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Greetings! Today's program is a bit of a world tour, starting in Shropshire, UK, then moving along to distant climes including Princeton, New Jersey, Hamburg, Germany, Norway & Quebec, Canada. Good luck with your passports! Listen & Enjoy! https://www.podbean.com/ep/pb-2hs7g-18adbc6 Joel e-mail: pushingtheenvelopewhus@gmail.com Blue Sky: https://bsky.app/profile/envpusher1.bsky.social 5-24-25 PTE Playlist Ronsack - Swansither - Ronsack - Subexotic Records (2025) https://swansither.bandcamp.com/album/ronsack Just More Idle Chatter - Paul Lansky - Inner Voices: Music from the Winham Laboratory at Princeton University - Centaur (1990) https://centaurrecords.com/ Wasting - Brad Garton, Paul Lansky, Andrew Milburn / Text-Reading: Richard Kostelanetz - Inner Voices: Music from the Winham Laboratory at Princeton University - Centaur (1990) https://centaurrecords.com/ C'ant See The Rebel - R. Schappert - C'ant see the Rebel - r-ecords (2025) https://rolandschappert.bandcamp.com/album/c-ant-see-the-rebel Moth Molecules - Kristine Tjøgersen, Cikada Ensemble - Night Lives - Aurora Records (2025) https://www.aurorarecords.no/en/nightlives 1.4 MS Stubnitz ⁞ Hamburg ⁞ 25.04.2024 - David Wallraf - Amnesia - self-release (2025) https://davidwallraf.bandcamp.com/album/amnesia Amrita Flux - Sacred System - Asana 2: moving meditation - Meta Records (2000) https://billlaswell.bandcamp.com/album/asana-2 Quickening & Enlivening - composers: Matthew Evan Taylor; Rajna Swaminathan; Ganavya Doraiswamy; Utsav Lal; RAJAS; Metropolis Ensemble / ensemble: Rajna Swaminathan; Utsav Lal; Matthew Evan Taylor; Ganavya; RAJAS; Metropolis Ensemble | Andrew Cyr, conductor / Life Returns - Navona Records (2025) https://www.navonarecords.com/catalog/nv6735 Life Returns! - composers: Matthew Evan Taylor; Rajna Swaminathan; Ganavya Doraiswamy; Dave Adewumi; Mark Dover / ensemble: Matthew Evan Taylor; Rajna Swaminathan; Ganavya; RAJAS, Metropolis Ensemble | Andrew Cyr, conductor; RAJAS / Life Returns - Navona Records (2025) https://www.navonarecords.com/catalog/nv6735 Elle qui est-elle - Joane Hétu - Elle a sont mot à dire - AMBIANCES MAGNÉTIQUES (2025) https://ambiancesmagnetiques.com/ Edge of Town - Held By Trees - Hinterland - Tweed Jacket Music (2025) https://heldbytrees.bandcamp.com/album/hinterland McLaughlin - EZRA - Froggy's Demise - Adhyâropa Records (2025) https://ezraquartet.bandcamp.com/album/froggys-demise Sister Andrea - Mahavishnu Orchestra - Between Nothingness & Eternity: Mahavishnu Orchestra Live - Columbia (1973)
For the lastepisode of the first season of Reverberations, host Majel Connery talks to William Brittelle, one of New Amsterdam Records' co-founders and co-artistic directors, about his album Alive in the Electric Snow Dream, which was released earlier this year and developed in collaboration with Metropolis Ensemble during the COVID-19 pandemic. Support the show
Paula Matthusen is a composer who writes both electroacoustic and acoustic music and realizes sound installations. In addition to writing for a variety of different ensembles, she also collaborates with choreographers and theater companies, and frequently performs live-electronics. Her music has been performed by Metropolis Ensemble, Experiments in Opera, Tigue, Dither, Mantra Percussion, the Bang On A Can All-Stars, The Glass Farm Ensemble, to name a few. Awards include the Walter Hinrichsen Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, a Fulbright Grant, two ASCAP Morton Gould Young Composers' Awards, and the 2014 Elliott Carter Rome Prize. Matthusen is currently Associate Professor of Music at Wesleyan University, where she teaches experimental music, composition, and music technology. Music: Lion's Tale by Pauline Oliveros, performed by Toneburst Laptop and Electronic Arts Ensemble; of an implacable subtraction by Paula Matthusen, performed by Dana Jessen paulamatthusen.com Co-hosts: Niloufar Nourbakhsh and Rob Cosgrove Follow us on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter. ensembledecipher.com Contact us at decipherists@ensembledecipher.com. Decipher This! is produced by Joseph Bohigian; intro sounds by Eric Lemmon; outro music toy_3 by Eric Lemmon.
Jazz trombonist and composer Kalia Vandever joins us to chat about conceptualizing her album In Bloom, funding this project through touring and crowdsourcing, identifying a recording engineer and studio, and developing her compositional voice throughout the process. We talk about her start in community education through the Herbie Hancock Institute Peer-to-Peer Program and the importance of encouraging students to connect with one another through community engagement initiatives. Kalia shares about her experience working in a historically male-dominated industry, her article “Token Girl”, and how to support women and artists of ALAANA backgrounds in professional and educational settings. And she offers strategies for developing jazz skills after being trained in a non-jazz idiom. Kalia Vandever is a trombonist, composer, and educator living in Brooklyn, NY. She released her debut album, "In Bloom" in May, 2019 which features all of her original compositions written for quartet and duo with guitar. She has toured and performed nationally with her quartet, as well as her solo project. She has performed in such venues as Carnegie Hall, Sydney Opera House, Walt Disney Concert Hall, Preservation Hall, the Hollywood Bowl, The Jazz Gallery, The Blue Whale, Dizzy's Club Coca-Cola, SMOKE Jazz Club, the Blue Note, and the Rose Theater at Jazz at Lincoln Center. Kalia moved from Los Angeles, CA to New York City in 2013 to study at the Juilliard School where she received her Bachelor of Music degree in Jazz Studies. She has played with the following musicians whom she admires greatly, Ingrid Jensen, Herbie Hancock, Tyshawn Sorey, Darcy James Argue's Secret Society, Fabian Almazan, Wynton Marsalis and the Lincoln Center Jazz Orchestra, Joel Ross, Maria Grand, and others. She is also known for her work as a composer and arranger. She has been commissioned to write pieces for the Tesla Quartet, Metropolis Ensemble, Katherine Kyu Hyeon Lim, and more. The transcript for this episode can be found here. Resources discussed in this episode: Kalia Vandever, In Bloom Kalia Vandever, “Token Girl” Herbie Hancock Institute Peer-to-Peer Program Jazz at Lincoln Center's Jazz Academy Kalia Vandever, Tesla Quartet, “Variation: Meditation” Kalia Vandever, The Westerlies, “Calling Me Back Home” For more information about Kalia Vandever, please visit her website, Instagram, and YouTube.
Welcome to a new edition of the Neon Jazz interview series with Jazz Saxophonist, Composer & Educator Matthew Evan Taylor .. We caught up in late February 2021 about his latest 2020 CD The Unheard Mixed Tapes .. This is his third installment of his Metropolis Ensemble-commissioned five-part series that all started during the pandemic .. He has had an ongoing fascination with the dissemination of art through underground or backdoor channels like zines and mixtapes. At his heart, he is a southern kid who worshiped at the altar of Cannonball Adderly, Ornette Coleman, Carla Bley and Charles Mingus .. Over his career, he has been performed across the United States and these days is is an Assistant Professor of Music at Middlebury College in Vermont. Get to know him .. Click here to listen.Neon Jazz is a radio program airing since 2011. Hosted by Joe Dimino and Engineered by John Christopher in Kansas City, Missouri giving listeners a journey into one of America's finest inventions. Take a listen on KCXL (102.9 FM / 1140 AM) out of Liberty, MO. Listen to KCXL on Tunein Radio at http://tunein.com/radio/Neon-Jazz-With-Joe-Dimino-p381685/. You can now catch Neon Jazz on KOJH 104.7 FM out of the Mutual Musicians Foundation from Noon - 1 p.m. CST Monday-Friday at https://www.kojhfm.org/. Check us out at All About Jazz @ https://kansascity.jazznearyou.com/neon-jazz.php. For all things Neon Jazz, visit http://theneonjazz.blogspot.com/
Connect with Dr. Ashley Jackson here. www.ashleyjacksonharp.com Bio Praised for her rhythmic precision and dynamic performances, harpist Dr. Ashley Jackson enjoys a multifaceted career in New York and beyond. She holds degrees from Juilliard (DMA) and Yale University (BA, MM). As an orchestral harpist, she performs with the New York Philharmonic, Metropolis Ensemble, and NOVUS NY, and has appeared on stages in New York and around the world including Carnegie Hall, Park Avenue Armory, Royal Opera House in Muscat, Oman, and the National Center for the Performing Arts in Beijing, China. A passionate advocate for developing new works across artistic disciplines, she has premiered works by Brad Balliett, Doug Balliett, Courtney Bryan, Danielle Eva Schwob, and Nina Young. She also premiered a mixed-medium immersive performance curated by Roya Sachs titled What Did Freud Dream About, performed at New York Fashion Week, and was featured in the fashion and style blog, Swagger New York. Throughout her academic and professional careers, Dr. Jackson has demonstrated a commitment to diversity and inclusion within the performing arts. Her speaking engagements have included “Representation as Resistance: How an Activist Orchestra Redresses the Push-out of Black Practitioners from Classical Music” (Harvard University) and “The Cultural Citizen: How Classical Music Got Me Woke” (SUNY Purchase). She is on the faculty at Vassar College. Learn more at ashleyjacksonharp.com. Support this podcast
Simply put, the vast majority of classical music performance features the work of dead composers. Performers don't have the chance to ask a work's creator for advice; can't inquire about phrasing, articulation, or dynamics; and almost never were these pieces written specifically for them. For this episode of LPR Live, however, quite the opposite is true. You'll hear the world premiere performance of Canadian-born composer Vivian Fung's Harp Concerto, the fruit of a close collaboration with New York City-based harpist Bridget Kibbey, heard here live at Le Poisson Rouge on April 6, 2014, with conductor Andrew Cyr leading the Metropolis Ensemble. Throughout the collaborative process for this tailor-made concerto, Kibbey and Fung were in constant contact, with Fung catering her writing to Kibbey's singular musicianship while Kibbey provided input for idiomatic – and sometimes un-traditional – approaches to the instrument. The result is a vividly colored exploration of style and sonority that showcases the virtuosity of both performer and composer. In conversation before the performance, Kibbey and Fung are joined by Metropolis Ensemble director Andrew Cyr to discuss the dynamics of their close-knit collaboration, the thrills of live performance, and what it took to turn the harp from angelic arpeggiator to virtuoso protagonist.
Christopher Cerrone is one of those “on-the-brink” artists. The Brooklyn-based composer, riding an impressive wave of accolade and acclaim for his opera Invisible Cities, can seemingly not be heard enough, accumulating important commissions and performances across the country. This episode of LPR Live offers a bird’s eye view of his work for string quartet and string orchestra, High Windows, and features a performance by Quartet Senza Misura, Metropolis Ensemble and conductor Andrew Cyr. Cerrone’s music strikes that elusive balance between intense emotion and meticulous craft, and combines ornamental dissonance with luminous triadic harmony in a singular language. You’ll hear from Cerrone and the Metropolis Ensemble director Andrew Cyr about High Windows’ unlikely source material, the pitfalls of writing string orchestra music, and, for Cyr, what it feels like to literally be in the middle of such intense music. This concert was recorded live at Le Poisson Rouge in New York City on April 7, 2014. Christopher Cerrone’s High Windows was used by arrangement with Schott Music Corporation, New York.
Workshop #13 Young Composers & Improvisors Workshop Recordings
I didn't start with my main melody, and near the end, composing my piece became more and more fun. I don't really remember how I came up with the melody. I was just messing around with the notes and it sounded good to me. When I listened to the Metropolis Ensemble, I think that the cello was the first part, but before they came, I thought that the clarinet was. I named my piece Secret because you never know what’s going to happen next. One challenge I had while composing my piece is that since the computer apparently doesn't play it right when you add a lot of instruments, I was wondering if it would sound right in real life. Later I did find out that it sounds great. Composing music is one of my highlights this year because it's something new, and I always try something new in case it's great and fun, just like composing music is. The things that I've learned about composing music this year are that I've started to love music even more than I thought was possible, with the help of band.
Workshop #9 Young Composers & Improvisors Workshop Recordings
I chose "The Beatles" as a style because I really love their music. I knew a lot of their songs, but I didn't know anything about the actual style. I learned many of the common Beatles Chord progressions and their form, along with some of the rhythms. I used a common Beatles Chord progression and tried to make my melody simple, but unique sounding like many of the Beatles songs. The violin has the main melody in my piece. I have learned a lot about composing music over the last two years. I really enjoyed learning about the Beatles for this piece because I really didn't know anything about it, and I love their music! Composing music has helped me with playing the violin and I really enjoy getting to watch the violinist from the Metropolis Ensemble play my music.