Paul Paccione, Apartment House

American composer Paul Paccione makes a welcome return to recording with this portrait album featuring five chamber works originally composed between 1980 and 1990, all performed by the acclaimed Apartment House ensemble. Born in New York in 1952, Paccione studied with legendary minimalist pioneer Harley Gaber and later at the University of Iowa, developing a distinctive voice deeply influenced by Morton Feldman, John Cage, and Anton Webern.

The album includes Exit Music for string trio, Gridwork for clarinet, bass clarinet, violin, cello and piano, Violin for four violins (revised in 2022), the title piece Distant Music for two clarinets and strings, and Still Life for two flutes (revised in 2013). These works showcase Paccione's mastery of long-form minimalism, with patient melodies unwinding through slowly shifting harmonic landscapes.

Peter Margasak writes in Bandcamp: "Distant Musics has been haunting me for weeks, its patient melodies unwinding through a fog of undulating harmony with slow-motion grace... One of the most extraordinary things I've heard in a long while."

Dusted Magazine observes: "Paccione's music is dominated by long notes played on stringed instruments and his pieces slowly unfold over five to ten minutes, if not longer... The music creaks and groans, droning like a set of bagpipes, and settles into an unsettling, otherworldly ambience."

The Wire notes: "The selection of small group compositions date mostly from the 1980's, but their diagrammatic clarity seems to grant them a timeless quality... His scores can generate an aura of luminosity, and the sensuousness of his music's harmonic motion far transcends its structural geometry."

Essential for admirers of Feldman, Cage's Number Pieces, and contemporary American minimalism.