Storm Drain – Ken Thomson, as featured on Todd Reynolds's Outerborough
Difficult to label
Philip Blackburn goes big, big, big and sensual on the astronomic Ghostly Psalms. By Doyle Armbrust
Ghostly Psalms would be best delivered by a 50-foot-tall orchestrion, plopped in the center of the city, not by CD. The exemplary recording and production give that impression anyway. From the opening herald of a conch shell onward, listeners will find the walls swelling outward.
Composer Philip Blackburn describes the piece in his liner notes as a “Universe Cantata” inspired by a dream. While the experience is often phantasmic, Blackburn grounds the illusions with familiar, earthly timbres, such as that of the cello or human speech. Take the eighth section, “Scratch I-Ching,” in which nuns of the Sisters of Notre Dame each play a disembodied organ pipe in a human rhythmicon. The experience is wonderfully disorienting, trancelike without dissolving into meditation.
Section one, “Jungle Litany,” features sprechstimme in five languages, while “Draw On, Sweet Night” uses EEG and EKG sensors to trigger snippets of Hildegard von Bingen by brainwave and muscle movement. The devices may sound cerebral, but the listening experience is decidedly organic, if blissfully overwhelming.
“Duluth Harbor Serenade” is just as immense as the record’s titular piece, a living symphony of lift bridge alarm bells, rail horns and chain saws. It captures what Blackburn does most compellingly—draw focus to the terrestrial music that surrounds us. 
As varied in scope as this collection of compositions is, Hovda’s primary intent—to explore the outskirts of the sonic possibilities inherent in instrumental sound and how they relate to the physical world—is clearly expressed in every piece. One of her main interests was, as she put it herself, invoking “the sound around the sound.” That is, the partials, harmonics, etc. which emerge above (or below) and beyond an actual notated pitch. Accordingly, her pieces are often sonic visualizations of natural phenomena and of physical movement energized by the timing of human breath.
And wait, it gets better! A special treat is in store for those who purchase the hard copy box set. Three of the four CDs are also loaded up with .pdf scores of most of the pieces (scores from the Coastal Traces music were dubbed too cryptic to be included), not to mention extensive liner notes by Hovda, with commentary by a number of the musicians. The handwritten and typed—as in with a typewriter—scores are at once wonderfully revealing and abstruse. They are quite enough to make, as Robert Carl’s Fanfare magazine review states, “…musical theorists sputter in frustration at the challenge of the evanescent perfection of art.”
The Eleanor Hovda Collection is a beautiful and substantive portrait of a brilliantly original musical mind deserving of a prominent place in music history. I encourage you to pick up this recording and spend time in Hovda’s unique sound world. Rest assured that you’ve never heard anything like it. 
In my opinion, Eleanor Hovda is a fantastic candidate for the composer most deserving of far greater recognition than she has received. I have long admired her sonic landscapes, which have never failed to grab my attention, even when I’ve been listening to compilation CDs in the background while administering to other tasks, and I was saddened to hear about her death in 2009. She left behind a relatively small catalog of works, but all of the ones I’ve heard have been of the highest quality and I’m very happy that Innova Records recently released a 4-CD compilation of her music.
I’m working on a guitar quartet right now, and, as usual, I began by listening to several examples of contemporary quartets. The Minneapolis Guitar Quartet’s recording of Hovda’s striking 1992 piece, Armonia, blew my mind with its beautifully constructed sounds in an entirely engaging form. I wanted to study this piece further, and so I went online to try to purchase its score. I was saddened to find that it wasn’t available through any distributor that I could locate, nor was it in my local libraries.
Next, I went to the website for the Minneapolis Guitar Quartet, who had commissioned the piece, and sent an email through their “Contact” link. I also posted a query on the wall for the Facebook group “Eleanor Hovda—Remembering” asking if anyone knew how I could purchase the score. Within a very short time, several people offered to ship me free copies, and less than a week later the score arrived in my mailbox. Sure enough, studying it has proven to be extraordinarily fruitful. 
...Multiple listenings do both pieces righteous, only then can all that audio information actually can beprocessed. This is music for headphones, to completely drown yourself in and then end with a quiet "Amen" to enjoy twenty minutes of silence in a room with four white walls and a plant. 
It's the most wonderful time of the month - time for new releases show on New Sounds! John Schaefer carefully sorts through the stacks, bins, and boatloads of new CDs, downloads, LPs, cassettes (!) 
...each time we make a tour of the "surrounding" to hear something new and interesting bubbles in the pot, especially for contemporary music...A decisive breakthrough, a pleasant surprise for those who (like me) had been standing to Laurie Anderson and Mark Feldman.
Storm Drain – Ken Thomson, as featured on Todd Reynolds's Outerborough 
31 Minatures in Celebration of the Saxophone Quartet's 20th Anniversary
All are contemporary, seem specially suited for the quartet, and sparkle like small but brilliant stones in a modern cabinet of curiosities.
Dedication showcases ideally the excellence of the Prism Quartet with their exceptional tonal blend and precise agility. A most fitting way to kick off the next 20 years! - Gapplegate Classical-Modern Music Review Orchestra 2001 – ‘To the Point’ = Works of JENNIFER HIGDON, ANDREW RUDIN, GUNTHER SCHULLER, ROMEO CASCARINO & JAY REISE – Soloists/’Orchestra 2001/James Freeman – Innova 745 
Indian Fusions mixed with Jazz: Mantra Revealed 
5. Duo Runedako Room temperature fusion just got hotter Out today for accordion maniacs everywhere: The Multiple Personality Reunion Tour by Guy Klucevsek on the iTunes Store. |
This is the debut monograph of Icelandic composer Anna Þorvaldsdóttir (anglicised in most non-Icelandic contexts as Thorvaldsdottir, or Thorvalds for short). She is half a generation younger than Björk Guðmundsdóttir - plain 'Björk' in pop parlance - and writes music a thousand times more interesting whilst being subject of approximately one millionth of the hype - no sign of the Brodsky Quartet on this CD...
And yet, by the third listen-through, at least with headphones, what seemed like tundra bleakness or black smoke begins to turn warmer and lighter. This is subtle, rich, atmospheric, meditative - almost transcendental - music of uncommon beauty, predominantly piano and slow-moving, that does not yield its abundant, elaborate secrets to a first audition - and never will to a drive-by ear...
With intense, persuasive performances all round, this is a disc offering unusual but ultimately substantial reward for the more adventurous listener. A review site created by the DJs and staff of KFJC 89.7 FM in Los Altos Hills, California...
the shape of a changing tone, active energy 
This “Multiple Personality” CD does indeed reflect an exceptionally wide range of influences and inspirations, Guy’s ever-fertile imagination, his effective arrangements, impeccable musicianship, and genuine musical pleasures from start to finish. 
Anyone unfamiliar with the Prism Quartet, a Philadelphia saxophone ensemble, and Music From China, a New York group formed to preserve and promote traditional Chinese music, might assume that they had precious little in common. But these industrious ensembles, both founded in 1984, share a mission to expand their repertories and an insatiable hunger for new music. Considering the proliferation of Chinese-born composers in Western concert music, perhaps it was inevitable that their paths would cross.
Prism and Music From China toured together in 2009 and documented their shared repertory with “Antiphony,” a noteworthy album on the Innova label. 
Lots of innova content lovingly heard and described: A review site created by the DJs and staff of KFJC 89.7 FM in Los Altos Hills, California...
"Enjoy this aural adventure that celebrates the coexistence of ambient sound and human creation." 
Philip Blackburn captures the atmosphere of the taconite city in a way no rock band ever could...
Not to sound like an old saw . . . but this is a perfect realm for experimentalism—like the combination of found-sound manipulation and abstract choral music of Philip Blackburn. Blackburn is a UK-born “environmental sound artist” who’s been doing much of the album production work for the fabulous and under-appreciated innova record label based in St. Paul. After about 20 years with innova, the label is releasing what amounts to Blackburn’s “debut album,” Ghostly Psalms (due out February 28). The lead-off track from the album is “Duluth Harbor Serenade,” an 8-minute wander along the shore of Lake Superior and the up the cobblestone avenues of the taconite city.
“Duluth Harbor Serenade” is a montage of found sounds mingled with immersive public performances in the city. (Watch the video below.) The shrill bellows of fog horns, piercing wail of ambulance sirens, and tolls of church bells comingle with the laughter of school children, buzzing chainsaws, an impromptu street-corner choral arrangement, lapping waves, and random loud instruments played and recorded simultaneously throughout the city. According to innova, the composition was “heard over several miles.”
Blackburn’s serenade is, I think, the perfect example of music capturing the “sound” of a city. 
Another good friend to living composers is the relatively new Innova label. The recent double CD set Odyssey, featuring flutist Mimi Stillman and pianist Charles Abramovic, is a veritable love letter to Philadelphia composers, including 11 works from eminent artists who either live in the area or have close associations. The variety of styles speaks to a diversity of expression in the classical music world that is probably unprecedented in history, ranging from lyrical neo-Romanticism to folk and jazz influences, and a healthy dollop of good old modernistic dissonance. 
Interview with Turkish composer Erdem H, who's Eleven Short Stories will be out on innova in March. 
Rudresh Mahanthappa's Indo-Pak Coalition : Apti 
22. Harley Gaber: in memoriam 2010 (innova)
The composer's detailed booklet notes go on at considerable length about how this monumental work was inspired and constructed, but this is music the value of which depends on the merits neither of the philosophy behind its creation nor the mechanisms of its making. This is haunting electronic music that reminds me at times of Ingram Marshall's work, which is to say that some of its textures sound similar and it has an equally strong emotional impact, not that it's even remotely imitative. Long threads of sound float shimmering in the air while other threads or clusters revolve around them, weaving a tensile sonic fabric that implies a narrative without insisting on it. A profoundly affecting achievement. 
Snagging both #6 and #7 in the Top 10: 6/7) Graham Reynolds, The Difference Engine (Innova)/Graham Reynolds & the Golden Arm Trio, Duke! Three Portraits of Ellington (Innova) 
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