The Tavern

Published in August 7th, 2009

The following is a recording of the world premiere of Ben Johnston’s The Tavern, for just-tuned guitar and voice [text by Rumi, trans. Coleman Barks] (1998-2008) (25:16) Performed by John Schneider (just-tuned guitar) and Paul Berkolds (baritone). This was recorded March 5, 2009 at the 14th Other Minds festival in San Francisco. Thanks to all [...]

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Listen to Quintet for Groups

Published in November 19th, 2008

Posted by Jon Roy in Audio

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Here it is, Ben Johnston’s Quintet for Groups, as it was played live at the 2008 Donaueschingen Festival.
Enjoy!

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Quintet for Groups

Published in October 22nd, 2008

Posted by Jon Roy in Words

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The following is an essay written for the festival about Ben and “Quintet for Groups” by Marc Sabat, who was the guiding force in bringing about this performance.
Ben Johnston’s “Quintet for Groups”
by Marc Sabat (2008)
Some years ago I remember asking James Tenney about his experience with Harry Partch. I recall him telling me at [...]

Ben Johnston in Germany

Published in October 22nd, 2008

Posted by Jon Roy in Words

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Ben’s piece “Quintet for Groups” was just performed at a sold out concert at the Donaueschinger Musiktage in Germany last Sunday. This was the European premiere of the piece and only the third time it has ever been performed (the other two were in St. Louis 40 years ago).
Read more about the about the world’s oldest [...]

Oh, Danny Boy…

Published in August 19th, 2008

Posted by Jon Roy in Videos

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Ben explains the mysterious quotation in the 4th movement of his 10th string quartet.

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House of Cards

Published in July 26th, 2008

Posted by Jon Roy in Videos, Words

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Earlier this week I stumbled upon the new Radiohead music video for their song “House of Cards,” which I had been eagerly anticipating since they first posted screen shots from it on their site. The excitement came from the fact that the video was not shot with camera, but by using lasers to capture then [...]

Harry Partch on Consonance/Dissonance

Published in July 19th, 2008

Posted by Jon Roy in Audio

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On the use of a Bass/Drone…

Published in July 19th, 2008

Posted by Jon Roy in Theory

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This is something that I’m thinking about in regard to my new piece I’m writing for electric bass and mictrotonal piano:

Beethoven’s Studies in Thorough-bass, Counterpoint and the Art of Scientific Composition Collected from the Autograph Posthumous Manuscripts of the Great Composer By Ludwig van Beethoven, Ignaz Seyfried, Henry Hugo Pierson

Questions, please

Published in July 19th, 2008

Posted by Jon Roy in Words

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If anyone has any questions, technical or other, that they would like Ben or I to address, please send them to info@newdissonance.com and we will post responses to them on here.

A Visual analysis

Published in July 18th, 2008

Posted by Jon Roy in Pictures

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This is a spectral frequency display of a 45 second passage from the last video, about 4 minutes in. The bottom of the picture represents the lower frequencies and at the top the colors fade out around 10,000hz.

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