Morton Feldman: Bass Clarinet and Percussion

Performed by Zeitgeist in 2016 during Early Music Festival: The Music of Morton Feldman. Heather Barringer & Patti Cudd, percussion; Pat O’Keefe, woodwinds.

Zeitgeist’s 2016 Early Music Festival explored the powerful contributions of our musical pioneers with a celebration of composer Morton Feldman. One of the 20th century’s great visionaries, Feldman’s innovations in music notation and his free-flowing indeterminate music embraced new artistic possibilities and made a lasting impact that continues to shape new music today.  Continue reading “Morton Feldman: Bass Clarinet and Percussion”

Victor Zupanc & Kevin Kling: For the Birds

Co-written in 2010 by Victor Zupanc and Kevin Kling, For the Birds is a concert length work that, on the surface, seems to be about birds. It features a series of musical pieces extolling the nature of each particular bird (sparrows, roosters, woodpeckers, Canadian geese, hawks), drawing parallels with our own human nature. Interspersed between, is insightful storytelling created by Kling reflecting on childhood memories, immigration, illness, accidents, and healing. However, just below the surface (but discernible to those that look), For the Birds is a work about that part of our human nature that compels us to reach beyond ourselves for more —more opportunity for our family, more money, more fun, more speed, more knowledge, more love. When all goes well, we call that need aspiration. When it doesn’t, and we plunge to the earth with melting wings, we call it hubris. Through utterly delightful music and a worldview only Kevin Kling can provide, For the Birds gives us the space to contemplate our nature, laugh at ourselves, and heal.  Continue reading “Victor Zupanc & Kevin Kling: For the Birds”

Homer Lambrecht: Signature One: Mendelssohn Fantasy

SIGNATURE ONE: A MENDELSSOHN FANTASY (1980) by Homer Lambrecht was commissioned by the Jerome Foundation for Zeitgeist and received its premiere at Carnegie Recital Hall October 18, 1980 in New York.

“Music spans time in history; the movement of time also articulates the form and substance of music. Patterns of movement form streams of rhythm, flow of harmonic motion, and currents of timbre. These patterns also reveal the spiritual substance of the composer and his cultural heritage. To find patterns that connect my time with the past is the origin of SIGNATURE ONE. Techniques common to today’s music are used to transform ‘Adieu,’ one of Mendelssohn’s ‘Songs Without Words.’” Continue reading “Homer Lambrecht: Signature One: Mendelssohn Fantasy”

James DeMars: This

THIS (1980) by James DeMars
THIS (a contracrostipunctus) for Frederic Rzewsky and Douglas Hofstadter IS an opportunity to adJUST to circles of reference and TIME, because a variety of “meanings” are available in (this) unusual interplay of an invertible text AND a looping melody which apparently refer to each and YOU; however, if you TAKE your TIME (AND you are) YOU may HEAR JUST both, which is MUSIC, which IS an opportunity to adJUST to circles of reference and TIME, because a variety of “meanings” are available in (this) unusual interplay of Continue reading “James DeMars: This”

Stacey Bowers: Pattern Study #2

PATTERN STUDY #2 by Stacey Bowers, dedicated to the Blackearth Percussion Group, was written in 1976. The score is a set of several melodic patterns, to be played in any order, repeated as often as desired, and used as a basis for improvisation. The form emerges from the resultant improvisation.

Stacey Bowers was born in 1952 in Wisconsin, USA. Early in his career he was a percussionist and pianist with the Blackearth Percussion Group and held teaching positions at Northern Illinois University and the University of Cincinnati, College Conservatory of Music. He is currently an executive with Woodstock Percussion, Inc., based in the New York Hudson Valley.

PATTERN STUDY #2 appears on Zeitgeist’s album BOWERS/DEMARS/STOCKHAUSEN; originally released 1980, re-released 2015.

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James DeMars: Premonitions of Christopher Colmbus

Premonitions of Christopher Columbus (1979)
by James DeMars

PREMONITIONS of CHRISTOPHER COLUMBUS by James DeMars was premiered by Zeitgeist at the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis in October of 1979. This recording uses five musicians playing alto saxophone, two pianos, tablas, marimba, cymbals, and a tam tam. The form is similar to that of the Moroccan “nuba” tradition, in which a pulse gradually emerges to support melodic material. The eclectic blend of idioms and sonorities produces a paradoxical “state of being” as each gesture draws forward. Continue reading “James DeMars: Premonitions of Christopher Colmbus”