Q2 is the 24/7 New Music Stream from New York Public Radio

“On Monday, March 26 at 7 pm, Q2 Music welcomes San Francisco Symphony music director Michael Tilson Thomas, composer John Adams and the St. Lawrence String Quartet to The Greene Space for an evening of music and conversation about America’s great iconoclastic composers. WQXR’s David Garland and Q2 Music’s Nadia Sirota host the event.

Michael Tilson Thomas

John Adams

David Garland

Nadia Sirota

Tilson Thomas’s appearance in The Greene Space comes during a four-city tour by the San Francisco Symphony, which focuses on American Mavericks, the orchestra’s ongoing multimedia initiative that started in 2000 with an acclaimed summer festival and later evolved into a public radio series and Web site. Composers covered in the series include John Cage, Steve Reich, Edgard Varèse, Terry Riley, Meredith Monk, John Adams and others. The series has raised questions about what — and who — exactly defines the maverick spirit in American music throughout history.

Michael Tilson Thomas became Music Director of the San Francisco Symphony in September 1995; he’s received numerous accolades including 10 Grammy Awards, a Peabody for Radio Programming in 2008 for The MTT Files (a co-production with American Public Media), and in 2010, a National Medal of the Arts from President Obama.”

See the full article here.

Cued Up On Q2 streams Sundays at 2PM on Q2; encores Tuesdays at 8PM and Thursdays at 4PM on Q2

Sorry, this did not go up on RSS feed until 2:58PM. But, you know, it will be there, whenever you want it.

The History of Chamber Symphonies: Explicit and Imagined
Sunday, October 30, 2011

John Adams

“Concert music is perhaps one of the few art forms that is born purely of abstraction. Each composition demands the composer construct a new world with its own set of rules and regulations. The composition becomes the sole portal into this new sonic universe, through which we get a glimpse of the artist’s vision. However, some pieces come with a history, and, while entirely original and independent, connect with the audience somewhat differently. The experience of listening becomes filled with discovery of the new and surprises of sensing familiar traces.

This Sunday we’ll start with John Adams’s Son of Chamber Symphony, a thrilling work that comes with its own considerable lineage. Composed in 2007 for the ensemble Alarm Will Sound, the work follows the footsteps of its predecessor, Chamber Symphony of 1992, a piece that itself is a response to Arnold Schoenberg’s Chamber Symphony, Op. 9. Following the Adams, we’ll listen to Paul Chihara’s own Chamber Symphony.

Alarm Will Sound

We’ll finish the program with Jason Treuting’s Oblique Music for 4 Plus (Blank) as recorded live at Miller Theatre, a work that while bearing no immediate connection to the other pieces on the program, nonetheless lulls the ear into a familiar space (the piece starts beautifully and reminiscent of something decelerated and almost Gershwinesque!) as it wistfully offers a few dim glimpses of the opening Adams.

The original post is here.

This edition of Cued Up is hosted by Gity Razaz

Gity Razaz