Imagination Radio

This bonus episode features two songs from the heart of The Two Halves, Finnegan Shanahan's lush and driving record: The Giant Sleeps and the title song The Two Halves.

The Two Halves was released by New Amsterdam Records in 2016 and features Shanahan performing with Contemporaneous. You can find the whole thing on Bandcamp, iTunes, and Spotify. Imagination Radio Episode 3 takes a deep dive into the story and inspirations of The Two Halves, and even gives a cartographer’s perspective on the music. Check it out in the previous episode.

An 1852 railroad map of Contemporaneous member Finnegan Shanahan's native Hudson Valley sparks his imagination, and into his genre-defying debut album, he pours not only his own story but the story of growing up.

Written for Contemporaneous and featuring Shanahan singing and playing violin, guitar, and keyboard, The Two Halves is inspired by the composer’s experience of coming of age, particularly symbolized by the train that took him back and forth between the Hudson Valley home of his youth and his current home of New York City.

In this episode, we not only hear from Shanahan sharing his inspirations behind this remarkable work, but we hear from cartographer Aaron Reiss with a perspective on the map that sparked the composer’s imagination and from percussionist Matt Evans on playing drums in The Two Halves.

The Two Halves was released by New Amsterdam Records in 2016 and features Shanahan performing with Contemporaneous. You can find the whole thing on Bandcamp, iTunes, and Spotify.

Music in this episode

• Finnegan Shanahan: The Two Halves (2015) — Finnegan Shanahan & Contemporaneous

• Tiny Tim: White Christmas (1994)

• Finnegan Shanahan: In Your Land (2018) — Robby Bowen, Jeff Mertz, and Finnegan Shanahan

• Sacred Harp: Amazing Grace — recorded by Alan Lomax, 1959

• Finnegan Shanahan: 18 hours (2018) — Finnegan Shanahan

• Sufjan Stevens, Bryce Dessner, Nico Muhly & James McAlister: from Planetarium (2012): Pluto

• Animal Collective: Fireworks (2007)

• Zammuto: Idiom Wind (2012)

• Sylvester: Body Strong (1979)

This bonus episode features a complete live performance of New Geometry, Katherine Balch’s captivating work for instrumental ensemble. This is the world premiere of the revised version of the piece, performed by Contemporaneous live at Roulette in Brooklyn, New York in April of 2017.

Imagination Radio Episode 2 takes a deep dive into the story and inspirations of Balch’s piece, and even gives a physicist’s perspective on the music. Check it out in the previous episode.

Drawing influences from sources as diverse as Virginia Woolf, fractal geometry, and the theater, discovery is the catalyst for composer Katherine Balch's creativity, and her music is a deeply personal expression of the wonderment she feels in experiencing the new.

Thomasina Coverly, a precocious 13-year-old character in Tom Stoppard’s play Arcadia, breezes through her geometry exercises, but she is disappointed by the limitations of traditional geometry to map an equation for an apple leaf, so she invents a new geometric system to map the intricacies of nature. Katherine Balch’s New Geometry is inspired by the awe and drive for discovery that Thomasina feels when she sees the apple leaf, and the music explodes that image onto a rich canvas of sound.

In this episode, Balch shares how her deep love of Arcadia and science become a piece of music, and we also hear from physicist Matthew Deady about the natural phenomena that come to vivid life in New Geometry. Actors Hannah Mitchell and Lee Osorio contribute readings of segments from Arcadia.

Music in this episode:

— Katherine Balch: New Geometry (2015, rev. 2017) — Contemporaneous

— Katherine Balch: from Responding to the Waves (2017): I. Chrysalis — Michiko Theurer, violin

— Keith Jarrett: from The Köln Concert (1975): Part IIb

— Brad Mehldau: Anything Goes (2004)

— György Ligeti: Étude 14: Coloana infinita (1994) — Pierre-Laurent Aimard, piano

— Katherine Balch: Thread Unfurled (2016) — Zach Sheets, flute & Wei-Han Wu, piano

— Katherine Balch: from Phrases (2017): III. and IV. — Departure Duo

— Franz Schubert: 36 Originaltänze, D 365, Op. 9, "Erste Walzer": No. 2 in A-flat, "Trauerwalzer" or "Sehnsuchtswalzer" — Paolo Bordoni, piano

— Thomas Adès: from Asyla (1997): III. Ecstasio — City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra & Simon Rattle, conductor

— Katherine Balch: Leaf Catalogue (2015) — Yale Philharmonia & Heejung Park, conductor

— Katherine Balch: With Each Breathing (2015) — FLUX Quartet

— Per Nørgård: from Voyage Into the Golden Screen (1968): II. — Copenhagen Philharmonic & Giordano Bellincampi, conductor

— Katherine Balch: off hesperus (2017) — Christophe Desjardins, viola

— Johann Sebastian Bach: from Partita for Violin No. 2 (1720): Ciaccona, with Just Intonation — Josh Modney, violin

What possibilities emerge when we begin to question the tacitly accepted — and easily overlooked — limits that govern who we can be and what we can do?

Composer Samuel Adams, rock climber/BASE jumper Steph Davis, and arts leader Ed Yim all push past traditional limitations in their everyday lives by writing music that reaches new emotional depths, scaling cliffs and flying off of them, or making a platform for artists to create without compromise. Each of them offers a unique and insightful perspective on this question in the debut episode of Imagination Radio.

Music in this episode:

— Dylan Mattingly: from Stranger Love (2018) — Contemporaneous

— Samuel Adams: Tension Study no. 2 (2010) — Living Earth Show

— Judd Greenstein: Change (2009) — NOW Ensemble

— David Moore: Broad Channel (2015) — Bing & Ruth

— Samuel Adams: from Chamber Concerto: Prelude (One by One) (2017) — Karen Gomyo, violin

— Samuel Adams: Shade Study (2014) — Sarah Cahill, piano

— Samuel Adams: Drift & Providence (2012) — National Orchestral Institute Philharmonic & James Ross, conductor; Samuel Adams, electronics

— John Lewis: Silver (1964) — John Lewis, piano; Orchestra U.S.A.; Gunther Schuller & Harold Farberman, conductors

— Dan Trueman: Silicon / Carbon (2008) — Princeton Laptop Orchestra (PLOrk); American Composers Orchestra & Jeffrey Milarsky, conductor

— Ólafur Arnalds: Hands, Be Still (2013)

— Philip Glass: from Symphony No. 4 (1996): I. Heroes — American Composers Orchestra & Dennis Russell Davies, conductor

— Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky: from String Quartet No. 1, Op. 11 (1871): II. Andante cantabile — New York Philharmonic & Leonard Bernstein, conductor

— Julia Wolfe: from Fuel (2007): Part II — Ensemble Resonanz & Brad Lubman, conductor

— Hector Berlioz: from Symphonie fantastique, Op. 14 (1830): V. Songe d'une nuit du Sabbat — Orchestre Révolutionnaire et Romantique & John Eliot Gardiner, conductor

— Gustav Mahler: from Symphony No. 8 in E-flat, Symphony of a Thousand (1906): Accende lumen sensibus — Schola Cantorum of New York, Juilliard Chorus, Columbus Boychoir; New York Philharmonic & Leonard Bernstein, conductor

— James Horner: from Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan (1982)

— Ludwig van Beethoven: from String Quartet in E-flat, Op. 74 (1809): I. Poco adagio; Allegro — Artemis Quartet

— Samuel Adams: Quartet Movement (2016) — Spektral Quartet

— Meredith Monk & Mieke van Hoek: Vow (2011) — Katie Geissinger, voice

— Steve Reich: Proverb (1995) — Theatre of Voices; Steve Reich Ensemble & Paul Hillier

— Dylan Mattingly: from Atlas of Somewhere (on the Way to Howland Island) (2011): II. Islanded in a Stream of Stars — Contemporaneous

— Morton Feldman: String Quartet No. 2 (1983) — FLUX Quartet

— Anthony Motto: Live at GGBY in Moab (2017)

With gratitude and admiration, this episode is dedicated to the memory of composer, conductor, pedagogue, and family man Harold Farberman (1929-2018).

Imagination Radio investigates the ways we search for meaning through music and life, and why people are compelled to create.

Produced by Contemporaneous and hosted by co-artistic directors David Bloom and Dylan Mattingly, Imagination Radio explores the boundless imagination in every walk of life — from BASE-jumping to neuroscience, and cartography to music — in search of what drives each of us to venture into the unknown.

The first season of Imagination Radio features three episodes that pursue monumental questions of creativity, and three episodes that dive deep into works that Contemporaneous has commissioned.

Subscribe to catch the whole season! The first episode will be released December 5, 2018.