John Adams’ “The Dharma at Big Sur,” composed for the opening of LA’s Disney Hall, references Jack Kerouac’s evocation of the first of Buddha’s Four Noble Truths in microtones, celebrating the freedom of the California coast at Big Sur.
Sound
Harry Partch: Genesis of a Musical Outsider
Composer, dishwasher, hobo, fruit picker, sailor, microtonal theorist, instrument builder, writer, visual artist, philosopher, musicologist, iconoclast teacher Harry Partch was one of the first 20th Century composers to work with microtonal scales, writing much of his music for custom-made instruments that he built himself, tuned in 11-limit (43-tone) just intonation.
Creators of the Cool: Miles Davis and Gil Evans
The collaboration of trumpeter Miles Davis with Gil Evans’ orchestral arrangement and composition elevated “the new thing,” freeing modern jazz from big-band swing with lyrical-literary French horns and tuba and Davis taking up the flugelhorn.
Sound Motel: Experimental Musings in Los Angeles
Eagle Rock’s Welcome Inn transformed into a micro-concert grand finale for Los Angeles’s Pacific Standard Time Performance and Public Art Festival on Sunday, January 29th. The Society for the Activation of Social Space through Art and Sound produced this free, six-hour event.
mapping sound. – Bowed Guitar Tributaries of Los Angeles
Just Intoned tunings sound off, with a 2009 tribute to slain microtonal guitarist Rod Poole, from SASSAS at the Schindler House, Los Angeles.
Composer John Adams: September 11th Souls Eternally Transmigrating
Years after the World Trade Center attacks of September 11th, 2001, John Adams’s “On the Transmigration of Souls” is more poignant than ever.
Dmitri Shostakovich: Revolutionary Composer or Soviet Propagandist?
The composer Dmitri Shostakovich, considered the conscience of the Russian Revolution, denounced twice by Stalin, later lent his name to the Soviet Communist Party.