Music of the Day : 8/20/11

George Benjamin (b. 1960, King's College London)

• At First Light (1982, chamber orchestra)

Martin Bresnick (b. 1946, Yale)

• BE JUST!* (1995, chamber: cl., vc., cb., guit., pno., perc.)
• String Quartet No. 2, "Bucephalus" (1984)
  
• Piano Trio (1988)
• The Bucket Rider* (1995, chamber: bcl., vc., cb., guit., pno., perc)
• Three Intermezzi (1971, solo cello)
• Falling (1994, mezzo soprano and piano)
• Willie's Way (2006, solo piano)
• Ballade (2004, cello and piano)
• Every Thing Must Go (2007, saxophone quartet)
• High Art (1983, piccolo and toy piano) *** Look at the score sometime!
  

* BE JUST! and The Bucket Rider are both part of Bresnick's Opere della Musica Povera (Works of a Poor Music). The twelve "operas," composed between 1990 and 1999, feature a variety of instrumentations, but share similar formal plans and structures. Each has its own "key" and a title that "evokes a sense of poverty: poverty of means, of spirit, of wit."
The titles of BE JUST! and The Bucket Rider refer to two stories by Kafka: In the Penal Colony and The Bucket Rider, respectively.
The Bucket Rider contains some lovely timbral blurring between clarinet and vibraphone.

Dennis Kam (b. 1942, University of Miami)

• The Epistemology of Delicate Time in Blue Three (1981, two pianos)
• Fantasy Sonata for clarinet and piano (1981) 

Aram Khachaturian (1903–1978)

• Adagio of Spartacus and Phrygia, from Spartacus (1954, ballet - orchestra)
• Piano Concerto in D-flat Major, Op. 38 (1936)
• Toccata, Op. 11 (1932, piano)

Anthony Suter (University of Redlands)

• As We Shine, Singing, Over Waterless Seas (2007, concert band)
•  tracings of sand and smoke (2006, bsn., hn., vcl.)

Charles Norman Mason (University of Miami)

• Metaman (2009, violin with digital sound and video)