Modern Notebook for July 16 - 22, 2023

Photo: composer Oliver Leith (Photo credit: Marcus J. Leith).

On this week’s Modern Notebook with Tyler Kline: “Nothing fancy - nothing extravagant.” That’s how Caroline Shaw describes her own work, “Thousandth Orange.” It’s “just something quite beautiful and everyday, that is enjoyed and loved and consumed and forgotten,” she continues. But then she notes how something so banal can also be completely celebrated in art - like bowls of fruit in still-life paintings.


Then, we’ll hear otherworldly music grounded in photographs of abandoned Irish mansions with Oliver Leith’s “Big House:” a haunting string quartet that smears in and out of tonal centers, leans into microtonal music, and revels in blurry visions of these old photos.


Also featuring music by Andy Akiho, Jeffrey Mumford, Sarah Kirkland Snider, Courtney Bryan, Mari Takano, Aurie Hsu, and others; and performances by RighteousGIRLS, I Giardini, violinist Miranda Cuckson with the Argento Chamber Ensemble; Ruisi Quartet, Ensemble Pi, pianist Brianna Matzke, and more.



Hour 1

  • KARakurENAI by Andy Akiho.
  • Derek Bermel’s Thracian Sketches.
  • Thousandth Orange by Caroline Shaw.
  • Jeffrey Mumford’s through a stillness brightening.
  • The Currents by Sarah Kirkland Snider.
  • Courtney Bryan’s Elegy.

Hour 2

  • Full Moon by Mari Takano.
  • Aurie Hsu’s This Train, Blue Shine.
  • The Big House by Oliver Leith.

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