Temple University Concert Choir presented a concert of new American choral music, 
featuring water and chant themes, performed mostly a capella, with some 
percussion accompaniment. The program, conducted by director Alan Harler, was designed for the singers and audience to experience the “tapestry of 
diversity” and “broad landscape of contemporary society.”

The opening piece, To Be Sung on the Water (1969) by Samuel Barber, 
presented delicately balanced and blended voices, excellent diction, and a 
melodic emphasis that moves among vocal parts as others comment between 
phrases. Eric Whitacre’s Water Night (1996) brings out astringency and 
mystery with bi-tones that chill, to accompany the English text by Mexican 
poet Octavio Paz. Whitacre’s second piece, Cloudburst (1996) to Spanish 
text also by Paz, represents a meditation of unleashed energy that at 
moments sounds like a babble of praying voices, and culminates in a 
percussive rainstorm.

In a Philadelphia premiere, Rain Chant (2002) by R. Murray Schafer is an 
extended vocalize of repetition based on Native American chants, included 
by the Canadian composer as part of a music drama. Slides, grunts and 
trilling are non-traditional vocal technique that had to be mastered; if 
some of the vocal intervals were not exactly as written, the listener could 
not always discern.

Temple graduate composition student Girard J. Kratz adds harp and vibraphone 
to set off text by Sara Teasdale in There Will Come Soft Rains (2002). The effect
is that of chimes and Japanese goto (guitar), for a soft veil of sounds to go with the nature—swallow, frogs, wild plum tree—sweet spring in time of dissonant war.

The second half of the concert featured music by Meredith Monk that explores 
vocal technique and performance, excerpted from her science-fiction opera The Game, 
a vocal repetition of rituals on a distant planet as a means of preserving Earth’s culture and civilization. Short hummed phrases set an atmospheric mood; the ensuing harmonic vocalise expands and varies the set motif. Then, the whoops and wails start on top of the theme. Then the chorus starts walking around; some form a line and tap each other
on the shoulder as new sounds are started and passed along. 
Next a line circles the hall and with synth accompaniment, presents a theme 
with syncopated voices that is not unlike what we have heard from Eastern 
European vocal groups, as phrases were started and passed around a large 
circle to a continued bass ground chord. 

The work was not overly 
repetitive, even fragmentary, and seemed to be lacking dance and video to 
fill in the sensory experience. The closing Panda chant at least provided 
the former, as singers did a sideways stamp-step and clap to a joyous theme 
with yells and trills that could have gone on a little longer.

The concert closed with a Native American chant as recessional. The 
performance was marked by Harler’s usual attention to vocal blend, clear 
diction and clean starts and stops.

One of the great pleasures of CD collecting in recent years has been the reemergence of an enormous amount of recorded Villas-Lobos' chamber music.  Impossibly lush melodies, exotic rhythms, otherworld spirtiuality in extremely vivid performances.   Music to love and listen to over and over again.

There was a time, in the 1920s, when Ornstein's name was mentioned in the same breath as Stravinsky and Schoenberg, and he lived long enough (he died earlier this year at 109)  to see his music come and go in fashion several times.   One thing is certain:  he has never had--and probably never will have again--as formidable and effective an advocate as Marc-Andre Hamelin, the brilliant Canadian pianist, who makes a convincing case that Ornstein's early admirers had it right--he belongs in the same company as Stravinsky and Schoenberg.

Christina Fong is among the most adventuresome of modern violin and viola players having lovingly committed to CD modern masterpieces by John Cage, Morton Feldman, Alan Hovhaness and now the Spanish composer Maria de Alvear's glorious extended 1994 meditation for viola.  Engaging and important music from one of the most inventive of the independent CD labels. OrgreOgress Productions

Harry Partch was iconoclastic American composer, musical theorist, philosophic instrument builder, raconteur, artist and hobo and it is Partch's king of the road life from which Dean Drummond and Newband draw the inspiration for The Wayward. "Found" hobo poems serve as fodder for Patch style "just intonation"  or what might be called American plainsong. 

Here's something irrestible to collectors--the first release of the long awaited recording of Csaba Erdelyi's Restoration and Orchestration of the Bartok Viola Concerto, which was left in an uncompleted form when the composer died in 1945.  For many years the only way in which the work could be heard was in the completion by Hungarian Tibor Serly, which nobody much liked.

 Erdelyi has worked for many years on a better restoration and  has produced, after exhaustive study and consultation, a number of interim 'completions'. Now he has arrived at his definitive version.  The trick is that for copyright reasons, the CD is not available in this Hemisphere but can be ordered directly from New Zealand.  Click on the cover picture for details.

 George Rochberg was  born in 1918, and became one of North America's most influential composition teachers.  A rabid atonalist Rochberg abandoned that stance following the death of a son and began to construct his music out of both tonal and atonal languages. In so doing, he dramatically reinterpreted the notion of stylistic uniformity that had been a hallmark of the Western aesthetic since antiquity. By including these diverse musics, Rochberg believed that he had expanded the emotional range that modern music was able to express. He had found a contemporary language that could both bear the weight of despair and point to transcendence. And—unlike either strict serialism or aleatoric composition—it was a language that was pointedly individualistic. 

Our usual monthly bow  to English country estates, chintz and big slobbering dogs.  Every culture has some composer or artist or writer who is famous for being unknown:  E.J Moeran is England's claim to unsung genius. 

Delightful collection of contemporary works for flute and guitar including a new transcription of American composer Charles T. Griffes' "The White Peacock." This piece, originally written for piano in 1915 and later scored by Griffes for full orchestra, was transcribed and arranged by Mike Coates for flute, guitar and bassoon -- this recording features guest artist Russell Peterson on bassoon.  Also, contains lovely piece by Debussy and Rodrigo.

Oh, no, Maria.  No.  Ready or not the "composer's version" of the now overly familiar score has arrived, courtesy of Bernstein disciple Kenneth Schermerhorn and the first-rate Nashville orchestra. 

Saxophonist Russell Peterson plays David Maslanka's Sonata for Alto Saxophone and Piano, Larry Thomas Bell's Mahler in Blue Light and his own Concerto for alto Saxophone and Percussion Orchestra.  Distinctly American music, masterfully played and recorded.  Highly recommended.