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PGM 727R 'ANCILLARY DREAMS' (Harold Budd Retrospective 1) - dec.25-jan.1

The revered ambient composer HAROLD BUDD was taken by the Covid-19 virus on December 8th 2020. This is the first of two retrospectives celebrating his life and his music.

Who would have believed when it was written in 1972, that the delicate chamber music that begins this show was actually an act of defiance. "When I told people," says HAROLD BUDD, "that my idea was to make music that was as devastatingly pretty as possible, it was out-and-out politics."

In fact, the California-born composer and ambient music pioneer has always been something of a contrarian. He got a late start in music, getting his degree in composition at the age of 36 at USC in Los Angeles. In the late 1960s he was loosely involved with a circle of Southern California minimalist and avant garde composers, absorbing influences from JOHN CAGE and MORTON FELDMAN, but also from jazz giants like PHAROAH SANDERS and JOHN COLTANE. He even wrote a piece for piano, harp, celeste, and topless female choir. Ah, yes. Those were the days.

In 1970 he began teaching at the California Institute of the Arts. He left six years later after meeting someone who would change his life: English producer, musician and theorist BRIAN ENO. Years later Budd told me with his typical sly wit: "The problem with teaching was that you had to listen to so much bad music."

Eno signed Budd to his new OBSCURE RECORDS label in 1976. Budd and Eno went on to create several influential and widely enjoyed albums — foundation stones of the ambient genre, including THE PLATEAUX OF MIRROR and THE PEARL.

Budd's early works had neo-classical titles, like Madrigals of the Rose Angel and The Pavilion of Dreams. In addition to his musical gifts, he had an ear for language and the sensibility of a poet, able to work with ambiguous images and squeeze emotion out of them. He didn't just do pretty, either. As you'll hear, he explored darker, stranger landscapes: melancholy, forlorn, and highly evocative.

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PGM 1098R 'CARITAS' : dec. 18-25

DECEMBER 2020 IS THE 35th ANNIVERSARY of the first Hearts of Space program created by our guest producer for western classical and sacred spacemusic, ELLEN HOLMES — a labor of love, dedication and stamina that continues to bring us experiences of sublime beauty and depth. Thank you, Ellen. We are all in your debt.

On this winter holiday transmission of Hearts of Space, Ellen brings together sacred choral and instrumental sounds of love, caring and compassion, on a program called CARITAS. The Latin word translates as charity, and is considered the highest of Christian virtues: the divine love of God, as well as the love of one's neighbor and oneself.

The program includes Anonymous early sacred chants: Baroque and Classical choral gems by MARC-ANTOINE CHARPENTIER, WOLFGANG AMADEUS MOZART, CHARLES GOUNOD, and FRANZ SCHUBERT, and sacred choral and classical instrumentals by contemporary composers JOHN TAVENER, IVER KLEIVE, GEOFFREY BURGON, JOHN RUTTER and PATRICK HAWES.

Holiday sounds of love, caring and compassion: CARITAS...on this transmission...of Hearts of Space.

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PGM 1268 'THE ETERNAL HARP' : dec. 11-18

Quick quiz: what's one of the oldest instruments in the world, heard in musical cultures in Asia, Africa, Europe, the Middle East and the Americas, and revered by folk, classical and contemporary musicians alike?  Here's a hint: you can think of it as a large guitar, or a small piano.

Give up? It's the harp — a descendant of the Persian chang and the Sumerian lyre — still with us after four thousand years. With tones ranging from seductively soft and warm to bright and bell-like, scales from diatonic to chromatic, and now acoustic and electric versions, the harp is both the original therapeutic instrument, and a vehicle for avant-garde experimentation. Now that is range.

On this transmission of HEARTS of SPACE — folk, classical and contemporary music for acoustic and electric harp, on a program called THE ETERNAL HARP. Music is by LISA LYNNE & ARYEH FRANKFURTER, TRINE OPSAHL, LAVINIA MEIJER, CECILIA CHAILLY, SOMEI SATOH, and from Belgium ECHO COLLECTIVE.

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PGM 1267 'COSMIC ELECTRONIC 2' : dec.4-11

Just over a hundred years ago, English composer GUSTAV HOLST created the hugely popular orchestral suite THE PLANETS. He used conventional acoustic instruments. Just think of what he'd have done with the electronic instruments of today. In fact, if you give a musician a synth the odds are they'll use it to create some of the cosmic brand of ambient we like to call "spacemusic."

It's been that way since the earliest days of electronic music. The cool, abstract, non-material tones of electronic instruments were intuitively associated with the moon, the planets, the stars and the entire cosmic panorama.

Cosmic music led to another discovery: rhythm created by electronic tones generated by programmable machines called sequencers, instead of drums. Why? Because drums grounded the music in the physical world, and tethered the imagery of the music to acoustic space. The goal was the infinite release and infinite freedom...of infinite space.

On this transmission of Hearts of Space, another cosmic electronic journey across the starfields to distant galaxies, on a program called COSMIC ELECTRONIC 2. Music is by STARTERRA, EXTRAWORLD, TRANSPONDER, ASC, OVNIMOON, and SYNC24.

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