[Badasses of Contemporary Composition] The String Quartets of Gloria Coates

Ed: I have decided to take this particular strain of music blogging onto its own parallel track at Badasses of Contemporary Composition with the help of my friend Philip, but will be linking my items here for your x-posting pleasure and to complete the thread of Me that is a blog.

As Philip stated in his post about Lucier the other day, part of the liquid mission of this blog is to find the composers who are writing new and engaging orchestral and chamber music, who are expanding on the already rich tapestries of 20th/21st century music.

My biggest itch that needs scratching is one for string quartets - that intimate little combo of two violins, viola and cello seems to be the soil in which much of my favorite music flowers. Thanks to our ever-inquisitive friend Robert Gable at aworks, I have come to witness and quickly love the eight string quartets of Gloria Coates, tenderly captured by the Kreutzer String Quartet.

The sum of the experience of listening to all six in order is that Coates finds the most interesting things hidden in the folds of time and space's fabric, things that on occasion stir her to rapture, allowing her to step into those exalted planes and record and report back the wondrous things she witnessed there.

Click here for the play-by-play and lala playlists of the music