Composition / All styles

An astonishing album by Manuel Zurria with music by Alvin Lucier, William Basinski, John Duncan, Terry Riley, Pauline Oliveiros, Giancinto Scelsi among others, 2CD in deluxe packaging with 12p booklet... Foremost in my mind was the idea of being able…

**300 copies** Starting with an open dialogue seems like a good way to approach a collaboration. Almost a decade ago, that’s how Joana Gama (piano) and Luís Fernandes (electronics) started to work together, and both quickly understood that it was an …

Uncle Jard (1998) (saxophone quartet, piano, harpsichord, and voice) is a particularly compelling example of this. In this piece, Indian classical music and blues/jazz elements co-exist in a stylistically coherent whole: ragtime and raga have never b…

Composer/performer Joan La Barbara (b 1947) has been an influential figure in experimental music since the early 1970s. She has devoted her career to the exploration of the human voice as a multi-faceted instrument. Going far beyond traditional bound…

Defining the character of a composer’s music is always hazardous, especially if the composer is restless. But around Stefano Scodanibbio’s music we often return to the concept of wandering, which moreover reflects his life. This is testified by his w…

Painted Lights, a new album of compositions by Kui Dong is now available on Kairos Music. The record, which features performances by Juliet Petrus, Deirdre Brenner, Third Coast Percussion, Arditti Quartet, Koehne Quartett, Volti, Piedmont East Bay Ch…

Tip! First pinging our radar with her ‘Headflush’ album for Catch Wave back in 2019, Leila Bordreuil has a tactile, extreme approach to the cello, one that focuses on its visceral aspects in a way that mimics the most spirited, fraught and melancholy…

Building on the back of their stunning release of Ensemble 0’s rendering of "Femenine" issued earlier this year, Sub Rosa returns with "Three Extended Pieces for Four Pianos", featuring brand new recording of three seminal works composed by Julius Ea…

Robert Hughes, composer and author, is a graduate of the University of Buffalo (now SUNY Buffalo) and composition student of Aaron Copland, Carlos, Chavez, Luigi Dallapiccola, and Lou Harrison. He has written for symphony orchestra, chamber ensemble,…

*2022 stock* Robert Hughes, composer and author, is a graduate of the University of Buffalo (now SUNY Buffalo) and composition student of Aaron Copland, Carlos, Chavez, Luigi Dallapiccola, and Lou Harrison. He has written for symphony orchestra, cham…

“I am finally able to say that I write for orchestra— even if I have to make the orchestra myself.” — Robert Ashley Robert Ashley is known primarily for his theater-based pieces and television operas. This new release presents the world premiere reco…

Wolfram Schurig's musical career began with instrumental playing. After basic training on the recorder, his concert studies with Kees Boeke, one of the protagonists of historically informed performance practice, left their mark on him. This experienc…

**2022 stock** Sonatas and Interludes for Prepared Piano, a cycle of 20 short pieces for prepared piano (a piano modified by inserting nuts and bolts and other objects between the piano strings in order to produce percussive and otherworldly sound ef…

The Plains at Gordium was composed from June to August 2004 and is dedicated to Charlotta Kotik. The incentive to compose the piece came from a percussion group in Brno, Czech Republic, who asked me for a piece of music. Not being a commission-discip…

Just arrived, this is the newest edition RZ release focused on a radical electronic (+ Ensemble) music by Clara Maida "During the first years of my compositional research, my goal was to mark out, in my music, the flux of the psychic energy at work i…

German composer Michael Reudenbach's works and studies from 1991-2009 are presented in a six-panel digipack with a 22-page booklet of notes, images and photos

At his third release for our Zeit Composer Series, the talented Italian flute player Manuel Zurria has given birth to some of the most heartbreaking music ever published by Die Schachtel. A moving and incredibly clever transcription for flutes, gla…

Born in 1934, Christian Wolff is the last surviving member of the group of composers that also included Morton Feldman and Earle Brown, which gathered around John Cage in New York in the 1950s. Wolff's own music has remained faithful to that Cageian …

Olivier Messiaen's Harawi (1945), a cycle of twelve songs for soprano and piano on the composer's own text, sung by Sarah Maria Sun with Stefka Perifanova, on a deluxe 2LP set with a 12-page book.

Steve Reich's Sextet (1984) and the Pulitzer Prize winning Double Sextet (2007) together on one release for the first time, played by the Danish ensemble Ekkozone under percussionist and conductor Mathias Reumert.

Six modern song cycles for soprano and piano by Holliger, Sciarrino, Lachenmann, Kurtág, Rihm and Bernhard Lang, sung by Sarah Maria Sun with pianist Jan Philip Schulze, with several first recordings.

John Cage works for a speaking percussionist, including Bonnie Whiting's realization 51'15.657" and Music for Two (By One), the early voice and piano songs, and a piece by Allen Otte built on Cage's methods.

Marc Chan's My Wounded Head 3, an open-ended piano piece inspired by Bach's Passion chorales, played in a 72-minute continuous recording by Rob Haskins.

Twenty-four tracks of saxophone music by Henry Cowell and Percy Grainger, many of them first recordings, for saxophone ensembles, piano and orchestra, directed and played by Ulrich Krieger with guest ensembles and the Glens Falls Symphony Orchestra.

Structured improvisation compositions by violinist Malcolm Goldstein, ranging from jazzy to dense microtonal sound, in which he plays with the Montreal-based Ratchet Orchestra as composer, soloist and ensemble member.

Volume 7 of Mode's Edition Christian Wolff, on 2CD: the composer plays his own Incidental Music (2003-04), written for a Merce Cunningham Dance Company Event, and the ongoing series Keyboard Miscellany, on piano and melodica.

DVD centred on Iannis Xenakis's Linaia-Agon for trombone, French horn and tuba, in two performances with Benny Sluchin, plus Zythos for trombone and six marimbas, a 78-minute film by Sluchin and an interactive interface.

Roger Reynolds's complete works for cello, on 2CD and composer supervised, with many first recordings, played by Alexis Descharmes with Ensemble Court-circuit, violin, electronics and piano, and readings by the composer.

Four chamber works by Chris Newman, all first recordings, played by Berlin's Ensemble KNM conducted by Steffen Tast, with Newman as vocal soloist in Cologne.

Five chamber works by Tim Hodgkinson, co-founder of Henry Cow, for ensemble and electronic sound, bass clarinet and strings, and string quartet with harp, trombone and synthesizer, played by Hyperion Ensemble and others.

Four-CD survey of American piano music from 1911 to 1991: 62 works by 48 composers, from Ives and Antheil to Zappa, including seven first recordings, played by Yvar Mikhashoff.

First commercial release of John Cage's Variations V, the 1966 NDR Hamburg television production with David Tudor, Gordon Mumma and the Cunningham Dance Company, with the Paris 1966 audio, dancer interviews and a 12-page book.

Six chamber works by Keeril Makan performed by the International Contemporary Ensemble and pianist Cory Smythe, including Mercury Songbirds, Afterglow for solo piano and Mu for prepared violin played by Erik Carlson.

Four works by Johannes Schöllhorn: the concert piece clouds and sky for piano and orchestra with the WDR orchestra, rota for contrabass clarinet and string quartet, red and blue for percussion sextet, and a self-same song for solo contrabass clarinet…

First complete recording of John Cage's works for organ, played by Gary Verkade on the organ of Gammelstad Church, Sweden: Some of 'The Harmony of Maine', Souvenir, ASLSP and Organ2/ASLSP, with 4'33'' on the DVD only.

Helmut Lachenmann performs with and supervises Ensemble Signal in Zwei Gefühle, Musik mit Leonardo for speaker and ensemble, and plays three of his own piano works, recorded after a four-concert tour of the programme.

John Cage's early percussion chamber works from 1935-1942, including the three Constructions, Trio, Quartet and Living Room Music, played by Third Coast Percussion, with the first movement of Living Room Music recorded in the Ford House.

DVD of French-school percussion theatre by Aperghis, Kagel, Globokar, Alvarez and Drouet, performed by Aiyun Huang and colleagues and directed by Hans Fjellestad and Anton Cabaleiro, the first commercial video release of these works.

First CD recording of Songbirdsongs by John Luther Adams, a cycle for piccolos, ocarinas, flutes and percussion based on real bird songs, with Callithumpian Consort, plus Strange Birds Passing.

Three of John Cage's late number pieces, Five, Seven and Thirteen, recorded in 1993-94 by Essential Music of New York and released for the first time. Thirteen, Cage's final completed work, is heard in only its second recording.