A Web Nexus for Contemporary Art Music
The Pytheas Center for Contemporary Music is a wide ranging web nexus for contemporary concert music. Our mission is to promote contemporary composers and their music through information, understanding and performances.
Contemporary classical/art/concert music is a living art form, fed by the creativity of composers across the country and around the globe. Finding inspiration from a multitude of sources, this music springs from a well know and beloved past, yet travels new avenues and explores amazingly diverse sound worlds. There are more composers writing music now than there ever have been in the history of the world, and our goal is to help you connect with them and enjoy their art.
Featured Items and Upcoming Events
Nikolai Kapustin
Toccatina op.40, no. 3 (1984)
Shan-shan Sun, piano ~ ~ check out our video archive post your comments at PytheasTalk
NYOS
Futures
National Youth Orchestras of Scotland
NYOS
Futures is the contemporary chamber ensemble of NYOS. It is
drawn from senior NYOS and Camerata Scotland musicians and aims to
introduce young musicians and new audiences to the fascinating world of
late 20th and early 21st century classical music. The interest in NYOS
Futures from established music professionals has been
encouraging and the ensemble is delighted to have worked with a variety
of internationally renowned Conductors, Soloists and Orchestras.
Through NYOS
Futures, NYOS hopes to encourage an interest in the musicians
and music of today, and develop and engage future audiences for
contemporary classical music. Their concerts are usually informal
performances followed by an exploration of the music by the conductor,
who dissects and explains the piece, allowing audiences to fully access
and appreciate new and challenging contemporary classics. Past
perfomances have featured such works at Tanaka's Wave Mechanics, Xenakis'
Phlegra, Lutoslawski's Chain 1 and Ligeti's
Kammerkonzert and Mysteries of the Macabre . . .
Learn More
Steve Reich
Composers Portraits
"There's just a handful of living
composers who can legitimately claim to have altered the direction of
musical history, and Steve Reich
is one of them," wrote The Guardian (London) recently. "Reich
is among the great composers of the century," echoed The New York
Times. Such adulation is a far cry from the initial reception Reich's
piece Four
Organs
got at Carnegie Hall in 1973. "People were catcalling or holding their
ears and shouting, 'Stop, stop! I'll confess!'" recalled conductor
Michael Tilson Thomas, who recognized Reich's
genius early and reassured him that his work was provocative and would
eventually be heralded. He was right, of course. Reich's
music is lauded for embracing the spoken voice and non-Western rhythms
and virtually inventing "sampling" long before the computer or hip-hop.
His compositions cross boundaries, attracting such admirers as
minimalist composer Philip
Glass, pop icon David Bowie, jazz guitarist Pat Metheny and
remixing master DJ Spooky .
. .
Learn
More
visit Steve Reich at Pytheas ...
The Avant Garde Project
Online Audio Resource
The
Avant Garde Project is a series of recordings of 20th-century
classical, experimental, and electroacoustic music digitized from LPs
whose music has in most cases never been released on CD, and so is
effectively inaccessible to the vast majority of music listeners
today . . .
Learn More
Benjamín Gutiérrez
Pavane for Strings (1961)
Orquesta Sinfonica de la Universidad de Costa Rica, Alejandro Gutiérrez, cond. ~ ~ check out our video archive post your comments at PytheasTalk
A Piano Method by Claude Debussy: Debussy's Ideas on Piano Playing (Karstein Djupdal)
At one time Debussy
interested himself in pedagogy so much that he thought of writing a
piano method of his own, because he considered those in existence
unsatisfactory, uninspiring, tedious and mechanical. A piano method by Claude Debussy. What would it be like? The above quote from Maurice Dumesnil indicates that Debussy
might have thought about writing a piano method, but he never did, and
probably didn't interest himself enough in this. It is however clear
that Debussy had certain ideas on how his piano music should be played. In a letter he writes: One
is often betrayed by so-called pianists! I mean it - I can't tell you
the extent to which my piano music has been deformed; so much so that
often I have a job to recognize it! For the pianists who want a better understanding of the performance of Debussy's piano music, it is interesting to get to know the ideas that Debussy himself had. I have attempted to construct the piano method that Debussy could have written. That is, the ideas I present here are not my ideas about playing Debussy, but should as far as possible be Debussy's own ideas. Fortunately we have a lot of sources which, taken together, can give us a good indication of how Debussy wanted his music played .
. .
Learn
More
Composers of the Month
Sound Advice
Nonesuch Records

Henryk Górecki
Kleines Requiem für eine Polka
Gorecki fan, or anyone looking for
something different ..."
- Paris Guffy
Learn More
The Pytheas EarfulEach week we recommend
a listening experience
made possible by one of the web's
many streaming audio sites
Click, listen, explore, enjoy...
This week's featured piece:
Maija Hynninen' s
Turnings, flute (2008)
Streaming Audio? click Listen
Pytheas Sightings
New Music on Film
Erich Wolfgang Korngold's score for
The Sea Wolf (1941)
Danses Pytheuses
New Music for Dance
Béla Bartók
The Miraculous Mandarin (1919)
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Contemporary Composers
Contemporary Composers ... Cont'd
Composers in Selected States
Composer Collectives
Film Composers
Dance Composers
Composers Speak on the Web
New Music Ensembles
New Music Festivals
Contemporary Music Centers
New Music Websites
Publishers
Award Winning Music
* * * Cool New Music Videos * * *
Streaming Audio
Streaming Audio Archive
New Music Recordings
New Music Video Archive
New Music Film Archive
New Music Dance Archive
New Music Thoughts & Ideas
New Music Concepts & Terms
New Music for Kids
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