Composition / All styles

This collection of two tonal works by composers known for their non-tonal compositional style is a fine example of contemporary approaches to sacred choral music. Salvatore Martirano’s Mass is a setting of a traditional Latin Mass whilst Donald Martino’s Seven Pious Pieces sets religious texts by Robert Herrick. The vocal writing is masterful with transparent textures and flowing contrapuntal lines.

George Lewis (b 1952) combines an astonishing level of creativity with trenchant critiques of many traditional conceptions about experimental music. The four compositions on this album reference a wide range of ideas, from rhetoric in Ancient Rome to actor network theory, and the album's eponymous composition finds its grounding in the concept of the "assemblage," (or agencement in French) a pragmatic, material, non-teleological approach to composition. Among the album's compositions, Mnemosis (…

While certain recognizable fingerprints are found throughout the body of Daniel Lentz's (b. 1942) work, he has never been content to settle within one particular style or mode of music for long, moving ever forward in an evolutional continuum, an overriding arc that defines his growth as a composer -- beginning with traditional music, diverting into electronic music, moving into performance art pieces for his various touring groups, then sallying into minimalism, followed by work distinguished f…

Born in Michigan but for most of his life a true Californian, Robert Erickson (1917-1997) had a reputation as a maverick. His musical path was never a straight line, nor, really, a line at all but a landscape, with ranges of features rather than mere points of interest. He was a profound and original musical thinker who embraced the expressive possibilities of all music, from the Western classics and moderns of his own early education to Indian and Balinese traditions and all manner of contempor…

Charles Ives composed nearly 200 songs throughout his life. Wiley Hitchcock, in the thorough introduction to his 2004 critical edition 129 Songs, described the Ives song canon as the contents of a kind of scrapbook or commonplace book or chapbook, or even a desk drawer. Into such a receptacle Ives tossed irregularly, if not casually, his reactions Ñin the form of songsÑto memories, personalities, places, events, discoveries, ideas, visions, and fantasies in his life.' Whether popular tale or per…

Lejaren Hiller (1924-1994) is, understandably, best known for his computer-assisted compositions and works utilizing electronics. The three pieces included in this collection span a crucial fifteen-year period in Hiller's career. The first was written two years before Quartet No. 4 for Strings, The ILLIAC Suite. The second work was written three years into his time as a music professor at the University of Illinois, while the final sonata in this collection was written during his second year at …

music for bowed string instruments consists mostly of music composed by Malcolm Goldstein (b. 1936) between 2018 and 2019 while living in Montréal, Québec. The impulse to compose this series came from Goldstein’s experience as a teacher and performer of Béla Bartók’s 44 Duos for Two Violins (1931). Whereas Bartók’s series features a clear progression to the pieces, gradually increasing in technical and musical complexity from beginning to end, music for bowed string instruments has no such seque…

Wrestling with the notion of balancing both formal construction and creative spontaneity has allowed Scott Fields (b 1952) to compose a powerful body of work with ties to extramusical concerns from the realms of literature, philosophy, and science. Seven Deserts (2019), rather than operating from a fixed narrative structure with predetermined events, lays out the ground rules for a manifestation that is absolutely identical in every performance in its operations and sonic vocabulary, but with ea…

Born in Michigan but for most of his life a true Californian, Robert Erickson (1917-1997) had a reputation as a maverick. His musical path was never a straight line, nor, really, a line at all but a landscape, with ranges of features rather than mere points of interest. He was a profound and original musical thinker who embraced the expressive possibilities of all music, from the Western classics and moderns of his own early education to Indian and Balinese traditions and all manner of contempor…

We want to fabricate a new music. We imagine a situation in which the sounding together of tones is never taken for granted, is continually renewed and reinvented. We know that the effect of any set of simultaneous tones, by means of the multiplication implicit in the harmonic series, totals much more than the number of notes played. A room can be made to vibrate with hundreds of frequencies by a single chord. We want to enter into a universe of harmony in which it becomes possible to hear into …

Rory Cowal is a distinctive pianist, one who draws liberally on classical chops, ample experience with improvisation, and a predilection for the new and uncharted. This makes him especially attractive to composers who wish to blur the boundaries between traditional styles and genres. A musical adventurer at heart, Cowal seems drawn to challenging and unusual projects. The eight pieces on this CD reflect this willingness to experiment, to not just play the same old (now canonic) warhorses of the …

Compositions performed by Bethany Beardslee and Lynne Weber (sopranos), Jerry Kudern and Robert Miller (pianos). The four works on this recording span a period of a decade and are among the best of Milton Babbitt’s output, tape and otherwise. Philomel, for soprano, recorded soprano, and synthesized sound, is one of the undisputed classics of electroacoustic music and this is its definitive recording. Two versions of Phonemena —one for soprano and piano, the other for soprano and tape— another vi…

The Piano Concerto No. 2 is an experiment in classical form. The work contains the same sudden juxtapositions and abrupt contrasts of mood as his futurist music. But the excesses of his recent Ballet mécanique are compensated for by an almost spare, baroque orchestration and motifs that draw on Bach as much as on Stravinsky. In three movements, George Antheil employs a more restrained but still exuberant style. The beautifully meditative slow movement is followed by a virtuosic and compelling to…

The harp is a strange and compelling instrument that in its technological ancientness beckons composers and listeners alike to bask in its heavenly aura. Like hand drums and acoustic guitars, the immediacy of a harp's sound production demands an intimate, one-on-one relationship between listener and instrument/performer. This intimacy is why composers of all stripes write music for harp－it strips away habit and affectation. Its limits are challenges that distill the essence of a composer's style…

The intense individuality of Morton Feldman's (1926?1987) art and its 'painterly' aspect have tended to push his rich output of works into a zone all of their own, surrounded by a moat of stillness. This recording attempts the reverse process -- to bring his choral works (the previously unrecorded Chorus and Instruments, Voices and Instruments 1, Voices and Instruments 2, and The Swallows of Salangan) into a 'gallery' of other choir compositions of his times. Through the interaction with works o…

James Tenney (1934-2006) was one of the most versatile figures in contemporary American music. Apart from creating a large, wide-ranging, and fascinating body of compositions, more than a hundred of them, he was one of the key music theorists of the late twentieth century. This CD set offers complete recordings of one of the most important of Tenney's later sets of pieces-Spectrum Pieces 1-8, the first five of which were written in Toronto in 1995 and the last three in 2001, after he moved to Va…

Just Asked whether he would describe his music as “Sound for the sake of sound,” James Tenney (1934–2006) replied, “It’s sound for the sake of perceptual insight—some kind of perceptual revelation.” This release aptly demonstrates Tenney’s deep exploratory fascination with the nature and potentialities of aural perception. His attraction to these topics was simultaneously intellectual and sensuous, and its musical products at once invite both sustained reflection and the most immediate of corpor…

Closing the achingly long four years wait since her last full-length, the American composer/percussionist Sarah Hennies returns with “Motor Tapes”, her second release with New World Records. Comprising three astounding new pieces, made in collaboration with three acclaimed ensembles - ensemble 0, Talea Ensemble, and Ensemble Dedalus - that simultaneously encounter her moving into new uncharted territory, while remaining rooted in her singular practice, exploring musical, sociopolitical, and psyc…

Just when you think you are grasping the breadth and quality of the music of Julius Eastman (1940 - 1990), a recording such as Julius Eastman: The Zürich Concert shows up, and you have to go back and reassess his work and wonder what will show up next. This recording is from a 1980 solo seventy-minute improvisatory concert in Zürich, a cherished cassette made by a friend of Eastman's, who recently realized its uniqueness and decided that he should share it. The Zürich Concert was performed on Oc…

"The music on this recording illustrates the essential integrity of the work of Morton Feldman (1926-1987) and one of its fundamental strengths -- its continuously unfolding unanimity of purpose. There are few composers of his generation whose first and last published work (in Feldman's case 'Journey to the End of Night' of 1949 and 'Piano and String Quartet' of 1986) span youth and final years with such a concentrated viewpoint. There are, however, landmarks in the music of Feldman that are lar…

2024 Stock. First volume of solo piano compositions by Emahoy Tsege Mariam Gebru, finally back in print.  Born to an aristocratic family in Addis Ababa in December of 1923, Emahoy spent much of her youth and young adulthood studying classical music in Europe. She returned to Ethiopia in the 40s, where the war interrupted her musical studies. In 1948 during a church service in Ethiopia, she found her faith and began years of religious training.  Throughout her physical and spiritual journeys, Ema…

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…

First reissue of Walter Zimmermann's solo piano work Beginner's Mind, played by Herbert Henck and first released in 1978 on Beginner Records. The CD adds Abgeschiedenheit, after Meister Eckhart, released for the first time.

The inaugural release in Greyfade’s innovative new FOLIO music release format, composer Kenneth Kirschner’s Three Cellos is the culmination of a five-year collaboration between Kirschner, arranger & producer Joseph Branciforte, and cellist Christopher Gross.

Ruedi Häusermann 5th release of strinquartets from his music Theatre productions. CD with digipak and 8-page booklet. Born in 1948 and residing in the medieval Swiss town of Lenzburg, and virtually unknown outside of the German-speaking world, Häusermann is a multi-instrumentalist and enormously prolific composer who works primarily in the medium of absurdist music-theater. A virtuoso wind player and free improviser who also composes for traditional classical instrumentation, his work is charact…

1991 release ** Nebojša Jovan Živković plays total percussion music by himself, Maria Ptaszynska, Johannes Kotschy, Markus Halt, John Christie Willot and Robert Schumann.

1987 release ** Includes recordings of: Toshimitsu Tanaka-Two movements / Minoru Miki – TIME / Dmitri Schostakowitsch – Polka & Oportunist from his Ballets Nebojsa / J. Zivkovic – Drei Phantastische Lieder, Tensio, Strah*Ctpax

1996 release ** "The works on this recording are recently composed flute pieces by six distinguished senior American composers from the generation born in the fist quarter of the 20th century (1900-1926). All of the works have been written by these composers at age 65 or older - autumn rhythms and all represent a new departure for each. Four of the works are for the one keyed wooden baroque flute - the flute for which Bach and Mozart composed their flute music. The instrument is now enjoying a r…

1997 release **

1988 release ** Highly enjoyable album by American pianist and composer, with four piano pieces performed by Cacioppo himself plus the Monsterslayer string quartet based on Navajo cosmology performed by the Emerson String Quartet. "The principal material of the work evolved out of a system of scales, intervals, chords and rhythms that I derived from numerological, directional and other elements of Navajo cosmology. Although the connected movements more or less follow sonata form, song form, sche…

1988 release **

Two live 1983 performances of John Cage conducting Atlas Eclipticalis with Winter Music at Seattle's Cornish Institute, first issued on LP in 1986, with a bonus disc of the 86-part Atlas Eclipticalis and Winter Music for 20 pianos.

1994 release ** "Zeitgeist is an oddly comprised quartet with two percussionists, a keyboardist, and a woodwind player. Here, they perform four pieces by Frederic Rzewski written between 1984 and 1993, works rather different in character than the neo-romantic piano pieces for which he's better known. "Wails" derives influence from Greek theater, particularly Aeschylus, employing steel drums, sopranino saxophone, and bass clarinet in a very dance-like piece full of reedy twirls and light rhythms.…

1995 release ** Contemporary music for organ by Arvo Pärt, John Cage and Giacinto Scelsi.

After-Image traces composer Lila Meretzky’s exploration of memory, color, and time through chamber, vocal, and electroacoustic works, culminating in luminous studies for strings and percussion inspired by personal and historical narratives.

Feldman and Tobias Hume (performed by Luciana Elizondo and Guy Vandromme).

1994 release ** Contemporary music for winds by Alessandro Solbiati, Pietro Borradori, Ruggero Laganà,Massimo Ambrosini, Claudi Scannavini, Paolo Aralla, Umberto Bombardelli, Cristina Landuzzi.

1993 release ** Free improv quintet led by saxophonist George Haslam, who is joined by trombonist Paul Rutherford, pianist Howard Riley, bassist Marcio Mattos and drummer Tony Marsh, plus vocalist Liz Hodgson on two tracks. “George Hasam's Level Two has been in existence, with various personnel changes, since 1987. It plays improvised music, a form Haslam describes as located between Level One (the performance of compositions) and Level Three (completely abstract sonic textures). Of course even …

1994 release ** "From the Byzantine Alleluia that begins this ritual to the Scelsi Alleluia that brings it to a close, a circular program weaves a path through the world of Christian theology, Jewish tradition and alchemy, brought together by the universalist music of Giacinto Scelsi. Michael Maier was an alchemist composer whose three voice fugues speak of bizarre cures and spiritual unions. Veronika Krausas set a text by Quintan Ana Wikswo evoking the first female alchemist, Maria the Jewess. …

1990 release ** 20th Century percussion music by Hans-Günter Brodmann, Bertold Hummel, Maurice Ohana, Werner Heider, Steve Reich.