These Galant Days

I really like this trailer for Paul Bailey's new work, requiem for a high crime enclave. The composer's description: it's "a deconstruction of Purcell's Funeral Music for Queen Mary (1694) based on excerpts from the from the LA Times Homicide Report which documents every murder that takes place in Los Angeles County using blog posts, comments, and Google Maps."

There is a lot of anxiety-free engagement with early music in new music these days, whether from folks like Bailey, Lloyd Rodgers or Jon Brenner on the US west coast or Nico Muhly on the east (or even some bits of mine, coastless as I be, here, here, & here). I, like my west coast colleagues, prefer forms with repeating elements, grounds especially (Mr Brenner likes chaconnes, I like passacaglias), and this activity connects happily with work by experimentalists ranging from Michael Nyman to Douglas Leedy (see this).