At the more serious end of the expressive spectrum, there was a lot to take in during my long weekend at this year’s HCMF. It was disappointing to witness, in Ann Cleare‘s TERRARIUM, yet another example of that which has become so prevalent at HCMF in recent years, a multimedia …
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Chaya Czernowin
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Though i don’t (any longer) have a religious bone in my body, i’m nonetheless drawn to the paintings of John Martin, particularly his vast, frenzied depictions of some of the more apocalyptic events described in the Bible. i find myself thinking of Martin’s paintings while listening to On the Face …
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i’m turning to music that’s more abstract, though no less powerfully evocative, for the next work in this year’s Lent Series. The title of Chaya Czernowin‘s short 2018 guitar piece Black Flowers comes from a text by French philosopher Gaston Bachelard: In the depths of matter there grows an obscure …
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One of my recurring trains of thought during HCMF 2021 was concerned with the notion of continuity. This was, very simply, due to the fact that all of the best things i heard at the festival had an incredibly clear, logical sense running through them that, regardless of their inner …
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As i know i’ve remarked previously about compositions, size isn’t everything. Apropos: i’ve been spending time recently with a short work by Chaya Czernowin which, though it was premièred four years ago, only received its first UK performance last month. Once I blinked nothing was the same has a duration …
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As today is International Women’s Day, for my March mixtape i’ve allowed myself to indulge in a celebration of fabulous music by women composers and musicians. Compared to most of my mixtapes, this was one of the more difficult to create, for two reasons. First, because the shortlist of music …
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HAPPY NEW YEAR!! As of today, 5:4 is ten years old, so first of all i want to say an enormous thank you to all of you who have read, commented, enjoyed, shared and supported this blog over the last decade, especially to my merry band of patrons. As this …
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* Please note this list has how been superseded by the one on the Best Albums of the Years page * i started last year’s Best Albums of the Year list concerned about whether or not such lists were a good, viable or indeed practical idea. This year finds me …
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HAPPY NEW YEAR! i’m starting 2017 in the usual way, with a mixtape bringing together one track from each of the forty albums on my best of 2016 list. i’m sure posterity will come to regard last year as something of a trough in human history, but this mixtape does …
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* Please note this list has how been superseded by the one on the Best Albums of the Years page * Here they are, then: the best of the best of 2016, each and every one of them packed full of the rarest imagination, invention and ingenuity. i can’t recommend them highly …
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It’s been good to get back to the plethora of new releases that have have found their way to my door in recent weeks and months. While i don’t like to make spurious connections between disparate pieces of music, i’ve been fascinated at the way various composers explore the interplay …
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Having packed out Phipps Hall at HCMF last year, pianist Richard Uttley‘s Saturday morning recital found him in the considerably more fitting space of St Paul’s Hall. Taking place on a stunningly cold day—local temperatures hovering around -1°C—the audience was healthy in size but not in general well-being, peppering the concert with …
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The next piece in my Lent Series celebrating women composers is by the Israeli Chaya Czernowin. Czernowin left Israel in her 20s, studying first in Germany and then the United States (her teachers included Brian Ferneyhough and Roger Reynolds), where she remains today, in Boston. One of the features of …