Does anyone still listen to Postclassic Radio? I wouldn’t blame you if you’d quit, having heard everything on the long-stagnant current playlist over and over, but actually, according to my stats, listeners logged in 567 hours in September, at an average of 37 minutes per listening session, and the rate seems to be continuing for October. I’m teaching a five-course load this semester instead of my usual three, preparing for sabbatical, and in over my head, but I have lately been finding time to add some new tracks. If you’re the guy who’s listening, you’ll notice some new pieces by the Southern-born Boston microtonalist Ezra Sims (including his lovely Sextet of 1981), and piano music by the cogent and brilliant Hartford postminimalist James Sellars. Other additions will be made very soon, I promise.
UPDATE: Promise kept. Home sick with a cold today, I uploaded more than 20 percent new material. The official composers of the month – at my current rate, they’ll be around until March – are Linda Catlin Smith and Raphael Mostel, with several works each. Plus, new recordings of music by James Tenney and Jo Kondo, a rare vinyl disc of Zygmunt Krauze (Fete galante et pastorale), and Annea Lockwood’s Thousand Year Dreaming. I’ll try to keep it up, so that if you’ve been tired of Postclassic Radio, there’ll be reason to come back. Don’t make me start a pledge drive!
UPDATE AGAIN: With new pieces by Chiel Meijering, Chris Brown, Beata Moon, Reinhold Westerheide, Arvo Pärt, a couple more by Ezra Sims, and several installments of Alvin Curran’s intermittently astonishing piano cycle Inner Cities, the playlist has been a good 40 percent updated, and the complete listing on my web site is momentarily up-to-date, too. After the hundreds of hours’ worth of music I’ve programmed with virtually no repetitions, I still feel like I’m pulling things out of the top drawer.
UPDATE AGAIN AGAIN: And perhaps best of all, a deliciously strange and thrilling new work for three microtonal vibraphones, Orenda, by Kraig Grady.