David Dalle
Thursday September 7th, 2023 with David Dalle
Farewell to Gloria Coates; Anna Thorvaldsdottir's "Aion"; Orchestra Baobab; Arooj Aftab and Vijay Iyer

I planned today to showcase another wonderful new piece from Anna Thorvaldsottir. We will still hear this work, but I awoke this morning to the news that the wondrous independent composer Gloria Goates had died. She was born in Wisconsin in 1933, living and breathing music. Despite some early notice for her compositions, winning a national junior competition in 1951, and pursuing her musical education in the US, earning a Master's in composition she ended up moving to Europe where she spent the rest of her life. Her rich and complex music never found solid footing in the US, though she enjoyed a successful compositional career in Europe, particularly Germany. She composed 17 symphonies and 10 string quartets, among many other works. Her music is most famous for her extensive use of glissandi with stringed instruments. There are often beautiful melodies and structures beneath the glissandi, which critic and composer Kyle Gann described as “the effect is often like a painting of a beautiful edifice on which rain has impressionistically smeared the surface.” For Thorvaldsottir, we will hear the 3rd orchestral piece released recently on the independent label Sono Luminus. This is the largest of the three pieces, and the only one comprised of explicit movements. Most of her music, particularly orchestral music, is cosmic in scope. I do talk about that in a previous show which featured the other two works, which can be listened to here: https://cod.ckcufm.com/programs/105/61434.html I am not the only one to find her music massive. Violist and new music specialist Doyle Armbrust writes in the album notes: "So what makes her Archora and Aion so huge? The answer is, and I'm not being coy, everything. It's the transcendence of bar lines, the exploitation (the good kind!) of the range of the orchestral 'instrument,' the perfectly timed exits of any section of the music, the unequivocal conviction of the Iceland Symphony musicians, the immediacy and detail of the recording capture, and the crystalline mix. It is the uncommon intuition of the composer herself -- a trait not miraculously bestowed, but uncovered only through persistent, perpetual excavation."