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Chris Lydon’s interview this week on Radio Open Source is with composer Yehudi Wyner. It’s a fascinating hour spent with an American “classical” composer  – he spends time discussing his influences, the way he approaches composition  and deconstructs some of his works on the piano.

Image: Boston Globe

As with many 20th century American composers, Wyner is open to the influence of “popular” forms on his work – particularly gospel and jazz. But as Stravinksy and Ives did with ragtime and marching band tunes, Wyner’s compositions refract these sources through his own personal tonal lens.

Wyner has been writing music since since his childhood in the 1920s, so he’s learned a thing or two about how creativity happens. I particularly liked his description of the compositional act – and the responsibility that comes with inspiration:

“When you stumble on these thickets of interesting material, you’re confronted with the most terrifying task of all, which is somehow living up  to it, continuing it, recognising not only that nugget is of value, but that nugget is of no meaning unless it’s in a proper context, unless it’s really enveloped in understanding and development.”

Wyner’s insight could apply to all creative acts – writing, painting, creating a business, raising a child. Most of us only experience very short and occasional moments of true inspiration. The real work of creativity is how we put context and create flow around these small original ideas.

I commend this conversation to you – the music is wonderful, the conversations surrounding it are enlightening, and Wyner’s critique of contemporary popular music is penetrating without being bigoted.

Nikolai Kapustin – Scherzo: Allegro Assai from Sonata No.2 Op. 54
Performed by Marc-André Hamelin
From In A State of Jazz: Hyperion [Buy]

It happens almost every birthday – my aunt gives me a CD of music I’ve never heard of and I really really like it. This year it was a new album by Canadian pianist Marc-André Hamelin, playing solo piano music written by “classical” composers who were inspired by jazz.

The music on this album is remarkable because although it is all through-composed, it sounds very spontaneous and highly idiomatic. In Russian composer Nikolai Kapustin‘s Sonata No.2 there are passages that would fit easily into a Keith Jarrett solo performance or a 78rpm by Earl Hines.

This disc also contains six arrangements of Charles Trenet songs by the pianist Alexis Weissenberg, originally released as anonymous 45′s in 1950, and transcribed half a century later by Hamelin for this album. The arrangements catch the humour and bawdy double entendres of songs such as Vous oubliez votre cheval and Boum!… all delivered with a lightness of touch that few jazz players could achieve.

Finally, George Antheil‘s Jazz Sonata, clocking in at just 90 seconds sounds like Spike Jones and Stravinsky holding an orgy inside a Steinway – not only hilarious but a challenge for any virtuoso. Pure Joy.