Roger Reynolds
Reynolds, a Pulitzer prize-winning American composer, was born in 1934 in Detroit, Michigan. He is known for his capacity to integrate diverse ideas and resources, for the seamless blending of traditional musical sounds and those newly enabled by technology.[1] His work responds to text of poetic (Beckett, Borges, Stevens, Ashbery) or mythological (Aeschylus, Euripides) origins. Roger Reynolds' compositions incorporate elements of theater, digital signal processing, dance, video, and real-time computer spatialization, in a signature multidimensionality of engagement.
Reynolds, a Pulitzer prize-winning American composer, was born in 1934 in Detroit, Michigan. He is known for his capacity to integrate diverse ideas and resources, for the seamless blending of traditional musical sounds and those newly enabled by technology.[1] His work responds to text of poetic (Beckett, Borges, Stevens, Ashbery) or mythological (Aeschylus, Euripides) origins. Roger Reynolds' compositions incorporate elements of theater, digital signal processing, dance, video, and real-time computer spatialization, in a signature multidimensionality of engagement.
Sonor Ensemble
1993 release ** "When the founders of the University of California, San Diego (UCSD) set out to develop a Department of Music, they decided to start with composers and leave it to them to attract performers and scholars to an environment that could be a home for exploration and invention, unceasing challenge and debate. The intention was to have musicians as committed to new perspectives and discoveries as, say, UCSD's physicists. Even before the department was established, Harry Partch was invi…
Electroacoustic Music
This CD presents two of the less often heard, most extreme and hardest to categorize sides of Roger Reynolds. The music for Ivanov is collaborative, utilitarian music for the theater. Versions/Stages is abstract experiment, music inspired by the desire to investigate compositional phenomena. Both are works seemingly far removed from Reynolds's concert music, and, additionally, they reveal yet another facet of the composer, his quarter-century contact with Japan.
The only instructions that Tada…
Whispers Out Of Time / Transfigured Wind II
If composers born in the 1920s deconstructed the classical tradition and destroyed the foundations of "normal" musical practice, it was left to the '30s generation to build a new universe amid the rubble. No one has participated more assiduously in that venture than Roger Reynolds (b. 1934). He has infused into avant-garde music a perspective cognizant of the extra-musical world. It seemed surprising, yet fitting, that in 1989, Reynolds nabbed the usually sedate Pulitzer Prize for music; he was …
From Behind The Unreasoning Mask
Clearly influenced by Varese's concept of "pure sound," the four works on From Behind the Unreasoning Mask privilege the exploration of sound as a means of musical expression. In the 1970s, the integration of new vocal and instrumental techniques and, sometimes, electronic sound sources into the composer's vocabulary broadened the tonal, textural--and, consequently--expressive palette immeasurably. Roger Reynolds's (b. 1934) From Behind the Unreasoning Mask (1975) presents an interplay between a…
All Known All White
2024 stock. "My intention … was to explore those situations in which a loss of orientation leads us more deeply into the moment itself. There is a certain aquatic feel to the music, in which the performers are joined with a complex and sonorous fabric of computer generated sound. […] The work is twenty minutes long, divided into three roughly equal sections. In the first, the primary aim of the performers is to match, submit to and intensify the taped sounds. The second, in which the synthesized…
Process And Passion
2024 stock. This is a recording that explores the "extra"- ordinary potential of the CD not only as a carrier of traditionally recorded instrumental sound (CD 1), but also offering a different view through binaural encoding of the same materials spatialized (CD 2). - Please note: the binaural recording is only available as part of the 2 cd set. not as a downloadFirst you are presented with two solo compositions-Kokoro and Focus a beam, emptied of thinking, outward…-and the duo Process and Passio…
Distant Images
A delicate and mysterious vinyl LP release of two works for chamber ensemble in which Reymolds addresses the dualistic nature of aural perception, approaching the elusive territory between the polarized pair and the unified whole.
Roger Reynolds at 85, Vol II: Piano Etudes
Reynolds’ Etudes allows the performer to not only choose the number of Etudes to be presented (even repeating them, if desired) as well as their order. In this way, the performer becomes a co-creator with the composer. All 12 Etudes are presented in this recording by Eric Huebner. Each etude inhabits a world distinctly its own. Reynolds dares a remarkable leap from the first to the second book. Rather than merely continue the premises and promises established by the first six etudes, the second …
The imagE - imAge Set
Neuma presents the complete recordings of Roger Reynolds’s "imAgE" series (2007-2015). The series features six pairs of comparatively short, related works that showcase several solo instruments: flute; viola; cello; contrabass; piano; and guitar. Each pair, composed for the same instrument, represents opposing ideas- the first is evocative, and the second is more articulate and punctuated. All works were composed for the performers on the album.
Roger Reynolds at 85, Vol 1: String Quartets
This release documents Roger Reynolds’ most recent string quartets in composer supervised first recordings by the acclaimed JACK Quartet. “Flight”, commissioned by Jack Quartet, arose from a collaborative process lasting almost five years. Its four movements reflect upon the stages of humanity’s aspirations for flight. Of “not forgotten” Reynolds writes: “As the years pass, one notices that certain elements in one’s days have unusual persistence in the mind. Such elements may involve individua…
Whispers Out Of Time
Roger Reynolds’ (b.1939) music is a bit of a paradox: intimate in detail, while on a broader scale it is epic. It fits well with the music of his friends: Toru Takemitsu and Iannis Xenakis. The three works on this disc were composed over a four-year period (1987-1990). All are first recordings, and the first complete disc of Reynolds’ orchestral music. Symphony[Myths], dedicated to Takemitsu, is for large orchestra: woodwinds in fours, piano, harp and an extended percussion section. It is see…
Epigram And Evolution: Complete Piano Works
These piano pieces were written at every turning point in Roger Reynolds’ creative life, marking his evolution. The music is driven by relentless attacks toward catharsis, but also bittersweet chords, and trembling, rolling, wandering or sweeping masses of sound. We feel as though we are being pushed around by forces beyond human imagination. This sense of being carried away by an uninterrupted undercurrent may be the image of the world we live in. The featured pianists are the legendary Yuji Ta…
Personae - The Vanity of Words - Variation
** 2021 Stock ** Neuma Records presents Personae - The Vanity Of Words - Variation by Roger Reynolds. Personae (1990) violin, ensemble, and tape; The Vanity OF Words [Voicespace V] (1986) tape; Variation (1988) piano. Baritone Vocals – Philip Larson. Composed By, Liner Notes – Roger Reynolds. Conductor – Rand Steiger. Ensemble – Sonor. Liner Notes – Thomas DeLio. Piano – Aleck Karis. Violin – János Négyesy.
The Paris Pieces
** 2021 Stock ** This is invaluable documentation of the electro-acoustic works of Roger Reynolds. The product of time spent at IRCAM, Pierre Boulez' Paris institute, some of the pieces bear a strong resemblance to "Repons," the highest-profile Boulez composition using the state-of-the-art IRCAM technology. This is even less surprising since they were recorded by Boulez's Ensemble Intercontemporain. "Archipelago" was composed in 1982-3, for 32 instruments and 8 tracks of computer generated sound…
Complete Cello Works
This first complete recording of Roger Reynolds' cello works is being released to celebrate the composer's 80th birthday. This special 2-CD set contains many first recordings. French cellist Alexis Descharmes and Reynolds have a close artistic relationship which led to this composer supervised set. Alexis Descharmes is an internationally regarded musician and specialist in contemporary music. He has worked with the Ensemble Intercontemporain, Ensemble Alternance and Ensemble Court-circuit…
Sanctuary
Roger Reynolds’ Sanctuary for percussion ensemble is conceived to be both visually and sonically dramatic. Composed for a spatially distributed ensemble and live electronics, the work makes spectacular use of DVD’s surround sound capabilities. Sanctuary is a malleable work intended to evolve with the experience of its creators (composer, performers, and technicians) and conceived so as to adapt to, and capitalize upon, the changing resources and contexts within which it is realized. Sanctuar…