Hear music by Serbian Aleksandra Vrebalov composed for the string quartet ETHEL on this New Sounds program, devoted to electroacoustic chamber music. Listen to a double-quartet with pre-recorded sounds, “Logbook,” which was commissioned in 2013 by Dusan Tynek Dance Theatre and is Vrebalov’s way of summing up war-time Serbia. According to ETHEL cellist Dorothy Lawson, “Logbook” contains some of the most terrifying music they play, but also has moments of innocence, such as imitating crickets chirping in a field. 

Then listen to selections from Vijay Iyer's “Mutations I-X”, a work for string quartet, piano, and electronics, which veers through propulsive atmospheres, beautiful and strange sound-textures, and is augmented with perceptive and delicate electronics, handled by Iyer. Plus, music from the Frankfurt-based Heiner Goebbels, a composer who operates between worlds of theatre and music. Hear excerpts from his "Walden," performed by the Netherlands' Ensemble Klang, as inspired by writings of Henry David Thoreau. The album-length work uses text from the novel, as narrated by the saxophonist Keir Neuringer, along with steel cello and bow chimes. Fittingly, it is dedicated to the American instrument designer Bob Rutman, who developed said instruments.

PROGRAM #3587 Electroacoustic Chamber Music (First aired on 4/10/2014)