Extra Eclectic

If there's one thing that has changed definitively in classical music, it's that there are plenty of composers who are as much at home in rock n' roll for their "day-jobs" as classical. It's true for composers from Bryce Dessner (guitarist for the band The National) to Jonny Greenwood of Radiohead, who's classical bona fides are not only strong, but Grammy winning as well. Steve Seel features music by both on this week's program.

"For most people today, the spiritual dimension has been lost. My intention is to provide food for the soul, and this is what I preach in my works," says Latvian composer Peteris Vasks. His Violin Concerto, "Distant Light," provides ample food for the soul on this week's program. Steve Seel also features spiritual-themed works from Terry Riley ("Sun Rings: One Earth, One People, One Love") and James Wilson ("The Green Fuse"), and music by Evan Ziporyn, Daniel Wohl, and Sarah Kirkland Snider.

Composer John Adams wanted to depict "the current pounding and smashing" the cliffs of California's rocky coastline in his work The Dharma at Big Sur. But rather than open with aggressive music, his work for violin and orchestra almost sounds like a meditative religious epiphany. Steve Seel features Adams' music on this week's show, in addition to works by John Cage, Lou Harrison, Douglas Knehans, and more.

From the classic 20th-century minimalism of Steve Reich's "Pulse" and the electronica-tinged "Scale of Volitility" by Emilie Levianaise-Farrouch, to Bryce Dessner's dramatic, sweeping "Concerto for Two Pianos" written for Katia and Marielle Labeque, Steve Seel has the gamut of sounds from minimalism to "maximal-ism" mapped out on this week's program. Steve also features works by Keith Jarrett, John Cage, Lou Harrison, Terry Riley, and more.

It's a program of winds and windy music this time out - in the first hour, Steve Seel features music from wind instruments, from Joseph Schwantner, Marc Melits, Christopher Theofanidis and others, and in the second hour, it's music on "windy" themes, including John Luther Adams' "Canticles of the Holy Wind," Ludovico Einaudi's "Cold Wind," and more.

If you think that a banjo can't play with a symphony orchestra, don't tell banjo great Bela Fleck. In fact, Fleck's "Juno Concerto" is the second time he's written a concerto for banjo and orchestra. Steve Seel plays Fleck's amazing work on this week's program. In the second hour, it's an array of contemplative modern works, from Arvo Part, Georgs Pelecis, and an award winning composer who hails from the Canadian Northwest Territories, Carmen Braden.

This week on Extra Eclectic, Steve Seel explores themes of space, galaxies, and communication with extra-terrestrial beings -- in such works as Urmas Sisak's "The Milky Way" and Nimrod Borenstein's "The Big Bang and Creation of the Universe." Also, a salute to the classical endeavors of Jon Lord, known best to many as the man who spent years behind the Hammond organ in the rock group Deep Purple.

In 1968, Arvo Part essentially went dark. He stopped composing for several years as he entered a period of, as he called it, "artistic reorientation." When he re-emerged, he had a completely new style. One of the major works he created during this time was one that had a particularly appropriate title for him -- Tabula Rasa, or "blank slate." Steve Seel shares it on this week's program, in addition to some other works from the Baltic region, including Estonia's Erkki-Sven Tuur and Latvia's Peteris Vasks.

This week on the first night of the new year, Steve has meditations on the meaning -- and endless cycle -- of life, in two works drawing from the book of Ecclesiastes from composers David Lang and Norman Dello Joio. Also, a rock pioneer sees his music adapted for the concert hall by composer Timo Andres in his "Paraphrase on Themes of Brian Eno." That plus music of Philip Glass, Nico Muhly and more.

This week's edition of Extra Eclectic falls on Christmas night, and Steve Seel has an all Christmas-themed two hours of 20th and 21st century music in store for us -- in a program that promises plenty of musical discovery while keeping with the perfect atmosphere you're looking for to wind down the holiday. Tune in for selections on yuletide themes by Alan Hovhaness, Ola Gjelo, Chilly Gonzalez, Stephen Paulus, Eric Whitacre, and much much more.