During my break I found a brilliant procrastination routine in the form of the Canadian Music Centre's "early career composers" page. Here you can read brief bios, hear audio samples, and study score excerpts from dozens of Canadian young 'uns. The music covers a bafflingly wide stylistic spectrum, from old-school neoclassicism to post-serialist complexity and on to avant-avant musical happenings. (Canada is home to perhaps the most far-out composer living, R. Murray Schafer, whose Patria works involve camping expeditions into remote forests.) After a brief survey, I was especially captivated by the unpredictable and unclassifiable music of Michael Oesterle. His le contrat social hilariously borrows some famous D-flat-major piano chords from Tchaikovsky. Here's a parallel page for Australian composers, which makes my brain hurt just to look at it. There's a lot of music out there.
