hearts of space | news

PGM 1030R 'COLD and BRIGHT' : dec. 26 - jan. 2

Winter settles in to the Northern hemisphere bringing powerful storms, but also radiant clear days with azure skies and deep vistas. Unlike most sensible animals, human activity seems to increase as the temperature drops, and we fill the brief days leading up to the new year with all manner of hustle and bustle.

Holiday lights twinkle in the crisp air, and while the traditional sounds of the season are warm, rich and harmonious, it's also a perfect time for intricate electronic rhythms that echo the activity, and crystalline tones that ring in the chilled atmosphere.

On this transmission of Hearts of Space, an Ambient/Electronic journey for early winter, on a program called COLD AND BRIGHT. Music is by BRYAN CARRIGAN, BLUETECH, FORREST SMITHSON, NATURAL FREQUENCIES, PHILLIP WILKERSON, and JUSTIN VANDERBERG.

[ view playlist ] [ view Flickr image gallery ] [ play 30 second MP3 promo ]

PGM 1064 'MAGNIFICAT : dec.19-26

The great tradition of choral singing has a glorious history extending over thousands of years. Even in these diverse, multicultural, often secular days, the tradition endures because there is something deeply satisfying and essentially human in the sound and the practice of group singing.

Choral groups range from trios to 200 voice chorales; they're often unpaid and done purely for the love of it. The genre has attracted specialist composers in every era, some working within churches and religious institutions, others as solo artists. During the winter holiday season, we enjoy choral classics like The Messiah and traditional hymns and carols in sacred spaces from cathedrals to street corners.

On this transmission of Hearts of Space, another sacred music journey from our longtime guest producer for classical and sacred music ELLEN HOLMES, on a program called MAGNIFICAT.

[ view playlist ] [ view Flickr image gallery ] [ play 30 second MP3 promo ]

PGM 1063 'HEARTH and HOME' : dec.12-19

Well, another twelve months are almost history, and the holiday season has arrived in all its glory. And you know what that means: Christmas music is in the mall, on the air, in TV commercials and pretty much unavoidable. No matter how you feel about that — and the sentiment runs the gamut from delight to despair — here at Hearts of Space, we have a hopefully more subtle strategy: call it Ambient/environmental.

On this transmission of Hearts of Space, we confront the cold with acoustic instrumentals that please the ear with harmony and warm the heart with melody and emotion, on a program called HEARTH AND HOME.

[ view playlist ] [ view Flickr image gallery ] [ play 30 second MP3 promo ]

OUR WEB SERVER IS MISBEHAVING

UPDATE 12/12/14: All better now, but we had to "spin up" a new virtual server with twice the capacity of the one our service provider originally advised us to use. Who knew? With cloud servers the actual capacity you get varies because you are sharing hardware with other clients. So you need more than "just enough."  At the same time, we've added better "load balancing" and  alert advisories to let our techs now when we are getting close to the edge and need to add even more capacity, reboot, etc.

It's a brave new world, folks. We're learning as we go...and so, apparently are our vendors!

:: SH

 

For the last 24 hours we've been having the most frustrating kind of intermittent outage on our web server. This also has affected operation of our mobile apps. Symptoms are slow or no loading of the site, delayed operation, or part of the service unavailable.

All hands are on deck in three states trying to resolve the issue. 

Note: For those who want to know why, the problem has to do with the provisioning and configuration of our cloud servers, which are failing intermittently under load. We are working to re-spec and re-configure them now. As soon as we get the right setup, everything should be back to normal or even better.

As always, we hate anything that disrupts service and are deeply sorry for the inconvenience.

:: SH

 

 

PGM 1062 'CLASSICAL REINVENTIONS' : dec.5-12

The familiar Baroque harmonies of ANTONIO VIVALDI'S "The Four Seasons." But something is different. The notes are almost the same, but the sound and the recorded image have been "recomposed" in a more modern style by British composer MAX RICHTER.

Since the dawn of the popular electronic music era in the 1960s and 70s, both classical composers and popular musicians have been fascinated by the creative intersection of Classical structure and Ambient atmosphere. And it has led to a genre of Ambient/Classical hybrids that continue to the present day.

For Ambient is, at its heart, a sensibility for sound and space, one which had already been incorporated into certain forms of Western classical music over ten centuries of evolution: especially sacred and choral music, works for pipe organ, and adagio movements of all eras and genres.

On this transmission of Hearts of Space, the creative intersection between Classical and Ambient, on a program called CLASSICAL REINVENTIONS.

[ view playlist ] [ view Flickr image gallery ] [ play 30 second MP3 promo ]