Paul Simon has always been attracted to new kinds of sounds. From his early band Simon & Garfunkel in the 1960s through solo albums like Graceland and Rhythm of the Saints in the '80s and '90s, up through his recent albums So Beautiful or So What and Stranger to Stranger, Paul has made music that does what the very best art can do: it resonates wit…

We began last week’s episode digging into the music of one particular electronic musician - the synthesist, producer and composer Kaitlyn Aurelia Smith. Today we’re thrilled to bring you a song that you won’t hear on any of Kaitlyn’s albums. Clouds Forming Over Mount Baker was commissioned by the University of Pennsylvania’s Arthur Ross Gallery to …

What happens when a composer writes music without pen and paper, using machines? How does that change the creative process? How does it morph the art itself? Today on Meet the Composer, our producer Alex Overington — usually behind the studio glass — takes us on a road trip to unravel the creative process of those composers who write without a scor…

For today’s Bonus Track, we’re thrilled to bring you the world-premiere recording of Bryce Dessner’s Wires, performed by Ensemble Intercontemporain! Last week, we dug into a particularly contentious moment in classical music’s history. This week, however, we’re looking at where we are NOW, a place of, well… niceness. “I think right now is a really …

It was composer pitted against composer: uptown vs. downtown, tonal vs. atonal, left brain vs right brain, and these musicians were NOT pulling any punches. Composers were antagonizing each other, questioning each other's validity, and bad-mouthing one another; it was like the second half of the 20th century was when Western Music went through midd…

Henry Threadgill’s music and community can’t be separated; there is no boundary: challenge and failure and growth in music are the same as challenge and failure and growth in life. This Meet the Composer bonus track shares an exclusive performance by Henry Threadgill's Zooid ensemble of I Never, recorded live by Q2 Music at the Village Vanguard on …

1967, Fort Riley, Kansas. Henry Threadgill is 23 years old. Knowing he’s going to be drafted into the military, he joins the Army Concert Band, hoping to focus on his passion: writing music. As he surrounds himself with new ideas, he works his influences into the music that he's arranging. Then one day, the band plays one of his arrangements of a p…

Today's bonus track is an exclusive arrangement of a nutso, sci-fi-y electronic piece John Adams wrote in 1993. Originally part of a larger work, Hoodoo Zephyr, Coast was never intended to be performed live. However, the 20-person chamber ensemble Alarm Will Sound has often been tempted by electronic works. Violinist, composer, and Alarm Will Sound…

What happens when the composer shows up to the first rehearsal of his brand-new piece? Would a living Beethoven sue for intellectual property? Are you the hit, or are you in the hole? For this episode, we collaborated with the 20-member chamber ensemble Alarm Will Sound and its conductor Alan Pierson – with whom we're partnering on the upcoming pod…

Today's Bonus Track is an extended cut of Pauline Oliveros' "Tuning Meditation," recorded live at the Fuentidueña Chapel at the Met Cloisters on Jan. 20, 2017. Recorded in 3D-sounding binaural audio, it's an immersive experience in which we would love you to think about participating while listening. For optimal audio quality, please listen with he…

We continue our investigation of the odd, wrong-side-of-the-tv-set role of The Performer with a deep dive into the "Sonic Meditations" of pioneering American composer Pauline Oliveros. Pauline manages to smudge at the distinction between composer, performer and audience with these simple, text-based pieces, which somehow pack an emotional wallop fa…

We are thrilled to bring you a WORLD PREMIERE recording as our first bonus track of Season Three! Our previous episode, The Performer: Part One, featured, among other things, a fascinating conversation with the Austrian composer Georg Friedrich Haas. As we are a talk show about music, we are always dying to simply play some MUSIC, and so today we b…

We're kicking off Season Three with a look beyond the composer to the performer, that unusual intermediary between the artist and the audience. How do performers from different cultures, who speak different languages, come together to perform the same piece? What happens when an ensemble completely messes up... and the audience loves it? How does a…

We conclude the week-long ramp-up to our next and third season with an interview with the legendary, charismatic Leonard Bernstein. Though mostly known for his work as a composer (West Side Story) and conductor (New York Philharmonic), Leonard Bernstein was also a consummate evangelist for classical music. This conversation focuses on Bernstein's e…

A blast from the past featuring the composer Libby Larsen. Larsen explains how living in Minneapolis facilitated her success as a composer, and how federal regulations in Title IX provided an uplift to women composers in the U.S. This week, we're revisiting interviews conducted in the 1980s by the influential music critic and educator Tim Page. His…

Otto Luening was a forefather of experimental electronic music and a life-long educator, flutist and composer. In this 1985 interview with host Tim Page, from the original WNYC program called Meet the Composer, Luening tells the story of his first electronic experiments and wonders why audiences had found new interest in some of his earliest works.…

We continue the week-long ramp-up to our next and third season with an interview with the widely influential patriarch of 20th-century experimental music John Cage. In this conversation with host Tim Page, Cage explains how his strenuous connection with music precipitated his experiments with silence, ambient noise and spirituality. Page offers his…

As we build up to the launch of our third season next Monday, we thought we'd look back at the original WNYC radio program Meet the Composer from the mid-'80s, hosted by the illustrious music critic Tim Page. We'll share excerpts of his interviews with some of the most exciting figures in contemporary music, but before that we wanted to check in wi…

Jaga Jazzist is an eight-piece Norwegian instrumental ensemble that draws inspiration from jazz, vintage funk, Krautrock and shoegaze. But it adds up to something different: a mesmerizing, exploratory and overwhelmingly energetic sound. Led by composer Lars Horntveth, the band first came together in 1994, and to date has released seven full-length …

Bruce Brubaker and Francesco Tristano are two virtuoso pianists from very different musical backgrounds. Brubaker is known for his performances of music by John Adams and Meredith Monk whereas Tristano alternates classical performances with beat-driven electronic dance music. On “The Glass Piano Versions” the two mix their influences with Philip Gl…

The music of GABI is hard to pin down. Chopped vocal fragments float and cluster among classical orchestration, found sounds and abstract electronic textures. Taking cues from Meredith Monk and Björk, her music uses the power of the human voice to create strange, densely-textured soundscapes. --- About the podcast: LPR Live brings the excitement of…

For composer Daniel Wohl, the distinction between a physical performer and an electronic sound is inconsequential. While he builds on the traditions of heady electronic pioneers like Morton Subotnick and Paul Lansky, he also draws inspiration from pulse-driven dance beats and minimalist chamber music. On this episode, Wohl discusses the art, appeal…

Eartheater is the solo project of Queens-based singer, songwriter and guitarist Alexandra Drewchin. Her music exists in an alien world all its own, often incorporating looped textures and pitch-shifted vocals alongside elements of mystical folk and ambient music. On this episode, she discusses her process, the singular and nomadic lifestyle of the …

Composer Dan Trueman is the inventor of a new instrument: the prepared digital piano. Last October, we joined Trueman and So Percussion's Adam Sliwinski for conversation and a performance demonstrating the interactive instrument's capabilities, which utilize old-fashioned composition techniques while looking toward the future of music performance. …

Port St. Willow, the project of Brooklyn-based Nicholas Principe, performed its second improvisational, atmospheric album Syncope at Le Poisson Rouge this past November. Join Principe, multi-instrumentalist Andrew Dunn and drummer Tommy Crane backstage to discuss the art of performing ambient music live and bringing new life to recorded music in a …

Join the ambitious chamber group Ensemble LPR for a performance by American composer Andrew Norman. His 'Grand Turismo' for eight virtuoso violinists, draws its inspiration from the racing-car video game of the same name. --- About the podcast: LPR Live brings the excitement of the live-concert experience back to life with recordings from Greenwich…

Bing & Ruth – an ensemble of classically trained musicians – blends the colors of ambient electronic music with contemporary classical and jazz. Join us for backstage conversation with band-members and an exclusive performance. --- About the podcast: LPR Live brings the excitement of the live-concert experience back to life with recordings from Gre…

The second season of LPR Live launches with composer and Arcade Fire violinist Sarah Neufeld. Her new album "The Ridge" melds elements of classical, folk and pop. --- About the podcast: LPR Live brings the excitement of the live-concert experience back to life with recordings from Greenwich Village’s pioneering Le Poisson Rouge in New York City. Dr…

Help us make a third season of the Peabody Award-winning podcast about the creative musical process, with host Nadia Sirota. Learn more about our ambitions for next season and help make Season Three a reality by backing our Kickstarter campaign today at www.q2music.org/kickstarter.By Q2 Music, WQXR

Despite being one of relatively few chamber music pieces in his catalog, John Adams’s 2008 String Quartet stands among the composer’s most compelling works and has been solidly adopted into the chamber-music canon. This episode features a live performance of the titanic two-movement piece, performed live at Le Poisson Rouge by the Attacca Quartet. …

If you're a composer and you at least partially acknowledge the musical history that came before you, you're left in a tough position. How can you even put pen to paper when so much profound music already exists? Do you disregard it? Build upon it? Scrawl graffiti on its pages or bow in reverence? In this episode we hear music that does a little bi…

David Lang's music hangs beautifully in the balance between head and heart. Despite the intricate mathematical undercurrents of his musical language and the rigorous construction of his forms, Lang's music is always primarily concerned with expression. This episode of LPR Live features two movements from Lang's Memory Pieces for piano, one of the c…

Simply put, the vast majority of classical music performance features the work of dead composers. Performers don't have the chance to ask a work's creator for advice; can't inquire about phrasing, articulation, or dynamics; and almost never were these pieces written specifically for them. For this episode of LPR Live, however, quite the opposite is…

One of America’s most revered experimentalists, Terry Riley turned 80 years old in 2015. Somehow, he remains eternally youthful and effortlessly hip, continuing to compose and perform at an invigorated pace. For decades now Riley has furthered the musical traditions he helped start in the '60s while serving as an inspiration to newer and younger ge…

Christopher Cerrone is one of those “on-the-brink” artists. The Brooklyn-based composer, riding an impressive wave of accolade and acclaim for his opera Invisible Cities, can seemingly not be heard enough, accumulating important commissions and performances across the country. This episode of LPR Live offers a bird’s eye view of his work for string…

On paper John Cage and Domenico Scarlatti—the experimental American composer and the late-Baroque keyboard maverick—make for an odd juxtaposition. But where some might hear contrast in the sonatas of this unlikely couple, pianist David Greilsammer hears complement. This episode of LPR Live features the Israeli virtuoso live in performance of four s…

LPR Live, a new podcast from WQXR's Q2 Music showcasing music recorded live at Greenwich Village's Le Poisson Rouge, launches with a throwback to Steve Reich's seminal 1988 Different Trains for string quartet and tape, performed by the American Contemporary Music Ensemble (ACME). Steve Reich undoubtedly stands as one of America’s most influential c…

I'm so excited to share today's Meet the Composer bonus track with you. Last October, I traveled to Detroit to perform the US premiere of Nico Muhly's viola concerto with the Detroit Symphony Orchestra under Maestro Leonard Slatkin. The orchestra has graciously agreed to let us use the second movement of the viola concerto for our show for three mo…

First, a disclaimer. I wanna make something clear right off the bat here: I'm completely in the tank for Nico Muhly. We went to college together and he has been one of my best friends and most frequent collaborators ever since. But! He is deeply gifted creator, and honestly I'd feel insane not featuring him just because we're close. Okay. Nico is a…

This week’s Meet the Composer Bonus Track is a world premiere recording of Anna Thorvaldsdottir’s piano work Scape. Scape, like many of Anna’s works, uses extended techniques to create unique, otherworldly textures. For this piece, Anna demands quite a bit of playing INSIDE the instrument, as well as a few somewhat unconventional preparations to th…

Anna Thorvaldsdottir is an Icelandic composer whose work conjures entire environments of sound, surrounding the listener in a dark and forbidding landscape. Anna thinks sonically; her music comes from a deeply non-verbal place, and she has developed a brilliant workflow which allows these ideas to remain mostly whole and unmolested through her crea…

Today's MTC bonus track is a WORLD PREMIERE! Or, apropos of its October release, we might call it a movement brought back from the dead. This undead movement was born back in 1981, when Ingram Marshall wrote a string quartet for the Kronos Quartet called Voces Resonae. The piece employed, among other things, very complicated choreography for a soun…

Ingram Marshall is often called a California Minimalist, a title which, while not exactly geographically accurate, allies him with a loose cadre of artists writing ambient, visceral scores. It's a title he'll happily wear, but it only vaguely describes they art he makes. Ingram is kind of a throwback - a free-thinker making music on his own, music …

I'm thrilled this week to give you a sneak peek of a new Q2 Music podcast called LPR Live coming out this Fall. It's hosted by Conor Hanick, a longtime friend and radio colleague, brilliant pianist, and all-around passionate and insightful advocate for new music. The performances will come from Greenwich Village's Le Poisson Rouge, a stalwart showc…

I am so thrilled to bring you this Meet the Composer Bonus Track! We are extremely lucky to present this recording of Kaija Saariaho's piano trio Light and Matter, taped live at the Coolidge Auditorium in the Library of Congress, just this past May 22 by the world-class ensemble of violinist Jennifer Koh, cellist Anssi Karttunen and pianist Ieva Jo…

Kaija Saariaho's music evokes all sorts of natural sounds, the kinds of complex, white noise-y sounds that we often tune out. She's able to take the instruments of the orchestra and pull out of them the sound of wind rustling through trees, or waves hitting the shore. She's got this ear that can hear the music in everything, but in not in a John Ca…

I am absolutely thrilled to present this week's bonus track, an exclusive in-studio performance of Meredith Monk's transcendent string quartet Stringsongs. Stringsongs is Meredith's first string quartet. Written in 2005, the piece was premiered by the Kronos Quartet. Until now, however, no recording of this entire work has been available to the pub…

Living legend Meredith Monk is a composer, vocalist, dancer, choreographer and filmmaker. While all of these descriptors are technically on point, none quite gets to the bones of who she is as an artist. Meredith seamlessly blends these media into arresting performance pieces that feel like rituals – rites from another dimension. Take a tour with M…

Season Two is just around the corner, but we need your help to make it happen. Learn about our next five featured composers and support Meet the Composer today on Kickstarter.By Q2 Music, WQXR

Building on a long-standing collaborative relationship, Marcos Balter wrote Intercepting a Shivery Light for the Anubis Quartet, a saxophone ensemble, in 2012. The piece's title is an anagram for Everything in its Right Place, a Radiohead song, which Marcos admits is an important song for him "and many members of [his] generation."…