John White
Members: The Scratch Orchestra
The Complete Obscure Records Collection
** CD edition ** We’re thrilled to announce the first ever box set gathering the entire ten album collection of Brian Eno’s Obscure Records, originally issued between 1975 and 1978. Containing the debut releases of Gavin Bryars, Michael Nyman, John Adams, David Toop, Max Eastley, Harold Budd, Christopher Hobbs, Jan Steele, and Simon Jeffes / The Penguin Café Orchestra, in addition to important works by John Cage, Tom Phillips, and John White, not to mention Eno’s seminal “Discreet Music”, the la…
The Avantgarde Series
The legendary DG Avantgarde vinyl series (1968-1971) is turning 55! In order to celebrate this occasion, the series is now released on 21 CDs for the first time. The Avantgarde series serves as a historical document for a time of radical change in musical thinking and the breaking of artistic boundaries. The question "What is music?" confronted many of the composers and musicians involved in the series, and the anti-authoritarian spirit of the 1960s and 1970s was a palpable influence. Deutsche G…
The Sinking of The Titanic
Mega-Tip! Gavin Bryars was born in Yorkshire, England in 1943. His first musical forays were as a jazz bassist working in the early 1960s with improvisors Derek Bailey and Tony Oxley. Bryars later worked with composers John Cage and Cornelius Cardew, founded the Portsmouth Sinfonia and collaborated with Brian Eno on his famed Obscure imprint.
The Sinking of the Titanic, Bryars' first major composition, was inspired by the tragic event of the British passenger liner's cross-Atlantic maiden voyage…
Improvisation Rites (Book)
*2022 stock* "I used my experience of The Scratch Orchestra (1969 - 72) to work with a younger generation of people. We by working with John Cage's magnum opus 'Song Books'. Then we worked with the improvisation rites in Cornelius Cardew's collective work 'Nature Study Notes'. This book documents that process and its assessment, and afterglow in some details"
Electric Music
**Cardboard Folded cover 6-page colour booklet with liner notes in English by Dave Smith and Andrea Rocca** Here is a new, exciting, step in the discover of the genius of the English composer, pianist and tuba player John White, the maverick master of British Experimental Music, Sctarch Orchestra former member (with Cornelius Cardew, Gavin Bryars and John Tilbury). This double CD represent one of a thousand in between the musical facets of his enormous output. As Dave Smith says in his liner no…
London, 1969
Limited to 100 copies only in clear vinyl, this is one of the very few available recordings by the seminal collective centered around C. Cardew - it consists of two recordings made during the first public performance by the Scratch Orchestra. The concert took place on the 1st of November 1969, at Hampstead Town Hall, London
Gracilty
2024 lucky restock. A mind blowing archival double cd centred around Laurie Scott Baker, who has been involved in experimental music since he was a teenager. A pioneer of live electronics and graphic scores back in the 60s, a member of the Scratch Orchestra & Peoples Liberation Music with Cornelius Cardew, played many first performances of new music. Gracility comes out of the development of free improvisation & groups such as Scratch Orchestra etc. & the general questioning of the music establi…
The great learning
Long out of print, very rare nowadays - The Great Learning was one of British composer Cornelius Cardew's most important works, a series of seven "paragraphs" with text from the writings of Confucius and scored for generally large numbers of both trained and untrained performers. The original productions of this piece, in fact, served as the genesis of the legendary pro-amateur Scratch Orchestra. This 2000 release includes three of the paragraphs, two from the 1971 Deutsche Grammophon album that…