Music as Sound as Music: On Making Nostos
Nostos, a collaboration between bassist/electronics artist Cristiano Bocci (Follonica GR) and myself, represents a melding of the organic, acoustic sounds of the double bass with after-the-fact timbres and supplementary compositional structures afforded by the...
Airi Yoshioka & the Violin Alone
Much has changed in Western art music since the modern violin family was developed in Northern Italy in the early 16thcentury. Formal conventions have come and gone, tonality has evolved, broadened and dissolved, and...
On Making The Rationale for a Space Telescope
The Rationale for a Space Telescope, the latest release from If, Bwana, includes four tracks featuring my electronically processed contrabass.
If, Bwana is Al Margolis’s electroacoustic music project, which has been active since 1984. Starting...
Un simposio per il contrabbasso: le basi di una nuova era (parte prima)
Introduzione
Nell'area delle sfide e delle interposizioni di genere musicale, il contrabbasso può vantare una nuova storia: gli attuali orientamenti permettono di acclarare una certa effervescenza su quanto si produce nelle rinnovate visuali di compositori...
The Timbre of Neither/Nor: Morton Feldman’s Clarinet & String Quartet
In the 1972 essay “A Compositional Problem,” Morton Feldman mentioned a contradiction he felt faced him as a composer: The contradiction between instrumental color and the immediacy of sound. For a composer with a...
Gato Barbieri (1932-2016)
Although probably best known for his soundtrack to the 1972 Bernardo Bertolucci film Last Tango in Paris, tenor saxophonist Leandro “Gato” Barbieri, who died on April 2, was an innovator in fusing elements of...
Notes on the Music of Sound II: Timbral Music and Plastic Values
Notes on the Music of Sound II: Timbral Music and Plastic Values
Daniel Barbiero
1
Much contemporary experimental music puts sound color, or timbre, to the foreground, generally through extended techniques or...
Renewing Modernism: The Music of Ross Feller
Through its innovations in technique, technology and formal structures, the Western art music of the second half of the last century continues to exert influence on and offer possibilities to contemporary composers and performers....












