The Samuel Andreyev Podcast

Linda Catlin Smith grew up in New York and lives in Toronto. She studied music in NY, and at the University of Victoria (Canada). Her music has been performed and/or recorded by: BBC Scottish Orchestra, Exaudi, Tafelmusik, Other Minds Festival, California Ear Unit, Kitchener-Waterloo, Victoria and Vancouver Symphonies, Arraymusic, Tapestry New Opera, Gryphon Trio, Via Salzburg, Evergreen Club Game...

Carl Ruggles (1876-1971) lived to the age of 95, but published only 8 works in his lifetime — less than an hour of music. In this podcast, I present an overview of this enigmatic composer, as well as an analysis of Lilacs , the central movement of Men and Mountains , for orchestra (1924). This episode begins with a recording of Lilacs by Michael Tilson Thomas, conducting the Buffalo Philharmonic O...

With a unique background in music composition + technology, cognitive science, and data science, Alexander Sigman has been active internationally as an interdisciplinary composer, performer, researcher, software engineer, and educator. His compositions have been featured on a number of commercial releases, including portrait recordings on the Carrier and New Focus labels. Sigman has published and...

Brian Ferneyhough is widely recognized as one of today's foremost living composers. Since the mid-1970s, when he first gained widespread international recognition, his music has earned him an enviable reputation as one of the most influential creative personalities and significant musical thinkers on the contemporary scene. Ferneyhough was born in Coventry, England, in 1943 and received forma...

In this episode, I took questions live from my YouTube subscribers. Thanks to everyone who participated. SUPPORT THIS PODCAST Patreon Donorbox ORDER SAMUEL ANDREYEV’S NEWEST RELEASE Iridescent Notation LINKS YouTube channel Official Website Twitter Instagram Edition Impronta , publisher of Samuel Andreyev’s scores EPISODE CREDITS Podcast artwork photograph © 2019 Philippe Stirnweiss Support the sh...

In this episode I present a 3-way conversation between English composers Colin Matthews , Julian Anderson and myself. Colin Matthews was born in London in 1946. He studied with Arnold Whittall and Nicholas Maw; in the 1970s he was assistant to Benjamin Britten, and worked for many years with Imogen Holst. His collaboration with Deryck Cooke on the performing version of Mahler’s Tenth Symphony last...

In this episode, I spoke with three composition students about the musical and professional landscape they are about to graduate into: Jonty Watt , of Oxford, England; Ben Schweitzer , of the University of Massachussetts Amherst, and Thomas McGee , of Williams College.  All three have one thing in common: they have all worked with me as private composition students over Skype, and though I have wo...

Clarinetist Richard Haynes performs music spanning the 18th to 21st centuries all over the world in a multitude of contexts. During the course of undergraduate study at the Queensland Conservatorium of Music and further study at the University of Arts Bern his teachers included Brian Catchlove, Paul Dean, Ernesto Molinari, Diana Tolmie, Donna Wagner-Molinari and Floyd Williams.  Since his solo deb...

Ian Pace is a pianist of long-established reputation, specialising in the farthest reaches of musical modernism and transcendental virtuosity, as well as a writer and musicologist focusing on issues of performance, music and society and the avant-garde. He was born in Hartlepool, England in 1968, and studied at Chetham’s School of Music, The Queen’s College, Oxford and, as a Fulbright Scholar, at...

In this episode, Samuel Andreyev presents a short introduction to the world of 'extended techniques', those unconventional ways of playing musical instruments that have become an almost ubiquitous feature of contemporary composition. ** SUPPORT THIS PODCAST Patreon Donorbox ORDER SAMUEL ANDREYEV’S NEWEST RELEASE Iridescent Notation LINKS YouTube channel Official Website Twitter Instagram...

The Canadian composer, pianist and percussionist Andrew (Andy) Creeggan is equally at home in the worlds of classical composition and pop music. A member of the wildly successful Canadian band Barenaked Ladies from 1989 to 1995, he experienced fame early in life. Deciding that being a member of a band was not for him in the long run, he left to study composition at Montréal's McGill Universit...

Bill Harkleroad was the longest-serving guitarist of Captain Beefheart's Magic Band, playing on such essential recordings as Trout Mask Replica , Lick My Decals Off, Baby and Clear Spot . His significant artistic and practical contributions to these works have largely gone unacknowledged. Bill subsequently formed the band Mallard, released masterful solo recordings including 2001's We Sa...

Anthony Etherin is a formalist poet, a publisher, and a musician. He tweets poetry @Anthony_Etherin and archives his published works online at anthonyetherin.wordpress.com . He founded Penteract Press and he invented the aelindrome. He hosts a (neglected, but soon to be revised) YouTube channel . He lives in the United Kingdom, on the border of England and Wales. ** ORDER SAMUEL ANDREYEV’S NEWEST...

Chris Dench was born in London in 1953. After periods living in Tuscany and West Berlin, the latter as a guest of the DAAD Berliner Kunstlerprogramm, he finally arrived to settle in Australia; he became an Australian citizen in 1992. He has had works commissioned by ensembles and individuals on three continents and is particularly recognized as a composer for solo woodwind instruments, having comp...

The music of Franco-British composer Jonathan Bell is influenced by Franco-Flemish polyphony, American minimalism (Morton Feldman), and spectral music. He graduated from the Paris Conservatoire with 4 prizes, and the Guildhall School of Music and Drama (Doctorate in Musical Composition). Since 2007, he has collaborated intensely with the vocal ensemble De Caelis, which produces his music in numero...

Percussionist and drummer Art Tripp talks with composer Samuel Andreyev in a wide-ranging interview about his fascinating career working with John Cage, Frank Zappa, Don Van Vliet (Captain Beefheart), Robert Austin Boudreau, and many others. He also discusses meeting such luminaries as Morton Feldman, and performing avant-garde music by Stockhausen and others in the 1960s. His important contributi...

This episode reproduces the audio from my May 10th, 2020 Livestream Q&A on YouTube. Viewers typed their questions into a chat window and I answered them in real time. Due to the large volume of questions received, and my inability to answer even a small fraction of them, I am considering making this a weekly feature of my channel. ** ORDER MY NEW CD Iridescent Notation SUPPORT THIS PODCAST Pat...

Toronto-based pianist Cheryl Duvall has established herself as one of Canada’s foremost contemporary music interpreters. A dynamic soloist and in-demand collaborator, Duvall has immersed herself in a wide variety of compositional aesthetics and collaborative endeavours. In 2012, she co-founded the “adventurous and smartly programmed” (Musicworks Magazine) chamber group Thin Edge New Music Collecti...

Luigi Gaggero has been performing as cimbalom and percussion player and as a conductor at important concert halls and festivals all over Europe, USA, and China. With an endless passion for Medieval painting; Dante and Cavalcanti; the cinema of Tarkovsky and Tarr; Bach, Mozart and Kurtág; Heidegger and Nietzsche -  Luigi is very sensitive to artists who express the Transcendental in art and therefo...

Thomas Lacôte is organiste titulaire at the Eglise de la Trinité in Paris, a post that Olivier Messiaen held for 60 years. He worked at the Paris Conservatory for six years as the assistant of Michaël Levinas, before being named professor of analysis in 2014. He was educated at this institution, receiving five first prizes with distinction between 2002 and 2006. His manifold musical activities bri...

Samuel Andreyev presents an overview of Stravinsky's late style, beginning with the pivotal work Agon, and continuing through Threni, Movements for Piano and Orchestra, and Variations Aldous Huxley in Memoriam. ** SUPPORT THIS PODCAST Patreon Donorbox LINKS YouTube channel Official Website Twitter Instagram Edition Impronta , publisher of Samuel Andreyev’s scores EPISODE CREDITS Spoken introd...

Nick Storring is a Toronto-based composer, writer, musician and curator. His extensive worklist includes both instrumental chamber music and studio creations that he playfully refers to as 'solorchestral' music. In this episode, Nick talks with Samuel Andreyev about his influences, his musical philosophy and the inspiration behind some of his pieces. Nick has an LP forthcoming in early 2...

In this episode, Samuel Andreyev responds to a viewer’s question: how does a composer write music? Watch the original YouTube video (now over 20,000 views!) ** SUPPORT THIS PODCAST Patreon Donorbox LINKS YouTube channel Official Website Twitter Instagram Edition Impronta , publisher of Samuel Andreyev’s scores EPISODE CREDITS Spoken introduction: Maya Rasmussen Podcast artwork photograph © 2019 Ph...

In this episode, Samuel Andreyev talks with Dan Albertson , music writer, critic, translator and creator of Composers21.com . They discuss the state of new music in the world today, both aesthetically and in terms of its institutions; and the challenges and opportunities facing young composers in the 21st century. See below for Dan's recommendations of who to follow, as referenced in the podc...

On 10 October 2017, I presented a lecture on my work at the University of Chicago. This lecture deals, apart from general aesthetic issues specific to my compositions, with the pieces Bern Trio for oboe d’amore, viola and harp, and Midnight Audition for solo viola. The lecture is followed by questions from the students in attendance. ** SUPPORT THIS PODCAST Patreon Donorbox LINKS YouTube channel O...