Sonic Grace
Our Sonic Grace audio blog is a place where musicians and composers tell us about a piece of music that changed everything.
Patty Chan - Dreaming by the Plum Blossoms by Wang Danhong
I was fortunate to be exposed to both Western classical and traditional Chinese music as a youth. While I loved playing Bach, Chopin, and Shostakovich,…
Read MoreAtish Mukhopadhyay - Raag Shree by Ustad Ali Akbar Khan, Pandit Ravi Shankar, and Ustad Alla Rakha
In the early 1980s, when I was still a small boy, my father brought home a recording that changed the direction of my life. It…
Read MoreAndile Khumalo - Beat Furrer’s FAMA: Listening Through the Noise
Beat Furrer calls his 2005 work FAMA a listening musical theatre. That phrase matters because this is not a piece about spectacle or storytelling in…
Read MoreWesley Shen - Volumina (1961-62 rev.1966) for solo organ by György Ligeti
Volumina is a revolutionary organ work that flung open the doors to the radical sonic experiments of the post-war avant-garde. The work is infamous for its…
Read MoreMorgan-Paige Melbourne - Scenes From A Jade Terrace (1987) by Alexina Louie
In my late teens, I was furthering my studies in new music and was soon introduced to Alexina Louie’s work. One of her pieces in…
Read MoreThierry Tidrow - Symphony—Street—Souvenir (2010) by Joanna Bailie
When I first heard the music of Joanna Bailie, I wasn’t exactly a complete stranger to new music. I had, in fact, already finished my…
Read MoreAnju Singh - Threnody for the Victims of Hiroshima by Krzysztof Penderecki
I was introduced to Penderecki after I finished a set with my project, The Nausea, and someone asked if I was influenced by his work.…
Read MoreAlex Matterson - The Banshee for piano strings by Henry Cowell
I first heard Henry Cowell’s The Banshee when I was still in highschool. I remember falling down some long winded YouTube rabbit hole when I…
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