New Works from Evan Ziporyn, Lei Liang, René Leibowitz, Christopher Cerrone, and Hannah Lash

April 15, 2014, 8:54 a.m.

We're excited to announce that an amazing new batch of works are now available on PSNY!

From Evan Ziporyn, we have Tsmindao Ghmerto for solo bass clarinet and the Suite from ShadowBang. ShadowBang, a theater piece that combines aspects of traditional Balinese shadow puppetry with Western staging and music, has been recorded by the Bang on a Can.

From Lei Liang, just in time for spring, we have Listening for Blossoms. Check out a recording here: 

Newly available from René Leibowitz: Chanson Dada, the serialist's answer to anti-art. These short monodramas, for child's voice and small ensemble, are somewhere between Schönberg's Pierrot Lunaire and Stockhausen's Gesang der Jünglinge, with a decidedly French touch. 

Continuing with dramatic works, Christopher Cerrone's I Will Learn To Love A Person, in a new version for soprano voice and piano. Containing settings of five poems by Tao Lin, this piece is a rumination on time, love, and communication.  

And finally, Hannah Lash's This Ease, for Chamber Orchestra, commissioned by the Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra, and slated to be premiered on April 26, 2014. Grab a copy of the score before the piece is premiered! 

Three Premieres for PSNY Composers

by Ted Gordon on March 26, 2014, 12:35 p.m.

Only a week after announcing the publication of works by Marcos Balter, we're excited to spread the word about his upcoming World Premiere with the American Composers Orchestra on April 4th at Carnegie Hall's Zankel Hall! Balter's work, Favela, was commissioned by the ACO and draws sonic inspiration from the favelas of Brazil, Balter's home country. Check out Balter himself talking about this piece, his first for a full orchestra:

For those in New York, be sure to check out the Czech Center's 80th birthday celebration for Christian Wolff on March 27th. The program features the American premiere of Alex Mincek's Subito: No. 2, which premeired at the Ostrava Days fesitval last year. Musicians featured in the concert include Mincek himself, Christian Wolff, Philip Glass, Thomas Buckner, and many more. Mincek's Nucleus will also be performed on the second half of the concert. Check out an excerpt of Subito: No. 2 here:

For those in Boston, be sure to attend the Boston Modern Orchestra Project's concert on Friday, March 28th, which includes the American premiere of Lei Liang's Saxophone Concerto "Xiaoxiang", for saxophone and orchestra. The piece is an orchestration of his earlier work, Memories of Xiaoxiang, for saxophone and tape, available here on PSNY. Listen to a recording to be transported to the intersection of the rivers Xiao and Xiang during the cultural revolution, where Liang "search[es] for memories of realities, fragments of the truths in this broken, fractured, and scattered soundscape."

If you happen to be in Texas, Houston's Da Camera hosts Loadbang on April 8 for a performance of Christopher Cerrone's How to Breathe Underwater, Adrian Knight's 20 Maj, as well as works by Hannah Lash, Charles Wuorinen and Andy Akiho. 

Hannah Lash's "Total Internal Reflection" Now Available

by Ted Gordon on Nov. 12, 2013, 8:56 p.m.

New from PSNY: Hannah Lash's string quartet, Total Internal Reflection. Co-commissioned by the Great Lakes Chamber Festival and the Aspen Music Festival for the Jupiter Quartet, this work highlights Lash's unique musical language, using a metaphor borrowed from physics to describe the composer's intertextual encounter with the past. In physics, "total internal reflection" occurs when light is reflected back onto itself, failing to penetrate the border into another medium's boundary. Like this phenomenon, Lash views her composition as a kind of light source, reflecting back upon itself through the dense medium of the string quartet repertoire. Though Lash avoids direct quotation, her work approaches the history of the musical form with her own language.

Listen to the work here: