Avant-garde, rhythmically driven chamber music, inspired equally by free jazz, Stravinsky, and Balinese gamelan

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Contents

#		Title	Length	Sample
1		Quartet for Saxophones	12:12
2		Salt in the Wound	10:51
3		Myopia 1	12:11
4		AVOIDANCE TACTICS #1 (original version)	12:12
5		String Quartet - I. constraint #1	1:52
6		String Quartet - II. conceit #1	3:36
7		String Quartet - III. constraint #2	4:08
8		String Quartet - IV. conceit #2	4:09
9		String Quartet - V. constraint #3	1:12
10		String Quartet - VI. conceit #3	3:48

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Description

"Avoidance Tactics #1 for piano and percussion... sounds like the cocktail music you'd play if Cecil Taylor, Morton Feldman, and Iannis Xenakis were coming over to your house for dinner....
...this disc is definitely worth a lot more than the polycarbonate it's pressed on.... With its breezy cut-and-paste aesthetic, AVOIDANCE TACTICS is an emblem to pulling together the wherewithal to do something audacious."

- New Music Box, May 2004

AVOIDANCE TACTICS features striking new works by Boston composer Curtis K. Hughes, sure to appeal to fans of the avant-garde, free jazz, microtonal music or Balinese gamelan, as well as to anyone who thinks the distinction between "UPTOWN" and "DOWNTOWN" should be considered irrelevant. With intense performances by the Third Rail Sax Quartet, drummer Aaron Trant, pianist Sarah Bob, clarinetist Michael Norsworthy, the Kaya String Quartet and more.
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Curtis K. Hughes is a Boston-based, freelance composer, as well as a music instructor who has taught at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and the New England Conservatory of Music. His music is inspired by many of the avant-garde pioneers of 20th century concert music, as well as by the free jazz of John Coltrane, Cecil Taylor, Joe Maneri and others. He attempts to find common ground among these diverse traditions, resulting in a style which is restless and rhythmically driven. Nearly every one of his compositions also reflects an obsessive interest in cylical rhythmic patterns that derive loosely from Balinese gamelan music.
His music has been played by the Callithumpian Consort, The Boston Modern Orchestra Project, the Firebird ensemble, the Cleveland Chamber Symphony, the Greater Twin Cities Youth Symphonies, the Indiana University New Music Ensemble, the Radius Ensemble and the Yesaroun' Duo, among many others. He has received numerous awards, including the Boston Japan Society's Toru Takemitsu Prize, awarded annually to one of the "most promising" young composers in the greater Boston area. A graduate of Oberlin College and Conservatory and of the New England Conservatory, his primary teacher has been composer Lee Hyla, and he has also studied with Evan Ziporyn and Michael Gandolfi. His composition AVOIDANCE TACTICS #1 received praise in the New York Times as a "fiery work" with "great moments of interaction," and his orchestral piece "Gestations"(1999) was lauded by the Boston Globe as "colorfully scored," and by New Music Connoisseur as "a most worthy offering." Recent events have included the premiere of Myopia II for 12 saxophones as the centerpiece of the centennial festival (2004) for Boston's Jordan Hall, and a program of all new political music, "National Insecurity," first given at MIT's Killian Hall in collaboration with composer David T. Little