Uploaded December 2022 | Updated September 2026, 2 weeks ago
A finalist for the 2018 Pulitzer Prize in Music, this is Ted Hearne's cantata masterpiece "Sound From the Bench" for chorus, two electric guitars and drums, with the libretto by Jena Osman. This performance is by the exceptional chamber choir The Crossing. The composer writes:
"Sound From the Bench is a reaction to Jena Osman's incredible book "Corporate Relations," a collection of poems that follows the historical trajectory of corporate personhood in the United States. The five movements combine language taken from landmark Supreme Court Cases with words from ventriloquism textbooks. I was instantly drawn to Osman's work because of its rich intertextuality: she appropriates a variety of texts from diverse sources and assembles them into a powerful bricolage. I strive toward a similar polyphony of oppositional voices and perspectives in my music, and to bring the chaotic forces of life into the work itself. It was this impulse, and the unabashedly political tone of Osman's poetry, that made me want to set some part of "Corporate Relations" to music."
COMPOSER: Ted Hearne
POET: Jena Osman (adapted from oral arguments in Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission)
CONDUCTOR: Donald Nally
CHOIR: The Crossing
INSTRUMENTALISTS:
Taylor Levine and James Moore, electric guitars
Ron Wiltrout, drums
TRACKLIST:
0:00 - I. How to Throw Your Voice
5:47 - II. Mouth Piece
11:52 - III. (Ch)oral Argument
28:22 - IV. Simple Surgery
34:47 - V. When You Hear
Please be aware that all of the music (and images) featured in this video belong to their respective owners, and I or this channel does not claim any right over them. I upload these solely for archiving purposes, and for the sharing and enjoyment of great music. Monetization is not enabled. If you are the rightful owner of copyrighted material used and would like the video removed from YouTube, please, instead of reporting/striking my channel, leave a comment below with your statement and I will take the video down effective immediately.
A finalist for the 2018 Pulitzer Prize in Music, this is Ted Hearne's cantata masterpiece "Sound From the Bench" for chorus, two electric guitars and drums, with the libretto by Jena Osman. This performance is by the exceptional chamber choir The Crossing. The composer writes:
"Sound From the Bench is a reaction to Jena Osman's incredible book "Corporate Relations," a collection of poems that follows the historical trajectory of corporate personhood in the United States. The five movements combine language taken from landmark Supreme Court Cases with words from ventriloquism textbooks. I was instantly drawn to Osman's work because of its rich intertextuality: she appropriates a variety of texts from diverse sources and assembles them into a powerful bricolage. I strive toward a similar polyphony of oppositional voices and perspectives in my music, and to bring the chaotic forces of life into the work itself. It was this impulse, and the unabashedly political tone of Osman's poetry, that made me want to set some part of "Corporate Relations" to music."
COMPOSER: Ted Hearne
POET: Jena Osman (adapted from oral arguments in Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission)
CONDUCTOR: Donald Nally
CHOIR: The Crossing
INSTRUMENTALISTS:
Taylor Levine and James Moore, electric guitars
Ron Wiltrout, drums
TRACKLIST:
0:00 - I. How to Throw Your Voice
5:47 - II. Mouth Piece
11:52 - III. (Ch)oral Argument
28:22 - IV. Simple Surgery
34:47 - V. When You Hear
Please be aware that all of the music (and images) featured in this video belong to their respective owners, and I or this channel does not claim any right over them. I upload these solely for archiving purposes, and for the sharing and enjoyment of great music. Monetization is not enabled. If you are the rightful owner of copyrighted material used and would like the video removed from YouTube, please, instead of reporting/striking my channel, leave a comment below with your statement and I will take the video down effective immediately.
![Stephen Michael Gryc — Evensong (2000) [w/ score]](https://i.ytimg.com/vi/RjkxJwB3VK4/mqdefault.jpg "Stephen Michael Gryc — Evensong (2000) [w/ score]
This is Stephen Michael Gryc’s beautiful “Evensong” for solo trumpet and wind ensemble (score shown here is the piano reduction), commissioned and performed here by former Principal Trumpet of the New York Philharmonic, Philip Smith, and the University of New Mexico Wind Symphony. Gryc writes in the program notes:
“Evensong was commissioned by trumpeter Philip Smith and the University of New Mexico Wind Symphony, Eric Rombach-Kendall conductor. The work was started in August of 1999 and completed in January of 2000. The commissioning artists premiered Evensong on April 18, 2000 in Albuquerque. The piece is dedicated to the memory of my father-in-law, publisher Robert King, who died at the age of 85 after a lifetime of invaluable service to the worldwide community of brass players. Evensong is the English name for the church service celebrated shortly before sunset and may also mean any song sung in the evening. The work uses two ancient church modes, dorian and mixolydian. The dorian mode is based on the pitch D, but the mixolydian mode is transposed from its usual base of G up to A flat. The diminished fifth interval between D and A flat is the source of harmonic tension and richness as well as harmonic motion in the work. The piece ends with repeated cadences on Ab by the low brass while the solo trumpet, flutes, and bells reiterate D. The elegiac character of Evensong demonstrates the lyricism of which the trumpet is capable and, more particularly, the great artistry of Philip Smith.”
COMPOSER: Stephen Michael Gryc
TRUMPET: Philip Smith
BAND: University of New Mexico Wind Symphony
Please be aware that all of the music (and images) featured in this video belong to their respective owners, and I or this channel does not claim any right over them. I upload these solely for archiving purposes, and for the sharing and enjoyment of great music. Monetization is not enabled. If you are the rightful owner of copyrighted material used and would like the video removed from YouTube, please, instead of reporting/striking my channel, leave a comment below with your statement and I will take the video down effective immediately.
#scorefollower #contemporaryclassical #classicalmusic")
![Sarah Kirkland Snider — The Reserved, The Reticent (2004) [w/ score]](https://i.ytimg.com/vi/ULDvP2jDTIo/mqdefault.jpg "Sarah Kirkland Snider — The Reserved, The Reticent (2004) [w/ score]
Snider writes in the program notes of this wonderful work for solo cello:
I wrote this piece in my first year of graduate study at Yale. I wanted to create a lyrical, ruminative, single-movement narrative for solo cello, an instrument I had studied as a child and often longed to play. The music was inspired by this passage from As One Put Drunk Into the Packet-Boat, a poem by John Ashbery.
COMPOSER: Sarah Kirkland Snider
CELLO: Hrant Parsamian
Please be aware that all of the music (and images) featured in this video belong to their respective owners, and I or this channel does not claim any right over them. I upload these solely for archiving purposes, and for the sharing and enjoyment of great music. Monetization is not enabled. If you are the rightful owner of copyrighted material used and would like the video removed from YouTube, please, instead of reporting/striking my channel, leave a comment below with your statement and I will take the video down effective immediately.
#scorefollower #contemporaryclassical #classicalmusic")
![John Mackey — Juba (2003) [w/ score]](https://i.ytimg.com/vi/UbW689sEazc/mqdefault.jpg "John Mackey — Juba (2003) [w/ score]
John Mackey’s intense, rhythmically driving “Juba,” for electric string quartet and percussion, was commissioned by and written in collaboration with dancer, choreographer, and Artistic Director of Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater, Robert Battle. Mackey and Battle have had many music-dance collaborations over the years, with many other pieces in Mackey’s catalog created in this collaboration like “Strange Humors” and “Mass.”
Mackey writes in the program notes of this work:
“Robert wanted something aggressive. His only specific musical request was that the work have a ‘Rite of Spring’ sort of nastiness, with repeated eighth-notes and featuring syncopated accents. Robert also wanted percussion, and although I was initially reluctant to incorporate it – almost all of our works have featured percussion – I relented, and Robert was, as usual, completely right. As you’ll hear, this piece wouldn’t be the same without the percussion, and specifically, the amazing playing of Damien Bassman. (Yes, these are real, live musicians. No synths here.) The first movement is full of ‘power chords,’ with those repeated eighth-notes that Robert requested. The second movement allows the dancers to catch their breath briefly before the final movement, a rhythmically dense and virtuosic 7-minute crescendo of raw energy.”
COMPOSER: John Mackey
ENSEMBLE:
Vesselin Gellev, violin
Annaliesa Place, violin
Ralph Farris, viola
Rebecca Patterson, cello
Damien Bassman, percussion
TRACKLIST:
0:00 - Introduction
0:13 - I.
5:18 - II.
7:30 - III.
Please be aware that all of the music (and images) featured in this video belong to their respective owners, and I or this channel does not claim any right over them. I upload these solely for archiving purposes, and for the sharing and enjoyment of great music. Monetization is not enabled. If you are the rightful owner of copyrighted material used and would like the video removed from YouTube, please, instead of reporting/striking my channel, leave a comment below with your statement and I will take the video down effective immediately.
#scorefollower #contemporaryclassical #classicalmusic")
