Tosca: The new Vienna School is plugged in
Series: Echo Location: Soundings for New Music
From: John Diliberto
Length: 00:03:30
Also in the Echo Location: Soundings for New Music series
Violinist Anna Schaad's Dream Within a Dream
(00:03:30)
From: John Diliberto
Violinist Anna Schaad’s music is steeped in fantasy and inspired by her Navy pilot husband. Though heavily Celtic influenced, she takes an electronica turn on her album ...
English electronic duo plugs in with vintage synthesizers and heads into space
(00:03:30)
From: John Diliberto
English electronic musicians Mark Shreeve and Ian Boddy perform in a pair of cockpits of keyboards and gear. They specialize in a sound that has roots in German space music ...
Kronos Quartet: Four Decades of Breaking the String Quartet Rules
(00:03:30)
From: John Diliberto
In the world of string quartets there is before and after Kronos, the ensemble that revolutionized the form, playing new music from Steve Reich to Sigur Ros. We talk with ...
Ludovico Einaudi's Nightbook
(00:03:30)
From: John Diliberto
Pianist Ludovico Einaudi is a different kind of classical composer. He's a student of the avant-garde and the rich classical tradition of his native Italy, but he’s also a ...
The Orchestrion: Pat Metheny's One-Man Band
(00:03:30)
From: John Diliberto
Acclaimed jazz guitarist Pat Metheny plugs to the Orchestrion, a massive instrument based on the old player piano orchestrations of yore.
The Godfather of Ambient Chamber Music
(00:03:30)
From: John Diliberto
Harold Budd started out as a jazz drummer in the 1950s, then became a student of Schoenberg style serialism. Against that backdrop, he revolted the only way he could: making ...
Three Musicians in Communion With Each Other
(00:03:30)
From: John Diliberto
Native flute master R. Carlos Nakai, luthier and guitarist William Eaton, and world percussionist Will Clipman return with an album of intuitive improvisations, ranging from ...
A Senegalese griot meets a German jazz trumpeter
(00:03:30)
From: John Diliberto
An African griot meets a German jazz trumpeter when Ablaye Cissoko and Volker Goetze talk about their unlikely and serenely beautiful collaboration.
Wandering the Psychedelic Galaxy with Gong
(00:03:30)
From: John Diliberto
It's been 40 years since Daevid Allen convened his space gypsy rock band Gong which influenced everyone from Ozric Tentacles to Steve Roach. Allen and guitarist Steve ...
The East-West fusion of Urban Nature
(00:03:30)
From: John Diliberto
Urban Nature is the duo of guitarist Todd Boston and Indian percussionist Ramesh Kannan. They’re updating the East-West fusion of John McLaughlin's Shakti, adding looping ...
Related Pieces
Piece Description
The Viennese duo called Tosca may take their name from the Puccini opera, but this plugged in pair doesn't usually have romantic intrigue and mezzo-sopranos in mind when they compose. With No Hassle, they've made an album that goes deeper than the chillout lounge. It may not make it onto the dance floor, but it will reverberate across the ballroom in your head with a sultry beckoning call and warm embrace.
Richard Dorfmeister
Echo Location is a 3 1/2 minute weekly feature an artist, event, album or trend in new music. Radio producer and music critic John Diliberto has had a long and deep relationship with new music and each week he shares the excitement of new discoveries with Echo Location.
Diliberto's interests are wide-ranging, from the French retro-lounge duo Air, to Balmorhea's Americana chamber music, to Gerry O'Beirne's Celtic fingerstyle guitar and more. He's a segue master. Each edition of Echo Location features a beautifully edited music blend, that's combined with John's thoughtful insights and artists's comments to make a sound-rich journey for listeners.
Echo Location can be scheduled as a weekly series or individual episodes can be used as desired on their own, within an arts, news magazine or music program.
and Rupert Huber are eclectic musicians, avant-garde bred, jazz besotted and electronically wired. Their music, going back to their 1997 debut with "Chocolate Elvis," has always mixed heady atmospheres with sly asides. Tosca eschews conventional song forms and dramatic arcs, as each track establishes a sonic terrain and plays around inside it. They're electronica's answer to "Don't Worry, be Happy," a soundtrack to "turn off your mind, relax and float downstream."Transcript
:13
The Viennese duo called Tosca may take their name from the Puccini opera, but this plugged in pair doesn't usually have sexual intrigue and mezzo-sopranos in mind when they compose.
Music
:13
Tosca is Richard Dorfmeister and Rupert Huber. Dorfmeister is a half of the Kruder & Dorfmeister duo who have been making downtempo electronica since 1993 with songs like High Noon.
Music
:15
In 1997 Dorfmeister teamed up with Huber, his childhood friend who was already a figure on the Euopean avant-garde scene making music you're more likely to hear in Paris's Pompidou Center than a Berlin club,
music bite
:07
As Tosca, Dorfmeister and Huber weren't thinking operatic dramaturgy. They were thinking street singers.
Music bite “chocolate Elvis”
:14
Chocolate Elvis was their first single, using the field recording of a New York City street singer as the basis for thei...
Read the full transcript
Timing and Cues
Incue: [sonar sound] + This is an Echo Location: Soundings for New Music.
Outcue: I’m John Diliberto and this has been an Echo Location, Soundings for New Music
Musical Works
| Title | Artist | Album | Label | Year | Length | Find on Amazon |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Chocolate Elvis | Tosca | Chocolate Elvis. | 00:10 | find now |
