In a time where the arts and creativity is systemically and politically undermined and unappreciated, it’s even more important to make art and celebrate it by listening, sharing, and talking about it. We need to show artists how much their work moves us; how it makes us better neighbors, better friends, and better people.
The albums gathered here are just a snapshot that honors the artistry and ingenuity of composers of today. We’ve taken a more democratic approach to our year-end list in 2024 and invited multiple people from our team to weigh in. Ranging in style, location, era, and purpose, these selections from ICIYL contributors and editors are a peek into the music that inspires our own creative practices; drives our thirst for knowledge; and expands our listening ear.
Thank you for reading and listening with us this year; here’s to 2025! – Amanda Cook and A. Kori Hill
a Song for two Mothers / OCCAM IX (Black Truffle) – Laetitia Sonami
Sound artist, composer, and performer Laetitia Sonami has spent more than three decades inventing electronic musical instruments. On a Song for two Mothers / OCCAM IX, her first ever solo release, she highlights her electronic instrument the Spring Spyre and her enduring relationship with her former teacher, the pioneering composer Éliane Radigue. The Spring Spyre, created in 2011, is three springs attached to a metal ring; when touched, the resulting sounds are analyzed and processed using Max/MSP and machine learning technology.
Though the album only presents two pieces, it showcases the great range of the instrument’s sonic capability: “a Song for two Mothers” sporadically crackles and bubbles and zags, while “OCCAM IX,” composed by Radigue in the closely-collaborative vein of all her Occam works, observes the gradual evolution of low-vibrating notes into a rainbow of overtones. Both Sonami and Radigue have dedicated their practices to exploration, and a Song for two Mothers / OCCAM IX is a testament to their adventurousness. – Vanessa Ague
African Pianism, Vol. 2 (SOMM Recordings) – Rebeca Omordia
For years, pianist Rebeca Omordia has been magnifying the rich, diverse tradition of classical music by African composers. Her latest album, African Pianism, Vol. 2 (SOMM Recordings), is a stunning snapshot of piano repertoire by 20th and 21st century African and Diasporic composers; a reminder of the millennia-old intersection of African, Middle Eastern, and European idioms through the repertoire of Fela Sowande, Nabil Benabdeljalil, Florence Price, Salim Dada, and more.
Girma Yifrashewa’s Elilta is a gossamer and lyrical work of variations that blossoms and unspools, while Mokale Koapeng’s Prelude in D-flat Major is more motivically driven and rhythmically diverse. My personal favorite is the ear-catching melodies, pastoral character, and rambunctious rhythms of Akin Euba’s Wakar Duru, calling to mind the relationship between African and African American musics. Omordia’s interpretations are miraculous in the timbre, articulations, and expressive arcs she pulls from the piano. This is a beautiful portrait of this repertoire that I’ll be revisiting again and again. – A. Kori Hill
American Counterpoints (Bright Shiny Things) – by Experiential Orchestra, James Blachly, and Curtis Stewart
American Counterpoints (Bright Shiny Things) provides a fascinating alternative look at mid-20th-century American classical music, with violinist Curtis Stewart, conductor James Blachly, and the Experiential Orchestra giving Julia Perry and Coleridge-Taylor Perkinson their due. The selections highlight different sides of each composer; take the first movement of Perkinson’s neo-Baroque Sinfonietta No. 1 for strings, in which contrapuntal melodic curlicues twirl around each other. It’s a far cry from his Louisiana Blues Strut, a barn-burning, down-home fiddle showpiece.
Two charming arrangements of music by Perry likewise stand in stark opposition to her modernist, supremely crafted Violin Concerto. Over six continuous movements, including two mesmerizing cadenzas, Perry constructs a cohesive blend of restrained lyricism and calculated dissonance. The concerto is an unsung gem that deserves performances everywhere; here, Stewart and Blachly give it their all. To end, Stewart raps to his own We Who Seek, a 21st-century response to Perry and Perkinson that samples and remixes music heard before into a spoken-word mashup with electronics. – Esteban Meneses
i want it more than i want to be well (Self-release) – Kaho Matsui
Listening to Kaho Matsui’s prolific, diaristic catalog, you’re aware of what you’re allowed to know as the listener. Her trademark vocal treatment features a degree of obfuscation; in her sometimes autotuned, sometimes muffled singing, Matsui tells secrets and keeps them, too. On “i want it more than i want to be well,” she strikes a balance between concision and thoroughness: when grief washes over, one cannot say enough, yet words fail.
Softly glitchy and oscillating manipulations of the guitar tenderly accompany Matsui’s vocals and recall the ambient meditations of Rachika Nayar. Though the album’s sound remains largely sheer and reflective, certain moments bubble-over, adding striking dimension to the project’s world. With the album on now, I think back to watching ducks trailing around one another on a pond in Delaware, leaving gentle ripples in their wake. I imagine their feet working hard under the placid surface. – Connie Li
Plastiglomerates (innova Recordings) – Jess Rowland
Jess Rowland has been experimenting at the intersection of sound art and technology for decades, regurgitating our commercialized existence into beautifully controlled chaos. Her latest album, Plastiglomerates (innova Recordings), draws inspiration from a geological phenomenon where plastics cement with organic rocks near shorelines to create unsettling artifacts of our existence. This idea of unexpected fusions guides the album, which considers our relationship with technology and the artificial through highly processed and partially-AI generated music that is catchy and familiar, yet lives in the uncanny valley.
With wisps of muzak and other commercial music creeping in at the edges, tracks groove and glitch at the same time, creating a satisfying dichotomy. AI-generated voices trip over sputtering plosives and gasp in desperation as Jess tries to “break AI.” Swelling ambient drones meld with industrial beats, and a strumming guitar transforms into a buzzsaw of textured vibrations. Despite the 12 tracks totalling just over 30 minutes, each musical snapshot lands with a self-assured weight. – Amanda Cook
Perceive Its Beauty, Acknowledge Its Grace (Impulse! Records) – Shabaka
Known for his stellar saxophone performances, Shabaka hung up his horn in December 2023 after playing Coltrane’s “A Love Supreme” one more time. Since then, the bandleader has focused on his solo debut – but not without community. On Perceive Its Beauty, Acknowledge Its Grace (Impulse! Records), the multi-instrumentalist convenes forces of jazz heavy hitters, New Age icons, and poetic rappers. In an era defined by uncertainty, struggle, and degradation of safeties/institutions, we can find strength in the meditative musings of Saul Williams.
We can ground ourselves in rejuvenating flutes and strings, and the sublime sweetness of vocalists Moses Sumney and Lianne La Havas. Shabaka even conjures Floating Points, Laraaji, and his father to aid in the cycling and release of energies – an exaltation of the bad and inhalation of the transformative. Perceive Its Beauty is a testament to the power of inner spirit, collective synergy, and the transfiguration that happens when we move between the two. – Yaz Lancaster
Revolution diamantina (Platoon) – Gabriela Ortiz, the Los Angeles Philharmonic, and Gustavo Dudamel
Magical realism meets reality in Revolution diamantina (Platoon), a collection of works by Gabriela Ortiz featuring fierce and delightful performances by the LA Philharmonic with Gustavo Dudamel at the helm. Ortiz composes with a virtuosic, melody-forward, and multi-colored vernacular that often highlights folk song, Mexican culture, and social commentary. The Los Angeles Master Chorale joins for the haunting titular work; the six grand, exquisite, and bristling movements speak to the 2019 “Glitter Revolution” in Mexico, a feminist movement in response to the country’s violence towards women.
Kauyumari alternates between shy elegance and grooving, celebratory fanfare as it embodies the spiritual guide seen by the Huichol people during the transformational experience of consuming peyote. Altar de cuerda (String Altar) for violin and orchestra showcases the outstanding artistry of young violinist Maria Dueñas with three movements that are thick, colorful, and intelligent. Ortiz has set a high bar for music that enchants audiences just as deeply as it educates them, and this album is an inarguable illustration. – Stephanie Ann Boyd
Sentir que no sabes (Unheard of Hope) – Mabe Fratti
Mabe Fratti is an artist who effortlessly straddles the line between her classical training and the punchy flavours of experimental, pop, rock, jazz, and folk music. When I think of her work, I imagine in-your-face, bold bursts of colours that weave through moments of textured, harmonic bliss. Her 2024 album Sentir que no sabes is no exception, gripping the listener from the first few grungy strikes of bass and drums in the opening track, as if to say, “I am here.”
The album questions the idea of “superimposing,” with Fratti exploring the space where ideas take shape and gesticulate. The detailed experimentation process and deep collaboration with her partner, Héctor Tosta, brings forth her bold compositional voice, flared through jagged grooves, tastes of alt-pop, and instrumental interludes that venture into experimental drone music. – Michelle Hromin
the sky in our hands, our hands in the sky (innova Recordings) – Leilehua Lanzilotti
Leilehua Lanzilotti’s work is steeped in the elemental nature of sound and its creation. It invites you to fuse with perception itself: to become your sensorial experiences and sink away from ego. On the sky in our hands, our hands in the sky (innova Recordings), Lanzilotti immerses herself in the bronze and ceramic work of artist Toshiko Takaezu, which she first encountered as a child in Honolulu’s Contemporary Museum. The title track explores the deep, richly complex and ever-changing resonance of Takaezu’s bronze bells over the better part of an hour. In these quiet reverberances, we find the world.
This plangency is likewise present in for Toshiko, which considers the composer’s relationship to Takaezu in a profoundly sensitive performance by Longleash. Meanwhile, Sō Percussion accentuates more playful facets in sending messages, using the ceramics and other objects to evoke child-like wonder. More even than engrossing, this deeply transformative album asks you to experience new ways of being. – Sofía Rocha
Toy Store (Carrier Records) – Juri Seo and Jinjoo Cho
Belied by its cutesy façade, Juri Seo’s Toy Store is an artfully-composed work with the kind of thematic and technical depth that demands repeat listenings. The Carrier Records album is a mind-melting fever dream that grew out of the composer’s multi-year collaboration with violinist Jinjoo Cho, and the work’s five movements, which are named after children’s toys, showcase Seo’s impressive command of disparate styles.
“Monster Truck” packs a heavy-metal punch; “Mobile” is a shapeshifting sound sculpture; “Jack-in-the-Box” channels intricate IDM riffs; “Roller Skates” glides along with post-minimal ease; and “Bubbles” swells with lyrical romanticism. Cho breathes life into this divergent stylistic terrain with her technical prowess and sensitive performance, a welcome contrast against the cool sheen of the electronics. Toy Store sets up shop at a multitude of similarly dissonant thematic intersections, offering listeners the chance to reconcile memory and nostalgia with a stunningly original box of curios. – Tristan McKay
I CARE IF YOU LISTEN is an editorially-independent program of the American Composers Forum, and is made possible thanks to generous donor and institutional support. Opinions expressed are solely those of the author and may not represent the views of ICIYL or ACF.
You can support the work of ICIYL with a tax-deductible gift to ACF. For more on ACF, visit composersforum.org.
Автор публикации
- Галерея пользователя
- Гостевая пользователя
АВТОРИЗУЙТЕСЬ, чтобы написать в гостевухе
!
Пока нет записей в гостевой книге пользователя
КОММЕНТЫ