Für Alina
Compilation of Mississippi's favorite Arvo Part pieces. All sparse and beautiful arrangements. Some solo piano pieces, some duets with piano, violin cello and viola and one string quartet. The pieces on this record are all unique to the style of Arvo Part—deceptively simple compositions that force you to live in the moment you are listening to them. A Part quote from the back of the record: "You can kill people with sound. And if you can kill, then maybe there is also the sound that is op…
The Zürich Concert
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 Oct…
17 Stücke
Helmut Kaplan is multimedia artist that belongs to distinctive art scene of styrian capital of Graz. His medium of expression belongs to visual arts (mostly comic), as part of Tonto association, which once included legendary record label with artists that are already seen on GOD roster (Robert Lepenik, Winfried Ritsch, Kauders, Bernhard Lang, Peter Ablinger). He was part of bands like Fleischpost and skin and since middle '90s he is interested in different loop structures through different med…
Klang Der Wandlungen
From the liner notes by Jakob Ullmann (translated by Peter Gebert and Molly McDolan): "It was during a break in the inaugural meeting of the East German section of the IGNM (International Society for Contemporary Music) in March of 1990 when Reinhard Oehlschlägel, the long-standing music editor of Deutschlandfunk in Cologne, suggested taking advantage of the fact that John Cage was to attend the summer courses in Darmstadt as a special guest by inviting John Cage to East Berlin. . . . Making Gia…
Winter Music (1957)
John Cage’s 1957 composition in a visceral realisation for four pianos, played by John Tilbury, Philip Thomas, Mark Knoop and Catherine Laws.
“Chance procedures were used to assign each of the pianists five of the twenty pages of the score. The pianists agreed an overall duration of 40 minutes and prepared their parts independently. At the recording there was no rehearsal and the piece was played once only.” Winter Music was written in 1957 at a time when Cage was exploring different ways …
L'âme Est Sans Retenue I
Swiss composer Jürg Frey's six hour long electronic tape piece L'àme Est Sans Retenue I was recorded and assembled in 1997/98 and is now being released for the first time. It is the longest piece Frey has ever composed in his over 40 year career.In this piece, Frey utilized the sounds of field recordings he made in Berlin in 1997 as the source materials, alternately inserted between long stretches of silence. Frey was particularly focusing around that time on how the dynamic relation between sou…
Occam Ocean Vol. 1
**Mindblowing edition, comes with a 40 page booklet** What can be said about Éliane Radigue? International treasure? Sonic saint? The most important composer living today? Even these grand designations fall short of doing the composer the justice she deserves. Born in 1932, beginning her life in music in Paris during the late 1950 and early 60’s, working under Pierre Schaeffer and Pierre Henry, for more than half a century she has carved a singular path in sound, sculpting one of the most astoni…
Risonanze Erranti
*Super Audio CD* The poetic significance of Luigi Nono's Risonanze Erranti (1985-87) should be interpreted in the light of the reflections developed since the summer of 1975 with the venetian friend and philosopher massimo cacciari, to whom the work is dedicated.after Al Gran Sole carico d'amore (in the bright sunshine heavy with love) (1972-74) nono, obsessed by a sense of anguish owed to his solitude and his activism frustrated by the stagnation of italian music institutions, felt the need to …
And On The Seventh Day Petals Fell In Petaluma
The history of American avant-garde music is a snarled knot, twisting through the decades, spanning genre, practice, and approach. Most narratives plant its origins within the post-war period, orbiting around John Cage, Morton Feldman, and those artists springing from the movements of Fluxus and free-jazz. American creative innovation issued unquestionable influence over the later half of 20th century, but the root of its radicalism was earlier, with its origins often misplaced. Rather growing f…
Cine Opera
Limited edition of 500 copies worldwide, each hand-signed and individually numbered by Michael Nyman. Cine Opera represents Michael Nyman at a creative peak, bringing together the old and the new, a powerful statement on the timeless nature of his work, his continuing relevance, and his enduring success in multiple artistic fields. La Traversée de Paris was first commissioned in 1989 to mark France’s bi-centennial celebrations. Nyman continued to use tracks from La Traversée de Paris in other pr…
Ode (owed) to O
Reading (Story of) O brings together (Story of) O a graphic and semantic reworking of the original story (English and French words coexisting on the page) accompanied by two fictional texts (Story of) A and (Story of) E, and Reading O, a few simple strategies and choices for reading—alone or with others, in private or to an audience, so that you may find your way through it as through you own story. This is the first collective reading in English and French with 9 readers, it lasted 48 mins. …
Chants
This really is a special one. Solo voice carries so many connotations, of speech, of song, of chant, of prayer. It’s the most directly human, personal, unmediated instrument of all. It’s the way we speak to each other, comfort each other, entertain ourselves, reassure ourselves, talk to our gods. Kurka’s singing throughout is quite extraordinary: so refined, balanced, unadorned and controlled. Absolutely nothing is wasted or unnecessary.
Antoine Beuger Christopher Fox Eva-Maria Houben Th…
Music For 18 Musicians: Tokyo Opera City, Tokyo, Japan, May 21st
A stunning version of Steve Reich's masterpiece of musical minimalism Music For 18 Musicians (1974-1976), performed live at Tokyo Opera House in 2008 by Ensemble Modern and Synergy Vocals, featuring the composer as guest performer. LP housed in a deluxe die cut jacket with printed insert. In the 1960s, with Terry Riley and Philip Glass, Reich gave pulse back to experimental music. He discovered the tape-based techniques of looping and phasing, using recordings of fragments of speech, and then mo…
Berlin Exercises
Christian Wolff on Berlin Exercises: "'Exercise' indicates relatively shorter pieces in which the process of work, of practicing and of trying things out within specified limits, in short a kind of discipline in process, are being attempted. I regard them as both exercises in composing and for performers, especially as the performers function as members of an ensemble." Your first encounter with the music of Christian Wolff leaves you with the impression you’ve just heard (or played, or re…
Piano, Violin, Viola, Cello
“Another Timbre has been contributing excellent recordings to the rapidly expanding universe of what might still be called “Classical” music, and nowhere more convincingly than in the shimmering beautiful tapestries woven by Morton Feldman. The label’s double set of Feldman’s earlier piano works would be an excellent place to begin for anyone wishing to slide into familiarity with his work, as it’s wonderfully performed by John Tilbury and Philip Thomas. Pianist Mark Knoop, violinist Aisha Orazb…
Liminal Studies
Wojciech Blecharz is somewhat an exhibitionist. An emotional one, of course. With his music, he doesn’t create a vision of the contemporary world burdened with disasters, being neither a “digital indigent” nor a fan of algorithmic passages. He’s not even recognized as a political rebel who discloses his outlook on life between the notes. In the centre of his interest remains what’s closest to him – the human psychological condition in the context of experiencing crises and break-ups, trauma…
Harmony
The fifth CD in the Canadian Composers Series is also the debut appearance on Another Timbre by the Jack Quartet. It features chamber music for strings by the Berlin-based composer Marc Sabat, whose compositions explore the world of Just Intonation. But, as Nick Storring argues in the booklet accompanying the Canadian Composers Series of CDs, “to fixate upon this aspect of his music conceals at least half of what makes it so beguiling and beautiful. From an aural perspective, what is most salien…
During a Lifetime
The fourth disc in the Canadian Composers Series features the music of Chiyoko Szlavnics. The CD contains three works, two of which use sinewaves in conjuncton with acoustic instruments. The title track ‘During a Lifetime’ is written for sinewaves and saxophone quartet, an instrument on which Szlavnics herself used to perform. The final piece, ‘Reservoir’, is composed for sinewaves and an unusual instrumental octet, including two accordions, two flutes and two percussionists. The middle piece ‘F…
The Spit Veleta
The second CD in the Canadian Composers Series contains three recent works by the Toronto-based composer Martin Arnold, played by Mira Benjamin (violin) and Philip Thomas (piano). In his introductory essay to the booklet accompanying the Canadian Composers CDs, Nick Storring quotes a comment that Arnold made about one of his earlier works, highlighting a quality which Storring feels applies to a large part of Arnold’s compositional output: "The piece is not intended to be demonstrative but rathe…
Drifter
The first in the Canadian Composers Series of CDs is a double album of chamber works by Linda Catlin Smith, who was born in New York, but studied in Canada and has lived in Toronto for over 25 years. The album ‘Drifter’ contains ten pieces dating from 1995 to 2015 played by Quatuor Bozzini and Apartment House. In his introductory essay to the booklet accompanying the Canadian Composers CDs, Nick Storring says that “One of the primary tensions in Linda Catlin Smith's music is between its equal a…