★Cantaloupe
Music In Fifths / Two Pages
Cantaloupe continues its recording series of the masterworks of the music of our time with this brilliant disc of two early classics by composer Philip Glass, performed by the Bang on a Can All-Stars. Glass is arguably minimalism's most well-known and influential composer. Before film soundtracks, operas, and universal acclaim, there were these intense, rugged, and demanding early works for keyboard. In Music in Fifths and Two Pages, Philip Glass's ideas are at their most basic, using only addit…
Which Side Are You On?
The first woman to record Frederic Rzewski's setting of Oscar Wilde's De Profundis, Bang on a Can/Steve Reich pianist Lisa Moore sheds powerful new light on Wilde's jailhouse meditation on imprisonment, debasement, and the barriers that he faced as a homosexual. Rzewski, a revolutionary American composer with associations in both the modern classical and avant-jazz worlds, has created an aggressively emotional soundtrack to Wilde's moving prose. De Profundis breaks down the boundaries between …
Hockets For Two Voices
In just over ten minutes of recorded music, Los Angeles-based composer, artist, and instrument designer Meara O’Reilly can communicate a daunting breadth of creative possibility. That’s no mean feat in today’s soundbite-obsessive world, but it’s part of what makes Hockets for Two Voices such an unusual and compelling addition to the hypermodern canon of new music. Hocketing refers to the practice of splitting a melody across multiple parts, often in very surprising ways. While the form dates ba…
Memory Game
* CD in 6-panel wallet, designed by Denise Burt, including a booklet with lyrics and liner notes by the composer * Memory Game is both a look back at a pivotal point in Meredith Monk’s storied career, and a richly layered portrait of how vocal music, under the guidance of an indefatigable master, can play with our expectations in poignant and compelling ways. What emerges is a suite of songs that flows with a remarkable narrative cohesion, stemming in large part from the composer’s willingness t…
John The Revelator
Kline created a Mass for six voices, seeking to craft a "window to a deeper world...unburdened by a rigid plan, formal or stylistic." The result is a 21st century Mass, featuring world-class string quartet, Ethel, and renowned early music vocal ensemble, Lionheart.
Steve Reich: Tehillim The Desert Music
Two Reich masterpieces, definitively recorded, featuring a crystalline, high-energy Tehillim with the ONLY RECORDING of the newly revised version of The Desert Music. A must for Reich fans. For freshness and focus, the new recording of Tehillim surpasses the 1981 recording by Mr. Reich & his own ensemble.
Acoustica: Alarm Will Sound Performs Aphex Twin
Alarm Will Sound, a young 22-piece new music band featuring voices, strings, woodwinds, and percussionists, received high praise from around the world for their debut release on Cantaloupe featuring the music of Steve Reich. Now the band takes on the music of twisted techno master Aphex Twin on Acoustica. Alarm Will Sound has, with a cadre of ten arrangers, painstaking recreated and rethought Aphex Twin's legendary electronic work for an all-acoustic ensemble. From creative new transcription ide…
Revelation
A protégé of La Monte Young, composer-pianist Michael Harrison has developed one the most distinctive voices of our time, informed by his study of North Indian classical ragas and Middle Eastern rhythms. In Revelation (2001), his hypnotic seventy-minute work for solo piano, he employs the principles of harmonic resonance and just intonation to forge a remarkable new sound for the instrument, based on unfamiliar tunings and scales. Live performances of this strangely beautiful work have been prai…