Composition / All styles

*New CD edition of sold out LP/CD* Recital is proud to publish the first album of American Gamelan composer Daniel Schmidt (b. 1942). Schmidt, who emerged in the Bay Area music scene in the 1970s, wove the threads of traditional Eastern Gamelan music together with American Minimalism (repetitive music). Schmidt was (and is still) a prime figure in the development of American Gamelan music –  studying and collaborating with Lou Harrison, Jody Diamond, and Paul Dresher. He currently is a teacher a…

*In process of stocking* In nineteen movements of varying lengths and moods, Denis Doufour’s monumental piano piece “Avalanche” invites us on a voyage across the infinite variation of the forms taken by snow, and the rich vocabulary established by the Innuits for it since their arrival on Greenland, the continent of ice. At work in this piece is a transposition, inspired by morphologies, of a certain kind of energy onto the relationships between the physical and musical realms. Thanks to his prac…

Anton Lukoszevieze, cellist, composer and interdisciplinary artist, founder of Apartment House. Le Jardin des Plantes, in four parts, for cello and electronics. A place in Paris and a novel by Claude Simon. Memory spaces, a source, a scrying of time.

*200 copies limited edition* Theatre of the Mind is a work for bass clarinet and electronics by Swiss composer Roland Dahinden. It was commissioned by the Dutch Foundation Mousai, an organisation that uses contemporary music as a platform to explore and work with issues of mental health. It was written for bass clarinettist Gareth Davis. Roland's composition takes elements of his mixed background performing in jazz and improvised combinations with Miles Davis and Anthony Braxton while at the sam…

Stunning document of a one-off performance by Powell and London Contemporary Orchestra at Barbican Centre, London. Captured from a three-hour multi-channel recording of unheard music. Unique acoustic rendering of a unique moment in time.Performed in January 2022 alongside works by Jon Cage, Alvin Lucier, Micah Levi.First music on Diagonal after a brief pause for growing up and babies.

"My reasons for writing pieces are often very surprising.... Two Pages, you'll recall, is a unison. Someone asked me if I was trying to follow the evolution of music history and if, then, my next piece would follow that logic and be fifths. So I wrote Music In Fifths. All movement is parallel, so I had to do one with contrary motion. After Music In Contrary Motion came its opposite, Music In Similar Motion. It was all very simple. In 1969, nobody knew me or really cared what I could write, so I …

*2024 stock* It's quite unusual for me to take on an existing piece. Since I've been interested in contemporary music, I've devoted myself to commissioning new pieces. This time, it's a bit different. I wanted to extend the ringers' quartet into a form reminiscent of a bagad. In C (1964) consists of 53 ordered patterns. The musicians repeat them freely and move on to the next. Terry Riley simply explains that each musician must be neither too far behind nor too far ahead of the others. This grea…

2024 Stock. Wild Up — the multiple-time GRAMMY®-nominated contemporary music ensemble that has been called “a raucous, grungy, irresistibly exuberant … fun-loving, exceptionally virtuosic family” by The New York Times and turned in a stunning NPR Tiny Desk performance last year — announces Julius Eastman Vol. 4: The Holy Presence, out June 21, 2024 via New Amsterdam Records. Opening track, “Our Father, is an accompanied duet with both vocal parts performed by Davóne Tines. With open harmonies th…

2024 Stock. On June 17, 2022, the acclaimed Los Angeles-based new music collective Wild Up will release Julius Eastman Vol. 2: Joy Boy, the follow-up to last year’s Julius Eastman Vol. 1: Femenine, a record that was hailed “a masterpiece” (The New York Times), “instantly recognizable” (Vogue), “absorbing” (Pitchfork, in its 8.1 review), and “singularly jubilant” (NPR, who placed Femenine among its top 10 records of 2021, across all genres). Arriving, once more, on New Amsterdam Records, Julius E…

2024 Stock. Out now, Los Angeles-based musical collective, Julius Eastman Vol. 1: Femenine is the opening entry in Wild Up’s multi-volume anthology celebrating Julius Eastman, the late composer whose amalgamated musical vision was repeatedly dismissed during its day, but is now being unearthed to critical acclaim. Championed by The New York Times for their “boisterously theatrical sensibility,” Wild Up slowly comes alive inside this recording of “Femenine,” the epitome of Eastman’s longform “org…

Ainon, a Helsinki-based ensemble founded by cellist-composer Aino Juutilainen, returns on We Jazz with their second album, out 6th September. On Within, the four-piece plays music influenced by jazz, contemporary music and classical music, all morphed together into a highly inspired musical vision that echoes the legacy of the likes of Abdul Wadud and Jimmy Giuffre. The music of Ainon might be best described as "avantgarde chamber jazz", with original compositions and the individual voices of th…

“An den Mond (To The Moon) is a recent release bringing together two compositions by Austrian composer Peter Ablinger. The first is for seven violins and is all about creating a feeling of searing/pitch wavering intensity. And the second is for chanted female voices/violin, and creates a feeling of witchy dread and fear. Together these pieces create a compelling, at points unsettling release, which uses two different tacks to unbalance the listener. The release appears on Slovenia-based Inexhaus…

*2024 stock* Bernd Alois Zimmermann (1918–1970) was one of the most distinctive composers in the musical avant-garde after the Second World War. While Karlheinz Stockhausen served as a kind of ‘generator’ in Cologne during the 1950s and 60s, inventing completely new sounds and techniques, Zimmermann was in many ways his opposite, a ‘transformer’ who redefined previously existing material by placing it in new contexts and collage-like structures, anticipating the ideas of the Postmodernists. Zimm…

The celebrated L'Album des Six of 1920 may represent only a small landmark in 20th century modern music. Nevertheless the artful relationship between the young French composers of 'Les Six' and their mentors Erik Satie and Jean Cocteau forms an important cornerstone of the inter-war avant-garde. As well as the L'Album des Six, this generous 74 minute anthology also includes music composed by Satie and Les Six for spectacles staged by Cocteau between 1917 and 1920, as well as Arthur Honegger…

Created out of adversity and artistic longing, this is a wondrous, evocative diversion.

*2024 stock* Three recordings of three different performances from the 60's written and directed by Bruno Maderna.

“Dead of winter, a hidden chapel, silent prayers echoing.” We first introduced Haruka Nakamura’s first full-length piano-based album ‘Twilight’ in 2010. The studio-recorded album was extolled and acclaimed by fans and critics alike in Japan. Building on the strengths and success of its predecessor, haruka nakamura returns with this one, a 2 CD 106 minutes collection entitled ‘Ongaku no Aru Fuukei’ (English Translation: Music with scenery). Recorded at concert hall ‘sonorium’ in Tokyo, the album …

In Galgenlieder à 3, Christian Morgenstern’s whimsical Galgenlieder merge brilliantly with the haunting musical language of Sofia Gubaidulina. This unique song cycle, consisting of voice, percussion and double bass, brings Morgenstern’s playful and surreal poetry to life. Gubaidulina’s composition captures the essence of each poem through various expressive techniques, from normal singing to whispering and chanting. With imaginative interludes and an inventive use of motifs and intervals, this w…

Sofa is proud to present this new collaboration with the labels own Ingar Zach together with the critically acclaimed contemporary ensemble Speak Percussion from Melbourne, Australia. Eugene Ughetti and Matthias Schack-Arnott in Speak Percussion invited Ingar Zach for the first concert in their series named Before Nightfall One. The idea behind this concert series is to experience and document the result of one single day of collaboration, culminating in a concert in a carefully chosen space in …

**300 copies** Konsequenz has released a new anthology that offers another incredible window into the Napoli’s remarkable experimental endeavours, another essential artifact for any fan of Italian border and avant-garde musics. Avant-garde and experimental musics are intrinsically connected to community, collectivism, support, and collaboration. Audiences and artists, stretching to every corner of the globe, continuously rely on each other to push into ever more ambitious realms. This spirit of …

Approdi is a cultural operation involving thirteen composers and numerous other artists from heterogeneous segments of the Neapolitan visual arts. The guest composers of the first volume are Carlo Vignaturo, Enzo Amato, Max Fuschetto, Girolamo De Simone, Giusto Pappacena, Piero Viti, Vito Ranucci, Gabriele Montagano, Patrizio Marrone, Enrico Iannaccone, Alessandro Petrosino, Carlo Mormile and Gaetano Panariello. The album was then joined by the poet Luca Buonaguidi, with a lyric for the late com…

"The Coronation of Poppea by Claudio Monteverdi garnered the interest of Gian Francesco Malipiero, who emphasized a second copy of the manuscript found in Naples in the rooms of the Conservatory Library, and showing a series of pages not included in the Venetian manuscript. Among these, a Prologue that constitutes, together with other fragments taken from the work, the main plot of monteverdi | pianocloud. As is known, the Coronation was performed in Naples in 1651 and is ignored, given that Mon…

Absolutely brilliant debut by the young pianist Andrea Riccio. "Every record is a text and every text is fabric, and this is a fabric of precious threads. A pianism that has gold in its fingertips, from the timbral calligraphy of the pages of Annette Dieudonne, restored to the present, to the dark abysses of a Kreisleriana that reaches the uncanny through beauty, passing through the intimism of Brian Eno, between Brahmsian suggestions, minimal and echoes of Sehnsucht and Lied. Made unique by the…

*Limited edition - 1st press of 118 audiophile CDr ephemerals* Defined as "the best secret of Italian music" (Gigi Razete-La Repubblica) Celletti actually has over 20 record albums under her belt with English and American labels, concerts all over the world and millions of listens on Spotify. Graduated from the Santa Cecilia Conservatory in Rome, she comes from a classical background, but her inclination to experiment has broadened her experiences with forays into rock, avant-garde and electroni…

With Elisabet Curbelo as your travel guide, you may hear the world in a whole new light. Her debut album, Resonance Unbound, invites you to expand your aural imagination and follow in her musical footsteps through places she has lived including the Canary Islands; Madrid, Spain; Istanbul, Turkey; and San Diego. This album is a sonic exploration of her nomadic life, where diverse influences manifest through words, sonorities, instrumental resonances, organic shapes, and the resonant chorus of urb…

* 2021 stock * Steve Reich's landmark Music for 18 Musicians is perhaps Steve Reich’s most popular, if not most important, piece of music. Defining characteristics of Music for 18 Musicians piece include an ethereal, trance vibe, pulsating bass clarinets, a consistent beat, and slowly developing chord progressions unfolding over the length of approximately one hour.  Steve Reich’s genre-defining minimalist compositional tool, phasing, is demonstrated in full force here. We will dive deeper into …

Miguel Angel Crozzoli’s album "Sounding Numbers" explores the intersection of climate data and music. This album features two compelling works: I Am the Forest and I Am the Ocean, both born from transforming scientific data on deforestation and ocean contamination into sound. Through innovative sonification techniques and a blend of electronic and acoustic instrumentation, Crozzoli creates immersive soundscapes that resonate emotionally and inspire action against climate change. Let the haunting…

This album presents the innovative works of Gabriel Iranyi composed between 2012 and 2022. It includes two string quartets and their unique extensions with human voice and the Chinese mouth organ sheng. Iranyi’s compositions explore profound musical spaces and subjective experiences. The album features the intense String Quartet No. 4, the intricate String Quartet No. 5, the emotive Four Love Poems by Paul Celan for soprano and quartet, and the captivating quintet for sheng and string quartet Th…

Three long-form works from Joan La Barbara's first decade of recordings, with new stereo and surround mixes from the analogue tapes: As Lightning Comes In Flashes (1981), Autumn Signal (1978) and the previously unreleased CYCLONE (1976-77).

Morton Feldman's Trio for violin, cello and piano, lasting one hour, 45 minutes, in a recording with Aki Takahashi, Marc Sabat and Rohan de Saram, two of whom worked closely with the composer.

Temporary Super Offer! Cat Hope is a composer, performer, songwriter, noise artist and researcher. She is lautist, experimental bassist and artistic director of Decibel new music ensemble, which led to her being awarded the Australian APRA|AMC Award for Excellence in Experimental Music. Decibel are a new music ensemble that focus on the integration of acoustic and electronic instruments in chamber music performance, founded in Western Australia in 2009. They are world leading interpreters of gra…

Temporary Super Offer! "‘Hieroglyph’ is a word that history has gradually prised away from its linguistic roots as the Greek term for sacred carvings. Over time it came to be associated principally with the enigmatic symbols found in Egyptian burial sites and because these symbols resisted translation for so many centuries the word hieroglyph became a synonym for incomprehensibility. It was the discovery of an artefact – the socalled ‚Rosetta Stone‘, containing both hieroglyphs and parallel text…

This companion to our Messiaen et Autours de Messiaen collects together another classic group of works for Onde Martenot and piano, this time by Darius Milhaud, Andre Jolivet, Arvo Part, Kazuo Fukushima and Francisco Semprun, collected together here for the first time: an essential chapter in the history of a remarkable instrument. The performances are immaculate and the sound transparent. A pleasure from beginning to end. Historic.

Reminiscenze: vague and distant memory, nearly lost in oblivion. Form and structure of the past to which the author refers consciously or unconsciously. The pieces aim to translate the sound quality of the voices of Renaissance music into acoustic saxophones through the use of multiphonics. The structure of the composition Reminiscenze is based on In te domine speravi by an anonymous composer, Miserere mei Deus by Fabrizio Dentice and Per non dir ch'io moia by Michelangelo Rossi. The material of…

Black Truffle is thrilled to present a Song for two Mothers / Occam IX the first ever solo release from Laetitia Sonami. Born in France in 1957, Sonami studied with Éliane Radigue in Paris before moving to California in 1978 to study electronic music at Mills College, going on to make important innovations in the field of live electronics interfaces and multi-media performance. Sonami is perhaps most closely associated with one of her inventions, the Lady’s Glove, an arm-length tailored glove fi…

This newly remastered reissue marks a welcome return to the catalog of the first volume of the classic 4-CD collection that was formerly available on the CRI label. The works recorded on this disc span the first six years of what Harry Partch (1901–1974), slightly tongue-in-cheek, called the “third period” of his creative life. They show him moving away from the obsession with “the intrinsic music of spoken words” that had characterized his earlier output (the vocal works of 1930–33 and 1941–45)…

The four works on this newly remastered CD are eloquent testimony to Harry Partch’s aesthetic of corporeality. The music he composed for The Dreamer That Remains, for Rotate the Body in All Its Planes, for Windsong, and for Water! Water!, was intended as only one component in the total artistic experience. In these works music joins with drama, with film, with dance, even with gymnastics, as integral parts of the composer’s vision..New World's The Harry Partch Collection, Vol. 3, as was the CRI …

Like Hunt’s composition “Lattice,” released on Texas Music in the same year, the four pieces included on Cantegral Segment(s) (IR-0032, 1979) represent a culmination and transformation of Hunt’s investigations from across the decade. The “Cantegral Segments” are a body of scores (or strategies) derived from and developed alongside the evolving compositional procedure Hunt called Haramand Plane, first used in a large-scale performance of that name from 1972 that employed elaborate homemade audio …

Other Minds is pleased to present Polytempo Music, a new recording by American composer Brian Baumbusch with the San Francisco Contemporary Music Players. Polytempo Music draws influence from Indonesian gamelan music and minimalism, with their interlocking rhythms, stable harmonies, and kaleidoscopic instrumental colors. Conceptually, it also owes a debt to Conlon Nancarrow's rhythmic experiments. Building on those foundations, Baumbusch invites us to explore an advanced heterophony—multiple ins…

Chinese-American composer Kui Dong draws inspiration from old forms, employs unusual instrumental combinations, and even commingles four languages within her compositions on this collection of world premiere recordings. The major work Shui Diao Ge Tou and Song is performed brilliantly by San Francisco’s adventurous choir Volti, led by conductor Robert Geary, who also presents the heartfelt Let Frogs and Crickets Carry It On with the Piedmont Children’s Choir. Pianists Sally Pinkas and Evan Hirsc…