Composer Portals
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Q2 Music /
Esa-Pekka Salonen's Nordic Sounds Burn White Hot
Now that Elliott Carter has passed, we might well bestow the title of “world’s most impressive late-blooming composer” onto the shoulders of Esa-Pekka Salonen. Read a full portrait of... Jan 14, 2013
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Q2 Music /
The Rewarding and Unpredictable Music of Elliott Carter
Charles Ives wrote him a letter of recommendation to Harvard. He attended the New York premiere of The Rite of Spring. Decades later, Stravinsky himself would proclaim that he had wri... Nov 6, 2012
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Q2 Music /
Behind the Perverse Pandemonium of HK Gruber
Heinz Karl Gruber (or HK Gruber, depending on your program) isn’t afraid of being called silly. One of the Austrian composer’s most notorious pieces, Frankenstein!! (yes, with two exc... Oct 1, 2012
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Q2 Music /
Mason Bates and DJ Masonic: Two Halves of a Modern-Day Composer-Performer
The tradition of the star performer-composer is as old as classical music itself — Beethoven on the piano, Paganini on the violin. But Mason Bates isn't a virtuoso of the organ or the... Sep 20, 2012
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Q2 Music /
The Misfit Pop Art of JacobTV
Jacob ter Veldhuis, the Dutch composer better known as JacobTV, comes as close to pop art as classical music is ever likely to get. Borrowing the "speech-melody" technique of Scott Jo... Aug 15, 2012
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Q2 Music /
The Propulsive Post-Minimalism of Michael Torke
A decade or two before post-minimalism became the lingua franca of emerging American composers, the young Michael Torke was already building his career on it. Learn more about Torke a... Aug 6, 2012
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Q2 Music /
The Inestimable and Visionary Impact of Chou Wen-chung
Tan Dun's teacher, student of Edgard Varèse, Chou Wen-chung stands at the intersection of Asian and European traditions, of old and new logics for cross-cultural listening. Jul 24, 2012
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Q2 Music /
Terry Riley's Radical Openness to Sound
For a newcomer to Terry Riley, In C is where to begin, with its 53 melodic fragments passed back and forth between whatever instruments may have been assembled, and which are paced ... Jul 6, 2012
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Q2 Music /
The Spiky Neoromanticism of David Del Tredici
From time in the serialist trenches of academia to a position in the front ranks of the neoromantic movement, David Del Tredici has played a surfeit of roles over the last half-centur... Jun 8, 2012
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Q2 Music /
The Singing, Soaring Lines of Latvian Melodist Peteris Vasks
It will be hard to keep Latvian composer Peteris Vasks's passionate, yearning, eminently accessible music secret here much longer. Hear more about and from the composer ahead. May 22, 2012