Tag Archives: new music

Yaron Deutsch Performance

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It has been fascinating to watch the expansion of electric guitar into the “classical” realm over the last 30 or 40 years. I have been privileged to have had interesting and enlightening discussions with two guitarist/composers working in this field: Tim Brady and James Moore. Israel has been exporting excellent guitarists for a while now: Gilad Hekselman, Oz Noy to name but two. Add to the list Yaron Deutsch. Working in the classical/new music realm he turns in an astonishing performance here, demonstrating a wealth of extended techniques, developed in the improvised music realm, which are showing up more and more in composed works.

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The Patrick Higgins Interview

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I have often extolled Downtown Music Gallery in New York as a great place to order records by many of the artists I cover. I have also found it to be a terrific resource for discovering new modern guitarists.

Their periodic email blast often lists records featuring players that have escaped my attention and sends me scurrying to YouTube to check them out. Patrick Higgins is one such guitarist. He is also a composer of note on the modern classical scene. How he has remained unknown to me over a decade of touring and recording, I have no idea, but I hopefully have rectified that for you here.

Patrick was on his iPhone and on the move when we did the interview, so if you suffer from motion sickness, you might want to just listen. Either way, you will find our conversation rewarding.

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Spotlight: Dither’s Taylor Levine—Part II

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In Part I Dither co-founder Taylor Levine and I discussed the quartet’s origin and the concept of “good” guitar tone in a New Music/Modern Classical context. Here we delve deeper into the record, Potential Differences, guitarist’s process and gear, as well as some other projects of which he is part.

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Spotlight: Dither’s Taylor Levine—Part I

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Last year, I interviewed James Moore from the Dither Guitar Quartet around the time he released his record performing the entirety of John Zorn’s The Book of Heads. This set me on a path examining the place of the electric guitar in contemporary “classical” music. I recently posted a two-part interview with Tim Brady, where we discussed this fascinating (at least to me) subject. With this month’s release of Dither’s fantastic record, Potential Differences [New Focus Recordings], I deemed it time to talk to one of the Quartet’s founders, Taylor Levine, about how they manage to make the electric guitar sound like a natural vehicle for modern composed music. Again, the conversation ranged wide and so there will be a Part II. Please subscribe to find out when the post goes up.

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Spotlight: Tim Brady Part II

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In February of 2019, I was flown up to Montreal to cover composer/guitarist Tim Brady’s evening of 150 guitars for Guitar Player. You can read my coverage and interview about that here and see a sample below. Inspired by my conversation with Dither’s James Moore, after we finished Tim’s GP interview, I restarted the recorder for a wide ranging dialogue about the state of the electric guitar in today’s classical world. We covered a lot of ground so I broke  it up into two posts. You can start with Part I here, but it is not necessary.

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