Music Theory

The prolific New York lyricist digs into songcraft on the occasion of his new autobiographical album, 50 Song Memoir.

Early film, nineteenth-century science fiction, and experimental musical languages serve a young artist’s explorations of race and our political present.

“The records I don’t listen to are as important as the ones I do.”

Saxophonist and composer Matana Roberts combines music, storytelling, and political activism. On the occasion of the release of Chapter Three in her ongoing Coin Coin series, Christopher Stackhouse prompts her to talk about her background and vision.

Paper Clip is a weekly compilation of online articles, artifacts and other—old, new, and sometimes BOMB-related.

Musician and composer David Grubbs collaborates with improvisatory artists—including C. Spencer Yeh—to attain an unrepeatable quality on his new album, The Plain Where The Palace Stood.

“It’s difficult to see the relationship between your own thinking and your composing.”

Legendary composer-improviser and saxophonist Roscoe Mitchell is best known for his work with the Art Ensemble of Chicago over the past several decades, where he continues to make breakthrough innovations and influence musicians around the world.

As a jazz musician always looking for cutting-edge, exciting, and thoughtful collaborators to expand my concept of music with, I was instantly struck by rapper and producer El-P, aka Jaime Meline, when I met him last year.

Eddie Bobè is a master percussionist, vocalist composer and arranger. His expertise extends across the full spectrum of Afro-Caribbean music and traditions.

Composer David Del Tredici is playing at Bargemusic as part of their Labor Day Music Festival.

Avant-garde composer Christian Wolff speaks to ex-Galaxie 500 drummer Damon Krukowski about John Cage, indeterminacy, and the body politic of music and its audience.

Stuart Cohn examines composer Richard Einhorn’s extraordinary opera Voices of Light, based on the life of Joan of Arc and Carl Dreyer’s classic film.

With his ten CD box set, Testament: A Conduction, composer/conductor Butch Morris gives voice to the collective imagination and re-envisions the way we hear music.

Saxophone prodigy James Carter toured with Winton Marsalis when he was 17 and cut his first solo record when he was 23. He reflects on his mentors and heroes, and looks to the future of jazz.

From twelve-tone compositions to conducting improvisations, Joel Thome discusses what it was like to record music with Frank Zappa.

1) Pindar, 12th Pythian Ode (ca 490 BC). The specific flute Athena is credited with inventing, here, is called the Phrygian flute; it is a double flute thought to have been formed by her out of stag’s bones or horns.