In an ongoing effort to spend as little time as possible with my own thoughts, I often have something on: A new album, a podcast, an audiobook, the same recording of “Chess” that I’ve been playing into warped oblivion for the last two decades… They all more or less see the same concentrated output of […]
Tag: Experimental
Posted inInterview
Together on the Way
Born in 1955 in Rheinberg, Germany, and raised in Westphalia, Eva-Maria Houben’s musical career commenced at the age of 12 when she began playing organ in Sunday services at the church where her father worked as a presbyter. Subsequently working as a teacher at both school and university level, she has written numerous books of […]
Posted inPlaylist
A Theater of Music Playlist
You walk on stage, and it’s terrifying: senior-recital-gone-wrong, late-to-a-masterclass-with-Big-Name-Soloist, career-ending-farce-with-your-parents-in-the-audience terrifying. As always, it’s inexplicably hot on the boards (or too cold, or the lights are too bright) and you’re sure the audience can see the sweat glisten on your frustrated, unhappy face. You’re flubbing notes left and right, barreling through an old favorite, lilting […]
Posted inInterview
The Birth of a New Ritual
As a child, Alvin Curran would lie in bed at his parents’ Providence, Rhode Island home and listen to the counterpoint between the booms of trains shunting together at a nearby rail yard and foghorns down at the harbor a few miles away. “Was that a piece of music?” I ask him. “Absolutely,” he replies. […]
Posted inStuff I’ve Been Hearing
We Are All Ghosts
Ashley Bathgate & Kate Moore: “Stories for Ocean Shells” (Cantaloupe) Genova & Dimitrov Piano Duo: “Amy Beach: Complete Works for Piano Duo” (CPO) Anna von Hausswolff: “All Thoughts Fly” (Southern Lord) Kali Malone: “Pipe Inversions (for Kimberger III)” (Important Records) There’s a building near the Tiergarten in Berlin, just behind a section of the Zoological […]
Posted inInterview
The Nature of the Mind
Laurie Anderson, the 71-year-old performance artist, storyteller, musician and wife of Lou Reed, was looking out at the fog. She seemed exhausted, but her green eyes were alert. I met her in her green room in the middle of a packed four-day festival at the Elbphilharmonie in Hamburg, where she was joined by her colleagues, […]
Posted inInterview
Sun Energy
The Baltimore-based interdisciplinary artist Liz Durette recontextualizes the Fender Rhodes, an electric piano best known for its classic rock connotations (heard in The Eagles, The Doors, The Doobie Brothers, and the like), as the outlet for her solo improvisations informed by classical theory. The instrument is the basis for Durette’s setup heard on her two […]
Posted inInterview
Fill the Cracks with Gold
Recently, I spoke with the performer, composer, dancer, and musician Elizabeth A. Baker over Skype, from her home in Florida. A large fold-out picture of Schubert and some of her own paintings hung on the walls behind her. We talked about commercial music, the discourse on diversity, and going to the sex shop for composition […]
Posted inInterview
Surreal Conjunctions
The composer Annea Lockwood has been inspired by a lifelong fascination with timbre to record the sounds of rivers across the globe, to incorporate the sounds of the cosmos into her installations, to attach a music box to 20 helium balloons, and to set defunct pianos on fire just to listen to them burn. She […]
Posted inInterview
Awareness of the Present
Unseen Worlds, the label behind the new compilation of Carl Stone’s work, has a history of working with unusual composers and performers such as Laurie Spiegel, Philip Corner, Elodie Lauten, Girma Yifrashewa, and Lubomyr Melnyk, to name a few. I asked Tommy McCutchon a few questions about the label and working with Stone. VAN: Why […]