Catherine Lamb (born 1982 in Olympia, Washington) is an American composer and violist, and a winner of the 2020 Ernst von Siemens Composer Prize. [1]
Lamb describes her music as exploring "the interaction of tone, summations of shapes and shadows, phenomenological expansions, the architecture of the liminal (states in between outside/inside), and the long introduction form". [2] Most of her works explore extended harmonic spaces in just intonation. [3] Lamb explained her compositional philosophy in The Wire : "I follow the philosophy that the most intense sound is not the most intensive... I don’t agree with those who believe that sounds need to be pushed in order to be physical, or that they need to be loud in order to hear difference or summation tones. Particularly when working with particular tonal colourations and shadings, the more the tones are played in a plain and relaxed manner with room to blossom, the more expressive and generative they might become.” [4]
Lamb was also the film score composer for Anhe Ghore Da Daan. She has collaborated with Eliane Radigue, Marc Sabat, and Johnny Chang; received commissions from the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra, Ensemble Dedalus, Ensemble Musikfabrik, Ensemble Resonanz, Ghost Ensemble, EXAUDI, Konzert Minimal, the London Contemporary Orchestra, NeoN, Plus Minus Ensemble, Explore Ensemble, Yarn/Wire; and awards and grants from the Ernst von Siemens Composer Prize, Foundation for Contemporary Arts, Henry Cowell Foundation, and Akademie Schloss Solitude, among others. [5] [1]
Lamb studied at CalArts with James Tenney and Michael Pisaro and independently with Mani Kaul, and received her MFA from Bard College. [6]
Lamb's notable works include divisio spiralis (2019), curvo totalitas, Parallaxis Forma (2016), muto infinitas (2016), Point/Wave (2015), Matter/Moving (2012), and the Prisma Interius series (2015–present). [7] Lamb was commissioned by the BBC for Portions Transparent/Opaque, which premiered as the 13th performance of the 2023 BBC Proms. [8]
Lamb's music has been featured several times on the British experimental music label Another Timbre, with releases including, among other labels:
Stephen Michael Reich is an American composer best known as a pioneer of minimal music in the mid to late 1960s. Reich's work is marked by its use of repetitive figures, slow harmonic rhythm, and canons. Reich describes this concept in his essay, "Music as a Gradual Process", by stating, "I am interested in perceptible processes. I want to be able to hear the process happening throughout the sounding music." For example, his early works experiment with phase shifting, in which one or more repeated phrases plays slower or faster than the others, causing it to go "out of phase." This creates new musical patterns in a perceptible flow.
Terrence Mitchell "Terry" Riley is an American composer and performing musician best known as a pioneer of the minimalist school of composition. Influenced by jazz and Indian classical music, his work became notable for its innovative use of repetition, tape music techniques, improvisation, and delay systems. His best known works are the 1964 composition In C and the 1969 album A Rainbow in Curved Air, both considered landmarks of minimalism and important influences on experimental music, rock, and contemporary electronic music. Subsequent works such as Shri Camel (1980) explored just intonation.
The viola ( vee-OH-lə, Italian:[ˈvjɔːla,viˈɔːla]) is a string instrument of the violin family, and is usually bowed when played. Violas are slightly larger than violins, and have a lower and deeper sound. Since the 18th century, it has been the middle or alto voice of the violin family, between the violin (which is tuned a perfect fifth higher) and the cello (which is tuned an octave lower). The strings from low to high are typically tuned to C3, G3, D4, and A4.
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Sofia Asgatovna Gubaidulina is a Soviet-Russian composer and an established international figure. Major orchestras around the world have commissioned and performed her works. She is considered one of the foremost Russian composers of the second half of the 20th century along with Alfred Schnittke and Edison Denisov.
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The Busch Quartet was a string quartet founded by Adolf Busch in 1919 that was particularly noted for its interpretations of the Classical and Romantic quartet repertoire. The group's recordings of Beethoven's Late String Quartets are especially revered.
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Lucy Railton is a British musician, primarily known for playing cello.