Seven Deserts
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…
Space Guitars
**2020 stock** I was born in Detroit (1931), studied chemistry and music at Princeton (1949–53), and after the army, pro-baseball, and working as a chemist at Cape Canaveral, I went to “Koln State” (Music School) in Germany on the GI Bill, (1959-63) and spent a lot of time watching Karlheinz Stockhausen work. I then “visited” Rome (1964–87) where Frederic Rzewski, Alvin Curran, Jon Phetteplace and I put together a group, “Musica Elettronica Viva” (MEV), to create electronic- sounding music in co…
Music of David Tudor and Gordon Mumma
This historic recording features the first-ever release of the two earliest surviving recordings of David Tudor's seminal work, Rainforest. Sandwiched in between are six keyboard works by Gordon Mumma in recordings featuring the composer and his close collaborator, Tudor. Together, these works constitute a fascinating and historically important document of the 1960s avant-garde in America.
In early 1968, Merce Cunningham created a new dance whose apparent impetus was Colin Turnbull's The Forest …
September Canons
Todd Reynolds, violin, with electronic processing; Members of the Yale Philharmonia, Julian Pellicano, conductor; The Berkeley Gamelan, Daniel Schmidt, director; Ingram Marshall, gambuh (Balinese flute), Serge synthesizer, live electronic processing
The pieces on this recording span almost three decades and represent the principal threads that have run through Ingram Marshall's (b 1942) work: his remarkable skill in using electronics to create expressive and voluptuously beautiful pieces; the in…
At Synge Verden Ind I En Ny Og Mangefoldet Tid
At Synge Verden Ind I En Ny Og Mangefoldet Tid was composed during Anders Lauge Meldgaard’s period as composer in residence at the old Danish castle Rønnebæksholm on the south of Zealand. He has previously released music as Frisk Frugt, Supermelle, Music for Six Electric Guitars, Kirsten Ketsjer and been a part of the experimental collective yoyooyoy.
This release marked Anders taking on new musical adventures by composing for an ensemble of classical musicians. The music, however, retains the f…
Orchestral Music
The second release to be drawn from Orange Mountain Music's Philip Glass Archive series, this disc - if you hadn't guessed - focuses on the composer's orchestral works, namely his compositions Days And Nights In Rocinha and Persephone. The former of these was inspired by the titular neighbourhood in Rio De Janeiro, best known for its celebrated samba school. Accordingly, the piece is redolent of a Latin American influence, opening with a languid romantic melody only to eventually augment itself …
Lost and Found
Formed in 2017, J Pavone String Ensemble features Jessica Pavone and Abby Swidler on violas, and Erica Dicker and Angela Morris on violins. The group's latest release, Lost And Found, combines both traditional notation and improvisation, with a focus on sustained collaborative playing and the application of ideas exploring the healing potential of sonic vibrations. It was recorded at Firehouse 12 in New Haven, Connecticut.
Speaking with The Wire's Philip Clark in November 2019, Pavone describes …
Suite D’Études Chorégraphiques – Musique Pour La Danse D’Aujourd’hui
This suite of choreographic studies was commissioned by the Ministry of Culture and is designed to teach contemporary dance techniques of different styles. We deliberately avoid offering suggestions for exercises, leaving the teachers complete freedom of creation and improvisation. - Alina Piechowska
Honeysuckle Burials
* Edition of 300 * The Clywdian Range in North Wales is a landscape of outstanding beauty, forged as much by the forces of nature as the hands of generations who lived and worked in its valleys and peaks from times of antiquity. It is a place of Neolithic mounds, Roman hill forts and a remarkable chain of Iron Age earthworks fashioned over two thousand years ago. In this borderland, close to Offa's Dyke, the eighth century boundary between England and Wales, a musician came wandering and wonderi…
12 Instrumenter Til Henning
12 instrumenter til Henning (english: 12 instruments for Henning) is a new arrangement by Danish composer Anders Lauge Meldgaard (formerly known as Frisk Frugt) that sees Meldgaard exploring the music of Danish avant-garde artist and composer Henning Christiansen. A trio piece by Christiansen from 1975 is the source material for a bright and stimulating new work for extended chamber ensemble, with the tonal language the original blossoming outwards via Meldgaard’s own brilliantly colourful sound…
Kutra Bégulma - Unfinished Altar
* Limited Edition Green vinyls + insert * Ars Subtilior (14th century) and the Noise: the two inspirations of Christophe Guiraud which are like two rivers which are woven in a writing of great power. The French young composer is the link between the most accomplished scholarly music and some radical aspects of noise. Born in Toulouse mid-seventies, he settles in Brussels - which becomes the crossroads of a continuous creation. Currently works and has been collaborating since several years with …
Sexo Puro
* 2021 stock * Nobody who attended the first performance of Sexo Puro is ever likely to forget it. On that October afternoon, the conciliatory power of this work, which Maria de Alvear sees as a “meditation on inner goodness”, came into sharp collision with the irreconcilable powers that sometimes gather at contemporary-music festivals.
It was probably not even the theme of sexuality that so profoundly disturbed a part of the audience at the 1998 Donaueschingen Festival, even though it is seldom…
Section
* 2021 stock * The structures of Chris Newman's music are apparently simple, like his music pictures: large, thick dots of notes, but a lot of space in between: "The raw and the cooked" (Roland Barthes). He himself likes to cook well and with pleasure. Just his lamb chops, for example. He only puts them in a hot pan with oil; there is also chard, just pulled out of the water, but also more complicated things: coq au vin or bœuf bourguignon.His music has a strong physical structure, is quasi carn…
Legende
* 2021 stock * Acousmatic events dispense with performers. There are no musicians, even at public concerts. The audience is able to follow what is emanating from the loudspeakers with eyes closed and still not miss anything. What it hears is composed, and demands the same attention as any other kind of music listened to on a stereo system or via headphones. It is worth remarking this fact because so many people are no longer able to hear things without seeing something as well in video clips or …
Anabasi
* Edition of 200 * In what might appear to be a paradox of logic, much of the history of avant-garde music - from Eric Satie, John Cage, and Morton Feldman, through the minimalists, post-minimalists, and beyond - has presented new forms radicalism through remarkable, self-imposed constraint. Sometimes structural, others tonal, temporal, or a combination of any of the three, these limitations and focus not only place demands of focus and attentiveness on the listeners, drawing the ear toward subt…
Ataraxia
*2020 stock* Unlike my earlier freetonal and 12-tone works, my music since 1981 has been characterized by the use of repetition, and since 2004 by generally soft dynamics. While often termed "minimalist" or "postminimalist," I have come to prefer the term "focused music," as my works tend to concentrate on very specific, and often a limited number of, music elements.
Typically, there is but a single dynamic level specified, and sometimes not even that. I like to provide a good deal of freedom fo…
Im Klang Sein
*2020 stock* To be within the sound - not to expect anything - no beautiful moments - no big emotions - no artfulness- but to follow, from note to note, a sound that carries the music, a sound within the sound: it changes slowly at a tempo that suggests a movement at a great distance, one that might leave our gravitational field, in which gravity is reduced and which is not even always recognized because of its slowness.
This "sound-space", which touches the cosmos but is at the same time percep…
Angelus Novus
*2021 stock* Angelus novus is the third opera by Madrid composer Jorge Fernández Guerra. This time, he draws on a selection of texts by Walter Benjamin, which he uses to create a dialogue of sorts between a male character and a female character, who could be an alter ego or perhaps an angel.
The dialogue appears to transpire during the final moments of the character’s life, which may be reminiscent of Benjamin’s final moments at the Spanish border as he fled the Nazis.
Angelus novus premiered a…
Improvisaciones
*2020 stock* The double CD Improvisaciones is an homage to the Iberian baroque organ. Germán Valverde Usano’s music reminds one of the rich music tradition of the autonomous community of Castile and León as well as its rich cultural heritage with over 100 conserved Iberian baroque organs. The recordings took place in 2016 in San Agustín in Capillas not far from the capital city Palencia (Spain).
Germán Valverde Usano’s passion for the Iberian organ as well as his extraordinary musical talent are…
De Puro Amor & En Amor Duro
*2021 stock* What is one to make of Maria de Alvear’s two long solos for piano, De puro amor (‘Of pure love’) and En amor duro (‘In hard love’), both composed in 1991. The scores themselves, if one decides to start from here, are completely perplexing. Pages and pages are marked with hastily scratched notes, sometimes repeating themselves dozens of times. Little priority seems to have been given to rhythm, dynamics or articulation; even less to the notational conventions such as barlines, spacin…