New Amsterdam Presents: Reverberations with Majel Connery cover art

New Amsterdam Presents: Reverberations with Majel Connery

New Amsterdam Presents: Reverberations with Majel Connery

Written by: Majel Connery
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About this listen

Reverberations is a new podcast that extends the genre-fluid spirit of New Amsterdam Records from music to conversation. Hosted by musicologist and performer Majel Connery, the podcast is a series of probing discussions with NewAm's family of musical artists on the connection between life and craft. Each episode is rooted in musical exploration, while ranging freely into the big ideas that drive us and that shape our creative lives.


© 2025 New Amsterdam Presents: Reverberations with Majel Connery
Music
Episodes
  • Teddy Abrams: Preludes
    Jul 9 2025

    Episode 5 of Reverberations centers on a book of piano preludes written and performed by conductor, composer and pianist Teddy Abrams. In the episode, Connery and Abrams discuss his social and pedagogical agenda to reach amateur pianists around the country and the world. “I realized that there are very few living composers who have entered the repertoire for pianists,” says Abrams. “I wanted to write some music that would literally be accessible to anyone.” The episode also explores Abrams’ striking decision to use electronic production on the album. The ultimate result, a collaboration with producers Gabriel Kahane and Casey Foubert, exemplifies Abrams’ desire to enliven the classical music of today through novel juxtapositions with neighboring musical worlds.



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    18 mins
  • Juri Seo: Obsolete Music
    May 30 2025

    Episode 4 of Reverberations explores the question: “Can music go out of style?” Composer Juri Seo’s Obsolete Music album suggests that music is ageless. Obsolete Music is Seo’s collaboration with the flexible ensemble Latitude 49. Each track on the record pays homage to a form or style from the past (e.g. “Fugue” or “Ostinato”) in order to reimagine it. Seo’s own decision to become a musician is rooted in an important encounter with Bach and species counterpoint at the age of 11. The episode begins with Seo explaining this epiphany: “My mind and body came together through a fugue.”

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    20 mins
  • Alex Paxton: Delicious
    Apr 24 2025

    This episode of Reverberations is a conversation with composer and trombonist Alex Paxton about his album called Delicious. Host Majel Connery and Paxton discuss his early adulthood as a children’s music educator and how that experience still frames his compositional approach. They delve into the complexity of Paxton’s scores, his concept of melody, and his teenage fantasy of speaking exclusively in trombone. Says Paxton, with characteristic zest for colliding opposites: “my music is influenced by biting into a strawberry, but also by brushing your teeth every day for thirty years, playing a spontaneous game with a child when you’re really engaged but also maybe playing with a child doing a repetitive game for four hours.”


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    22 mins
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