Tom Johnson rip
American composer Tom Johnson (1939-2024), whose body of work included instrumental and vocal pieces employing pared-down musical material, died in Paris on the last day of 2024, at age 85.
Johnson grew up in the...
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...
Christopher Shultis & the Experimental Music Tradition
The 1920s and 1930s were a fertile time for experimental music in America. Composers such as Henry Cowell, George Antheil, William Russell—and very soon after, John Cage—explored...
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
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Much contemporary experimental music puts sound color, or timbre, to the foreground, generally through extended techniques or...
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...
The Quatuor BRAC
Daniel Barbiero
Il Quatuor BRAC è un quartetto internazionale improvvisazionale composto da violino, viola, violoncello e contrabbasso. Adottando un approccio non convenzionale di musica, nonché di strumenti, il gruppo crea un suono che può essere...












