Second Inversion hosts Seth and Maggie S. (and community member Brendan Howe) each share a favorite selection from the Friday 4/8/16 playlist! Tune in at the indicated times below to hear these pieces. In the meantime, you’ll hear other great new and unusual music from all corners of the classical genre 24/7!

Mason Bates: Desert Transport (BMOP/sound)

This week, I chose a piece that reminds me that I’m just a sucker for certain things. Two of those things are the majestic landscapes of the American West and good brass writing, both of which are present in ample measure in Mason Bates’s Desert Transport. Inspired by a helicopter ride over the Arizona desert, this is a well-balanced exploration of the beauty and complexity of the American Southwest that operates on multiple levels. It has the charmingly indulgent and innocently sincere moments of musical Americana that you might expected of a large-scale orchestra work about the Western landscape, but those are balanced with inward-looking moments that suggest a less nationalistic, more humbling consideration of the landscape at hand. Listen especially for a field recording of Pima tribal musicians, which is expertly interwoven with the live performance via offstage speakers. – Seth Tompkins

Tune in to Second Inversion in the 12pm hour today to hear this recording.

Finnegan Shanahan: The Great Sunstroke (New Amsterdam)

It’s no secret that I love pretty much everything that the New Amsterdam record label produces. I’m prone to gushing about them in my commentary on the Second Inversion stream and to my friends – particularly those who don’t have a clear understanding what “contemporary classical and cross-genre music” really means – because New Amsterdam constantly hits the nail on the head with releasing music that truly rethinks classical. One of the most recent releases is The Two Halves, a geographically-inspired song cycle from 22-year-old Finnegan Shanahan and the ensemble Contemporaneous. The 6 songs are based on a map of the Hudson River Railroad ~1852 and moves along the Hudson River to the Catskills and across the country to the Jemez Mountains and beyond. The Great Sunstroke captures this intersection of deft composition with popular song and folk music. It’s not quite classical, it’s not quite pop, and it falls in that beautiful in-between place with constant energy that keeps me excited about the evolution of music in the 21st century. – Maggie Stapleton

Tune in to Second Inversion in the 4pm hour today to hear this recording.

Daníel Bjarnason: Emergence (Bedroom Community)

Daníel Bjarnason’s 2013 album Over Light Earth opens with two pieces commissioned by the LA Philharmonic, which respond to paintings by abstract expressionists Mark Rothko and Jackson Pollock. The Icelandic composer delivered in magnificently ominous terms, capturing the early Cold War anxieties expressed by both painters in their starkly divergent styles.

Using unconventionally close micing and multi-tracking, Bjarnason accentuates each instrument’s individual character to great effect. The triptych Emergence and the five movements of Solitudes take the listener through a labyrinth of grainy strings, prepared piano à la John Cage, and buoyant woodwinds, all of which conspire to create the album’s pervasive sense of intimacy and unpredictability. – Brendan Howe

Tune in to Second Inversion in the 6pm hour today to hear this recording.