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 The Avantgarde series serves as a historical document for a time of radical change in musical thinking and the breaking of artistic boundaries.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…
Peach and Tomato
Leonor Falcón and Sana Nagano met in graduate school at Queens College in 2015, and have since collaborated in many projects. On this release, ‘Peach and Tomato,’ the duo offers fresh new compositions that display both their sense of imagination, and their deep appreciation for classical influences. This is particularly true with their version of two movements from the Prokofiev Sonata for Two Violins and the composition Etude 1 and 2, an homage to Bela Bartok and a fluent conversation between t…
Solo For Cello
The Trilogy Tapes’ first CD presents a studio recording of Jack Sheen’s Solo for Cello, a 35’ work written for Anton Lukoszevieze, the cellist, artist, and Director of the group Apartment House, renowned for their recent recordings of John Cage, Morton Feldman, and Jim O’Rourke, amongst many others.
“Jack Sheen’s Solo for Cello and fixed audio is an extended exploration of the resonant body of the cello, but also a kind of flickering, glitchy and incessant ‘moto perpetuo’, of extreme intensity…
One Arm Bandits
"One Arm Bandits is an hour-long piece in four parts, scored for four cellists. The cellists play only open strings, thus using only their right arms, never fingering the strings with the left hand. Recorded in Alvin Lucier's dining room, this work features cellists Tyler J. Borden, Laura Cetilia, Charles Curtis and Judith Hamann. Lucier oversaw and produced the recording, and approved the final takes. One Arm Bandits was an important project for Alvin Lucier. The idea for the piece goes back to…
Woodwind Multiples
Biggest Tip! Mary Jane Leach is a composer focussed on the physicality of sound, its acoustic properties and how they interact with space. She has played an instrumental role in NYC’s pioneering Downtown scene alongside Arthur Russell, Ellen Fullman, Peter Zummo, Philip Corner and Arnold Dreyblatt, as well as devoting years to the preservation and reappraisal of Julius Eastman’s work since his death in 1990, compiling the ‘Unjust Malaise’ 3CD set in 2005 and editing the 2015 book ‘Gay Guerrilla:…
Jerusalem
From beloved composer Emahoy Tsege Mariam Gebru, a revelatory new album of piano pieces, unreleased or virtually inaccessible until now! Emahoy Tsege Mariam Gebru is a true original – an Ethiopian nun whose recordings have funded orphanages back home since the early ’60s. Her compositions and unique playing style live somewhere between Erik Satie, Debussy, liturgical music of the Coptic Ethiopian Church, and Ethiopian traditional music. It is some of the most moving piano music you will ever he…
Sound Plantings
Jonas Gerigk is a double bass player who is active as a composer/performer in the fields of improvised music. In addition, he collaborates in projects of contemporary composers and is involved in the realization of their works. A main focus of his work deals with the term Explorative Music. He is doing intensive research on the expansion of the sound spectrum of the acoustic double bass. With a physical as well as technical approach and the use of objects he explores the variety of timbres of hi…
A Basement Suite
“Even without detecting in the figure of the refugee or exile the emblematic figure of our time, the loosening of the bonds with a place of origin is no longer rewarded by a search for a promised land. The loss of a deep-rootedness that would provide an identity is no longer perceived as a lack that needs to be filled. We strangers in our own land, and conversely we feel at home everywhere.”Mario Perniola, Ritual Thinking (tr. Massimo Verdicchio)The Italian philosopher Mario Perniola, in his 200…
Spring & Neap
In 1996 I went on a tour of Japan with Orchestra Carbon; a highlight was the Music Merge Festival in Tokyo. A colorful selection of wonderful musicians from the international scene met there for three days at the Shinjuku Pit Inn: Michiyo Yagi, Otomo Yoshihide, Sachiko M, Jim O'Rourke, Yumiko Tanaka, David Grubbs and others. In addition to performing with Orchestra Carbon and my solo Tectonics, I was allowed to develop a new algorithmic template for a small orchestra of festival soloists under m…
A Dread of Voids
Two beautiful recent works for ensemble by Australian composer Anthony Pateras, one performed in Naarm / Melbourne, Australia, the other in Berlin.
Patterned Language: Lizzy Welsh violin Erkki Veltheim violinChloë Sobek double bass Alexander Garsden guitarAnthony Pateras piano, celeste & sines
A Dread of Voids: Jess Aszodi voice Jon Heilbron double bassSam Dunscombe bass clarinet Rebecca Lane bass fluteAnthony Pateras piano & conductor
Fragments of Reincarnation
A 45-minute single movement piece for shō, Hammond organ and cello, exploring ways of combining the differing tuning systems inherent in the instruments.
Violin and String Quartet
Dating from two years before the composer's death in 1987, 'Violin and String Quartet' lasts two and a quarter hours, throughout which the strings weave gently shifting patterns of sound. It is one of Feldman's most beautiful pieces.
Echo Stane
Nine solos for Hardanger fiddle, composed and performed by Sarah-Jane Summers, a virtuosic Scottish musician based in Norway. Sarah-Jane's music stretches from traditional folk music to experimental work. This album is one of experimental solos, but nonetheless contains references to traditional music both in the titles of the pieces, and sometimes in the music itself.
Blumenstück
Blumenstück for piano was composed in 1984 as a sound meditation for private use and it celebrates the beauty of the piano sound through tenderness and slowness. All the sounds of the work derived from a word list that lists 168 flower names. All the letters in these names were assigned to notes on the keyboard according to a fixed system. Each sound has to be played softly and as long as possible. After the attack, all sounds should fade away into silence...
Piano Songs
Celebrating Meredith Monk as composer, these Piano Songs give us a world at once playful and earnest. Written or derived from work composed between 1971 and 2006, the pieces inhabit Monk’s unique universe, as played by two of new music’s most distinguished interpreters, pianists Ursula Oppens and Bruce Brubaker. These pieces are ‘songs’ because they have strong roots in Monk’s pieces for voice, and because they are direct, specific, and imagistic. Meredith Monk on composing for two pianos: “I de…
On Behalf Of Nature
For five decades, vocalist-composer Meredith Monk has explored what she calls “primordial utterance,” or non-verbal vocal sound that lay beneath and beyond language, expressing “that for which we have no words.” This exploration has led her to create music that The New Yorker describes as simultaneously “visceral and ethereal, raw and rapt,” an art that “sings, dances and meditates on timeless forces.” With her latest, multivalent ECM New Series album, Monk aimed to address ecology and climate c…
On Giacometti
Hania Rani announces "On Giacometti" a tender meditation on the life and art of Alberto Giacometti and family. "On Giacometti" is a collection of beautiful recordings inspired by the renowned artist and family and features some of Rani's most profoundly delicate compositions to date. Invited by film director Susanna Fanzun, to score her forthcoming documentary on the legendary artist Alberto Giacometti, Hania Rani took herself to the Swiss mountains to compose in blissful isolation. As Rani expl…
Ridgeway
A set of compositions by composer Kate Moore written around the concept of connecting memory of places and sensory experience, the album centres on the two major pieces, Ridgeway (2009) and The Dam (2015). Moore is at her most expressive in those immersive, visceral works, as she refers to personal experience and memories. In the title piece, Ridgeway, the giant white horse of Uffington, set in the dramatic prehistoric landscape where Moore lived for a time as a child, comes to life as in a powe…
becoming in shadows ~ of being touched
It's hard to parse exactly what you're listening to when you immerse yourself in Jason Doell's new recording, Becoming In Shadows ~ Of Being Touched. The old adage about never judging a book by its cover may often hold true but somehow Xuan Ye's beautiful design speaks volumes about both the sonics and structure of this bewildering document by the Toronto-based composer and sound artist. Though the imagery is blatantly computer-generated, it's rife with references to vegetation, bones, water, an…
Haizetxe
*300 copies limited edition* Timeless minimalist approach to composition braced by repetition and playfulness. Alberto Lizarralde’s music reflects calm, focus and intimacy. Ethereal and atmospheric, his pieces operate within the digital as well as the analogue realm in equal measures. Sampling, Midi sequencing and field recordings are the instrumentation used in these 15 songs recorded on a four track reel to reel tape. Highest possible recommendation for fans of Suso Saiz, Jon Hassell, Eno or H…