Clepsydra, Astray
**Restock of a rare, must-have record for contemporary music lovers. Comes with 4-page 12" booklet ** Great dense orchestral scraping and bowing from 1982 & 1983 by Romanian composer Horatiu Radulescu (1942-2008), among the great masters of Spectralism and subharmonics. This absorbing LP includes two groundbreaking works centered around the 'Sound Icons' - pianos standing on their sides, played with bows between the strings. On side A is the hypnotic, otherworldly Clepsydra for 16 Sound Icons (E…
Improvisations
This unique collection comes with an attractive and profusely illustrated 144-page book with many previously unpublished photographs of Gurdjieff and recollections of people who were present when these recordings were made. It further contains several chapters by Gert-Jan Blom about the process of selecting and sequencing the tracks, audio restoration of the recordings, the history of Gurdjieff’s harmonium music, transcriptions of Gurdjieff’s stories and an extensive track notes-section. The boo…
Coplanar
Guillermo Gregorio (b. 1941, Buenos Aires) is an Argentine composer, clarinetist, and saxophonist whose career bridges avant-garde music, visual art, and architecture. Active on the Argentine experimental scene from the 1960s through the early 1980s, he was a key member of groups like Movimiento Música Más (a Fluxus collective), the Experimental Group of Buenos Aires, and the Group of Contemporary Music of La Plata, engaging in Fluxus events, multimedia spectacles, and experimental concerts.
Gre…
Gottfried Michael Koenig
Restocked, reduced price: beautifully prepared overview of Gottfried Michael Koenig's work (including early 60s WDR electronic classics), produced in conjunction by the Instituut of Sonologie and NEAR/Donemus w/ Edition RZ. During the early '60s, Koenig began writing a program -- named simply 'Project 1,' or PR1 -- designed to compose and generate music via the computer; when in 1964 he accepted the position of creative director with the Institute for Sonology in Utrecht, Holland, he took the so…
Giacinto Scelsi
**Comes in glossy gatefold sleeve with 20-page booklet ** Features 6 works by the influential Italian avant-gardist of the 20th century, dating from 1961-1990. Pranam I (for voice, 12 instruments and tape, 1972); Anagamin. Celui qui choisit de revenir ou pas (for 12 strings, 1965); Quattro pezzi su una nota sola (for chamber orchestra, 1959); Quartetto n. 4, (1964); Okanagon (Tam Tam and double bass, 1968); Quartetto n. 2 (1961). "For Giacinto Scelsi, music was above all a manifestation of the e…
The Orchestral Works 2
"The first recording of his 32-minute grand cantata 'La Nascita del Verb.' Steeped in chromaticism, with hints of Scriabin and a sea of percussion, 'Nascita' boasts a vast double fugue (one of the most imposing in the history of music) and a forty-seven voice canon in twelve keys. This work, 'truly written in blood,' left Scelsi 'in a deplorable state, afterwards he stopped composing for several years. One of Giacinto Scelsi's infamous pieces are the 'Quattro Pezzi (su una nota sola).' Ear piece…
The piano works 3
Performed by Aki Takahashi, piano; 2005 recordings. "Giacinto Scelsi (1905-1988) wrote one of the largest sets of piano music in the 20th century. Scelsi was a virtuoso pianist, and even his most experimental compositions in this genre show a marked pianistic conception. Largely ignored during much of his life, Scelsi was basically only 'discovered' in the 1980s. Though a recluse in his later years, there were some artists who worked with Scelsi and gained special insight into the spirit of his …
Music For High Winds
"Ixor" (1956, for clarinet), "Suite" (1953, for flute + clarinet), "Pwyll" (1954, for flute), "Tre Pezzi" (1954, for Eb clarinet), "Rucke di Guck (1957, for Piccolo + oboe), "Preghiera per un' ombra (1954, for clarinet), "Ko-Lho" (1966, for flute + clarinet), "Three Latin Prayers" (1970, for Eb and A clarinet). "This recording presents pieces for woodwind instruments played solo or in duo. The majority date from the 50's, when Scelsi abandoned his classical and 12-tone training to undertake a re…
Advance of the Fungi
Advance of the Fungi - (chamber works 1960-66) - Time on Time in Miracles for soprano, 2 horns, 2 trombones, piano, cello & percussion; Mod 3 for flute, percussion & contrabass; Holy Ghost Vacuum or America Faints for electric organ; Advance of the Fungi for male choir, 3 clarinets, 3 trombones, 2 horns, & 1 percussion; Two Worlds for soprano, flute, oboe, piano, percussion, violin, viola, cello & contrabass; Bestiary 1: Eingang for soprano, piano & 5 percussionists.
The Previous Evening
Former Henry Cow guitarist Fred Frith pays homage to three giants of contemporary classical music: John Cage, Morton Feldman and Earle Brown. In his own inimitable fashion, Frith has tried to incorporate the chosen composer's own working methods into each of the three pieces that make up The Previous Evening. As he explains in the enclosed booklet regarding his John Cage homage: 'Fragments of text heard in Part 1 were taken at random from Cage's book Silence. Tape editing, the structure of the e…
Franco Evangelisti
The first CD release of works by Franco Evangelisti (1926-1980), the founder of Nuova Consonanza (infamous early '60s Italian avant garde ensemble that included Mario Bertoncini, Roland Kayn, Ennio Morricone, Frederic Rzewski and others). This two disc retrospective features studio audio-footage and lab-experiments, featuring performers Aloys Kontarsky, David Tudor, Eberhard Blüm and the LaSalle Quartet. Spanning the last 40 years, virtually all forms of post-1950 invention are represented here …
Phoenix
Superb introduction to a largely unknown avant-garde composer/instrument builder; one of the most important ReR releases in a while. The music of little known East European composer Ernö Kiraly has finally been preserved -- a collection of original works that will impress and amaze all students of contemporary classical/electroacoustic composition, along with those who have only recently discovered the sound worlds of Pierre Henry and Harry Partch. Kiraly's experimental music stems from two sour…
90% post consumer sound
From the liner notes by Tim Perkis: "Ellen Band's work... lies in the path it takes, leading one from listening to recordings of natural sounds to, before one knows it, being immersed in a dense and complex field of sound which, though built completely from natural elements, is something quite transcendent and otherworldly. Band's music seduces us into perceiving the sensuous properties of familiar sounds by building dense and complex sound environments out of these elements. By sheer sensory de…
Music for piano
Douvle CD set with recordings by the legendary 20th century avantgarde pianist performing compositions by (and with) John Cage, Sylvano Bussotti, Morton Feldman, Christian Wolff.
In between -the viola in my life IV
"Two first recordings of Morton Feldman's music in themselves make this CD a notable event. And then, David Felder's music puts it over the line. The music bridges two generations and two distinct personalities. Feldman, with John Cage, Earle Brown, David Tudor, and Christian Wolff, was a seminal member of the New York School in the 1950s, and his work is known for the beauty and delicacy of its orchestral colors, its 'painterly' surface, its static and quiet structure, its contemplative charact…
Clarinet songs
Daniel Goode's Clarinet Songs has long been a favorite on the new music concert circuit. It is a 75-minute suite for solo clarinet which Goode began writing for himself in 1979, and reached its current form in 1991. It uses all of Goode's virtuosic techniques distilled into sixteen "Songs without Words," a poetics of the new clarinet. It is made up of a series of individual pieces, each a sound world of its own, based on some unique material, perhaps a specific technical, poetic, or sonic idea, …
Piano Music 1959-70
‘Piano Music 1959-70’ is a reissue of an album that enjoys cult status
among Cardew aficionados. The standout piece remains Volo solo (1965),
conceived originally for Tilbury as an attempt to coin a new type of
virtuosity. Cornelius Cardew expected it to be taken at a reckless tempo so that,
as he wrote, ‘the piano should seem to be breaking apart’. But the
material he gives the pianist – 60 inchoate fragments interlinked by
pauses – trips impetus up, the structure left with a hiccuping
s…
Chamber Music 1955-64
Restocked, reduced price. The works on this CD represent arguably the most experimental and radical works to come out of Britain in the past 40 years. Cornelius Cardew's scores from the early 1960's are notable for their elegant, original and precise notational scores, labyrinthine blueprints for realisation as totally new and original compositions. They are open to ever new interpretations whose possibilities are restricted only by the creativity of the performer. It is this responsibility laid…
Ten Exercises
This marvelous recording of these elusive works features composer-supervised performances by a hand-picked group of renowned new-music exponents. "Your first encounter with the music of Christian Wolff leaves you with the impression you've just heard (or played, or read) something totally strange, unlike anything else you know. And yet, upon reflection, you realize it is at the same time something completely ordinary and normal, as familiar in its way as any number of repetitive actions …
Early Piano Music (1951-1961)
Early Christian Wolf piano music (written 1951-61), performed by: John Tilbury & Christian Wolff (pianos), Eddie Prevost (percussion). Studio recordings from 2001/2. "During the period when these works were composed (1951-61), Christian Wolff was closely associated with John Cage. Morton Feldmon, Earle Brown and David Tudor (they are sometimes referred to together as the New York School'). Feldman later remarked that he was profoundly indebted to Christian Wolff ('I think of him as my artistic c…