In Music

This show discusses music-making with Dame Evelyn Glennie. We discuss the nature of musicianship and how it feels to be music-making from the inside. Evelyn reflects on how journeys through sound and music are build around emotional bonds and narratives. She explains the importance of these and how they are communicated to commissioned composers and ensembles. She digs deep into how she perceives the flow of music-making, and how the visual and visceral aspects of percussion (e.g. the vibrating cymbal) becomes material for narrative building.Dame Evelyn Glennie is the world’s premier solo percussionist. Her solo recordings exceed 40 CDs. A double GRAMMY award winner and BAFTA nominee, Evelyn composes for film, theatre and television. The Evelyn Glennie Podcast was launched in 2020. Evelyn was awarded an OBE in 1993 and has over 100 international awards to date, including the Polar Music Prize, the Léonie Sonning Music Prize and the Companion of Honour. Evelyn is Curator for The Evelyn Glennie Collection. Her iconic film Touch the Sound, TED Talk and charity The Evelyn Glennie Foundation embody her life-long mission to Teach the World to Listen.In the image above Evelyn can be seen to be holding a poster for a play entitled "Playing from the Heart". This was a played created by Polka Theatre for Children in 1998 about Evelyn's early childhood and her journey into music and deafness. For this play Craig Vear was commissioned to write the music and perform on stage as Evelyn's musical persona. Through this run they met, and have continued to remain in touch.

In this episode, Craig talks with the musician Sandeep Bhagwati. They discuss the philosophical involvement of being inside music-making and the importance of trust. Through a conversation that journey's through Sandeep's early enjoyment of improvisation and exploration through to his recent works, they uncover important elements about what really matters to them when they make music as composers and performers.Sandeep Bhagwati is a multiple award-winning composer, theatre director and media artist [Studies: Mozarteum Salzburg, Musikhochschule München and IRCAM Paris]. His compositions and comprovisations (including 6 operas) are regularly performed worldwide. He has curated several festivals and long-term inter-traditional projects with Asian musicians. A Canada Research Chair for Inter-X Art at Concordia University since 2006, he also was Professor at Karlsruhe Music University, Composer-in-Residence/Fellow/Guest Professor at IRCAM Paris, ZKM Karlsruhe, Beethoven Orchestra Bonn, IEM Graz, CalArts Los Angeles, Heidelberg University, University of Arts Berlin and Tchaikovsky Conservatory Moscow. At Concordia, he currently directs matralab, a research/creation center for performance arts. His current work centers on comprovisation, inter-traditional aesthetics, gestural&sonic theatre and interactive scores. From 2008 to 2011, he also was the director of Hexagram Concordia. https://matralab.hexagram.ca/people/sandeep-bhagwati/

This show discusses music-making with Carla Scaletti. We focus on a recent performance and discuss how she forms meaning as a composer, performer and software engineer. For Carla, these are three different dimensions of her creativity, yet at the heart of each is a desire and vision to find the truth of the experience through phenomenon and affect. If it doesn't feel right, or take her on a journey then it is not meaningful.Carla Scaletti is an experimental composer, designer of the Kyma sound design language and co-founder of Symbolic Sound Corporation. Her compositions always begin with a “what-if” hypothesis and involve live electronics interacting with acoustic sources and environments.Educated at the University of Illinois (DMA, MCS), she studied composition with Salvatore Martirano, John Melby, Herbert Brün and Scott Wyatt and computer science with Ralph Johnson, one of the Design Patterns “Gang of Four.” She received the Distinguished Alumnae Award for invaluable contributions to the field of music from Texas Tech University where she earned her master’s degree in music and graduated magna cum laude with a bachelor’s degree in music from the University of New Mexico.Winner of the 2017 SEAMUS Award “for important contributions to the field of electroacoustic music,” she has been invited to present keynote addresses at the International Conference on Auditory Displays (ICAD2017) and the International Computer Music Conference (ICMC 2015), and was an invited participant in GVA Sessions 2015 — a workshop involving choreographers, filmmakers, and particle physicists from CERN — and was a regular lecturer at Centre de Crèation Musical Iannis Xenakis (CCMIX) when it was still in Paris. Each year, she co-organizes the Kyma International Sound Symposium (KISS).https://carlascaletti.com/

In this episode, the musician Elisabeth Wiklander speaks about how she understands meaning-making inside music. She shares her experiences of being an autistic musician, and how she negotiates a range of music-making activities ranging from small ensembles, orchestras and working with experiments in digital score.About Elisabeth WiklanderPrize-winning cellist Elisabeth Wiklander is a member of the London Philharmonic Orchestra. She also holds a teacher position at Ljungskile Folkhögskola in her native Sweden and has taught orchestral performance at conservatories in Amsterdam, London and New York. Elisabeth is autistic and a Neurodiversity Advocate, appointed Cultural Ambassador for the National Autistic Society in the UK. She recorded music for the award-winning film “The Reason I Jump” and is engaged in Neurodiversity projects worldwide as a speaker and advisor. Media appearances include a TEDx talk, The Daily Politics Show (BBC live) and several programmes and documentaries for Swedish Television.

This show discusses music-making with Marko Ciciliani. We discuss the nature of musicianship and how it feels to be music-making from the inside. Marko reflects on his long-standing work with mixed media and digital scores. He discusses his working processes and how he tries to embed connections and meaning into his scores, and why he is driven to explore technology in an open way.Marko Ciciliani works in the fields of composition, intermedia and audiovisual art, performance and artistic research. His focus is on the composition of performative electronic music in audiovisual and transmedia contexts. Interactive video, light design and laser graphics, as well as virtual 3D spaces or narrative structures form integral elements in his compositions and installations, which have been performed in more than 45 countries in Eurasia, Oceania and North and South America. Ciciliani is a University Professor of computer music composition and sound design at the Institute for Electronic Music and Acoustics (IEM) at the University of Art and Performing Arts Graz. 

This show discusses music-making with Julian Arguelles. We discuss the nature of musicianship and how it feels to be music-making from the inside. Julian reflects on how he finds meaning through emotional connections with the music he plays and hears. He discusses the importance of his jazz teaching and how students need to dig deep into their emotional states in order to get to a depth of understanding about jazz.Award-winning saxophonist and composer Julian Argüelles plays a unique mix of exciting British contemporary jazz infused with Spanish rhythms, South African grooves, brass band and classical influences. An exceptionally gifted musician, he has been compared to sax legends Wayne Shorter and Charles Lloyd (Jazzwise), while his on-stage chemistry with the Julian Argüelles Quartet has been likened to Keith Jarett’s renowned 1970s line-up (UK Vibe). Argüelles’ rapidly growing audience, built over the past 30 years, has an extraordinary reach for a jazz artist. His concerts attract a wide ranging age from early 20s upwards. Always keen to diversify, Argüelles has begun to reach out to jazz and classical music fans across Europe through his work with LAN Trio, with superstar Portuguese pianist Mário Laginha and the phenomenal Norwegian percussionist, Helge Andreas Norbakken. In 2019, he published "Etudes for the Modern Saxophonist" (available from Astute Music).Julian is currently professor of jazz saxophone at the Institute of Jazz, Graz, Austria. More information click HERE 

This show discusses music-making with Craig Hultgren. We discuss the nature of musicianship and how it feels to be music-making from the inside. Craig reflects on his long-standing work across classical music, free improvisation, and alternative scores. He digs into how he navigates these different forms of music, and what it feels like to work deeply and meaningfully with them.Cellist Craig Hultgren (1955) remains active in new music, the newly creative arts, and the avant-garde. Leaving Birmingham after more than 30 years as a member of the Alabama Symphony, he now resides outside of Decorah, Iowa as the farmer-cellist. The New York Classical Review commented that he, “…played with impressive poise and sensitivity…” for Dorothy Hindman’s 2016 chamber music retrospective at Carnegie Hall. At this point, almost 300 works have been created for him.He was the cellist for many years with Thámyris, a contemporary chamber music ensemble in Atlanta and is a founding member of Luna Nova, a new music ensemble based in Memphis, Tennessee. For ten years, he produced the Hultgren Solo Cello Works Biennial, an international competition that highlighted the best new compositions for the instrument. He taught at the University of Alabama at Birmingham, the Alabama School of Fine Arts, Wartburg College (Iowa) and Birmingham-Southern College where he directed the BSC New Music Ensemble.

This show discusses music-making with Carla Rees. We discuss the nature of musicianship and how it feels to be music-making from the inside. Carla reflects on her career, training and touches on issues with current music education. She also introduces us to her childhood teddy orchestra.Carla Rees is a performer (low flutes, Kingma system and baroque flutes), arranger and composer. Her career focuses on collaboration and developing the dialogue between composer, performer and flute maker in order to extend and enhance the repertoire. She has premiered several hundred works in the UK and internationally as a soloist and chamber musician. She is Artistic Director of rarescale and her original works and arrangements for flutes are published by Tetractys Publishing