Piano
All records with piano · Solo piano only
Asking
First recording of Maria de Alvear's Asking (2001), a 53-minute open-structure work for solo piano composed for and performed by Eve Egoyan.
erosion and growth
*Limited Edition Handmade CDR in Cardboard String Sleeve with Liner Notes and album art.*
"In loving memory of Kathryn Eagle.
This piece uses a record (a data structure) resulting from a field recording. It began with a waterfall in Washington (Little Mashel Falls) near my parents’ home, which I recorded in my mother’s final months of life. A brain cancer slowly took away her abilities, beginning with her speech. A loquacious person her entire life before this, I had to learn to hear and underst…
Mysteries:Untitled
*2023 stock* 'The chief attraction of this album is an almost 50 minute, previously unreleased solo performance by Taylor given at New York University in November 1976 as part of the Bösendorfer Festival, a benefit series for the Kitchen performance centre. His previous solo recital that year had been in August at Moosham Castle in the Lungau region of Salzburg during an open-air festival, subsequently released as Air Above Mountains (Buildings Within) (Enja, 1977). Taylor had come across a Böse…
Indent
*2023 stock* In 1973, Indent marked a new direction for one of the founders and masters of what was to be called »free jazz«; yet it turned out to have defined styles and highly sophisticated rules of its own. It was radically new and initially difficult to tune into for some. Cecil Taylor was composing in fractions of seconds. He was free to decide what to compose but in the end intelligent structures can be perceived with a multitude of »cells« being introduced, developed and layered one upon …
Silent Tongues
*2023 stock* 'If you had to pick three architects of modern jazz piano, you could just about cover everything with Bill Evans, McCoy Tyner and Cecil Taylor. Despite his phenomenal talent, Taylor may have seemed like the lesser influence at first, as most of his followers were relegated to the avant-garde end of things, but over the years his influence has grown and these days you are liable to hear Taylor type assaults on the piano from guys like Craig Taborn, Jason Moran or others, while they p…
Poschiavo
*2023 stock* In the life of every artist comes the time when toward the end of his existence, he will create a monument to his ever-lasting artistic efforts. It is the Swan-Song for which he wishes to remain being known; for centuries, this has crossed the borderlines between cultures and arts. Poschiavo was recorded when Cecil Taylor was sixty-nine years old, very much at the height of his musical and poetic powers. Recorded in Europe on a fine Bösendorfer grand piano in perfect digital clarity…
Psyco Analysis
Vittoria Corona's Corviria project at its darkest: short, gloomy pieces for treated piano, strings and synthesizers, tape delay and wordless voices, until the drum-machine lullaby Seagull Song lets the light back in.
18 July 1971 Nice, France
This is tenor sax giant Pharoah Sanders caught live in France in summer 1971, when the man was still in full post-Coltrane mood. At the head of a strong quintet featuring: Lonnie Liston Smith - piano, Cecil McBee - bass, Jimmy Hopps - drums, and Lawrence Killian - congas, Pharoah delivers two very intense yet serene versions of his milestone piece "The Creator Has A Master Plan" and "Let Us Go In The House Of The Lord", a traditional gospel hymn arranged by Lonnie Liston Smith. This is deep spir…
Toverbal Sweet
Big Tip!
*Limited edition of 500 copies.* The cultish London-based Mushroom label - already known for releasing some of the most uncompromising British improvised music - brought together three musicians whose approaches seemed fundamentally incompatible. Lol Coxhill, the anarchic genius of British free saxophone, meeting the pure magic of a Dutch rhythm section: Pierre Courbois on drums and Jasper Van't Hof on keyboards. The result was Toverbal Sweet - a clash of titans that somehow worked pr…
Anagrammi
*2022 stock* "The piano: the perfect balance between harmony and melody. Processing a piano is always an adventure; having 24 recordings of free improvisations performed by Francesco Arrighi and Mara Lepore is an incredible sound palette to have available. These recordings were deconstructed into individual phrases and micro fragments and then reassembled, both serially and in parallell, to follow a unifying compositional idea. At the same time the tracks were dilated and processed with filters,…
Solastalgia
*In process of stocking. Limited edition of 400 copies.* We haven’t found them yet, the words to talk to each other about the worrying signs of climate change. Feeling worried when walking on autumn leaves in the beginning of August should be completely normal. But how do we communicate about it? We don’t want to be just the next hysterical doomer. With this music I try to focus on the climate pain itself, gently inviting the listener to investigate their latent feelings of unease and growing co…
Omaggio a Giuseppe Ungaretti
In 1957 he founded an improvising ensemble with Terry Riley and Pauline Oliveros. In 1970 he wrote a drone for three amplified pianos on a single low D. In sixty years he has released almost nothing. Here he plays the Enhanced Piano in Just Intonation, on poems Ungaretti wrote in the trenches.
Respiration
Respiration adds to the Cecil Taylor oeuvre a nearly perfect 43 minutes of Taylor’s solo power recorded at a beautiful level of quality. It comes from early-ish in his career—it’s always surprising to me, even though I know the history very well, how early Taylor was going this far away from the rails—when he had only just cemented his mature vision ( Conquistador! and Unit Structures were 1966). It feels as joyfully playful for him as it does for him as it does for us.
It’s hard to tell sometim…
October Suite
*In process of stocking.* The greatest Polish piano trio RGG played in the great final of Ad Libitum Festival 2020. In the middle of pandemic restrictions, almost without the audience but with a great companion on three additional and at the same time exceptional guests. Next to the band stood on the festival's stage, one of the most interesting and promising vocalists Marta Grzywacz, great trumpet player Artur Majewski, and block flutes virtuoso Dominic Strycharski.They met for the first time, …
Orchard
*2022 Stock.* “I was born and raised in Kentucky, and for many generations my direct ancestors and extended family have been farmers. So, creating music that is ‘about’ soil, plant life, and the natural world, is my way of honoring that legacy.” Composer Tyler Kline’s tools, though, are not the plow – and vegetables are not the crop – in this collection of brief piano pieces commissioned by and for over a dozen pianists. Instead, Orchard is a celebration of fruit. Each sketch draws on a specific…
Intervals 2
*In process of stocking.* “Well, isn’t it always now?” Joel Futterman’s audible smile, in response to my simple query about the time during a phone conversation, bespeaks and accentuates the deeper truths embodied in his creativity. Grounded, sometimes adrift, forced to live in the world of duality, we capitulate too willingly to the whims and whiles of intervals, to their capricious grip on our intersecting realities, to their encapsulation of alternating mood and ebb-and-flow vitality. Doors o…
Abstersion
Dinzu Artefacts presents Abstersion by Lorenzo Abattoir. An exquisite collage exploring the internal sound-world of an upright piano. The piano here has shed its traditional use as a musical instrument to emerge as a wonderfully sonorous body in itself. Incidental sounds which are typically relegated to the periphery are moved towards the center of attention in a kaleidoscopic unity which privileges no sound over any other, opening up a whole world of noise, tone, and every shade between.
Speaksome
*In process of stocking. 2022 stock.* For as long as I can remember, Christian Wallumrød's piano touch has done something to me. We met early. The peculiar and surprising, but still somewhat self-evident, melodic twists. Not to mention the far above average well-weighted ornaments. He manages to create completely unique universes, either with his own ensemble or alone. In recent years, he has also returned to electronics and he treats them with a gentle rawness. There has always been something h…
Itinerario Beat
Rigol (Duilio Radici) and an uncredited Ugo Fusco with the Blue Sharks of It Became Crystal: ten instrumentals for bass, drums, piano and Hammond between beat, jazz-funk and symphonic pop.
Sextet & Double Sextet
Steve Reich's Sextet (1984) and the Pulitzer Prize winning Double Sextet (2007) together on one release for the first time, played by the Danish ensemble Ekkozone under percussionist and conductor Mathias Reumert.