Contemporary Classical Music Podcast
Award-winning composer Jimmy López Bellido has been performed by leading orchestras and his music has been heard in some of the world's most prestigious venues. His opera based on the bestselling novel "Bel Canto" was premiered by Chicago Lyric Opera to great acclaim and he served as the Houston Symphony's Composer-in-Residence from 2017 until 2020. … Continue reading #324 Jimmy López Bellido
Composer Douglas J. Cuomo’s Seven Limbs, written for and featuring Nels Cline and the Aizuri Quartet on Sunnyside Records is a ritual in seven movements, based on the Seven Limbs – a fundamental Tibetan Buddhist practice of purification. The spiritual grounding of the music is in the tradition of John Coltrane, Arvo Pärt, and John Tavener. Doug … Continue reading #320 Douglas Cuomo’s Seven Limbs
A cowboy from Texas, Martín Quiroga's music makes use of traditional compositional techniques and a unique harmonic language in order to honor the musical forms of the past while capturing the harmonic language of the present. Stephen Anthony Rawson talks with him about his music and the Space City New Music Festival which he directs. … Continue reading #318 Martín Quiroga
Jonathan Hannau is a Chicago-based composer and pianist devoted to the surreal, minimal, abstract, and colorful possibilities of music. Austin Williams talks with him about his new album Pieces I Wrote on a Cold Winter Night.
Described by the Chicago Symphony Orchestra as a “rising star”, composer Elijah Daniel Smith is quickly establishing himself as one of today’s leading young composers. Longtime friend and fellow composer Austin Williams chats with him about a big new commission from the Chicago Symphony Orchestra and his approach to music-making. MUSIC Submergences for String Quartet … Continue reading #314 Elijah Daniel Smith
Indian-American composer Reena Esmail works between the worlds of Indian and Western classical music, and brings communities together through the creation of equitable musical spaces.
Annie Gosfield, whom the BBC called "A one woman Hadron collider" lives in New York City and works on the boundaries between notated and improvised music, electronic and acoustic sounds, refined timbres and noise. Her music is often inspired by the inherent beauty of found sounds, such as machines, destroyed pianos, warped 78 rpm records … Continue reading #310 Annie Gosfield
In 1949 a 23-year old composer named Daphne Oram wrote a pioneering new work for two orchestras, live electronics and turntables that was subsequently lost for decades. Only vague references survived until composer and archivist James Bulley rediscovered the complete score in 2015. He enlisted composer and turntable artist Shiva Feshareki to help him realize … Continue reading #309 Daphne Oram’s Still Point
Composer inti figgis-vizueta writes "magically real musics through the lens of personal identities, braiding a childhood of overlapping immigrant communities and Black-founded Freedom schools—in Chocolate City (DC)—with direct Andean & Irish heritage and a deep connection to the land." Stephen Rawson talks with her about music, poetry, magical realism and more. MUSIC Openwork/Knotted Object/Trellis in … Continue reading #307 inti figgis-vizueta
We feature three works that recast age-old myths from a woman's perspective. Milica Paranosic's Penelope and the Geese reimagines the Odyssey from Penelope's point of view. We talk with her about the opera and feature three key scenes. And Marisa Michelson's Naama's Ark tells the flood myth from the perspective of Noah's wife and Salvatore … Continue reading #306 Feminist Retellings of Myth