Disseminate
Phill Niblock (born in Indiana, 1933) is a seminal figure in "drone" music who crosses the Downtown and Improv scenes. A characteristic of Niblock's drone style is its subtle, gradual alteration of pitch which leads one to lose a sense of "time" and draws one deeper and deeper into the sound itself. The remarkable thing is that Niblock achieves this effect by almost always using traditional acoustic instruments. Niblock is an intermedia artist using music, film, photography, video and com…
Extreme Positions
Philip Corner was an active member of Fluxus, a founder of the Tone Roads Chamber Ensemble, the resident musician and composer for the Judson Dance Theatre, and co-founder of Gamelan Son of Lion. The musical opportunities that these ensembles and their performances offered Corner ensured that he was both prolific and had or developed a deep understanding of the important artistic influences of that time. Corner uses a variety of scoring methods. He is truly the equal of John Cage in forcing us t…
Yomillak - Korean classical music
Selection of Korean classical music, performed by the Orchestra National Center for Korean Traditional Performing Arts. Cast your mind back to the 15th century. That is, of course, difficult if not impossible to do, but the major piece recorded on these CDs, Yomillak, 'Giving the People Joy', provides something of a sonic reference point: it was first performed in 1447. Y'millak is the most extended piece of orchestral court music surviving in Korea, and it has for many centuries been used for r…
Happening & Fluxus
"Happening & fluxus" est un essai pluridisciplinaire et transversal. Il vise à mettre en relation différentes occurrences artistiques dans une série d'événements tirés des champs des arts plastiques, de la musique et de la poésie, et tente des rapprochements issus du futurisme, de Dada, et des diverses mouvances néo-dadaïstes (Nouveaux Réalistes, Junk Art, Gutaï, Ongaku, Wiener Gruppe, Aktual, Wiener Aktionismus, Neo-dada Organizers, Zaj, Poesia Visiva...), pour obtenir une définition du Happeni…
Choral music of
Choral Music of Morton Feldman and Stefan Wolpe
Stefan Wolpe (1902-1972), one of the great teachers in
twentieth century music, is also now recognized as one of its most
significant composers. His Two Chinese Epitaphs, composed in
Jerusalem in 1937, illustrates the composer's deep allegiance to
socialist issues. He wrote the work swiftly and in anger, just after
learning that the Basque town of Guernica had been bombed by the
Fascists the previous week. He chose to set two poems by Louise …
For Bunita Marcus
Morton Feldman (1926-1987) remains a legendary and key figure in modern American composition. A pioneer of aleatoric and indeterminate music, he was a master of minimal improvisation. Despite many thematic fluctuations in Feldman's compositional style throughout his career, a significant turning point took place in 1949, when he met John Cage, commencing an artistic association of crucial importance to music in America in the 1950s. Cage was instrumental in encouraging Feldman to have confidence…
Morton Feldman
Beautiful collection of Morton Feldman's earliest, shorter piano works from the early 50s, going through the late 70s
The viola in my life
"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…
First recordings: 1950s
A remarkable discovery of over 75 minutes of Morton Feldman's music. This disc represents 13 unrecorded early works spanning 1950 to 1953, many previously unpublished. Highlights: his only works for magnetic tape, 'Intersection,' realized in 8-channels by Feldman with John Cage and Earle Brown. Considered lost, the work has been restored and presented here for the first time in 40 years. Also: his score for 2 cellos to Hans Namuth's film of Jackson Pollock, presented in its entirety including na…
Composing By Numbers: The Graphic Scores 1950-67
This ninth volume of Mode's Morton Feldman Edition brings together 13 of the 17 works the composer notated using graph instead of normal manuscript paper (between 1950's "Projection I" and 1967's "In Search of An Orchestration", though Feldman temporarily abandoned his graphic notatio after 1953's "Intersection IV" and only returned to it five years later with "Ixion"), performed with customary aplomb by the Amsterdam-based Barton Workshop under the baton of Jos Zwaanenburg and their musi…
Triadic Memories
Performed by Marilyn Nonken, recorded 2003. "The place Triadic Memories takes us is full of illusions, not only of function and direction but also of timelessness and stasis. This almost 90 minute, single movement work for solo piano is available in two formats: as a specially priced 2-CD set and complete and uninterrupted on one DVD-Audio. There is no indication of tempo. For this recording, Ms. Nonken chose a steady eighth-note pulse throughout that approximates the heart rate at rest. Unfoldi…
String quartet N°2
Dvd audio edition. In the 1970s Morton Feldman took up the study and collecting of antique Turkish rugs, a highly evolved and exquisite folk art. The rugs are intricately patterned, symmetrical in basic design but with constant variation and displacement in the detailed execution of that design; strikingly and subtly colored, including fine variegations of principal colors resulting from the dyeing process. Analogies are clear to Feldman's music as it takes up large-scale patterning, partly work…
Voices and instruments
This CD is comprised of works from Feldman's Early Period (late 40's until the late 60's) and Middle Period (late 60's/early 70's until the early 80's). In the beginning, like all young creative artists, Feldman was working through alluring influences as well as the influence of his teachers, towards the moment when he would find his personal creative voice. With the exception of the vocal solo Only, this disc documents all the earliest works that Feldman chose to publish. Journey to the End of …
Indeterminate music
A unique collection of Feldman's 'indeterminate' works; incorporating new types of notation (including graph scores) and involving a considerable degree of indeterminacy in regard to pitch, dynamics, etc. This is the first time the complete Durations and Projections series have appeared on a single disc. It is a rewarding experience to hear the Durations and Projections played together, imparting a sense of Feldman's mastery of instrumentation and timbre while savoring the metamorphosis of its s…
Puzzle
"Produced by Centre international de recherche musicale, Nice, France. Project involving 22 instrumentists featuring Pierre-Yves Artaud (flutes), Alexandre Ouzounoff (bassoon), Daniel Kientzy (saxophone), Vinko Globokar (trombone), Elisabeth Chojnacka (harpsichord). Puzzle 1999 (14-17) commissioned by INA-GRM." (Discogs)"An extension of the 'virtual orchestra' in which composer Pascal composes music out of gathered individual instrumental tones and lines (with the musicians never having met …
Michael von Biel
An astonishing CD with the usual RZ deluxe touch by the well-known fluxus related cellist. Michael von Biel (born 30 June 1939 in Hamburg) a German composer, cellist, and graphic artist. Von Biel studied piano, theory, and composition in Toronto (1956–57), Vienna (1958–60), New York (1960, with Morton Feldman, amongst others), London (1960, with Cornelius Cardew), and Cologne (with Karlheinz Stockhausen). From 1961 to 1963 he attended the Darmstadt Vacation Courses for New Music. In 1964 he rec…
Transición II. Phonophonie
This disc collects two early, forward looking works by Argentine born Mauricio Kagel, now living in Germany. Both works are constructed in such a way so that no two performances can ever be alike. Transición II was an early exploration of what "live electronics" are now being used to achieve. The score is in individual pages which can be placed in any order by the performers. It works on three levels. LIVE: The pianist performs on the keyboard while a percussionist performs inside the pian…
Morendo
1990 release. Six compositions by the German composer Mathias Spahlinger: ("Morendo" for orchestra), ("Yon Hier" for string quartet), ("Vier Stücke"), ("Entlöschend"), ("Storung" -- electronic music), ("Sotto Voce" -- choral work).Mathias Spahlinger is a composer. His compositions play out in the area of tension encompassing the most diverse musical influences and style directions: Spahlinger’s works portray conflicts for which there are no defined models as such, between Renaissance and jazz…
Celestial Fires
The works of Mary Jane Leach explore the physicality of sound, working very carefully with the timbres of instruments, creating combination, difference, and interference tones. Space is also an important concern: how sound changes when it is moved around a room. Celestial Fires features the New York Treble Singers, (Virginia Davidson, conductor) performing four 8-part pieces for a capella women's voices; Shannon Peet performing Feu de Joie for 7 bassoons; and Barbara Held and Ms. Leach performin…
Cartridge Music, Cifre, Four Systems
Works performed and arranged by Italian composer and Nuova Consonanza member Mario Bertoncini in 1970. Includes pieces by Cage ("Cartridge Music" for amplified "small sounds"), Earl Brown ("Four Systems" for prepared piano), and Bertoncini ("Cifre" for two or more pianos).