iTunes Festival, September 30th: Placido Domingo and Friends

I was lucky enough to score tickets to this gig last night, which took place at the Roundhouse in Camden - and friends, what a gig it was. Holy moly.

"Lux Aeterna" by Eric Honour

This week, I was feeling the need for some zen. With construction going on across the parking lot and in the apartment below me, the noise alone is starting to make me go bananas. Eric Honour's "Lux Aeterna" is definitely the remedy for a frazzled mind.

The Maleficent Soundtrack - Classic Disney, or Something More?

I have some friends who are hardcore Disney fans. We are talking the people who see every Disney release in the cinema at least twice (yes, even John Carter), can list every movie alphabetically and chronologically, yearly pilgrimages to the Magic Kingdom sort of folk. This review is for you.

"Oh Me Oh My" by Fast Molasses

I have been feeling the blugrass music vibe lately - maybe it's the appearance of daffodils and buttercups in the fields, or maybe it's because I've had the window open every day this week. Whatever the reason, "Oh Me Oh My" by Fast Molasses really hits the spot.

New Music Wednesdays: "Union Square Station," by Dale Trumbore

Today's piece of music will resonate with you...literally. The dark rumbles in the piano's lower register seem to be directly connected with your heart beat, and the soaring soprano line sounds like a bird flying south for the winter. See what Dale Trumbore has to say about the piece:

Francesca Caccini Vs. Brodude Music Historians

Francesca Caccini, image courtesy TheFamousPeople.com

Usually when one hears the name Caccini, the first composer you think of is Giulio Caccini, author of a famous musical treaty and member of the esteemed Florentine Camerata, a group of scholars and philosophers that included the likes of Vincenzo Galilei, father of the excommunicated astronomer Galileo Galilei. In fact, Giulio's daughter Francesca was also a likely member of this secretive club, though the fact of her gender precluded her from the official guest list.

The 5 Best Game of Thrones Tracks

IT'S HERE. Season 4 premiers today. I have spent the past few weeks in a total immersion rewatch of seasons 1 - 3 and listening to the soundtracks composed by Ramin Djawadi, who also wrote the jams heard in the hugely successful Pacific Rim. We are all counting down the hours until the premier - so spend a few minutes of the next few long hours reading up on the music from season 3.

Weekly Music News Roundup - Week Ending April 5th, 2014

It's finally April - the monsoon season of the northern hemisphere. With spring tidings comes music festival news, announcements, and gigs galore. Take a look:

-M.I.A and Janelle Monae are set to do a bi-coastal hologram concert and usher us into the 21st century. I feel like I'm living in Back to the Future! (Source)

-David Byrne asks an important question: Can musicians make a living off of streaming services?

-United Music Publishers has entered liquidation: a sad day for music. (Source)

-Song of the Lark's Emily Hogstad gives crucial and thorough coverage of the continued Minnesota Symphony troubles here.

-Sally Whitwell has a Pinterest account dedicated to women composers, and it is amazing. (Link)

-Violin legend Itzhak Perlman received terrible treatment by Air Canada at the Toronto airport - they left him to carry his own luggage and violin, even though he made his disability clear. (Source)

-The Sphinx competition for young Latino and Black musicians seeks to break the glass ceiling or traditional orchestras, and it is the most beautiful thing I've seen all week. (Source)

-The Guardian published a brief but accurate article about the state of whiteness in orchestras.

-There is a new app to create ambient music by waving your hands at your Mac, and I think it's safe to say that we all desperately need it. (Source)




That's the news for this week, check back every Friday for more current events in music! If you know of a story that needs some publicity, you can contact me on Twitter @AngelinaPanozzo or through my website, AngelinaPanozzo.com. Thanks for reading and have a fantastic weekend!

New Music Wednesdays - "Oros" by Marc Yeats

This week's new music sounds are courtesy of Marc Yeats, composer and visual artist from the United Kingdom. Marc's recent work, "Oros" (for 8 voices) is an inspired and courageous piece of music based off of the graffiti found on the Berlin Wall, and owing to the theme of "falling walls."

His vision for the work was to create an unmetered "wall of sound" that represented an auditory graffiti - that is, many parts layered on top of one another, not related to each other in a non-narrative fashion.


Check out what Marc Yeats has to say about "Oros" below:

           "Oros" was Commissioned by Auditiv Vokal to celbrate “Einstürzende Mauern”. It was premiered in Dresden, Germany on 27th February 2014. oros is for 8 voices: SSS AA T BB [ 3 sopranos, 2 altos, tenor and 2 basses]

In writing a piece that relates to the theme of ‘falling walls’ [Einstürzende Mauer], I wanted to create an abstract work that was coloured by issues of freedom and liberation, both individual, social and cultural [avoiding the overtly political] and deliver this through an experimental [for me] and wildly contrasting, dramatic new vocal work. There are many programmatic and cliched pitfalls to avoid here. My aim was to write a completely abstracted work without narrative or direct illustrative reference. There would certainly be no ‘message’ in the music or any attempt at proselytising! In fact, the whole idea or concept behind “Einstürzende Mauern” is difficult to translate into English. After conversations with Auditiv Vokal, I alighted on several ideas – colours even – that could articulate the concept.

Concept: To achieve my aims I quickly realised the new piece needed to be one of my un-synchronised works [see below] as I wished to reflect the themes above in the very fabric of the music; the way it was conceived, written and performed to create an ‘organic’ vocal work that becomes a living wall of sound itself. However, this wall would not represent something solid or fixed; it would be permeable, in a state of flux, changing, spontaneous and full of life. Furthermore, as the work would be un-synchronised, the vocalists were freed from the tyranny of the shared bar line and down beat, able to express themselves as individuals within the context of the whole [the ensemble].

This compositional and performance approach enhanced the themes of liberation and freedom even further.
To emphasise the theme of falling walls I found a text source that I could treat in the same manner I would treat my pitches and rhythms in the music. I decided to use graffiti documented from the Berlin Wall itself. I have transcribed a number of slogans, phrases, and words which have been coupled with three short prose of my own exploring themes of journey, freedom, liberation, exploration and self realisation. It is the combination of these text materials that provides the vocal fabric for the work. These materials [within the parts themselves] are treated in a semi-narrative fashion. However, the overall combination and unsynchronised layering of all eight voices purposefully leads to a non-narrative text delivery. Further to this, the setting of the words does not generally encourage clarity and diction in delivery. There is much melismatic writing and the words are used more for their inherent sound properties than literal meaning and context. Of course, at times there is a collision between word setting and context that amplifies meaning in the conventional sense.

Vision: Over time, many layers of graffiti can be written on walls, one covering the other until all of the text and words become obscured by each other. One becomes aware of a surface of tangled words where individual letters and words may appear from the visual jumble only to disappear again under the tangle of other words. This image of the surface of a well-used graffiti wall is a suitable illustration for how the sound-surface of oros can be experienced. As each of the eight singers produces their individual line, their words and phrases, musical gestures and individual vocal characters will intertwine, compete, challenge, unify, collide, obscure and generally create a complexity of sound that will become an aural representation of a graffiti covered wall containing the hopes and sentiments of ordinary people. To create this level of vocal activity, all parts are highly virtuosic, exploring the full range and dramatic presentation of the voices.

Un-synchronised music: The vocalists sing independently of each other. The music is cued to begin only. There is no ‘fixed’ synchronisation between the vocalists. Whilst the relationship of each vocalist is flexibly placed against its neighbour, care has been taken to calculate potential outcomes of coincidence and variability. To this end it is vital that metronome markings are adhered to as accurately as possible although the composer appreciates that it is the various interpretations and practicalities inherent in the realisation of tempi that contribute to the richly unique nature and interplay of each performance.  

There is only one instruction to the vocalists: to begin when indicated and sing until their material is completed.   
Structurally, the music is conceived as a large canon in eight parts with each part a transposition [with some variables] of the other. Thematic material is audible throughout the piece, bringing cohesion and structure. The music forms dense, highly complex and constantly changing relationships that are frequently wild and sometimes beautiful.

Thinking around the title of this piece: wall > boundary > limit > horizon –

The word horizon derives from the Greek “ὁρίζων κύκλος” horizōn kyklos, “separating circle”, from the verb ὁρίζω horizō, “to divide”, “to separate”, and that from “ὅρος” (oros), “boundary, landmark”.

Marc x

You can find out more about Marc Yeats and his music at Marc-Yeats.co.uk. 

Am I "Hearing Voices?" - a review of Jocelyn Pook

What do you get when you mix Massive Attack, classical training, and post-modernism? Well that's simple -

You get Jocelyn Pook, the British composer most famous for composing "Masked Ball," which took center stage in Stanley Kubrick's 1999 film, "Eyes Wide Shut." 

The Death of a Legacy - the von Trapp Family Singers, who Inspired "The Sound of Music"

Maria Franziska von Trapp: Petition for USA naturalization, 1948

Many of us awoke to sad news today - Maria Franziska von Trapp, the last remaining member of this world-renowned singing group, died on February 18th at age 99. At first glance, many will think the mother was the final member, but Maria was in fact the second eldest daughter, played by Louisa in the stage musical and the film. There are several key differences between this real-life family and the fictional family of Broadway and Hollywood. Many people don't even realize that "The Sound of Music" was based on reality!

So, who were the von Trapps, really?

"Chanukah Suite" by Jason Robert Brown

In celebration of Chanukah (or Hanukkah, depending on how you spell it), which begins tonight and lasts until December 5th, I wanted to feature some really lovely music which nearly always gets overlooked during the holiday season. Christmas kind of takes over everything, and other holidays (like Chanukah, Yule, and Kwanzaa, to name a very few) are forgotten and glossed over, much to the chagrin of those who celebrate them. Winter festivals are not unique to any culture or religion, and can be traced back incredibly far - the earliest festivals and celebrations can be attributed to the Pagan communities with their celebration of the Winter solstice (also called Yule).

That said - I went in search of one of the embarrassingly few Chanukah songs I know, which is called S'vivon, and ended up discovering a really wonderful medley called "Chanukah Suite," by Jewish composer, Jason Robert Brown (who also wrote music for Parade, The Last Five Years, and Urban Cowboy). 

Jason Robert Brown, photo courtesy News.Harvard.Edu

White Christmas! (by Irving Berlin)

I don't care if I'm a week too early for Christmas music. I started 3 weeks ago (and so have many musicians in preparation for concerts and recitals), and I've been barely holding in the sparkly snowflakes, frosted sugar cookies, and loudly sung carols. I am literally bursting with Christmas cheer. (Maybe not literally, physically bursting, but you can safely assume that I am emotionally consumed with thoughts of sugarplum faries, John Lewis adverts, and eggnog.) From now until December 25th, we're going to take a look at the origins and evolutions of popular holiday music. Today, we discuss "White Christmas," the impossibly successful ballad by Irving Berlin.

Irving Berlin, photo courtesy of MusicalReviewer.com

Classical Post: "Gretchen am Spinnrade" by Schubert

Happy Saturday, everyone! I've been waiting a month or so to do a post on some good old fashioned German lieder. This is probably one of my 50 top favorite Schubert lieders, and the first he ever wrote.

Franz Schubert, photo courtesy of BoisePhilharmonic.org

Performance Art Post: "O Superman" by Laurie Anderson

Another week has gone by, and I can't believe we are already into April! Today we take a look into the often understood world of performance art, with the wildly popular "O Superman," by artist and musician Laurie Anderson.

Laurie Anderson - photo courtesy of RogerBourland.com

Blues Post: Me and the Devil Blues

Hello there faithful followers! I was quite surprised at how much attention the choral post got, and I'm hoping you like this one just as much. Today we'll be taking a look at some blues and the man behind the legend, with, predictably, "Me and the Devil Blues" by Robert Johnson.

Robert Johnson - courtesy of TrueBlueser.Wordpress.com

Hark I Hear the Harps Eternal - Alice Parker: Choral

Apologies, followers - the holiday season brought a great deal of work and not very much spare time. Now that things are back to normal, postings will resume on a weekly basis. Also, I lied about this being a metal post. That will be coming up, to be sure, but this post is about one of my favorite choral anthems to sing and listen to, by the esteemed Alice Parker.

Alice Parker, photo courtesy of gothic-catalogue.com

Opera Post - The Flower Duet from Lakme, by Leo Delibes

Hello again faithful followers! Today I am going to review and discuss the very famous and well-known (you've heard it, I promise) Flower Duet from the opera, Lakme.