Installation Prelude by Nico Muhly performed by James McVinnie. Album: Cycles.
All Thoughts Fly by Anna von Hausswolff. Album: All Thoughts Fly.
Anna von Hausswolff is a musician and composer exploring the myriad of possibilities and the potential for new expressions on the pipe organ.
For Organ by Sarah Davachi. Album: All My Circles Run.
Note: Not available on YouTube.
Sarah Davachi (b. 1987, Canada) is a composer and performer whose work is concerned with the close intricacies of timbral and temporal space, utilizing extended durations and considered harmonic structures that emphasize gradual variations in texture, overtone complexity, psychoacoustic phenomena, and tuning and intonation.
Touches by Hans Otte performed by Matthias Geuting. Album: Musik für Orgel.
From the liner notes, “The recordings collected here are drawn from two live performances in Kunst-Station Sankt Peter in Cologne in 2010 and 2011. At the time Dominik Susteck, the organist at Kunst-Station Sankt Peter, invited Matthias Geuting to play at the annual festival orgel-mixturen, one of the rare occasions when we are lucky enough to have an entire festival dedicated to contemporary music for the organ.”
Four Organs by Steve Reich. Album: Four Organs & Phase Patterns.
From the program notes, “Four Organs is composed exclusively of the gradual augmentation (lengthening) of individual tones within a single (dominant 11th) chord. The tones within the chord gradually extend out like a sort of horizontal bar graph in time.”
Disorganised by Lary Seven (also Lary 7). Album: Spire: Organ Works Past Present and Future
Lary 7 is a New York City-based multimedia artist who has been making art in a variety of media for seceral decades.
Release by M Dwinell. Album: Golden Ratio
From the liner notes, “Golden Ratio offers the only documentation of M Dwinell’s just intonation organ work, recorded between 2007-2008. … Golden Ratio focuses exclusively on a natural tuning system generated from the harmonic series. By precise control of his instrument’s tuning, Dwinell sets into motion a dynamic musical system of pressure, intensity and calm. Golden Ratio incorporates both static pulsing drones and heavily arpeggiated passages, culminating in melodic lines that epitomize Dwinell’s unique musical vocabulary as developed over the last twenty years.
Cruor by Bent Lorentzen performed by Frode Stenyaard. Album: Lorentzen: Organ Music
From Naxos, “Lorentzen is one of the outstanding figures in contemporary Danish music. His production spans a wide range of genres from works for large orchestra, pieces for mixed ensembles, operas, a string of organ works, vocal music to instrumental theatre and electronic music. He has established particularly close links with musical life in Poland and Germany.”
Armageddon by Adolphus Hailstork. Album: Amazing Grace: Organ Music of Adolphus Hailstork
From Wikipedia, “Hailstork is of African American, Native American and European ancestry[citation needed] and his works blend musical ideas from the African, American and European traditions. … In the summer of 1963 he attended the American Conservatory at Fontainebleau, France, where he studied with Nadia Boulanger. In 1965, Hailstork received a Bachelor of Music from the Manhattan School of Music, where he studied under Vittorio Giannini and David Diamond, and in 1966 received a Master of Music at the same institution. After studying under H. Owen Reed, Hailstork received his PhD in composition from Michigan State University in 1971.”