Music from Switzerland

"Voice and Sky provides both a look at a previous work, On the Breeze – a series of public space interventions and text / sound installation – and an extension of that work in the form of a book and CD publication. My view is that an installation or …

Guitarist, composer and improviser Taku Sugimoto frequently performs overseas as well as in Japan. He's also a member of the Suidobashi Chamber Ensemble, which consists of five Japanese musicians. Stefan Thut is a Swiss cellist and composer. Both Sug…

Jason Kahn, Günter Müller and Norbert Möslang, all from Switzerland, comprise MKM trio, spontaneously founded in 2006 in Tokyo during their Japanese tour. They immediately achieved very fine results and collaborate since then. Their sound hovers betw…

Early to Late presents an inspired commission for Magnus Granberg and Jürg Frey, inviting each to compose for Ensemble Grizzana using the same brief: build a new work from Renaissance fragments. Granberg’s “How Vain Are All Our Frail Delights?” draws…

Edition of 300. A really great setting for drummer Gerry Hemmingway – an album that has him improvising live with trombonist Samuel Blaser – a fantastic musician who's one of the freshest trombone talents we've heard in years! In previous comments…

Collection Gustave Roud is a double album presenting five quietly radiant works by Swiss composer Jürg Frey, each created in dialogue with the poet and photographer Gustave Roud. The pieces - realized by a remarkable ensemble including Dante Boon, St…

Swiss composer Jürg Frey's six hour long electronic tape piece L'àme Est Sans Retenue I was recorded and assembled in 1997/98 and is now being released for the first time. It is the longest piece Frey has ever composed in his over 40 year career.In t…

University of South Carolina experimental music workshop, Greg Stuart (director). Kallam Ashmore (objects), Brian Bethea (saxophone), Erik Carlson (violin), Eric Dennis (objects), James Easteppe (guitar), Jürg Frey (clarinet), Michael Halbrook (objec…

Score for indeterminate ensemble by Swiss composer Stefan Thut (2012), here realised by Cristián Alvear, Cyril Bondi and D'Incise. The piece is governed by three categories of sonic material - 0 for faintly coloured noise, 1 for amalgam of noise and …

Space Text Sound documents text material used in three of my recent installations: An Attempt at Exhausting a Place in Hong Kong (After Perec) (2016), Drifting (2016) and Other Ghosts (2015). All three of these works investigate the nexus points betw…

New Jason Kahn double LP for analog electronics, voice, percussion, environmental recordings. "In the field of philosophy monads are often referred to as the elementary particles which combine to create a substance. In the context of this double LP, …

"..to shape a new consciousness, one in which cooperation triumphs over domination, and humility before nature's complexity challenges technological hubris. to move on and leave the religious, materialist and supremacist phases behind us. most dimens…

Raw field recordings. Immersion. Listening beyond sound. Nature speaks languages. we can “hear” them, but do we listen, do we try to understand? floods, tornados, land erosion, global warming, et cetera - these are but the most obvious examples of na…

An hour long piece consisting of classical instrumentation and orchestral arrangements using cello, violin and piano, plus recordings of wind, broken urban creatures, intimate situations, insect and amphibian sounds and mutations thereof, transmogrif…

Clarinet (and Piano) brings together Amsterdam composer Dante Boon and Swiss clarinetist Jürg Frey for three works at the porous boundary of composition and improvisation. In the long opening duo “O’Hare,” Boon’s gentle piano arpeggios glow beside Fr…

Jurg Frey - guitarist, alone played by Cristian Alvear. A double CD featuring all of Jurg Frey's music for solo guitar, beautifully interpreted by the Chilean guitarist Cristian Alvear, including a new piece written specially for Cristian. “Not one …

Hans Koch: Bassclarinet, Soprano Sax. Thomas Peter: Amplified Objects, Live Electronics. Recorded March 2014 in Biel / Bienne, Switzerland. “Music by bass clarinet and soprano saxophone player Hans Koch has been reviewed before and I particularly enj…

Kahn (American, living in Zurich) and Olive (Canadian, living in Japan) recorded these pieces while on tour in Japan in May 2014. This release features two unhurried explorations for radio, synthesizer, and mixing board (Kahn) and magnetic pickups (O…

2013 release ** From the early 2000s, Stefan Thut began a series of scores named according to the number of performers, somewhat like Cage's later works. Ranging from one performer to seven, including the more indeterminate "some" and "many," each sc…

Since their formation in 1998 at the Darmstadt Summer Courses for New Music, duo Contour have commissioned and performed over 40 new pieces by composers from Asia, Europe, New Zealand, Switzerland and the United States. Their collaborative work has c…