Contemporary Classical Music Podcast
In this live taping of Access Contemporary Music’s award-winning podcast Relevant Tones we'll talk with McWhorter about the development of language and perform several new pieces of music inspired by and incorporating language and created especially for this evening. "There are approximately six thousand languages on Earth today, each a descendant of the tongue first spoken by … Continue reading #447 RT Live: The Power of babel
Access Contemporary Music's Thirsty Ears Festival is Chicago's only classical music street festival. For two days we close Wilson Ave. in front of our music school for stellar music performances, craft beer and wine, food trucks and community vendors. We feature a small sample of the contemporary music performed on this year's festival. MUSIC The … Continue reading #443 Thirsty Ears festival 2024
Published 50 years ago this year, Studs Terkel’s seminal book Working (The New Press) is, then and now, a compelling look into the world of jobs and the people who do them. Relevant Tones celebrated this landmark with a unique evening of new music commissioned by ACM and inspired by Studs alongside a fascinating conversation about how work has … Continue reading #420 Relevant Tones Live: working
What is art worth and who determines its value? Join host Seth Boustead and special guests composer Douglas J. Cuomo (operatic adaptation of Doubt; Sex and the City theme), art curator Tod Lippy (Esopus magazine) and filmmaker Juliet Ellis (The Virtues) for a lively discussion of this pertinent topic. The music performed includes Cuomo's piece A Far Playground for cello and piano, Commercial Etudes by Will Rowe and Nivea Hair Care … Continue reading #401 Relevant Tones Live: commercialism in Art
The New York Times’ Overlooked series was introduced on March 8, 2018 for International Women's Day, when they published fifteen obituaries of "overlooked" women, and has since become a hugely successful bi-weekly feature in the paper. As part Relevant Tones: Live, Access Contemporary Music has commissioned five composers to write musical portraits of the lives in the series, including surrealist … Continue reading #379 Relevant Tones Live: Overlooked no more
Taped live as part of the third night of the 2021 Relevant Tones Festival, this is the album release party for Carla Kihlstedt and Rafael Oses' stunning collaborative project Necessary Monsters. Necessary Monsters is a collaboration between composer/musician Carla Kihlstedt and poet Rafael Osés. It is a contemporary song cycle based on Argentine writer Jorge Luis Borges’ Book … Continue reading #319 Carla Kihlstedt’s Necessary Monsters
The opening night of the Relevant Tones Tenth Anniversary Festival featured an exciting multi-media concert of music inspired by Rube Goldberg machines. We were joined by Rube's granddaughter Jennifer George who is also the director of the Rube Goldberg Institute, and an all-star roster of musicians for an unforgettable evening. MUSIC Rube G. by Frank … Continue reading #312 Useless Machines
ACM's Thirsty Ears Festival is Chicago's only classical music street festival combining stellar performances with great craft beer from Empirical Brewing. We did an intimate live broadcast the night before from the ACM School of Music featuring performances by Michael Hall, the Wurtz-Berger Duo and the Quijote Duo. MUSIC Neal and Jack and me by … Continue reading #308 Thirsty Ears Live
Narrative is an important aspect of both music and storytelling. Seth will talk with composers Nathalie Joachim and David T. Little and writer J. Robert Lennon about how they structure their music and stories. We'll hear music performed by cellist Nicholas Photinos and pianist Yasuko Oura and chat with them about their perspectives on narrative … Continue reading #273 What’s the Narrative?
Full Episode https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLKKOqw6qRyqeUtYpFr8yw4N29I5gNtx5m According to the New Yorker "astrology is currently enjoying a broad cultural acceptance that hasn’t been seen since the nineteen-seventies. The shift began with the advent of the personal computer, accelerated with the Internet, and has reached new speeds through social media." Seth chats with expert astrologers Rebecca Gordon and Sam Reynolds … Continue reading #272 Stargazing