New Music Seances

Aficionodos of new piano music should check out the recordings from two new music seances over at the Internet Archives. Sponsored by the new music community Other Minds, there have been seances in 2005 and 2007 at San Francisco's Swedenborgian Church, which seems to be a lovely spot (photos from this years event may be seen here), and focus on hypnotic and spiritual new music. The primary performers are pianists Sarah Cahill and Eva-Marie Zimmermann with occasional assistance from violinist Kate Stenberg. The stellar list of composers includes early classics such as Scriabin, Webern, Antheil, Ives and Cowell through mavericks such as Rudhyar, Hovhaness, Ruth Crawford Seeger, Rzewski, Harrison, to recent compositions from Ronald Bruce Smith and Dan Becker. There's even some ragtime from Bolcom and Albright, and some disclavier compositions.

The format for the seances is three concerts in one day, one at 2:00, one at 5:30, and the last one at 8:00. All three concerts from both seances are posted. Two of the 2005 concerts have been available for some time, but the third 2005 concert and all of the 2007 ones are fairly new. They are all available for streaming from the Internet Archive links given above. Complete programs for both seances are available at the links under the dates.