#4376, Music About Homelessness and Gentrification

New Sounds | Jun 8, 2020

Listen to music that deals with gentrification and homelessness by Brooklyn-based iT Boy, Michael Gordon and The Crossing, Gabriel Kahane, and Ted Hearne with poet Saul Williams.

Hear new music from Brooklyn-based composer and instrumentalist iT Boy (aka Theo Baer) whose solo electronic project is built around cassette loops. It’s from his EP, Nail House, a Chinese term for a real estate holdout amidst the pressures of gentrification. In fact, during his recording of the EP, his home and work studio became a “Nail House” and he was evicted shortly after finishing these works.  

There’s also new music from Bang on a Can Co-Founder and composer Michael Gordon and the Philadelphia-based Grammy-winning choir, The Crossing, conducted by Donald Nally. Gordon’s latest piece, Anonymous Man, for unaccompanied voices, is a memoir about his neighborhood in lower Manhattan. It’s also a meditation on having neighbors who are homeless – specifically including movements about one neighbor named Larry who lived on a loading dock across the street from his home.

Then, hear music by Gabriel Kahane from a larger work addressing homelessness called emergency shelter intake form, where all of the movements are titled for questions from the form. Also, listen to an excerpt from Place, a multimedia work by Ted Hearne in collaboration with the poet Saul Williams. Place is a “multifarious meditation on white supremacy, fatherhood, displacement and loss, at once intimate and monumental” (Bandcamp.) The work, which will get its premiere in an at-home pandemic quarantine version on Tuesday, June 9, at 8PM via The Greene Space and on Facebook Live, specifically addresses gentrification. 

Program #4376, Music About Homelessness and Gentrification  (First aired 6/8/2020)

ARTIST: Gavin Bryars
WORK: Jesus’ Blood Never Failed Me Yet, radio edit [1:00]
RECORDING: Bryars: Jesus' Blood Never Failed Me Yet
SOURCE: Obscure #1, reissued on Virgin #45970, another recording with Tom Waits is on Point 438-823.
INFO: Also, visit gavinbryars.com for info

ARTIST: Ted Hearne, Saul Williams, et al
WORK: Place (at home version) excerpt of Part 2 [8:59]
RECORDING: Place
SOURCE: This version not commercially available.
INFO: 
tedhearne.bandcamp.com

ARTIST: it Boy, ft. Zachary Paul, violin
WORK: Deities [6:35]
RECORDING: The Nail House EP
SOURCE: itboytpb.bandcamp.com
INFO: 
newamrecords.com

ARTIST: The Crossing
WORK: Michael Gordon: Anonymous Man - III. On Desbrosses Street [4:42]
RECORDING: Anonymous Man
SOURCE:Cantaloupe Music
INFO: 
michaelgordonmusic.bandcamp.com

ARTIST: The Crossing
WORK: Michael Gordon: Anonymous Man - - VII. One Day I Saw [6:40]
RECORDING: Anonymous Man
SOURCE: Cantaloupe Music
INFO: michaelgordonmusic.bandcamp.com

ARTIST: The Crossing
WORK: Michael Gordon: Anonymous Man- IX. I Sleep At Home [6:31]
RECORDING: Anonymous Man
SOURCE: Cantaloupe Music
INFO: michaelgordonmusic.bandcamp.com

ARTIST: Oregon Symphony, Carlos Kalmar, Gabriel Kahane, Alicia Hall Moran
WORK: Thank you for completing this form [4:48]
RECORDING: emergency shelter intake form
SOURCE/INFO: gabrielkahane.bandcamp.com

ARTIST: Gavin Bryars
WORK: Jesus’ Blood Never Failed Me Yet, radio edit [1:52]
RECORDING: Bryars: Jesus' Blood Never Failed Me Yet
SOURCE: Obscure #1, reissued on Virgin #45970, another recording with Tom Waits is on Point 438-823.
INFO: Also, visit gavinbryars.com for info

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