Eric Shanfield, composer

In celebration of what would have been John Cage’s ninety-third birthday tomorrow, over at The Rest Is Noise Alex Ross has suggested making a playlist of all of your songs lasting four minutes and thirty-three seconds. This is, I believe, a capital idea. My list is considerably longer than his, but this is clearly because he hasn’t bothered loading all of his legendarily humongous CD collection into his iTunes – I mean, no Hoodoo Zephyr‽ Metaphysically impossible.

Here, then, is my 4′33″ playlist. Some interesting stuff. Best track title: American Idiot? Long, Long Journey? The World at Large? A Distorted Reality Is Now A Necessity To Be Free? Anonymous Collective? Another Time, Another Place? Complexity Reducer?

John Adams: Day Chorus (from Death of Klinghoffer)
John Adams: Tourist Song (from Hoodoo Zephyr)
Add N To (X): Fyuz
Louis Armstrong: Long, Long Journey
Bela Bartok: Movement IV – Intermezzo interrotto (from Concerto for Orchestra)
Bat For Lashes: Glass
Beirut: Untitled (from The Joys of Losing Weight)
Ben Folds Five: Brick
Steve Beresford: Stationery Moves Me
Alban Berg: Movement V – Presto delirando (from Lyric Suite)
Alban Berg: Act I, Scene 4 – The Doctor’s Study (from Wozzeck)
Bettie Serveert: You’ve Changed
Johannes Brahms: I. Denn es gehet… (from Vier Ernste Gesange, op. 121)
Tim Buckley: Starsailor
Elliott Carter: Movement III – Andante espressivo (from String Quartet No. 2)
Elliott Carter: Movement V – Pavane (from Pocohontas Suite)
Elliott Carter: Careless Night (from In Sleep, In Thunder)
Emmanuel Chabrier: II – Danse villageoise (from Suite Pastorale)
The Chemical Brothers: Song to the Siren
Chromeo: Bonafied Lovin (Tough Guys)
Cub: Cast a Shadow
The Cure: Push
Luigi Dallapiccola: Scene Seconda (from Il Prigioniero)
Danger Mouse & Sparklehorse: Little Girl
Miles Davis: Two Bass HIt
Claude Debussy: II – La soiree dans Grenade (from Estampes)
Delorean: Complexity Reducer
Delorean: It’s All Ours
Dinosaur Jr.: Whatever’s Cool With Me
Dirty Projectors: The Softer Shell
Don Caballero: I Agree… No! I Disagree
Franco Donatoni: Francoise Variation III
Duran Duran: White Lines (Don’t Don’t Do It)
Eels: Trouble With Dreams
Efterklang: Illuminant
Evanescence: My Immortal
Morton Feldman: Projection IV
Fountains of Wayne: Sick Day
Fugees: No Woman, No Cry
Giovanni Gabrieli: Conzon Quarti Toni
Jan Garbarek: Snipp, Snapp, Snute
Kenny Garrett: Koranne Said
Philip Glass: The Ark (from Anima Mundi)
Heiner Goebbels: Wild Speculations (from The Man in the Elevator)
Green Day: American Idiot
Buddy Guy: Damn Right I’ve Got the Blues
Harvey Danger: Woolly Muffler
Jimi Hendrix: House Burning Down
Simeon Ten Holt: Section 165 (from Horizon)
Iron & Wine: Pagan Angel and a Borrowed Car
Jimmy Eat World: If You Don’t, Don’t
Kronos Quartet/Willie Dixon: Spoonfull
Constant Lambert: Bacchanale (from Horoscope)
David Lang: International Business Machine
Led Zeppelin: Black Country Woman
Gyorgi Ligeti: Sostenuto, Molto Calmo (from String Quartet No. 2)
The Low Anthem: Charlie Darwin
Lykke Li: Little Bit
Ashley MacIsaac: Bonnie Anne Anderson
Steve Martland: Re-Mix
Marc Mellits: II. Terracotta Soup (from Brick)
Melvins: Going Blind
Charles Mingus: Strollin’
Modest Mouse: The World At Large
The Mountain Goats: Mole
The New Pornographers: Go Places
Joanna Newsom: Sprout and the Bean
Nine Inch Nails: Kinda I Want To
Per Norgard: II. F# Major (from Bach to the Future)
Okkervil River: John Allyn Smith Sails
Oval: Aero Deck
Owen Pallett: Peach, Plum Pear
Paloalto: Breath In
Paloalto: Home
Passion Pit: Cuddle Fuddle
Passion Pit: Better Things
Tristan Perich: Circle Left, Right
Phish: Dirt
Phish: Axilla I
Francis Poulenc: – II. Divertissement (from Sextuor)
Praxis: Skull Crack (We Are Not Sick Men)
Elvis Presley: I’ll Hold You In My Heart
Prince: Gett Off
Public Image Ltd.: Bad Baby
Quasi: It’s Hard To Turn Me On
Radio Tarifa: Sin Palabras
Ramones: Daytime Dilemma (Dangers of Love)
Maurice Ravel: Chanson Hebraique
Red House Painters: Drop
Redd Kross: Love Is Not Love
Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov: II. King Dodon on the Battlefield (from Le Coq d’Or)
Marcus Roberts: Before the Party Begins
The Rolling Stones: Gimmie Shelter
Ricardo Romaneiro: Equinox (Vernal)
The Russian Futurists: A Mind’s Dying Verse (You and the Wine)
Joseph Schwantner: Black Anemones
Alexander Scriabin: Andante (from Piano Sonata No. 1)
Paul Simon: The Cool, Cool River
Elliott Smith: In the Lost and Found (Honky Bach)
Elliott Smith: A Distorted Reality Is Now A Necessity To Be Free
Snow Patrol: You’re All I Have
Dave Soldier: Nice Very Nice
Stars of the Lid: Another Ballad for Heavy Lids
Stereolab: Anonymous Collective
Karlheinz Stockhausen: Calmness (from Mixtur)
Styx: High Time
Sugarhill Gang: The Down Beat
Sun Ra: Space Loneliness
Superchunk: Cadmium
John Surman: On Hubbard’s Hill
Toru Takemitsu: III. Muir Woods (from In the Woods)
Talking Heads: Houses in Motion
Tan Dun: Desert Capriccio (from Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon)
These New Puritans: 5
Tullycraft: Vacation in Christine, ND
U2: Miss Sarajevo
U2: Another Time, Another Place
Kid Thomas Valentine: Bucket’s Got A Hole In It
Varttina: Korppi
Caetano Veloso: Meu Rio
Vetiver: Idle Ties
Vibrasonic: Kingsley J.
Tom Waits: 16 Shells From A Thirty-Ought Six
Tom Waits: Christmas Card From A Hooker In Minneapolis
Tom Waits: Pony
Weezer: Across the Sea
Kanye West: Drive Slow
John Williams: The Spiders (from Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets)
Wu-Tang Clan: Clan In Da Front
Yellowcard: How I Go
Neil Young: Tired Eyes
Frank Zappa: 200 Years Old
Frank Zappa: Night School
Frank Zappa: Sharleena
Frank Zappa: The Girl in the Magnesium Dress
Jan Dismas Zelenka: Allegro (from Sonata No. 1)
John Zorn: Shidim
John Zorn: Tears of Morning
John Zorn: Ghosts of Thelemas

Hear and buy a little something I wrote when I was seventeen. If you’re into that sort of thing.

According to a new report, it is more dangerous to cross with a walk sign than jaywalk. As I have always suspected and so instructed visitors. The reasons are simple: Cars don’t get to make a right turn on a red light, and left turns are made only when possible – usually at the end of a cycle when the intersection is clearing – so when the Walk sign is lit, cars are coming. At you. When the light is green you are much more safe, even if it is technically jaywalking. Of course, I’m not advocating stepping in front of traffic. What I am saying is the best way to cross a street in New York is: Look. If a car is coming, don’t go. If no cars go, walk. Ignore the Walk/Don’t Walk sign entirely. And those new countdown clocks? They will only make you nervous. Look away! You will be tricked into a false sense of security, and in fact may even put yourself in more danger attempting to get across before they tick down imperturbably to zero.

Let’s be honest: there almost doesn’t need to be a work, the title is so evocative. But the poem itself actually lives up to its title! It’s by Tom Andrews, a poet who died tragically young; I urge you to check out his collected poems, Random Symmetries. I don’t know much about him except he was a student of Charles Wright, who I admire enormously but whose work I have yet to set for some reason.

As to my new composition setting this poem, it’s for one of my patented specialized ensembles – this time around, bass voice with euphonium, timpani, harp and cello. That’s not too gratuitous, I hope; everything is explained in the program notes. Orchestration is fun! Also, I got my scanner to read graph paper, finally, so you can see what my sketches actually look like. Hint: they’re green!

I wrote this piece over the last couple of days. Actually I conceived of it last week, but then I procrastinated and bought a new hard drive and spent the next several days backing everything up and moving stuff around and redoing my iTunes (so…annoying…). Then the day before yesterday I didn’t feel too great, and yesterday I woke up with a fever and aches and an ooky nose and all-around weakness. There’s nothing so conducive to work as being sick and trapped in your house, right? That’s how Off the Deep End happened too, except that time I was a lot sicker and for longer. My fever seems to have broken (knock wood), and just in time! Back to fiddling with iTunes.

So today I spent the afternoon scanning the sketches for most of my major compositions into the computer, and now you – yes, you! – can see them on this very website! Just go to (almost) any composition page, click on View Sketches, et voila – as if by magic, a PDF of these selfsame sketches will appear on your screen.

By this method you may divine the alchemical methods by which my compositions are constructed. Actually, what will probably be most apparent is just how straightforward and simplistic they are under the surface. And how similar. But maybe that last one is a strength? Anyway, they’re up now if you’re interested. Check out what Symphony for Susan Logoreci looks like, or Breathcrystal, or how I doodled all over Music for Matisse - they’re pretty representative examples, I guess. (BTW, the pages that look white are actually graph paper made of teeny little squares that don’t scan. They come out looking pretty cool that way, I think.)

Caveat: there’s a few mistakes, and a few pages out of order or out of place. I’ll get around to fixing them at some point. Possibly.

Eventually I’m going to put up a post analyzing a few of these sketches; they all work pretty much the same way, or at least in one of two ways. Undoubtedly you will find it fascinating.

In other news, I’m compiling a second collection of writing for the Words page, a sort of sequel to Predella. This one is called Armstrong and other stories and features, inevitably, the novella version of Armstrong and – you guessed it – other stories that didn’t find their way into Predella for one reason or another. Because they weren’t as good? At the time, yes, but I’ve been revising. Sometimes I feel like I haven’t done anything but revise my writing for about half a decade. I have written new things, sporadically. Just to let you, my myriad fans, know I’m trying. An effort is being made. New poems and stuff go up on this site when they’re ready, if you’ve noticed. Mexico was pretty good, right? And I Am Still Awake. Which I am, still awake. Stupid nap.

Bernard Herrmann was the greatest film composer of all time. Full stop. He invented pretty much every mode of cinematic musical information with the exception of lush romantic goop (although he could do that pretty well too), and his orchestral imagination is the worthy heir of Strauss. A lot gets said about his obsession with ostinati and variously diminished harmonies, but really only the first is characteristic; his harmonies vary depending on the film’s subject matter, and though clearly he liked his music a certain way he must have recognized it was in service to the action, for though he abrasively insisted upon creative freedom (to the point Hitchcock eventually threw a hissy fit and fired him), the scores are carefully crafted to fit whatever images they’re in counterpoint with.

One of the great things about Herrmann was his concern that the music should remain interesting outside the strictures of any particular film, and so listening to his scores is an unusually rewarding and entertaining experience. An entire film’s worth of cues, though often repetitive, never fails to hold the ear, and the suites he put together are riveting. Today I’m going to introduce some of my favorite Herrmann, and you will be sad I am too lazy to post recordings (they take so long to upload!). I’ll only mention the major ones, which means skipping things like the 10 harps of “Beneath the 12 Mile Reef”, but it has to happen or we’ll be here all day.

If you don’t want to jump into full scores, try Esa-Pekka Salonen’s “Bernard Herrmann: The Film Scores” on Sony. Amazing recordings with the unbeatable LA Phil, and you even get a bit of “Torn Curtain.” And if you can find it, there’s a 4-CD re-release from the 90s of Herrmann conducting the London Phil in a pretty comprehensive selection of suites…

Citizen Kane

The Movie: Supposedly everybody agrees it is the greatest film of all time, although personally I’m not so sure. Do you know what the real Rosebud was?

Unusual Orchestrational Thing: 4 Bass Flutes. Sweet.

The Score: Brooding and dark, it bursts into scherzi and lush romantic interludes, but never loses a certain woodwindy abstruseness.

The Day The Earth Stood Still

The Movie: Klaatu Verada Nikto!

Unusual Orchestrational Thing: Wait for it. 2 Theremins. 2 Harps. 2 Pianos. Organ. 3 Trumpets, 3 Trombones. 4 Tubas. 2 Vibraphones and 2 Glockenspiels. Electric Violin, Electric Cello, Electric Bass. Now that’s an orchestra!

The Score: In which Herrmann invents every Sci-Fi movie score cliché of all time. Yet as is so often the case, you can’t improve upon the original. Actually, the score is surprisingly subdued most of the time, and there’s even a lovely Copland-esque trumpet solo.

Fahrenheit 451

The Movie: Truffaut burns up Hollywood.

Unusual Orchestrational Thing: Music for Strings, Percussion and Celesta.

The Score: The Prelude is one of the lovelist, darkest things ever to grace the cinema screen speakers. Danny Elfman’s career was born there, too.

Jason and the Argonauts

The Movie: I love this movie. Stop-motion master Ray Harryhausen’s creature are better actors than the people actors. Pure entertainment.

Unusual Orchestrational Thing: The skeletons are woodblocks!

The Score: Your basic action tritones. Good quality for your money.

Journey to the Center of the Earth

The Movie: Pretty bad. I remember watching it as a kid and being like, really?

Unusual Orchestrational Thing: Solo serpent. SOLO SERPENT!!!

The Score: A great collection of super-weird, super-atmospheric cues. Bad movie, classic score.

Marnie

The Movie: There is considerable discussion over whether the obviously projected backgrounds and obviously projected acting are the result of Hitchcock’s attempting to mirror the emotional alienation of the script or the result of Sean Connery’s inability to act and set cheapness. Either way, a pretty compelling study of emotional alienation, if slooow.

No Unusual Orchestrational Thing.

The Score: Such angst and aching! Yet totally effective and swoony rich.

Mysterious Island

I Haven’t Seen This Movie But I Bet It’s Pretty Bad.

Unusual Orchestrational Thing: Four tubas. Four harps. Eight horns. Lotsa low.

The Score: To wit: The best musical imitation of a bee ever. Better than Rimsky. Really. Perhaps this is because it is a Giant Bee. Every single cue is just ripping. Honking woodwinds and buzzing strings and blaring brass. You will learn: Crabs fight in 7/4. Giant Crabs, of course. Giant chords crash on the rocks. Wooooo!

North By Northwest

The Movie: Irresistible.

Unusual Orchestrational Thing: 5 clarinets used prominently.

The Score: Overrated. Everybody loves the proto-minimal 6/8-3/4 overture, but the rest of the score, while very effective underscore, is just that, under. Underachieving, underinteresting. Not that it doesn’t have its moments – we’re talking about Herrmann here – but don’t be fooled by the greatness of the picture, in this case.

Psycho

The Movie: Must I say anything?

Unusual Orchestrational Thing: Just strings, perfectly matching Hitch’s deliberate black-and-white.

The Score: One of the great achievements in film. The music makes the movie. Not that it wouldn’t be great otherwise, but Herrmann kicks it up into masterpiece theatre. Watch Janet Leigh driving in the rain with the sound off. Then with the score. Completely different. And the shower scene without the screeching glissandos, as Hitchcock originally planned? Sort of weak and edit-y, as opposed to truly terrifying. And then there’s the weird descending fourths in The City, and the gloom as the body-weighted car sinks into The Water. Classic stuff. You definitely cannot miss the suite, but the whole score is pretty great, if a little repetitive.

Taxi Driver

The Movie: Are you looking at me? Or listening?

Unusual Orchestrational Thing: Nothing much, just solo alto sax and crunchy winds.

The Score: Herrmann’s last, sadly. Scorcese dedicated the film to him. How many other composers get that honor? In fact, two directors dedicated their films to him at the time. And a worthy score, too, turning on a dime from yawping urban menace to swooning saxophonics without missing a beat.

Torn Curtain

The Movie: That got Herrmann fired. Probably for the best; it was capital-B Bad.

Unusual Orchestrational Thing: No violins. 9 Trombones. 12 Flutes. 16 FRENCH HORNS!

The Score: Herrmann’s most legendary. The story of how it soured the most famous director/composer relationship in history (barring maybe Spielberg/Williams nowadays) is famous enough you can find a lengthy exegesis elsewhere on these internets, but suffice it to say this is pure, rough excitement. And eerie. And strange. And brutal. Pretty much unlike anything else in film history. Super highly recommended.

Vertigo

The Movie: Slow. Some consider it Hitchcock’s peak. I am not some.

Unusual Orchestral Thing: N/A.

The Score: Tristan-taffy. But entirely without sugar. An odd concoction, but bracing.

The Seventh Voyage of Sinbad

The Movie: Harryhausen gets it on in an Argonauts retread; nevertheless pretty great if you’re into that kind of thing. As I am.

Unusual Orchestral Thing: Again, just a regular orchestra doing irregular things.

The Score: Best Herrmann action prelude? Ah, Orientalism. You never go out of style. Action! This time the skeleton is a xylophone.

My phone seems to have died at some point today, so if you can’t get in touch with me for the moment, that’s why. Of course, if you’re reading this you’re on your computer and can just email…

God, I hope it didn’t wipe all my phone numbers. I only know my parents’.

UPDATE: iPhone!

Very Sonnets was actually completed a couple of weeks ago, but I had intended it to be part of a larger cycle and so held it back from my admiring public, and for that I tender my humble apologies; for whose heart among you does not beat faster at the possibility of a new work from my pen?

Anyway.

A work I’ve long admired is Sir Harrison Birtwistle’s Pulse Shadows, which interlaces two separate compositions to create a larger cycle greater than the sum of its parts, and I wanted to try to do something along those lines. My original conception was to compose two sonnet sequences with similar instrumentation, each of which could be performed separately, or if together, with some instrumental interludes for the complete ensemble.

The best laid plans.

After completing Very Sonnets, to poems by the nineteenth-century ecstatic Transcendentalist Jones Very, I wrote most of a song for Black Sonnets, to poems by the young poet Malachi Black, but this second piece just wasn’t working, and since I had no idea what the instrumental interludes would even begin to sound like, I abandoned the idea of a cycle. Concepts are fine, but they have to serve the end result. Black’s poems remain amazing, and I’ll probably go ahead and set them soon, but completely differently.

Yes, the title of the complete cycle was to be Very Black Sonnets. Useful or shake-your-head embarrassing? Discuss.

Let me take a second to expand upon my Facebook-status indictment of Keith Olbermann’s incredibly dumb “Special Comment” last night, for the curious.

First of all, let me point out I never really watch Olbermann; I find his self-satisfied constant fever-pitch incredibly annoying. If only they would put Rachel Maddow on 8-11pm – that I would watch! But I was flipping channels last night and there was Keith with a picture of… John Pope? What? No doubt it had something to do with General McChrystal’s drunken bad-mouthing of civilians to the press (a long and venerable army tradition), so I stuck around to see what he had to say. And it was not good.

Here is what he said, in a nutshell. The substance of Olbermann’s argument, though put in his usual emptily verbose style, was pretty simple: if Obama declined to relieve McChrystal (Presidents can’t fire Generals, pace much of the media, they can only reassign them) he would look magnanimous, the General would be under his thumb, and if things went south in Afghanistan he would have his scapegoat ready to go; in short, McChrystal would become his bitch. True enough. But then he went on to compare this with an incident from the Civil War, where Lincoln declined General John Pope’s resignation. In doing this Olbermann made three major errors that must be called out.

First, he suggested this event happened before Antietam, which is impossible, because Pope had already been assigned to the West to kill Indians by Antietam, for reasons that will become clear shortly.

Second, he called Pope the “third of eight Federal army commanders”. This is so wrong I don’t even know where to begin. To start, in the Civil War there was no such thing as “the army”, on either side. There were armies, each with its own commander, answering to their respective Presidents, the most famous being the Union’s Army of the Potomac and the Confederacy’s Army of Northern Virginia, but no “army”. There was a Federal Commander, sort of, some of the time – McClellan was briefly in charge of all Allied Forces, as was Winfield Scott, but neither for very long or in any real capacity; Henry Halleck was General-in-Chief for a couple of years but this was basically a staff position, a glorified clerk. Only when Grant became Lieutenant General was there a true commander of Federal forces. Lee held a similar position in the Confederacy, but always answering to Davis, as Grant did to Lincoln. I guess Olbermann conflated “an army” with “the army”; I suspect he was thinking of the Army of the Potomac. Except that Pope was never in charge of the Army of the Potomac. He was given a new, separate command, the Army of Virginia (not to be confused with Lee’s Army of Northern Virginia); McClellan ran the Army of the Potomac at that time. And where did he get the number eight? The Army of the Potomac had five commanders: McDowell, McClellan, Burnside, Hooker, and Meade (when Grant went east he took immediate command of that army, but Meade remained in titular command). If you add the Army of the Tennessee’s Grant and Sherman you get seven, but what about the Army of the Cumberland’s Rosecrans and Thomas? What about the Army of the Ohio? What about the Army of the James? The Army of the Valley? The Army of the Gulf? There were a lot of general officers running around in those days, because there were a lot of troops and fronts.

Finally, and most importantly, the analogy to which all this was in service was terribly faulty. He suggests that Obama should do as Lincoln did, fold up Pope’s letter of resignation and put it away in a desk drawer. Except this is what happened then. Pope and McClellan’s armies were separated, and thus more vulnerable; they needed to connect. Lee knew this, and as Pope’s army was closer and smaller, he decided, being Lee, to attack them first. They met at a familiar railway junction called Manassas, and at Second Manassas (the Second Battle of Bull Run) Pope’s army was demolished so thoroughly his army ceased to exist thereafter and he was sent far, far away. So, Keith Olbermann, your analogy is as follows: Obama should keep McChrystal in Afghanistan so he can lead his army to destruction? I suspect this is not the analogy you had in mind. I don’t expect you to be an expert on the War Between the States, but seriously, does MSNBC not have Wikipedia?

It’s all well and good to learn from history, but you should make sure you know your history before you start talking about it, or before our very eyes we will be forced to watch as MSNBC magically transforms into Fox News. And no, Dad, that is not a good thing.

I’ve been following Alex Temple’s blog, in which he listens to approximately a piece a day and then provides an intelligent, fairly lengthy appraisal of the work’s (de)merits, and in one comment-section back-and-forth he noted how much music I seem to listen to. Well, I pointed out, I don’t have a job, and I’m pretty obsessive about it. So I just went and looked at my “Recently Played” playlist in iTunes, and the results are pretty horrifying – although actually it’s always like this, come to think of it. This is what I’ve heard so far this month; everything listed was listened to in its entirety (rock albums included); individual tracks played on shuffle while walking are not listed separately, nor are works begun but abandoned (today I couldn’t get through Vaughan Williams’s ‘Job’ or Schreker’s ‘Der Ferne Klang’, for instance). The emptier listening days are largely the result of composing – and Lee’s Lieutenants, I suspect. Also, I just remembered that iTunes only lists the most recent time you’ve listened to something, so although Schreker’s Kammersymphonie is only listed once in fact I’ve listened to it 4 times since I got it a week or two ago, and that probably includes a few other things as well. My phone does that too. Weird.

Today (June 20)

Julia Wolfe: The Vermeer Room
Bernard Herrmann: Selections from ‘North by Northwest’ soundtrack
Arvo Part: Symphony No. 4 ‘Los Angeles’
Ned Rorem: Eagles
Kurt Weill: Concerto for Violin and Wind Instruments
Erich Wolfgang Korngold: Violin Concerto
Einojuhani Rautavarra: Cantus Arcticus
Alexander Scriabin: Poem of Ecstacy
Anatol Liadov: Baba-Yaga
Alban Berg: Three Orchestral Pieces
Johannes Brahms: Academic Festival Overture
Bela Bartok: The Miraculous Mandarin (Complete Ballet)
Leo Brouwer: Concerto Elegiaco for Guitar and Small Orchestra
Anton Webern: Five Movements, Op. 5 (String Orchestra Version)
Anton Webern: Five Pieces for Orchestra, Op. 10
John Williams: Selections from ‘Born on the Fourth of July’ soundtrack
Eric Shanfield: Very Sonnets (Preliminary version)

Yesterday (June 19)

Paul Hindemith: Der Damon
Bernard Herrmann: Suite from ‘Vertigo’
Bernard Herrmann: Suite from ‘Psycho’
Richard Ayres: No. 8
David Lang: Loud Love Songs
Maurice Ravel: Fanfare from ‘Eventail de Jeanne’
Maurice Ravel: Histoires Naturelles
Charles Ives: Sonata No. 4 for Violin and Piano
Jean Sibelius: Lemminkainen Suite
Johannes Brahms: Klavierstucke, Op. 119
Conlon Nancarrow: Studies 6, 7 & 14 (Mikhashoff transcriptions)
Georg Friedrich Haas: Hyperion
Georges Enescu: Impressions d’Enfance, Op. 28
Eric Shanfield: Very Sonnets (Preliminary version)

June 18

They Might Be Giants: Apollo 18
The Cure: Pornography
The Cure: Kiss Me, Kiss Me, Kiss Me
Bernard Herrmann: Psycho (Complete Original Soundtrack)
Bernard Herrmann: Torn Curtain (The Rejected Soundtrack)
Leo Brouwer: Micropiezas
Alejandro Garcia Caturla: Tres Dances Cubaines
Leo Brouwer: The Black Decameron
Leo Brouwer: Concerto De Toronto
Eric Shanfield: Very Sonnets (Preliminary version)

June 16-17 (Sleep Cycle Messed Up)

Timothy Andres: Some Connecticut Gospel
Gustav Holst: The Planets
Eric Shanfield: Very Sonnets (Preliminary Version)
Rock, Jazz: Various Tracks (Shuffle)

June 14-15 (Sleep Cycle Messed Up)

Eric Shanfield: The Method She Employs Against That Which Cannot Be Seen
Eric Shanfield: Cycle of Dust
Eric Shanfield: Symphony for Susan Logoreci
Percy Grainger: Suite ‘In A Nutshell’
Scott Joplin: The Red Back Book (Selections)
Michael Nyman: Michael Nyman (1981 Album)
Julius Hemphill: Julius Hemphill Big Band

June 12-13 (Sleep Cycle Messed Up)

Augusta Read Thomas: Orbital Beacons (Concerto for Orchestra)
Bright Sheng: China Dreams
Thomas Tallis: The Lamentations of Jeremiah
Igor Stravinsky: Les Noces
Igor Stravinsky: Mass
Igor Stravinsky: Tango
Johannes Brahms: Symphony No. 2
The Boy Least Likely To: The Law of the Playground
Rock, Jazz: Various Tracks (Shuffle)

June 11

The Cure: Disintegration
Tim Buckley: Goodbye and Hello
The Cure: Faith
Franz Schreker: Der Geburtstag der Infantin
Johannes Brahms: Klavierstucke, Op. 118

June 10

Johannes Brahms: Fourteen Deutsche Volkslieder Woo 34
Hans Gefors: Lydias Sanger
Franz Schreker: Kammersymphonie
Joan Tower: Silver Ladders
Rock, Jazz: Various Tracks (Shuffle)

June 9

Johannes Maria Staud: Incipt III (Esquisse retouchee II)
Michael Nyman: La Traversee de Paris
Salvatore Sciarrino: Le voci sottovetro
Salvatore Sciarrino: Anamorfosi

June 8

Graham Fitkin: Servant
Graham Fitkin: Metal
Henri Tomasi: Concerto for Trumpet and Orchestra
Paul Hindemith: Sonata for Trumpet and Piano
Johannes Brahms: Trio for Piano, Clarinet and Cello, Op. 114
Andre Jolivet: Concertino for Trumpet, String Orchestra and Piano
Pierre Boulez: Pli Selon Pli
Graham Fitkin: Granite
Graham Fitkin: Length
Graham Fitkin: Bebeto
Graham Fitkin: Henry
Graham Fitkin: Hook
Graham Fitkin: Mesh
Graham Fitkin: Stub
Graham Fitkin: Log
Graham Fitkin: Loud
Graham Fitkin: Bed
Graham Fitkin: Bob
Rock, Jazz: Various Tracks (Shuffle)

June 7

Braid: Frame & Canvas
Johannes Brahms: Symphony No. 1
Richard Strauss: Don Quixote
Crooked Fingers: Red Devil Dawn
Yacht: See Mystery Lights
Modest Mussorgsky: Pictures at an Exhibition (Ravel orchestration)
Modest Mussorgsky: Night on the Bare Mountain (1867 version)
Modest Mussorgsky: The Destruction of Sennacherib
Francis Poulenc: Sonata for Horn, Trumpet and Trombone

June 6

John Williams: Suite from ‘Return of the Jedi’
Pierre Boulez: Explosante-Fixe (1993 version)
Alexander Scriabin: The Poem of Fire
Augusta Read Thomas: Carillon Sky (Violin Concerto No. 2)
Morton Feldman: For Samuel Beckett
Aaron Copland: Appalachian Spring (Suite, version for 13 instruments)
Aaron Copland: Quiet City
Aaron Copland: Three Latin American Sketches
Johannes Brahms: Violin Concerto
Johannes Brahms: Trio for Piano, Violin and Horn, Op. 40

June 5

Weezer: Raditude
John Harbison: Mirabai Songs (Ensemble version)
John Harbison: Words from Paterson
Keith Jarrett: Jasmine
Gabriel Faure: Piano Quartet No. 1
Michael Nyman: Double Concerto for Saxophone, Cello and Orchestra
Michael Nyman: Acts of Beauty
Sergei Prokofiev: Scythian Suite
Rock, Jazz: Various Tracks (Shuffle)

June 4

Hallelujah the Hills: Colonial Drones
Husker Du: Flip Your Wig
Ween: Chocolate and Cheese
Wilco: The Album
Dmitri Tymoczko: Power Chords
Timothy Andres: Senior
Eric Shanfield: From the Realm of Morpheus
Eric Shanfield: In the Realms of the Unreal
Eric Shanfield: Breathcrystal
Eric Shanfield: The Admonitory Hippopotamus
Eric Shanfield: Orfordness
Eric Shanfield: World Enough
Free Energy: Stuck On Nothing
Randall Woolf: Missing
Isang Yun: Chamber Concerto I
Augusta Read Thomas: Ritual Incantations (Cello Concerto)
Howard Skempton: Clarinet Quintet
Maurice Ravel: La Valse
Conlon Nancarrow: Sonatina
Rued Langgaard: The Music of the Spheres
Rued Langgaard: Four Tone Pictures

June 3

Stars: Heart
Eric Shanfield: Symphony for Ammi Phillips
Alban Berg: Violin Concerto
Camille Saint-Saens: Phaeton
Camille Saint-Saens: Danse Macabre
Camille Saint-Saens: Bacchanale from ‘Samson et Dalila’
Graham Fitkin: Circuit
Rock, Jazz: Various Tracks (Shuffle)

June 2

Erik Satie: En habit de cheval
Aaron Copland: Emblems
Erik Satie: Relache
Luciano Berio/Franz Schubert: Rendering
Rock, Jazz: Various Tracks (Shuffle)

June 1

Graham Fitkin: Carnal
Graham Fitkin: From Yellow to Yellow
Graham Fitkin: White
Graham Fitkin: Furniture
Graham Fitkin: T2
Maurice Ravel: Ma Mere l’Oye (Complete ballet)
David Lang: Gravity
David Lang: Born to Be Wild
Food: Quiet Inlet
Evan Parker: Boustrophedon
Tim Buckley: Blue Afternoon
Don Ellis: Soaring
John Williams: Soundtrack to ‘Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone’
Gyorgi Ligeti: Big Turtle Fanfare from the South China Sea
Franz Liszt: At the Grave of Richard Wagner
Meredith Monk: Dolmen Music
Frank Zappa: Everything Is Healing Nicely
Michael Nyman: Water Dances
Michael Nyman: The Essential Michael Nyman Band

Yikes!