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Geck0 wrote: Adam, don't forget to check out Golijov!  I am intrigued to know what your thoughts are about him.  Assaf, I also recommend you to try and listen to him as well.The more listeners he gets, the better conclusions people can come to.

I have been doing a little bit of searching on Golijov at the moment. Have found wealths of information, I don't even know where to begin with his works. Firstly I found four sample tracks from one of his string quartet's. This was interesting, more forumalated in tradional classic, while at the same time possessing a very dark and sinister tone to the music. I don't think I can comment properly on those as they were only thirty second samples, which is not indicative of the direction each piece is following.

Further searching lead me to this:

Golijov

This I was very impressed with, still not a long piece but gives further note the musical direction he focuses on. Please everybody check this out, I think this has a lot of potential. I will have to check out what our store has of his works.

I am so overwhelmed with this thread, it's going to keep my busy for a while!

I think this goes without saying to each of us participating in this thread. I know my knowledge has been expend ten fold since the initiation if this thread.

Adam, don't forget to check out Golijov!  I am intrigued to know what your thoughts are about him.  Assaf, I also recommend you to try and listen to him as well.

The more listeners he gets, the better conclusions people can come to.

I am so overwhelmed with this thread, it's going to keep my busy for a while!

Hey RP and BV,
I wasn't aware that Glass performed live, sounds exciting.

I will take your advice, Adam, and take it more slowly and gradually. I'll listen to one composer at a time until I feel I am acquainted enough with him and appreciate his music and I can move on.
I'll start with Branca, I think. I hope these two pieces by him I have are more representative of him, as I am new to his music.

Hi Sigod.

If you're interested in Philip Glass, one of my favorite recordings from him is Koyaanisqatsqi (which I hope I'm spelling right). He's a fascinating, mathematical type of modern composer who really just repeats a beautiful phrase over and over. But that's what I love about him. I saw him live and it was fascinating, to see something repeated so mechanically yet to be so human.

Ah I have finally found it.

http://www.epitonic.com/index.jsp?refer=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.epitonic.com%2Fartists%2Fhenrycowell.html

Just click on the 20th Century section when you get there.

The site is looking very different to the days when I first visited. But this is a good resource for somebody want to start their journey into 20th Century classical. This is pretty much how I introduced myself, so it has been a success story upon my behalf. You are album to listen to a few songs by numerous artist.

If you don't know where to start give me a shout and I will write some names down off the list which interest me. I'm not sure whether you want to do the discovering yourself, I usually find that sort of thing quite satisfying. Anyway you will be able to get farmilar with a few songs of Stockhausen.

Thanks for those links and the compilments Assaf I will have a read of them soon when I have some more time.

Thank you both, that has given me a lot to look forward too!

Ah, well I'm glad you didn't dislike Camille, I wasn't sure what you'd think of her.  She seems rather unique in her own right and she also writes her own lyrics too.  Certainly a talent in her own right.

Golijov from what I can remember, did sound very appealing to my ears.  I rather like klezmer and 'cellos too, so I hope his music has a lot of this.

Let me know when you know more, what you think of Golijov.  I hope you enjoy him.

Haha.. I don't think I am going to shoot the messager. I didn't think her material is bad, though I don't think it would be something that I would listen to regularly. It find I quite rare when I find myself looking to listen to something of this nature, though that does not mean I do not enjoy it. Hmmm... not sure if that made any sense, but that is the only way I could explain my feelings about her music.

One thing that did please me greatly was the beautiful French accent of her voice. I love the sound of the French accent especially sung, so that was a postive. Also I liked the "Ta Douleur" film clip, quite original. Much better than all the Americanised music industry is bring out at this point in time.

I think you hit the nail on the head when you stated she is not Avant-garde. Though it does have its quirky moments and sometimes interesting vocal technics, which definately set her apart for most singer who do similar music.

I have not heard any Golijov yet but I looked that the two sites you suggested and his music does indeed sound quite interesting. Well at least to my tastes. This section from Wikipedia really got me thinking.

"Instrumental forces are very unconventional - do not expect a normal late twentieth century symphony orchestra. Instead you get sampled sounds via a laptop computer, classical guitars and an accordian, subtle amplification, all alongside more conventional forces. The styles of singing (sometimes amplified) are also somewhat unusual (sample the St Mark Passion for a wide spectrum of styles ranging from classical soprano to the chanting of the Amazonian jungle)."

Sounds like something that would interest me greatly.

Also I noticed he has done some work with Kronos Quartet. I have not heard much of their stuff but I really enjoyed the work they did no the flim "Requiem for a Dream".

As for the classical composers: those which are down on your list are good places to start, even though I have not heard any compositions by Reich or Bartok... shame on me.

With Stockhausen and Stravinsky you are definately heading in the right direction.

I was introduced into Stravinsky's work via his piece "Fire Bird" which I still have great respect for. I went on the check a lot more of the his works out. But I suggest you start with "The Rite of Spring". This CD shows everything about his style and is truly an amazing piece of modern music. If you are interested in the dark side of RIO this is definately a composer you cannot go past. You will be amazed by the huge influence Stravinsky has been on this part of the prog world.

Sotckhausen's work I find a lot hard to get into, being a lot more experiment. He was one of the big name during the experimental '50s scene alongside other artist such as Cage and Boulez. Unforunately I only have one album "Kontakte" which I find to be a very rewarding listening experience, but really is not for everybody... I would try and listen to some sound samples before diving headlong into his works. But if you are interested in the evolution of experimental and avant-garde music he is definately somebody of note.

I would just like to suggest a few more composer to listen to which I think could be worth your time. One of my favrouite composers at the moment is Philip Glass. I own three albums, which are all worthy of noting down. His style is very minimalistic, which is something that suits my personal down to the bone.

My favourite piece by him at the moment is "Music With Changing Parts" which is fantastic. But a warning this piece is very repeative, but surprisingly very easy to get into. So if you don't like repeadative music steer clear of this. Another warning if you are somebody with an obessive personanlity like me, you could become quite adicted to this CD.

The other album which I am fully farmilar with is "Solo Piano" which is very minimalistic piano performance. Nothing really to do with progressive music, just a beautiful display of emotions in the simplest form of music.

The other album I have is " Koyaanisqatsi" which is a sound track to a movie, I have only rescently come to own this album and still have not listen to it fully enough to form a solid opinion. Though this album generally gets rated quite high on most music sites.

Another one I would like to add would be the Italian composer Gyorgy Ligeti. The first time I heard the band Shub Niggurath, I found so many things in common between these two artist. He makes some very dark music which I can highly recommend. I don't actually have full album by this artist but have many song spanning over his entire career. My favourite out of these pieces would be the terrifingly dark song "Requiem" which I recommend anybody into the dark side of Zeuhl.

Well this is the for the last recommendation, Assaf has already suggested this band to other people on this site and this is rightfully so. The artist is Steve Martland, he is a fantastic demonstration of the close ties between 20th Century classic and RIO. There was also another composer he has just sent which I cannot remember the name of but these two composers have a lot in common.

Well I think I have gone on far to long. So that will be enough for now and should give you plenty of new artist to listen to.

I will take the initiative to guess you are asking me

Primordial Undermind: Hmmm... I'm not to sure about this band. Starting with the first track to me sounded very much like post-rock with average vocals accompanying the music. The song was not overly bad just nothing special either.

The second song, I was cringing at the intro, but then once getting into the more experimental sections my spirits lifted. I'm really having troubles seeing the connects between sotos and these guys which lastfm have stated, I think you would agree with me on that point. It would be interesting to see what a whole album sounded like, to see what sort of direction they decide to take. The more experimental or post-rock approach.

I will check out Camille soon, my internet is running very slow at the moment so those sample videos on her site are taking ages to load, actually the whole site is taking a long time to load. So I will have to get back to you on what I think of her.

Have not heard of Oswaldo Golijov, sounds quite interesting, I will do a bit of searching sometime later today when I have some more time. Are you into any of the other more proggy classical composers? I guess focusing on the 20th Century ones in this question.

No worries, that information is quite helpful. Also thank you in advance for those names.

Well I finally got around to checking out those bands websites and sound sample to suggested a few pages back. Some were really good anothers just ok.

I guess we will start with Rosa Ensemble. They nearly had a very short listening. For first excert I listened to was Califormica III and I though it was terrible. I could not see myself listening to something like that for an extended period of time, I cannot really explain it but they were the first emotions I felt while listening to the song. I so thought to myself, we will give these guys a little more a of chance and decided to try a different album. This time there gold was struck. I would not go out of my way to say I love them, but that have a very nice sound, quite dark and chamber like. Do many of there song have sing in them as I feel it really does wreck the song of the songs?

D.A.A.U have turned out the be a very interesting band. They seem to have a vast variety of sounds and influences. I don't know if it just those songs on their site, but everytime I think I know what direction the band is taking, just starting to get comfortable with the style they are playing. You get hit with something totally different. To say the less this band has surprised me. And would definately like to listen to more of this band. I'm not quite sure whether this jumping around would keep surprising for the whole album or would give it to much of a disjointed feel. So I'm not to sure I completely sold on this band as of yet.

Diamanda Galas, wow that was quite impressive. A female vocalist of that quality is always going to do strange things to me . Listened to all the samples off Defixiones, Will and Testament. I find this very powerful music, she is able to dictate the mood of the song so gracefully. I find she is very good a portarying the theme behind the songs by giving each note different tonal and emotional values extremely well. I can definately see how a lot of people could be detered by vocals like this, but they are something I adore.