EL MAHBOOB

Category: Uncategorized

  • In Conversation with Stephanie Chua and Adam Sherkin

    On Thursday, November 14th, I will be part of Artists in Conversation, discussing my piano compositions in person with junctQín keyboard collective‘s Stephanie Chua and Piano Lunaire‘s Adam Sherkin, and listening to them perform solo selections of mine that they are also playing in concerts during November. Questions and input from those in attendance are welcome. Details are below.

    Date & Time: Thursday, November 14th, 7:30 pm (doors 7:00 pm)
    Location: Arraymusic, 155 Walnut Ave, 2nd floor, Toronto
    Admission: Free
    Duration: 1 hour
    Register your attendance in advance: info@pianolunaire.org

    Go to my Events page to see the concerts related to this event.

    There is also a Facebook event page.

  • Best of 2017

    Alarm Will Sound with Meet the Composer Splitting Adams (Cantaloupe)

    Sarah Cahill with Regina Myers and Samuel Adams Eighty Trips Around the Sun: Music by and for Terry Riley (Irritable Hedgehog)

    Ars Nova Copenhagen First Drop (Cantaloupe)

    Julius Eastman The Zürich Concert (New World)

    ÌFÉ IIII+IIII (Discos Ifá)

    Kelly Moran Bloodroot (Telegraph Harp)

    Sampha Process (Young Turks)

    Tyshawn Sorey Verisimilitude (Pi)

    Moses Sumney Aromanticism (Jagjaguwar)

    SZA Ctrl (Top Dawg/RCA)

    Thundercat Drunk (Brainfeeder)

    John Williams Close Encounters of the Third Kind · 40th Anniversary Remastered Edition (La-La Land)

    Music by Linda Catlin Smith, Martin Arnold, Isaiah Ceccarelli, Chiyoko Szlavnics, Marc Sabat Canadian Composer Series (Another Timbre)

    Various Artists Spiritual Jazz 7: Islam (Jazzman)

  • 1996+21: limina

    limina, for two pianos and percussion (1996), was composed as an exploratory diversion between larger projects. The title, “thresholds,” is meant to suggest points of transition or spaces between categories.

    There are two sections; the longer and more eventful first is in duple metre and features a pop-like, four-chord progression in A major. The second is in triple metre and A-flat major, with an outro-like quality. The transition between sections introduces more complex harmonies and a percussion break.

    All of the music is built around the initial melodic pattern, a loop that descends in fifths and ascends back to its starting point in fourths. This line is in fact the opening chord unfolded horizontally, and it becomes the rhythmic motor, layered against itself in canon. The final chord is the same as the opening one, though transposed down a semitone.

    Composed and recorded August 1996, Korg 01/WFD
    Remixed May 2017

    Photo: composer, 1997

    Music and composer’s notes copyright Bruce A. Russell 2017