Now is the Time

We’re trying to kick-start spring on Now is the Time, Sunday, March 24th at 10 pm. Leaps and Bulls is all funky frogs and swamps, from the group Blob. Yes, Blob. Gary Schocker tempts us out of the house with Out of Doors Duets for two flutes, and Ned Rorem’s long-limbed Day Music and Night Music is for violin and piano.

The Symphony No. 5 of Charles Fussell is an expansive memorial to Virgil Thomson, and Ronn McFarlane honors all things spring with modern music for the lute, in Over the Green Earth.

Time's marching on Now is the Time, Sunday, March 17th at 10 pm. Whether it's the change of clocks or seasons, something is trying to get our attention. Former Take 6 member Cedric Dent arranges the gospel song Somebody's Knocking at Your Door for piano, Margaret Garwood sets Tombsongs for choir, and Leonardo Balada puts an amplified classical guitar through its paces, with orchestra, in Persistencies.

New-music standout Zeitgeist rips through Chris Gable's game-show send-up Beat That Clock, and Dick Hensold applauds their three-decade longevity in Zeitgeist Anniversary Tune. Sebastian Currier persistently works his own tune in Variations on "Time and Time Again" for flute and piano.

Etudes for piano and for bongos are on Now is the Time, Sunday, March 10th at 10 pm. Maria Corley performs seven of the twelve neo-romantic Etudes by Leslie Adams, journeying through changing harmonic relationships, with a sure touch by composer and pianist.

Bang on a Can co-founder Michael Gordon wrote XY for Doug Perkins, who hypnotizes on this recording. Perkins works over five (we think) bongos with mallets. It’s an etude in itself, a study in polyrhythms, but most of all, a seductively fascinating work.

We're telling stories on Now is the Time, Sunday, March 3rd at 10 pm. Stephen Vincent Benét's The Ballad of William Sycamore ("My father, he was a mountaineer, His fist was a knotty hammer; He was quick on his feet as a running deer, And he spoke with a Yankee stammer...") is set pungently by John Biggs. Benjamin Broening accompanies the same clarinet music in two different—and fascinating—ways: with piano (Arioso), and with computer sounds (Arioso/Doubles).

Maurice Wright tantalizes with an excerpt from his Mythology cycle, and David Amram mythologizes a bit himself in his Elizabethan-inspired Sonata for piano.

We’re in the blue to purple section of the color wheel on Now is the Time, Sunday, February 24th at 10 pm. The blues are brought to us by Frank Ticheli’s wind orchestra, John King’s string quartet for Ethel, and Libby Larsen’s flute and guitar homage to Dizzy Gillespie and Ray Charles.

A Christopher Campbell interval spans wavelengths so that we may meet Efraín Amaya’s Venezuelan-spiced flute concerto. Joshua Stamper’s Incredible Purple sings the boundary between blues and something ineffable. Well, there’s a trombone.

The cello sings on Now is the Time, Sunday, February 17th at 10 pm. The seven-movement Sonata No. 2 for Unaccompanied Cello of Michael Hersch is a journey of lament, passion, and poignancy. There is darkness and depth in all of Hersch's music, but it is always leavened with an inescapable, sincere lyricism. This is thoroughly involving.  

Allen Shawn has written operas on librettos by his brother, actor and playwright Wallace Shawn, music for the film My Dinner with Andre, and lots of piano and chamber music. He calls his own music eclectic, and there's always a wry element just around the corner. But don't allow that to cause you to miss his crafting of satisfying, skillful works, including these six Episodes for Cello and Piano.

Listeners look for categories, but artists freely create, and David Bennett Thomas is, first of all, an artist. Neo-this, post-that, or fusion-with-something-else may be of interest to others, but the artist is interested only in creating.

David Bennett Thomas works in jazz and classical music, but he doesn’t put one foot in one and one in the other. He’s a professional, so he commits to either, depending on his purpose. He’s an artist, so he’s true, regardless of what he’s composing. He laughs and loves life, so his music is filled with humor and, perhaps what is most revolutionary in our earnest age, happiness.

It's as if we were all sent Valentines on Now is the Time, Sunday, February 10th at 10 pm. We're proud of all the music by women composers our show has aired since we began in 2008, but this program we've set aside for them and to some pieces that could be Valentines. Maybe.

It's not that we take anything for granted, as Annie Gosfield reminds us in Don't Bite the Hand That Feeds Back. Linda Robbins Coleman's piano rag is a Valentine to a dear member of the family, her beloved cat. The Syncopated Lady may be Carol Barnett or her pianist, Tomoko Deguchi. Valentine's Day is filled with flowers and poetry; Jasmine Flower is from Victoria Bond's CD Peculiar Plants, and Jennifer Higdon wrote String Poetic for the outstanding violinist Jennifer Koh.

Warming up the day is Anne LeBaron on harp, augmented, with Heat Wave 1, and Nicola Melville plays the searing Tango Gardél of Stacy Garrop.

The violin takes on many guises on Now is the Time, Sunday, February 3rd at 10 pm. A “Fantasy for Violin” is what Michael Horvit calls his Daughters of Jerusalem. A concerto in all but name, it’s a passionate circling of texts from the Song of Solomon. She searches for her lover; she pleads; she despairs; she looks her friends in the eyes and asks them, What would you do?

Henri Lazarof’s Violin Concerto No. 3 is every bit a concerto, dramatic and expressionistic, and enjoys a powerful reading from violinist Christiane Edinger.

Welsh-born Hilary Tann has lived and taught in the U.S. for many years. The Cresset Stone takes its name from the hollowed-out rock holding oil for light in earlier times; such a stone in a cathedral inspired Tann’s work for solo violin, and includes a Gregorian Kyrie.

It's two different kinds of quartets, both inspired by great, but different, works of art, on Now is the Time, Sunday, January 27th at 10 pm. Michael Ellison heard the Borromeo String Quartet perform Beethoven's late quartet, the Opus 131, and the experience prompted a desire to write for Borromeo; to write a work with the greatness of Beethoven's in his mind. Ten years later he did just that, and his String Quartet #2, for Borromeo, is the result.

The movements in Robert Maggio's Two Quartets are 1. Desire, Movement and 2. Love, Stillness. He calls for an unusual quartet of two flutes and two cellos, which can produce a ravishing and mesmerizing sound. The title? Maggio was reading T.S. Eliot's Four Quartets at the time. The mystic, meditative parallel is apt.