You can stream recordings of new music from the Library of Congress at WQXR’s website here. The diverse repertoire includes music by George Lewis, John Adams, Irving Fine, Jennifer Higdon, George Walker, and Nico Muhly, among others.
Tag: WQXR
Don’t Just Sit There
Why are you reading this blog when you could be:
- donating to Winsor Music’s Kickstarter to support their creative educational programming at the Mather School in Dorchester, MA for two years. Winsor Music’s artistic director is Peggy Pearson, the sublime oboist with Emmanuel Music.
- listening to a stream of C4‘s first album, this week’s WQXR Q2 Album of the Week. C4 is the Choral Composer/Conductor Collective. The album opens with a piece by my friend and fellow Columbia alum Hayes Biggs.
- browsing the hundreds of scores Music Sales Classical (G. Schirmer, AMP, Novello, Chester, etc.) has put online here.
Of course, get back over here when you are done!
Opera News on Fire-Memory/River-Memory
I just heard about a review in Opera News of the Mendelssohn Club‘s Innova disc called “Metamorphosis” that includes my Fire-Memory/River-Memory. If you subscribe, you can find it online - it was posted in October. Here is the discussion of F-M/R-M:
The third work, James Primosch’s Fire-Memory/River-Memory, from 1998, sets two poems by the British-born American poet Denise Levertov. Primosch ranges freely and effectively across the tonal spectrum, holding the listener in his emotional grip even when the harmonic language becomes harsh. The first poem, “What Were They Like?”, is a series of rhetorical questions and answers, posed to victims of the Vietnam War. Toward the end, a solo violin emerges from the choral texture with poignant beauty. The second poem, “Of Rivers” builds grandly and evokes nature’s majesty, as well as the divine, metaphoric ability of rivers to “remember.” This makes an effective counterweight to “What Were They Like?”, emphasizing that the horrors of war must not be forgotten.”
Pretty nice, huh? This for a disc that was named Disc of the Week by WQXR when it was released. Read more about the recording here, here and here. Thank you so much to the Mendelssohn Club and Alan Harler.
WQXR on Metamorphosis
Nice to see this from WQXR: Metamorphosis, the new release from the Mendelssohn Club of Philadelphia, has been named Q2 album of the week. More about the piece and the recording here and here.
Only the Living
Are you aware of Q2? This is WQXR’s online station for the music of living composers. The playlist today includes Lansky, Lang, Rakowski, Pärt, Gordon, Adamo, Golijov, Gordon, Tyondai Braxton, Schoenfeld… it’s a decent mix.
James Primosch, composer 