Composition / All styles

2009 release ** "Two sets of pieces written for the duo Contour (Stephen Altoff-trumpet, Lee Forrest Ferguson-percussion), a potentially unwieldy combination. Frey's "22 sächelchen" (small things) is rather just that, 22 miniatures lasting 32 1/2 minutes that vary from quiet reductionism to outright fanfares. I guess some of the latter sort are a bit...shocking, at least in a Wandelweiser context. But there are also oblique references to jazz (the mute in #11), processional music (the tympani in…

2007 release ** Fold in; fold out: the breathing of the accordion. On this CD the accordion unfolds in a very special way, unusually close to the instrument. Four works, four worlds that seem to know each other; refer to each other like a greeting from far away.Hearing John Cage's ,,Cheap Imitation" played on accordion gives you the impression of folk music from an unknown, probably non-existent country. This music comes from nowhere, goes nowhere, is forever on its way.....Like ,,Sam Lazaro Bro…

2009 release ** The score of "Stones" consists of just a few lines of text:Make sounds with stones, draw sounds out of stones, using a number of sizes and kinds (and colours); for the most part discretely; sometimes in rapid sequences. For the most part striking stones wfth stones, but also stones on other surfaces (inside the open head of a drum, for instance) or other than struck (bowed, for instance, or amplified). Do not break anything.  Christian Wolff, STONES, (from: Prose Collection, 1968…

Documentation '20 Years Inventionen', CD III. The string quartet 'sei-jaku' by German composer Klaus Lang, documented on this CD, was performed on 6/30/2002 in the Großer Sendesaal of the SFB Berlin by the Arditti String Quartet during the festival Inventionen 2002.

*2025 stock* Born in Athens, Greek composer Zinovia Arvanitidi is best known as one half of the duo Pill-Oh in Vanishing Mirror as well as her debut solo The Gift of Affliction. Zinovia returns with her first solo piano album titled Ivory, and like its precursors, further highlights her mastery in crafting piano ambiances of austere beauty and melancholia, led by mesmerizing melodies and evolving cinematic textures. Fully self-produced, the now France-based composer navigates through her own tim…

The album Nagual by Matt Choboter is a sonic ritual that dissolves the boundaries between composition and improvisation, tradition and innovation. Drawing on just intonation, Balinese tuning systems, and South Indian rhythmic theory, Choboter and his ensemble craft a vivid, shape-shifting musical world—at once ancient and otherworldly. Nagual resists the comforts of familiar forms, embracing ambiguity, sensory multiplicity, and intuitive collective listening. This music does not follow a path—it…

Himorogi is the tenth album by Ironomi. Divining Japanese mythology and its relationship with nature, the new album is an aural pastorale that fosters deeper territory in the realm of spiritual searching through dreamy, drifting piano, 17-string koto (jūshichi-gensō) and new form electronic processing. ironomi’s desire to commune with mother Earth and its season’s colors has always served as a continual inspiration for their music. In himorogi, the duo delves into a more spiritual focus in their…

Twilight was Haruka Nakamura’s second album, released in the summer of 2010. The album spawned the Haruka Nakamura classics such as twilight, ongaku no aru guukei, curtain call, faraway and hikari. Upon release it was seen (and still is) as a haruka nakamura masterpiece. twilight marks a milestone not only for the artist but also remains the best-selling album on Kitchen. Label in over a decade. Recorded in a studio overlooking the ocean as a tribute to the sight of the expiring sun falling slow…

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…

As a development of the work done by “I lost myself in finding you”, the trio of Rasha Ragab, Christoph Nicolaus and Lucio Capece is joined by cellist Judith Hamann. In this Quartet piece Capece created the structure, time line and the tones combinations, taking as a departure point the tuning of one specific Stone Harp, that takes the group into a carefully calibrated microtonal tuning. The piece is a slow  conversation, alternating long tones and overtones, repeated sequences of multiphonics, …

To sonically modify sound, not as a composerly or listenerly injunction but as a condition of its possibility: such is the task of Elizabeth Hoffman. Hers is not merely a music of the "verb" - that composers "do" something or "perform" something on the sonic. Hers is an "adverbial" music. Above all, adverbial music modifies - sound, yes, but more fundamentally the space in which sound appears and the temporality that it solicits as it vanishes, always. Adverbial music, reticently and generously,…

*75 copies limited edition* On Not here but somewhere, the Japanese ambient guitarist crafts freeform soundscapes that feel less composed than discovered. Each track unfolds like a whispered conversation between emotion and environment — guitar lines ripple like wind over water, subtly shifting direction, as if carried downstream by a current of pure intuition. The result is a quietly enveloping odyssey, where every piece becomes a new place, felt more than defined.

EM Records is proud to present 8 Automated Works, the first full release by Componium Ensemble, an "indeterminate chamber music" ensemble helmed by Spencer Doran of Visible Cloaks. The project is inspired by the long history of automated musical instruments, beginning with the ancient Greek Archimedes and further developed by the Banū Mūsā brothers in 9th century Baghdad, who "first perfected the concept of a programmable, automated musician: a mechanically controlled flute which used hydraulic …

The music of Ron Caines arranged for solo piano, string quartet and piano quintet by Laura Cole.

Theme features three works from Alvin Lucier. Music for Piano with Magnetic Strings is a work in which the strings of a piano sound by themselves. Several EBows (small electromagnets used primarily with electric guitars) which would cause the piano strings to vibrate and sound are placed on the strings of the piano. The pianist works from a prose score which describes the process and suggests she freely position and reposition five EBows on the piano strings, creating strands of sounds of v…

• Limited edition of 750 numbered copies on yellow vinyl. 180 gram audiophile vinyl •  In the pantheon of American experimental music, few works possess the historical gravitas and enduring influence of Terry Riley's A Rainbow in Curved Air, released in 1969 on CBS Records' short-lived "Music of Our Time" series. This album represents nothing less than a seismic shift in the trajectory of Western art music, establishing compositional and technological precedents that would reverberate through fi…

In intensive collaboration with the Swedish ensemble Lipparella, which specializes in creating contemporary repertoire for baroque instruments and countertenor, these 10 timeless contemporary songs were created. Peter Söderberg, the founder of Lipparella tells: "After having met by chance at the Ultraschall Festival in Berlin in 2019, Walter Zimmermann and I started discussing whether it would be possible to perform some of his music by Lipparella. After suggesting some already existing works, w…

* 2021 Stock * Sais. is a piece about cows. Cows are a topic quite familiar for a composer who lives in an Austrian mountain village at 1000 metres hight. He finds them right in front of his door. The cows that are grazing on a juicy green under a bright blue sky - so we might imagine - are one side of the trio. Within the 100 page long score we meet them in the shape of a line of overtones. Just as natural as the life of a cow on an alpine meadow is the musical material that builds SAIS. as a s…

Veiled Erosion, the debut album by Anqi Liu, invites listeners into a world of spectral nuance, cultural memory, and fragile connection. Her music breathes through thresholds—between noise and tone, breath and bow, self and other. In the closing Etude for Friends, Liu renders friendship as a sonic practice: intimate, unstable, and quietly transformative. Drawing from Mongolian long song and microtonal chamber traditions, she composes sound as a site of listening, learning, and being-together. Ve…

A meeting of worlds. A new kind of resonance. Godtet's upcoming release captures the alchemy of their landmark performance with the Sydney Symphony Orchestra at the Sydney Opera House. At once bold and nuanced, this album explores the friction between improvisation and orchestration. Where the orchestra is anchored in fully composed material, Godtet remains free – navigating the work's harmonic architecture with instinct and spontaneity. Structures are fixed, but expression is fluid. Orchestrate…

A Bridge Between Spaces traces a decade of Andrew Greenwald’s singular compositional journey—across rigorously constructed sonic terrains and into freer, more intuitive musical dialogues. Drawing from two major violin cycles and culminating in the expansive title work, this album captures a shift from analytical exploration to expressive openness. With sound worlds that feel both extraterrestrial and deeply human, Greenwald’s music invites us into a landscape where metaphors fail and sound speak…

2002 release (RARE) ** Transfigured Wind III (1984) for flute, ensemble, and tape / Ambages (1965) for flute / Mistral (1985) for chamber ensemble. "Pierre Boulez was widely praised as an innovator for his Rèpons when he premiered it at IRCAM in 1981. This is a piece where a computer samples the live sound of a chamber ensemble, recalculates it to a programmed algorhythm and then scatters the sounds back out into the hall. Not to knock Boulez, but American composer Roger Reynolds had been workin…

1996 release (light storage wear) ** Gianfranco Pernaiachi’s Abendland is a solitary and profound piano solo meditation on sound and silence. The piano hints, rings out and whispers. The sound is crystal clear; essential and like a prism that divides sound into mysterious harmonics and distant resonances. "Abendland“ is a work of great musical poetry, a musical meditation by a composer warranting close attention.

2012 release ** "Complex and expressive vocal writing, blending elements of traditional choral music with more modern, experimental techniques. Wolfgang Rihm has not usurped the immense reputation he enjoys in contemporary artistic life. The works of this worthy heir to the German musical tradition invariably oscillate between monumentality – immutable blocks of sound – and ethereal movement – instrumental or vocal lines opening towards the infinite. His choral music is characterised by a syncre…

2012 release ** "Number 4 of the Salzburg Festival “Kontinent” series was dedicated to Wolfgang Rihm. We have compiled a selection of the works for your conven- ience – including a first recording! Wolfgang Rihm once claimed that the most appropriate statements about his oeuvre are his own compositions. In 2010 the Salzburg Festival adopted this approach. The result was a “Kontinent Rihm” which placed the manifold tone colors and modes of expression created by the former Stockhausen student into…

2019 release ** "In most of Ana Sokolović’s work, an extra-musical element serves as a source of inspiration. This particular compositional process is intimately linked to the importance of “pluralities” for Sokolović; a diversity of approaches, putting different art forms in dialogue. Short Stories by Sokolović’s long-term collaborator, Quatuor Bozzini, enables us to listen to the encounter taking place between the composer’s artistic sensitivity and four of her sources of inspiration. In the r…

1991 release **

2011 release ** "Stemming from the homonymous biennial festival in the Czech Republic, Ostravská Banda – with its twenty musicians – thrives under the direction of Peter Kotik, a veteran of unconventional orchestration and artistic director of the S.E.M. Ensemble in New York City. Standing out among the large group is Joseph Kubera – a name already referenced in a contemporary context – a talented pianist with a resume rich with collaborations with masters such as Alvin Lucier, Robert Ashley, Mo…

2019 release ** "Dust is a collection of music for solo violin and electronics. Daniel describes the record as 'a full exploration of the sound world a violin allows. The electronics meld with, lift, surpass and dance around the organic rawness of the strings. The piece is all my years of not conceding or diluting myself to the needs of others, compressed into one long musical expression. It is hope and birth and death and melancholy'. Music by: Valgeir Sigurðsson, Edmund Finnis, Heinrich Ignaz …

One night, not too long ago at Union Pool in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, Ryan Sawyer introduced his piece, “For Those Who Wish to Sing, Will Always Find a Song.” He invited the audience to sing along at any point they felt moved to, “just abstract ‘oohs’ and ‘aahs,’ or ‘oms,’ or whatever.” The small stage was crowded with musicians – The Shaker Ensemble – which that night included Jessica Pavone on viola, Nate Wooley on trumpet, Laura Cocks on flute, Stuart Bogie on clarinet, cellist Lester St. Loui…

* 2021 Stock ** During the decades following the Second World War, all eyes shifted toward New York, a city which, at that moment, played host to some of brightest creative minds of the century. Innovations were abound. Visual artists, writers, thinkers, musicians, and composers continuously pushed into previously unthinking ground. While the United States had been previously known to give birth to a wild and distinct breed of composer, from Charles Ives to Nancarrow, Harry Partch, Cowell, and b…

*2022 Stock.* Natürliche Dauern (Natural Durations, 3rd Hour from Klang) for piano (2005/06) is presented in a 2 CD set. Some of these short piano etudes (24 in all) are predicated on the decay times of sustained, pianistic attacks, while others are fascinating explorations of melodic and rhythmic contrast. These final, late-era piano pieces are truly beautiful postcards of shape and color.- Stockhausenspace.blogspot.com

*2022 Stock.* Samstag aus Licht is the second opera written for Licht, Samstag aus Licht. This is a darkly humorous 4 act opera on 4 CDs, featuring flute, piano, wind (jazz) band and male choir. The 3rd Scene is presented in both the complete version and as the aborted strike version. In the latter case, the performance is halted before its completion by a revolt from the wind band members (for playing past contracted working hours). If you only get one Licht opera, this is the one I'd recommend…

Alvin Lucier (1931 – 2021) was one of the most influential American minimalists. Some call him "sound physician" as his compositions are often based on acoustic research settings. His pieces tend to turn inside-out the properties of space and instruments: poems based on acoustic settings! zeitkratzer worked with the composer in Dijon, France in 2008, and presented his music in various places. These recordings have been realized at Philharmonie Luxembourg that turned out to be the ideal space for…

*100 copies limited edition* Still Forms in Air is the debut album by Italian composer Francesca Marongiu under her own name. It draws inspiration from mid-1980s Japanese ambient music — Hiroshi Yoshimura, Satoshi Ashikawa, Takashi Kokubo — and, more subtly, from Italian experimental echoes rooted in both personal and cultural memory. The album unfolds like suspended time, like architecture that quietly bears witness to the shifts that have shaped our cities and the ways we live in them. These t…

Works by Luigi Nono for flute and live electronics from his 1980s collaboration with Roberto Fabbriciani, with Musiche per Manzù for tape (1969) and Fabbriciani's own tribute for piccolo, Omaggio a Luigi Nono.

This bundle includes the latest Blume releases, two groundbreaking archival discoveries that illuminate the hidden connections between American experimental music's founding generation and contemporary European avant-garde. Doris Dennison's Earth Interval (1956) emerges from seven decades of obscurity - a pioneering percussion composition by John Cage's forgotten collaborator, brilliantly realized by Third Coast Percussion. Swiss composer Jürg Frey's first LP presents his crystalline Wandelweise…

Blume presents the first ever vinyl release of Swiss composer Jürg Frey's "Extended Circular Music", offering a unique perspective on composition, sound, landscape, and circular music from one of the most distinctive voices in contemporary avant-garde composition.

2003 release ** "People uncertain about the appeal of an album of percussion music should know two things up front. First, the three longest pieces on Drums Along the Pacific feature a non-percussion solo instrument. Second, Lou Harrison's interest in percussion music was split equally between rhythm and melody. In percussion-only pieces like "Simfony #13" and "Song of Quetzalcóatl" -- both performed here by the William Winant Percussion Group -- he uses sets of instruments with different pitche…

Tip! Explicit isolation is the third album by the international collective E/I, led by composer and percussionist Szymon Pimpon Gąsiorek. The group’s seven core members came together while studying at Copenhagen’s Rhythmic Music Conservatory and the Royal Danish Academy of Music. For this latest release, they are joined by Slovenian musicians Samo Kutin (hurdy-gurdy) and Kaja Draksler (organ), alongside Danish tuba player Rasmus Svale. The three compositions distill sound down to its essential e…