Monday Muse Listens to Poetry's 'New Sounds'

Have you heard about "New Sounds", the WNYC program hosted by John Schaefer?

A nightly hour of music that may be accessed online, "New Sounds" offers listeners beyond-the-ordinary programs: storytelling-music by composers such as Laurie Anderson, David Byrne, Phillip Bimstein, and the Talking Heads; traditional and electroacoustic music from Poland; a collaboration between Tibetan devotional singer Yungchen Lhamo and Russian pianist and composer Anton Batagov; live concerts, including a 13-guitar performance; and music for heart and breath. 

Recently, "New Sounds" re-posted a 56-minute program titled "Latin American Poetry Settings" — contemporary musical settings of poems by Sor Juana Ines de la Cruz, Elias Letelier, Gabriela Mistral, Pablo Neruda, and Octavio Paz. These are beautiful settings.

The recording artists include Tim Brady, Eric Whitacre, Robert Spano and the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra, and John Adams. At the program link above you'll find information about the selected pieces and links to their sources.

Listen to the program:

A second, companion program, "Poetry Set to Music, II", embedded below, features settings of text by Mahmoud Darwish, Ashik Dertli, Derek Jarman, Pablo Neruda, Kul Nesimi, Rumi, and Saadi. The recording artists are Philip Glass, Sussan Deyhim, Marcel Khalife and Mahmoud Darwish, Donna McKevitt, Maria Neckam, Niyaz, and Robert Spano. These, too, are wonderful.

New Sounds on FaceBook and Twitter

Tim Brady's Atacama: Symphony No. 3

Eric Whitacre's Cloudburst

Donna McKevitt's Song Cycle of Derek Jarman Poetry and Prose

Donna McKevitt's Settings of Five Neruda Poems