As winter comes to a close, Inside the Music has been busy with spring cleaning. We're embracing the thaw by re-releasing old shows unavailable until now. Each week we'll release a batch of classic Inside the Music broadcasts, from popular music movements across the world, to bizarre experiments in sound. We'll even bring back some classics from our regular series My Playlist, and we'll recap the historic RPM series, which discussed 5 crucial albums in Canadian music. Join us every Tuesday for more and more episodes from the archives.
Tuesday March 19th 2013
Experimental music is somewhat difficult to define. It can mean new adaptations of old instruments, or it can mean a completely fresh form of music composition. It can be a bizarre visualization of music, or just bizarre music scores that accompany Hollywood box office hits. Inside the Music has unearthed documentaries that both challenge music convention, and the listener. They will open your eyes and your mind. From the archives this week, the best in experimental music documentaries.
John Cage
Try discussing contemporary music without referencing the music and mind of American composer John Cage. Contrarian to the core, Cage, who began composing during the Depression and continued right up to his death in 1992, helped define the sound of the last century by eschewing nearly every musical tradition put in front of him, including – much to the chagrin of his one-time tutor, Austrian serialist Arnold Schoenberg – harmony.
Traffic sounds, compositions written for amplified cactus, percussive pianos prepared with nuts and bolts, scores that instruct the performer to “make a deliberate action” or, if you’re a pianist sitting in front of Cage’s three-movement “silent” score from 1952, open the keyboard and perform the piece by sitting quietly for exactly four minutes and 33 seconds, the silence punctuated by the ambient noise of the concert hall.
Today's program came out of archival footage found mostly over 25 years ago, and most of it never aired except on Inside the Music. And in case it gets confusing, one side of the mushroom makes you smaller, the other makes you grow.
1Click to Listen to John Cage: Cage in the Woods
Pat Metheny and Linda Manzer
Pat Metheny may have more fans around the world than just about any other living jazz artist. What a lot of people don’t know is that his incredible acoustic sound heard on albums such as Beyond the Missouri Sky is the product not only of his fine playing but also the work of Linda Manzer, a world-renowned Canadian guitar builder. In fact, since 1982, she’s built over 20 guitars for Pat (including the amazing 42-string Pikasso).
It’s an amazing story about two incredibly creative people and their unique musical collaboration. The documentary is filled with Pat’s wonderful music and offers an inside look at one of the most productive and creative relationships in music history.
2Click to Listen to Kindred Spirits: Linda Manzer's 30 Year Journey with Pat Metheny
Unsettling Scores and Howard Shore
Watching a film can be an incredibly emotional and immersive experience. But without the proper score, a plot can fall flat on its face. Even those silent moments that grab your full attention are intentionally void of sound. The composers and performers behind these pieces of music have more of an impact on our emotions than we'd like to admit. The terror of Jaws came entirely from two notes played back and forth, slowly speeding up, not a fish.
This documentary features the haunted film music of Howard Shore, Bernard Herrmann, Miklos Rozsa, Denny Zeitlin, Black Sabbath, and others. From the films: Psycho, Dirty Harry, Spellbound, Vertigo, The Birds, Invasion of the Body Snatchers, The Fly, Ed Wood, The Silence of the Lambs, Ulysess, Twilight Zone (TV), Taxi Driver and others.
3Click to Listen to Unsettling Scores: Horror and Suspense Film Soundtracks
R. Murray Schafer
When we think of orchestral music, it is played in a concert hall or church: a space designed to be quiet. But every August for decades, one of Canada's leading composers takes musicians and actors into the wilderness to stage an opera. R. Murray Schafer is celebrated around the world, not just for his music, but for the study of the sounds around us every day. He coined terms like "sound walk," and represents the highest echelon of Canadian modern composers. Leading Freelance producer Andrew O'Connor explores the musical evolution of one of Canada's foremost composers, R. Murray Schafer.
4 Click to Listen to R. Murray Schafer: The Soundscape Revolution
Seeing Sound
Heidi McKenzie offers this feature documentary exploring the world of synesthesia - the ability to experience more than one sense at a time. You may be surprised that the list of musicians that experience this include Billy Joel, Duke Ellington, Rich Terfry (Buck 65) and Franz Liszt to name a small few. With this documentary, you'll get a rare glimpse into the perspective of people who see shapes and colours when they hear music.
5 Click to Listen to Seeing Sound
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