This list is pretty esoteric but I love it. I don't think the average pop listener has Flying Lotus on rotation, nor would Beat Furrer's Spur be a piece I would use to introduce contemporary classical idioms to the uninitiated. But maybe most people who listen to some of the "pop" on this list are acquainted with some of the more standard classical rep, so perhaps the list is spot on after all. My ponderings aside, everything in here is really exceptional.
9 Gateway Pieces to Contemporary Music for Pop Lovers | heather roche:
He’s helped me to create a list of nine comparisons between contemporary classical music and pop, intended for curious pop music listeners, in which each counterpart piece has some artistic commonality with the other. While this blog normally hosts entries intended for the initiated contemporary classical music listener (and, for the most part, the composer), this post has the adventurous pop music listener in mind, the suggestions aiming to be portals to previously unencountered music.
I’ve tried to pick a mix of work: young people who are active and changing the new music landscape, an older generation at the height of their power, two who would be with us working still had they not died tragically young, and plenty of brilliant women. And I also provided a “What’s next” for each suggestion: I’m mostly freestyling here in my associations, but I hope they’re of interest. There are a lot of different avenues that contemporary classical music has gone down, so if one sub-genre doesn’t appeal to you, all is not lost. You might notice a lack of minimalist composers here: minimalism (Reich, Glass, Nyman, etc.) is fairly omnipresent these days; I wanted to expose some of the other sub-genres available to curious listeners.
Adventurous indeed.