★Edition Wandelweiser
Ensemble Works
Three detailed and fragile compositions from German minimalist composer Eva-Maria Houben reveal themselves over two CDs, performed by the Boston-based experimental music ensemble, Ordinary Affects, with Houben herself on organ recording at Memorial Chapel, in Wesleyan University. Disc 1: Echo Fantasy I, IV & VDisc 2: Gesang XI, Unter AnderenPerformed by Ordinary Affects: Morgan Evans-Weiler (violin), Laura Cetilia (cello), J.P.A. Falzone (vibraphone/piano), Luke Martin (guitar) with Eva-Maria Ho…
Harmonies and Structures
Nine – for John Cage (2010) by Zeirkratzer with Reinhold Friedl (inside piano), Frank Gratkowski (bass clarinet), Hilary Jeffery (trombone), Hild Sofie Tafjord (horn), Burkhard Schlothauer (violin), Anton Lukoszevieze (cello), Ullrich Philipp (double bass), Marc Weiser (electric guitar), Christian Lillinger (percussion). The well-known Zagreb music biennale, which has been a hotspot for contemporary music for more than 30 years, asked Reinhold Friedl, musical director of Zeitkratzer, to perform …
Spaces . An Hour For Piano
Performed by Keiko Shichijo. Tom Johnson's An Hour for Piano was written in 1971. The piece began as a series of short, improvisatory sketches in 1967 when Johnson was accompanying a modern dance class at New York University. Johnson gradually expanded these sketches and added transitions between them, writing a piece that is to be played in exactly one hour. Achieving this goal requires an absolutely steady tempo for the duration of the piece, which Johnson has set at quarter note = 59.225 beat…
Socrate
Beautiful rendering of French composer Eric Satie's 1918 masterwork "Socrate", originally for four sopranos and chamber orchestra, here stripped to its essence as a duo with Olalla Aleman on soprano and Guy Vandromme on piano, maintaining Satie's characterist reserve and refinement in the 3 parts: "portrait of socrates"; "banks of the ilissus"; and "death of socrates".
Mundanas I - V
The title mundana comes from Boethius' (427-524 AD) printed work on ancient Greek music: De institutione musica. John McCowen is a New York based composer and performer whose work focuses on extending the possibilities of the clarinet family. John embraces long-form drones, difference tones, and beating harmonics as a means to extrude the dimensionality within - treating the clarinet as an acoustic synthesizer. His works for ensemble utilize spectral techniques to superimpose the timbral/sonic c…
Sileen II
An adaptation from "Sileen", a composition commissioned by Musica For The Festival Oortreders at Neerpelt, Belgium, 2016 performed with 50 members of a local music school; "Sileen II" was realized with only Gareth Davis on bass clarinet plus sounds from Machinefabriek, recorded in the same pitch and tempo as "Sileen', then slowed to half its speed and one octave lower. Stunning!
Voice with Harp
Although credited to Houben, as all of its compositions are hers, she does not play on Voice with Harp which is performed by the duo of harpist Christine Kazarian and soprano Tatiana Kuzina. Recorded in April and August 2017, the album opens with the 2009 solo harp piece "Aeolian Harp" on which Kazarian gives a fine performance that highlights its sheer beauty. In an inspired piece of programming, the album features both "Adagio" and "Songs for the Island" from Voice with Piano, allowing for…
Voice with Piano
Recorded in March 2016, Voice with Piano is true to its title. It features Eva Marie Houben as performer and composer, performing three of her compositions, playing piano alongside soprano Irene Kurka. The disc opens with the three-part "Adagio" with text by the Belgian Felix Timmermans (1886-1947), sung in the original Flemish. So, non-Flemish speakers will not get the literal meaning of the words but, thanks to Kurka's expressive singing, their drama and emotion is all too clear. The pi…
Observing Objects
Samuel Ekkehardt Dunscombe (bass clarinet), Rebecca Lane (bass flute), Eva-Maria Houben (organ, piano). "Observing Objects is in stark contrast to Voice with Piano in several ways and it helps expand the picture of Houben and her music. Once again, she is featured both as performer and composer, this time playing in the company of Samuel Dunscombe on bass clarinet and Rebecca Lane on bass flute, on recordings dating from May 2017. Ingeniously, the album consists of two versions of the title pie…
Works for piano 1949-1987
in this edition we hear for the first time the complete solo piano works from between 1949 and 1987 of the swiss avant-garde composer Hermann Meier. Before the time of the three movement sonata meier composed several dodecaphonic works some of which were cyclic. these were not considered for this CD, since the sonata contains structurally a replica of all that meier wrote before. the sonata coincides with the first serial sketches and visions, together with integral thinking using rows and is as…
Approximating Omega
text adapted from gregory chaitin's 1994 book the limits of mathematics muirgen éléonore gourgues (reading) judith hamann (violoncello) with samples contributed by: omás Cabado, Raven Chacon, Yiannis Christofides, Alan Courtis, John Eagle, Carmina Escobar, Bryan Eubanks, Jacqueline George, Tom Johnson, David Kant, Aj Kluth, Ulrich Krieger, Juan Sebastián Lach Lau, Ingrid Lee, John Lely, Todd Lerew, Heather Lockie, Scott Mclaughlin, Ezequiel Menalled, Ian Mikyska, Pablo Riera, Dean Rosenthal, Kar…
Euhesma
euhesma (harmonium indien, mélodica, harmonica, diapason à bouche). d'Incise (harmonium indien, orgue électrique, mélodica)
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…
Listen
"Recently, I have become interested in the idea of music blending with the environment the listener is in, rather than the music creating its own environment. In listen, I have recorded a balance of sounds that occur naturally throughout the day and others created intentionally in imitation of those sounds. the piece is comprised of four field recordings, collected in an area near my current home (Avon, CT) at different times of the day. I listened to each of the recordings and isolated sounds t…
Chaz Underriner Reinterprets Anastassis Philippakopoulos
Performers: Chaz Underriner, electric guitar; Chaz Underriner, bass guitar; Armin Abdihodzic, electric guitar; Greg Dixon, electric guitar; Robert Trusko, bass guitar
Sometimes
“Sometimes (harmony series 1)”, realization for female voice and three electronics players by Colectivo maDam. This piece was, as the title indicates, the first of the 34 pieces that would eventually become the harmony series. in this and all the other pieces in the series, i attempted to create the conditions for a harmonic situation without giving any actual notes. the main stimulus for this was swell piece (for Alison Knowles) (1967) by James Tenney (one of the postal pieces). i had reaso…
More Chamber Events
Antoine Beuger (flute), Christoph Nicolaus (stone harp), Burkhard Schlothauer (trumpet, bass drum). Before starting the event series in 1995, I had been occupying myself with nonrepresentational minimalist painting, in which, rather than representing anything from the objective world, the artwork itself becomes an entity, an object of the world. Would it be possible to realize such a degree of abstraction in music? In this series of compositions for solo instruments each sound by itself is c…
Organ Sonatinas And Drones
'Sonatina no. 1' (2016). 'Sonatina no. 2' (2016). 'Sonatina no. 3' (2016). 'drones' (2014). Carson Cooman, organ. Eva-Maria Houben has been performing works for the organ for more than 30 years. As she is related to the “wandelweiser-group” of composers, her compositions are published by “edition wandelweiser”, Haan. Her list of compositions up to now includes works for the organ, piano, clarinet, trombone, violoncello and other solo instruments, works for voice and piano, for wind and chamber e…
A Hint Of An Emotion
Beat Keller (Electric Guitar) Philipp Bowee (Electric Guitar) Recorded in Mellingen and Winterthur, Switzerland Recording: Philipp Bowee All tracks are composed (2014-2016), mixed and mastered by Cem Güney Special thanks to: Antoine Beuger, Sylvia Alexandra Schimag, Beat Keller, Philipp Bowee, Gil Sansón, Jeremiah Runnels, my wife and mother and to everyone who made this possible. 'a bas relief of a talisman' dedicated to Charles Ives 'soft kill incubator' dedicated to Sylvia Alexandra Sc…