Sound Perimeter

Today's Sound Perimeter listens across distance: two composers, both born in 1946, two different worlds. Vladimir Martynov and Mary Lou Williams arrive at the sacred from very different paths. Martynov through stillness, through a sound that unfolds like breath, rooted in chant and contemplation. Williams through voice and rhythm, through jazz, blues, and gospel carried into a liturgical space. 

Different languages, different histories, and yet, both works hold a quiet insistence on justice. On compassion, on the dignity of human life.They are not the same sound, but they shared gesture: music as reflection, as prayer, as a way of imagining something better.

Sound Perimeter is a segment hosted by Lia Uribe (@Lia Uribe) and dedicated to unexpected voices in and around music. We hope it’ll expand your knowledge and connection to sound and let music infiltrate your lives and transform your realities.

A note from host Lia Uribe: 

"Today on Sound Perimeter, Listening for Rain, I found myself drawn to   something simple and familiar: rain. We hear it arrive in different ways: as shifting patterns and playful color in Australian composer Elena Kats - Chernin’s piano duet 'The Rain Puzzle', and as something inward and heavy - hearted in Randy Newman’s 'I Think It ’ s Gonna Rain Today'. One piece lets rain move and sparkle; the other turns it into an emotional landscape, full of longing and quiet isolation. Different voices, different worlds, connected by that shared sense of something falling gently and persistently, lingering long after the sound itself fades. Next time it rains, I invite you to listen to it as music."

Featured artists include Tamara-Anna Cislowska, MayKay, Duke Special and the The RTE Concert Orchestra.

Sound Perimeter is a segment hosted by Lia Uribe (@Lia Uribe) and dedicated to unexpected voices in and around music. We hope it’ll expand your knowledge and connection to sound and let music infiltrate your lives and transform your realities.

Today on Sound Perimeter, we are thinking about butterflies, those fleeting flashes of color that feel more like memories than things you can hold. They show up without warning, linger just long enough to catch your breath, and disappear, leaving an impression rather than a trace. That sense of ephemerality, of beauty that sharpens our attention because it won’t stay, is the thread that connected today’s music: composer Kaija Saariaho’s Seven Butterflies for solo cello performed by Oliver Herbert, and Herbie Hancock’s Butterfly performed by Gretchen Parlato. 

Sound Perimeter is a segment hosted by Lia Uribe (@Lia Uribe) and dedicated to unexpected voices in and around music. We hope it’ll expand your knowledge and connection to sound and let music infiltrate your lives and transform your realities.

Today's Sound Perimeter features excerpts from "Nightscape" and "No-Man’s-Land Lullaby", both written by Jamaican composer Eleanor Alberga, works that linger at the edge of place and memory, where atmosphere gives way to deeper histories carried quietly in sound. 

Sound Perimeter is a segment hosted by Lia Uribe (@Lia Uribe) and dedicated to unexpected voices in and around music. We hope it’ll expand your knowledge and connection to sound and let music infiltrate your lives and transform your realities.

Pianist Gabriela Montero and salsa legend Willie Colón share a stage on Sound Perimeter — two artists from different worlds united by presence, improvisation, and music as a vehicle for truth.

Today's Sound Perimeter explores change, how it happens inside the music and around it. We begin with Philip Glass's Metamorphosis I, where repeating patterns shift so gradually you almost don't notice until the whole atmosphere feels different. Performed by pianist Lisa Moore. Then we turn to Terri Lyne Carrington and a spacious performance of her piece "Unconditional Love." Terri Lyne Carrington has carried her own kind of transformation by the way she leads offstage at the Berklee Institute of Jazz and Gender Justice, imagining a jazz world that's more inclusive and more equitable.

Today's Sound Perimeter spends time with two bassoon pieces that have stayed close to host Lia Uribe over the years. Music holding memory, shifting shape and meeting us differently each time we return to it. Past and present, coexisting. 

Sound Perimeter is a segment hosted by Lia Uribe (@Lia Uribe) and dedicated to unexpected voices in and around music. We hope it’ll expand your knowledge and connection to sound and let music infiltrate your lives and transform your realities.

Today's Sound Perimeter features two pieces of music, one by French composer Gabriel Fauré, and the other by American composer Meredith Monk. 

Host Lia Uribe says, "I chose these works because, lately, I’ve been turning tomusic for solace as we move through this present moment. Not necessarily to understand it, maybe just to sit with it, to hold space.

"For me, these pieces create a shared space for feeling, for presence, reflection and care. A place to pause. Maybe it’s about still being able to recognize beauty, or about processing what we're carrying, or finding inspiration to center light rather than darkness. I’m not entirely sure. But I do know that this music offers a way to be with life and death, complexity and tenderness, that's it. I hope you connected with these works, and if you feel moved to do so, I'd love to hear what the music said to you. Reach me at [email protected]."

Sound Perimeter is a segment hosted by Lia Uribe (@Lia Uribe) and dedicated to unexpected voices in and around music. We hope it’ll expand your knowledge and connection to sound and let music infiltrate your lives and transform your realities. 

Today's Sound Perimeter features Metacosmos by Anna Thorvaldsdóttir, a contemporary piece inspired by the idea of crossing into unfamiliar territory, taking listeners inside a universe where forces are felt more than explained. We then turn to Venus, the Bringer of Peace from The Planets by Gustav Holst, where the cosmos becomes a place of reflection rather than fear, imagining Venus as a planet in a state of calm within a vast and mysterious universe. 

Today's Sound Perimeter listens to two different versions of “Motherless Child”, one by Jubilant Sykes, and the other by Cécile McLorin Salvant. Each rendition holds the same spiritual at its center, yet each opens a distinct emotional world. Sykes offers the song with warmth, grace, and a sense of outward offering, shaped by movement, conversation, and color. Salvant, in contrast, brings an intimate, prayer-like reading, transparent, inward, and quietly intense.Together, these performances reveal the many lives a single song can live.