At the World’s Edge is a chamber music festival inspired by its roots in the Southern Alps of New Zealand and forging ties to Chicago and beyond.
Host Seth Boustead talks with violinist and founding Artistic Director Benjamin Baker about his vision for the festival and features music the festival has commissioned.
MUSIC
Yabo by Salina Fisher
String Trio No. 2 by Huw Watkins (excerpt)
Mata Au by Salina Fisher
Four Postcards by Gareth Farr
Host Austin Williams and composer guest Neil Quigley chat about Neil’s music and its relationship to speculative history.
Neil explains how his relationship to the Kilkenny Electroacoustic Research Laboratory is largely based in that practice. Among many other projects Neil created this love letter to his hometown and lans to wrap up the anthology in the coming year or so.
Check more of Neil’s work at his band camp:
Set List
1. Helga Hölzel ( Neil Quigley ) - Early Impulse Study 1 - St. Mary's Cathedral (1968)
2. Kenny Phelan ( Neil Quigley ) - A Psychogeographic sonification of Fairy Forts located near the banks of the Three Sisters I, II, III
3. Tony Quinn ( Neil Quigley ) - Footing
4. Physique - French Lick, Indiana
5. Physique - Desperate Housewives S04E05
6. Physique - Wunder-Baum
Join host Austin Williams as he speaks to members of the Coalescent Saxophone Quartet. The quartet consists of members Nathan Bogert, Michael Shults, Nick Zoulek, and Drew Whiting; each of which are incredibly accomplished musicians in their own right.
The quartet has recently released a new album (The Wall Between Us) of works for sax quartet. Austin asks the ensemble questions about codifying the saxophone quartet in the new classical music chamber zeitgeist and what that means.
There is also lovely conversation about the instrument itself and the role it plays in the new classical music world. Please check out the new album and each individual artist, you will not be disappointed!
Zack Browning - Unrelenting UniverseChen Yi - Distance Can't Keep Us Two ApartEmma O’Halloran: Night MusicEvan Williams - Quartet for SaxophonesMartin Bresnick: Mending Time
Join host Austin Williams and new music ensemble Hot Second ( Rebecca McDaniel Percussion and Dylan Feldpausch Violin/Viola) as we discuss their unique ensemble and its take on new music in Chicago.
The conversation consists of thoughtful insights on how an ensemble can think outside of the traditional cannon and use influences from pop and other styles to help shape the sound they work with.
A unique aspect of the ensemble is the incredibly vibrant collaboration that occurs between Rebecca and Dylan, to the point where they are writing and improvising their own music in real time.MUSIC
Gabriela Ortiz: "Atlas-Pumas”
José Martínez: Instructions for Playing, III, V
Dylan Feldpausch: “Quartz"
Esperanza Spalding, arr. Hot Second: "Formwela 4"
2023 and the first anthology has just been published by New Music Shelf.
This extraordinary album features world-premiere recordings of art songs commissioned by Strickling who says: "These twenty songs, from composers and poets of diverse backgrounds, are exceptional in their beauty, depth, quality, and range of emotional expression."
Host Seth Boustead talks with Strickling and features several songs from the album.
MUSIC
Email to Odessa by Dennis Tobenski
Peony by Ed Windels
Thanks a Latte by Lori Laitman
This Ode is Mine by Bess McCrary
Not Quite Stars by Juhi Bansal
Las Palmeras by Reinaldo Moya
Song of Solitude by H. Leslie Adams
Wind Carry Me by James Primosch
Cohosts Austin Williams and Stephen Rawson share what they have been listening to recently. Austin shares about an anthology of Irish Electroacoustic music that he became privy to recently and Stephen has a wide variety of vocal and chamber music that comes up.
Stephen and Austin also reminisce about their time they shared as music students in undergrad along with their hometown pride of some of the fantastic music that comes from the Twin Cities area. If you like what you hear drop a line, we love to hear from our listeners!
Music: Physique - Wunder-Baum
Neil Quigley - sketches in reaction to an exhibition, Hesitation and Breath
Du Yun - Angel's Bone, Scene I: A Prism, A Video, A Flurry
Cassandra Miller - Warblework: Swainson’s Thrush
Happy Apple - Vanity Plate
Gabriella Smith - Lost Coast II
Chiayu Hsu is an active composer of contemporary concert music and associate professor of composition at the University of Wisconsin-Eau Claire. Born in Banciao, Taiwan, Chiayu frequently explores ideas of cultural fusion. She derives inspiration from places, poems, myths, and images. Particularly, the combination of Chinese elements and western techniques is a hallmark of her music.
Chiayu’s works have been performed by numerous orchestras and chamber groups worldwide. Last year, her solo clarinet piece was featured on Eric Schultz’s album POLYGLOT.
Host Stephen Anthony Rawson talks with Chiayu about several works from her catalogue, her musical language, traveling, and more!
Host Austin Williams curates a listening experience with themes of feedback. Feedback is often associated with harsh sounds that are created when a microphone is placed too close to the speaker that it is amplified through.
While this is a way feedback can be aurally achieved there are many ways composers implement feedback and other broad strokes of recursion into their works! We cut back to an interview that Austin had with Paula Mathusen this past summer and listen to how she implements these ideas into her works.
We also look at feedback systems that composers create be-it through specific mic and speaker arrangements or internal feedback systems with no-input mixing.
Access Contemporary Music's popular Sound of Silent Film Festival celebrates twenty years of presenting modern silent films with newly commissioned scores performed live.
Host Seth Boustead features a few of his favorite scores from the last twenty years.
Host Austin Williams has guest Liam Marchant on the show to discuss the relationship to kinetics and music, relating to a variety of aspects within the music.
We use specific pieces to make points across the show to offer aural guides to the listeners for what Austin and Liam are discussing. It’s a broad topic with even more details than we can cover in an hour, we’ll certainly be back to chat more about this!
Copland House is a major force in contemporary American music dedicated to fostering greater public awareness and appreciation of our nation’s composers and their work in all of its many forms.
Copland House continues Aaron Copland’s incredible legacy of supporting his fellow composers and their work includes composer residencies, performances and recordings by resident ensemble Music From Copland House, and educational and community outreach programs.
Host Seth Boustead talks with Artistic and Executive Director Michael Boriskin about this incredible legacy.
Copland House is a major force in contemporary American music dedicated to fostering greater public awareness and appreciation of our nation’s composers and their work in all of its many forms.
Host Seth Boustead talks with Artistic and Executive Director Michael Boriskin about this incredible legacy.
Featured music includes Quartet for Piano and Strings, mvmt 2 Allegro Giusto by Aaron Copland
On the Immortality of a Crab by Matthew Browne
Tasveer by Reena Esmail
Without Words by Ugay Liliya
entwining by Paul Novak
Michael Ned Holte is a writer, independent curator, and educator based in Los Angeles, as well as the Associate Dean for the School of Arts at CalArts.
He has held exhibitions at the Armory Center for the Arts in Pasadena, the MAK Center for Art and Architecture at the Schindler House, and the Hammer Museum, to name only a few. He has also written monographic essays on artists including Charles Gaines, Richard Hawkins, Alice Konitz, Shio Kusaka, Caitlin Lonegan, Roy McMakin, Steve Roden, Clarissa Tossin, and Shirley Tse.
On today’s episode, Stephen Anthony Rawson talks with Michael about his recent book, Good Listener: Meditations on Music and Pauline Oliveros. This book is a result of a year-long performance of Pauline Oliveros’s Sonic Meditation XXI, which asks the question: “What constitutes your musical universe?”
Yuval Noah Harari’s breathtakingly expansive book Sapiens is a monumental achievement that comprehensively summarizes human history, behavior and thought from primordial times to today.
The book is also the inspiration for a 50-minute piano work by composer Sean Hickey recorded by pianist Vladimir Rumyantsev on Sono Luminus records and available on March 14, 2025.
Host Seth Boustead talks with Hickey about Harari's book and this fascinating new musical release.
Shara Nova is a composer, vocalist, and producer currently creating from Detroit, Michigan. Shara has released six albums under the monikerMy Brightest Diamond and has composed works for The Crossing, Conspirare, yMusic, Brooklyn Rider, Roomful of Teeth, Aarhus Symfoni, and American Composers Orchestra among many others.
In 2024 she starred in the Tony Award Winning musical “Illinoise” on Broadway, directed by Justin Peck, co-written by Jackie Sibblies Drury with music by Sufjan Stevens, witha live album released on Nonesuch Records.
Host Seth Boustead features a variety of pieces by composers who ask the performers to vocalize in some way while also playing their instrument.
Music by Frederick Rzewski, George Crumb, Daniel Bernard Roumain and Tom Johnson.
Access Contemporary Music has just released the second season of their PBS series Songs About Buildings and Moods in which they commission music inspired by historically and culturally relevant buildings and film a performance of the piece in the building that inspired it.
Host Seth Boustead features new pieces by Liza Sobel Crane, Ledah Finck, Michael Kropf, Amy Wurtz, Felipe Perez Santiago and Danielle Eva Schwob inspired by the Stony Island Arts Bank, Peabody Library, Fisher Building, the Wrigley Building, a former convent in Mexico City and the Brooklyn Tower.
We feature music from some of our favorite albums of 2024. Music selected by Austin Williams, Stephen Anthony Rawson, Neve Jahn and Matthew Dosland.
Wedge: Moments of growth and Decay. Join host Austin Williams as he discusses a variety of works that are heavily influenced by shape. Shape is a very simple concept in composition, but how far do composers take it?
We will take a deep dive into works that use it to influence motif and melodic lines, form, and overall structure of works. The power of taking a simple concept and expanding it to all musical facets can go a long way, let’s see how far it takes us!
Join host Austin Williams and we discuss how the concept of granulation finds its ay into many new and old(er) works of music. Granular activities are something we all experience on. Human level, the sums of man creating the whole.
This broad topic can be applied in very specific ways such as granular synthesis or the deconstruction of an idea that will lead to the parts being reassembled in a new scope.
It can also be applied to much broader topics such as counterpoint and other existing art and how that influences other creations.
