#4173: Music for Strings
Hear some music for bowed strings featuring Sam Slater’s processed monochord Rajasthani instrument to the 220-240 strings inside of a piano by Australian Vincent Plush. There’s also new work by string quartet ETHEL, new music from cellist Julia Kent, a work for the Quadracord invented by Paul Dresher, and music for viola da gamba from Gerald Trimble.
Hear music by Canadian cellist/composer Julia Kent from her 2019 record, Temporal where she combines multi-layered cellos and voice-as-texture. Then listen to new music from a multimedia work, Circus: Wandering City, by the string quartet ETHEL which couples their original music with material from the John and Mable Ringling Museum of Art—including interviews with contemporary circus performers and archival imagery. Also, hear music by Berlin-based composer Sam Slater, which has come from the highly-processed and arranged sounds of a central Asian monochord – we’re guessing the ektara (also in Punjab, tumbi.)
Listen to music for viola da gamba by Gerald Trimble, which draws on Moorish music, and an arrangement of a jig by Henry Purcell. Hear music for Quadrachord, a 15-foot long four-stringed instrument invented and built by Daniel Schmidt and Paul Dresher, that is plucked, bowed, hammered and strummed. Dresher’s work, “Glimpsed from Afar” is for both Quadrachord and another newly-invented instrument: the Marimba Lumina, which is an electronic mallet controller played by a percussionist.
Plus, hear music by Australian composer Vincent Plush for the bowed strings of the insides of a piano (some 220-240 strings in total), featuring the Colorado College Bowed Piano Ensemble, directed by Stephen Scott.
Program #4173: Music for Strings (First aired 11/14/2018)
ARTIST: Colorado College Bowed Piano Ensemble (dir. Stephen Scott)
WORK: Vincent Plush: SkyFire, excerpt [1:00]
RECORDING: live, 1989
SOURCE: This performance not commercially available.
INFO: Vincent Plush | Bowed Piano Ensemble
ARTIST: Pascal Le Boeuf, ft. Jessica Meyer, viola
WORK: Pascal Le Boeuf: Into the Anthropocene - 02 II- Requiem for the Extinct [5:21]
RECORDING: Into the Anthropocene
SOURCE/INFO: pascalleboeuf.bandcamp.com
ARTIST: Julia Kent
WORK: Imbalance [4:14]
RECORDING: Temporal
SOURCE: The Leaf Label, due out Jan. 25, 2019
INFO: https://music.juliakent.com/album/temporal
ARTIST: ETHEL
WORK: Kip Jones: 3 bwe [7:43]
RECORDING: Circus: Wandering City
SOURCE: This performance not yet commercially available.
INFO: ethelcentral.org
ARTIST: Sam Slater
WORK: Subway Lion [4:59]
RECORDING: Wrong Airport Ghost
SOURCE: Bedroom Community
INFO: bedroomcommunity.bandcamp.com
ARTIST: Paul Dresher
WORK: Glimpsed From Afar [8:17]
RECORDING: Private recording
SOURCE: This performance not commercially available.
INFO: dresherensemble.org
ARTIST: Gerald Trimble
WORK: The Moor's Revenge [6:25]
RECORDING: Uncharted
SOURCE: MSR 1523 msrcd.com
INFO: Available at arkivmusic.com, iTunes & Amazon.
ARTIST: Colorado College Bowed Piano Ensemble (dir. Stephen Scott)
WORK: Vincent Plush: SkyFire, excerpt [9:25]
RECORDING: live, 1989
SOURCE: This performance not commercially available.
INFO: Vincent Plush | Bowed Piano Ensemble
