Audio Explorations of Contemporary Music

LAST NIGHT: Santa Cruz, NM composer and musical scholar James Brody ends his series of musical investigations of the work of eight contemporary composers: Iannis Xenakis, Franz Kamin, Milton Babbitt, Brian Ferneyhough, John Cage, Elliott Carter, Igor Stravinsky and Karlheinz Stockhausen. Brody will mentor an extensive audience discussion and use technology to represent the music visually during these sessions.

Most Western classical music is complex because the rule systems used to create it are themselves quite complex and usually found in the realm of the classically trained composer. The 20th century launched musical explorations of a different form of complexity that moved far beyond the traditional rule systems and into a consideration of some of the contemporary meanings of complexity. Many listeners found their work too difficult and tuned out, thereby losing much of the energy and creativity that flowed through the musical explorations of leading composers during the last 100 years. Each session will emphasize the work of one or two leading composers with the goal of reconnecting listeners to their music.

Composer James Brody revisits this work in a series of interactive explorations at the Complex as part of the Summer@TheComplex series. James studied composition at Indiana University with Iannis Xenakis and Franz Kamin and was a teaching assistant in the electronic studio during its first years at IU. Brody wrote the liner notes for the original Nonesuch LP of Iannis Xenakis – Electroacoustic Music. He was co-founder of the FIASCO group in Bloomington, CAPASA in San Antonio and the Baltimore Composers Forum. In 1970, he taught composition, theory and electronic music at East Texas State University. He has written many electroacoustic and instrumental works and was honored at the 2009 Society of Composers meeting held last May in Santa Fe.