Real Music Forum

I had stayed away contemporary music until lately because nothing I found ever seemed of quality compared to the classics. The other day though I learned of Faryl Smith on http://bit.ly/FarylYH and was taken back to hear her voice. She’s still young, and has a lot of growing to do, but the potential is definitely there. Now that I have new hope for contemporary music, does anyone have any other artists to look for?

Argh. I'll have to check her out somewhere else. That story contains the words "Simon Cowell's favourite..." in the title, which instantly puts me off, and having never heard of her up until this moment, I don't want to dismiss her unfairly, purely because the music industry equivalent of the Antichrist happens to like her voice.

As for contemporary classical music, the standard of musicianship in all professional orchestras is so high that I don't follow the individual musicians - it's the composers that are the real geniuses.

My current personal favourite contemporary classical composer is Julian Anderson... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Julian_Anderson

I was at Birmingham Symphony Hall (an incredible building for classical concerts - purpose-built in a massively high-tech fashion with acoustics in mind) a few years ago to see... now what was it.... possibly Mahler's 8th, with a bit of Tchaikovski as the "support" piece, but first on was this composer I'd never heard of until then, Julian Anderson, who was "composer-in-residence" in Symphony Hall at the time. I was stunned by his approach to composition.... trumpeters who started playing backstage and slowly walked out, and onto the front of the stage while playing, then moving to the sides, percussionists using the legs of a piano or a music stand as the actual instrument... alll very off-the-wall but meticulously planned as any other symphony, very musical in an abstract way - altogether an incredible auditory and visual experience, a great warm-up for the more familiar and more traditional Tchaikovski and Mahler we were about to hear, and altogether a really nice surprise.

I can't find any on YouTube unfortunately, so I can't post a link, but there is a collection of his music on Spotify - do a Spotify search for "Julian Anderson Book Of Hours" - "Symphony" in particular is very interesting if you've got time to sit down with your headphones on for 18 minutes. An incredible musical journey from start to finish.