recommend me some good modern/experimental classical music

alex ross http://www.therestisnoise.com/

kyle gann http://artsjournal.com/postclassic/ (who's also been saying interesting things about the divide between rock and new music criticism, responding to teaching a class of undergrads)

really liking tim johnson: http://johnsons-rambler.blogspot.com/
most relevant to this thread, check out his 40 years of modern composition series.

Arvo Part: Te Deum

Gorecki: Miserere

JOHANN JOHANNSSON - Viroulegu Forsetar
http://www.boomkat.com/item.cfm?id=15828

How's Johann Johannsson's 'Englaborn'? Does that fit in the genre here too? I've considered picking that up before.

Avant Classical / Modern Composition / New composed experimental classical music, also there is a cross over scene to Hypnos type ambient/ space music

this FAQ is nearly 10 years old:

Post-Classical
http://www.sat.dundee.ac.uk/~arb/music/pc/faq.html

WHAT IS POST-CLASSICAL MUSIC?
Post-classical music, as defined by this list, is music incorporating elements of classical structure and instrumentation thru relatively unconventional means. It is not meant to represent any specific genre or period of music, but rather a cross-section of musical styles loosely defined by the following criteria:

Derivative
artists generally considered outside the classical genre but whom incorporate traditional classical components in a predominantly unconventional manner. Instrumentation may either be acoustically or electronically generated, but usually fused with another musical style.

Experimental
artists generally considered within the classical genre but whom work outside the boundaries of traditional classical structure. Instrumentation is usually acoustically generated, but often by unconventional means.
In practice, there are several readily identifiable musical "genres" which fall under the post-classical heading, or overlap with it. These include musique concrete, minimalism, indeterminate and aleatoric composition, sound ecology, ambient and post-industrial musics, electro-acoustic music and several other areas. In general, "composed" music is post-classical while "improvised" music is not, but there are enough works that don't fit these tidy pigeonholes to ensure there's no precise boundary. More details can be found in section 10.

but can anyone direct me to a significant resource that tracks that finest Post-Classical albums of the past decade.

Reasons why this music is poorly documented:

a: music released on small self released labels or small indeopendents
b: different sub genre scenes: each with the own agenda, e.g

New Age
Ambient / space music
electro-acoustic music

also Academic scenes don't promote their music well, maybe because they don't have the financial resourcs for marketing budgets

gear -- it depends what you're looking for: there's 10 recordings I listed on the thread below (and you will be shot did add a few more when I revived this a month ago) -- didn't have time to go into everything. and its classical recordings from just the last five years, comes from very diff places within the 'scene'.

Have there been any Great Modern Classical Record released so far this century?

yeah there is tons of classical that mimic some of the shapes you find on the same instrument in an improvised context - and some of the composers are improvisers too. and there are divisions but that can be overplayed -- ensemble moderne (and the smaller ensembles are where its at) work closely with composers, are indepedent and play reich as well as less accessible composers like rihm.

http://images.amazon.com/images/P/B000003G0F.01._SCLZZZZZZZ_.jpg

You're making me curious, Dan! Could you make an attempt at their names, and I'll try to contribute spelling?

I'm really liking Armenian composers at the moment. There was a CD of Mansurian out on ECM recently that got a bit of press (picked up some Grammy nominations), and any of the symphonies by Avet Terterian are fantastic, in a giant, isolationist/ambient soundscape kind of way.

If you fancy following up on the Postclassic tip DJ Martian mentioned above, then you could do worse than spend some time with Kyle Gann's Postclassic online radio: http://www.live365.com/stations/kylegann - mostly American stuff, mostly of a minimalist/experimental bent, and lots of it very very good indeed.

There's another guy whose name I can't remember at all who did a really great piece about wandering in the snow looking for God.

There's also a fantastic Requiem by Pizetti (obv not Scandinavian) that we did this fall and a setting of Petrarch's Sonnet 35 by Lars Johan Werle.

Funny that should come from Dundee uni- there's been a bit of an upsurge in Scotland of the kind of muzikkz wot gets covered in The Wire!!!!

For example, I daw some jolly interesting stuff here in Sunny Glasgow!!!!!!! There was a particularly interesting piece called "Ghost In The Machine" by John Harris...

Bump. I've caught this bug, which is on one hand strange, because I can't stand classical music, but on the other is completely normal but I love lush, poignant strings and seeping. So I don't have to go through and listen to everything already mentioned, can anyone reaffirm suggestions. Particularly stuff that sounds like Max Richter, or the John Cassavettes tributes by Ekkehard Ehlers or Keith Fulerton Whitman type stuff and what have you. To be honest, I find it hard to digest a lot of classical music proper, even Arvo Part, but yeah, anything beautiful is beautiful nonetheless.

9 beet stretch

Gavin Bryars/Philip Jeck/Alter Ego -- The Sinking Of The Titanic.

On the same LP as Sinking of The Titanic you can also find the orig recording of "Jesus Blood Never Failed Me Yet" which is... dope.

Jean Paul Dessy - Le Chant du Monde/Harmonia Mundi

"4'33" by John Cage is the only thing within that genre that I can actually bear listening to at all.

O YOU CARD

Didn't know which classical thread to revive, picked this one.

Just bought The Four Pillars Appearing from The Equal D under Resonating Apparitions of The Eternal Process in The Midwinter Starfield 16 VIII 10 (Kansas City), a piece for piano and electronics composed by Randy Gibson (who, obviously, is a student of La Monte Young) and performed by R. Andrew Lee. It's a three-CD set running about three and a half hours, and the whole thing uses just the seven D notes on the piano keyboard. I listened to some of it before buying it on Bandcamp (here's the link), expecting a LMY-esque shimmering cloud of sound, but in fact it's more like Ryoji Ikeda, or like someone trying to send a Morse code message using small gongs. It's really pretty amazing-sounding, and I can't wait to check out the whole massive thing.

Seth Colter Walls wrote about it for the New York Times; here's that link.

going bonkers trying to remember a composer, for piano, of difficult music -- I think he's English, but I'm more certain that a composition of his which had the word "English" in the title had its own thread on ilm an age ago. I want to say it was a three word title, ____ English _____s. the thread linked to video of him playing this difficult piece. ringing any bells for anybody?

Michael Finnissy- English Country Tunes, Japanese News Response

the youtube embeds aren't showing up for me though

Nor me. I posted a thread on MF in the archives. There should be a YT of MF playing this in the mid 80s with a ballerina on the stage

that was exactly it!! thank you!!

Nor me. I posted a thread on MF in the archives. There should be a YT of MF playing this in the mid 80s with a ballerina on the stage

yes this is great, watching now