"...William Anderson’s skills are both mesmerizing and inspiring..."
-- Take Effect
"...the alert guitarist..."
-- NY Times
Latest recording -- the punctum saliens:
Onshoring keeps the focus on American primal scenes.
"Whistle"is Kevin Young's peach -- his son.
"An Hymn to Morning" turns Phyllys Wheatley's Hynm to Evening upside down.
Bildung, individuation, spring from a poison oasis.
--Year 3 for Classical and New Music with The Village Trip--
We're now mopping up after The Village Trip '23
some highlights --
--Sept 14 at Loft393 In Memory of Scott Johnson
A Tale of Two Bourgeoisies
Mascha Kaléko, a poet from the last century, is shaping my counterpoint of Bourgeois musics. She sheds some light on what I've already been doing. I connect the transplanted European things to native US things. I call it "onshoring".
I made a comment during The Village Trip, something like, "Kaleko is a poet who came to the US and felt how very weird it is here. I can relate to that." The comment was recorded, and I will look for it to quote myself properly. And I was born and raised here." Kaleko is the poet for US misfits. My musical expression of this is seen in the combination of piano and electric guitar, which accompanies my Kaléko settings.
– William Kentner Anderson
Bio
One of Lou Harrison’s Strokes of Genius The Village Trip trip offered much Lou Harrison this year, kicked off with John Schnieder's show at Greenwich House. John Schneider recounted Harrison's time in Greenwich Village …
the sound of one hand clapping
Schat's principle was a simple and elegant.
From the New Focus Website
Guitarist/composer William Kentner Anderson releases a collection of works ... music is not like anything else, often engaging with simple musical materials-pop songs, folksongs and folk lyrics. He breaks barriers-asking his guitarists to sing backup vocals, incorporating Tibetan overtone singing in his setting of Djuna Barnes' "Paradise", integrating an uillean piper into the Cygnus Ensemble.
Works by Mario Davidovsky, Emil Awad, Jeffrey Nichols, Jose Saldaña, William Anderson, Robert Pollock
https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=OLAK5uy_lKSby8N9G-qaPqwSGh7Uz8G_GbAbQvDK0
Matthew Greenbaum is the only composer in New York to be a mentee of both Stefan Wolpe and Mario Davidovsky. Wolpe was one of the many great minds who were forced to our shores by historical circumstances, and arriving here, found that there was interest in what they had to offer. Stravinsky, Hindemith, Krenek, Schoenberg, as well as Stefan Wolpe all tried to put down roots in the Western Hemisphere, with varied success. Or, perhaps it’s more fair to say that their influence is paying off very slowly over a long period of time.
This is Anderson's first solo album.
