Music From Other Minds

Program 554: De Staat and Other Selections

KALW Broadcast Date: April 5, 2019 | Host: Liam Herb

On this Music From Other Minds, Liam Herb explores the music of three very different composers. The program features the work of Japanese composer and koto player Michiyo Yagi, De Staat but Dutch composer Louis Andriessen, and Alaskan composer Matthew Burtner‘s Sonic Physiography of a Time-stretched Glacier.

Michiyo Yagi is a Japanese Composer and Koto player who is renowned for her ambitious collaborations and -genre bending projects.- She studied Koto with Tadao Sawai, one of Japans best known koto masters. She has collaborated with many artists that will be familiar to some Music from Other Minds listeners including Peter Brötzmann, Fred Frith, Carl Stone, and late great jazz violinst Billy Bang.

Michiyo has performed in rock bands, jazz groups, classical ensembles, noise groups, and everything in between. She cites traditional Japanese music and the American Maverik tradition of composers like Harry Partch, John Cage, and Conlon Nancarrow as her main influences.

Louis Andriessen (b.1939) is widely regarded as the leading composer working in the Netherlands today and a central figure in the international new music scene. From a background of jazz and avant-garde composition, Andriessen has evolved a style employing elemental harmonic, melodic and rhythmic materials, heard in totally distinctive instrumentation. His range of inspiration is wide, from the music of Charles Ives in Anachronie I, the art of Mondriaan in De Stijl, and medieval poetic visions in Hadewijch, to writings on shipbuilding and atomic theory in De Materie Part I.

Louis Andriessen’s compositions have attracted many leading exponents of contemporary music, including the two Dutch groups named after his works De Volharding and Hoketus. Other eminent ensembles who have commissioned or performed his works include Asko|Schoenberg, San Francisco Symphony, Los Angeles Philharmonic, BBC Symphony Orchestra, Kronos Quartet, London Sinfonietta, and the Bang on a Can All Stars.

Matthew Burtner composes music for concert instruments accompanied by glacier sounds, recorded by the composer at very close range. His music and research explores embodiment, climate change, polymetrics, and noise. Born in 1970 in Naknek, Alaska, a small coastal fishing village where he was inspired by the vast natural resources of his native state. He will present recorded performances of Sound Cast of Matanuska Glacier (with string quartet, wind trio and Chapman Stick) as well as Syntax of Snow (with solo percussion). A highlight of the evening will be video of Ice Cycle, a dramatic collaboration with Time Lapse Dance (NY) featuring Jody Sperling’s choreography to music composed by Burtner. He is also a Professor of Composition and computer Technologies at the University of Virginia in Charlottesville and Director of EcoSono, an environmental arts non-profit (www.ecosono.org).

 

Program Audio

30-Second Spot