Bang on a Can

Galina Ustvolskaya (b.1919-2006), a Russian composer, studied under Dmitri Shostakovich from 1939-1947 but retained little influence of his style from the 1950s onward. She had few public performances and until 1968 none of her works were performend other than patriotic pieces written for official consumption. Ustvolskaya developed her own particular style, among its characteristics are: the use of repeated, homophonic blocks of sound, unusual combinations of instruments, considerable use of extreme dynamics, employing groups of instruments in order to introduce tone clusters, and the use of piano or percussion to beat out regular unchanging rhythms.