★Edition Wandelweiser
The Music Of Katharina Weber, Jack Callahan, Alex Goretzki & Alfred Zimmerlin
2016 release **
"This release by Edition Wandelweiser Records collects recent compositions by Katharina Weber, Jack Callahan, Alex Goretzki, and Alfred Zimmerlin, performed by Christian Buck on guitar and Christian Wolfarth on percussion. It opens with Callahan’s ‘New Piece’, beginning with quiet feedback and low rumble before moving on to evenly spaced chords, cymbals, and soft beats. There’s an ambiguity or uncertainty to these sounds, or to my hearing of them, in terms of their harmony and ti…
On Foot
2011 release **
"Shepard, in 2005, set himself the task of hiking 250 miles across Switzerland, composing a new piece each day (performing it as well, in some public setting). Six of these works are collected here, performed by various Wandelweiser-involved folk. The music has an aura of folk song to it, however attenuated, heard clearly in Christian Wolff's melodica rendition of "Crêt de la Neuve, le 20 juillet 2005" with it's gentle ups and downs, similarly the second brief track with Katie Po…
On Foot: Brooklyn
2014 release **
"Shepard walks around, often traveling impressive distances, and composes music, generally playing on route. I had previously heard the excellent documentation of his perambulation through Switzerland in 2005, "On Foot", but in 2012, he chose to navigate far more dangerous territory, namely Brooklyn, doing so for thirteen weeks, penning a composition per week and organizing on-site performances of same by varied musicians which are heard here, usually along with the environmental…
Number Pieces (Piano)
2018 release **
"Two versions of Cage's 'One' and one of his 'One5' performed by pianist Guy Vandromme. 'One' was written in 1987, a ten-minute long piece for solo piano. Per the Cage Works page, the commentary is: "This work comprises 10 systems of piano chords, varying in dynamics, selected by chance. Each system is roughly 1 minute long, and all but one is flexible. Each system contains 2 sets of chords. The order of each set is maintained, but the relationship between the two sets of chords …
Grand Chromatic Fantasy (Symphony) For Three Pianos
2016 release **
"In the early days of Wandelweiser records, a disc of music by the forgotten composer Herman Van San extended the label’s scope and helped to cement its aesthetic. He was composing long before there was a Wandelweiser group or label, but his outsider static and innovative music was a perfect fit. This disc of music by the all but unknown Mikheil Shugliashvili achieves a similar purpose. Born in 1941, the composer died in 1996, the year of the label’s first release, but his radi…
Duos
2009 release **
"Two sets of pieces written for the duo Contour (Stephen Altoff-trumpet, Lee Forrest Ferguson-percussion), a potentially unwieldy combination. Frey's "22 sächelchen" (small things) is rather just that, 22 miniatures lasting 32 1/2 minutes that vary from quiet reductionism to outright fanfares. I guess some of the latter sort are a bit...shocking, at least in a Wandelweiser context. But there are also oblique references to jazz (the mute in #11), processional music (the tympani in…
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
2018 release **
"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
2017 release **
"Recorded in March 2016, Voice with Piano is true to its title. It features 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
2017 release **
"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 piece, the first with Houben on organ, the second on piano, each one lasting about twenty-ni…
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
2017 release **
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 la…
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…