Composition / Contemporary

2011 release ** "Stemming from the homonymous biennial festival in the Czech Republic, Ostravská Banda – with its twenty musicians – thrives under the direction of Peter Kotik, a veteran of unconventional orchestration and artistic director of the S.E.M. Ensemble in New York City. Standing out among the large group is Joseph Kubera – a name already referenced in a contemporary context – a talented pianist with a resume rich with collaborations with masters such as Alvin Lucier, Robert Ashley, Mo…

2019 release ** "Dust is a collection of music for solo violin and electronics. Daniel describes the record as 'a full exploration of the sound world a violin allows. The electronics meld with, lift, surpass and dance around the organic rawness of the strings. The piece is all my years of not conceding or diluting myself to the needs of others, compressed into one long musical expression. It is hope and birth and death and melancholy'. Music by: Valgeir Sigurðsson, Edmund Finnis, Heinrich Ignaz …

* 2021 Stock ** During the decades following the Second World War, all eyes shifted toward New York, a city which, at that moment, played host to some of brightest creative minds of the century. Innovations were abound. Visual artists, writers, thinkers, musicians, and composers continuously pushed into previously unthinking ground. While the United States had been previously known to give birth to a wild and distinct breed of composer, from Charles Ives to Nancarrow, Harry Partch, Cowell, and b…

*2022 Stock.* Natürliche Dauern (Natural Durations, 3rd Hour from Klang) for piano (2005/06) is presented in a 2 CD set. Some of these short piano etudes (24 in all) are predicated on the decay times of sustained, pianistic attacks, while others are fascinating explorations of melodic and rhythmic contrast. These final, late-era piano pieces are truly beautiful postcards of shape and color.- Stockhausenspace.blogspot.com

*2022 Stock.* Samstag aus Licht is the second opera written for Licht, Samstag aus Licht. This is a darkly humorous 4 act opera on 4 CDs, featuring flute, piano, wind (jazz) band and male choir. The 3rd Scene is presented in both the complete version and as the aborted strike version. In the latter case, the performance is halted before its completion by a revolt from the wind band members (for playing past contracted working hours). If you only get one Licht opera, this is the one I'd recommend…

*100 copies limited edition* Still Forms in Air is the debut album by Italian composer Francesca Marongiu under her own name. It draws inspiration from mid-1980s Japanese ambient music — Hiroshi Yoshimura, Satoshi Ashikawa, Takashi Kokubo — and, more subtly, from Italian experimental echoes rooted in both personal and cultural memory. The album unfolds like suspended time, like architecture that quietly bears witness to the shifts that have shaped our cities and the ways we live in them. These t…

Works by Luigi Nono for flute and live electronics from his 1980s collaboration with Roberto Fabbriciani, with Musiche per Manzù for tape (1969) and Fabbriciani's own tribute for piccolo, Omaggio a Luigi Nono.

Tip! Explicit isolation is the third album by the international collective E/I, led by composer and percussionist Szymon Pimpon Gąsiorek. The group’s seven core members came together while studying at Copenhagen’s Rhythmic Music Conservatory and the Royal Danish Academy of Music. For this latest release, they are joined by Slovenian musicians Samo Kutin (hurdy-gurdy) and Kaja Draksler (organ), alongside Danish tuba player Rasmus Svale. The three compositions distill sound down to its essential e…

This is a lovely and surprising treat indeed. Composer andmulti-instrumentalist Tim Hodgkinson (Henry Cow and much more) partners with vocalist Atsuko Kamura (Mizutama Shobodan aka PolkaDot Fire Brigade and Frank Chickens) to present 37 compositions,expanding the usual sub-10-second acoustic life of classic haiku into avaried suite of compositions which place the gem-like poems, spokenand sung in both English and Japanese by Hodgkinson and Kamura,into gorgeous musical frames composed by Hodgkins…

CD in 6 panel digisleeve. With Obi strip. The first release to document the solo cello work of musician and composer Lucy Railton, the 40-minute composition Blue Veil recorded at Église du Saint-Esprit in Paris invites listeners into the realm of precision-tuned states of resonance: states made manifest through Railton’s careful traversal of her cello's most subtle acoustic characteristics as they harmonically interlock with mind’s embodied modalities of attention and imagination. Blue Veil aris…

*2023 stock. 250 copies limited edition* Composer/improviser Magnus Granberg, who lives in Stockholm, has presented outstanding composed works through Skogen, the ensemble he directs, and experimental music ensembles, projects and labels from around the world. He has released three CDs on the Meenna label: "Whose Words?"(meenna-983 / 2017), documenting a trio improvisation performance with Tetuzi Akiyama and Henrik Olsson; and two albums titled "Come Down to Earth Where Sorrow Dwelleth" (meenna-…

Music of Dary John Mizelle is a recording of three densely layered compositions by the eponymous Oklahoma-born composer. Originally trained in trombone performance, Mizelle was a graduate student in composition at the University of California, Davis, under Larry Austin. The two, alongside Stanley Lunetta, had founded the free improvisation group New Music Ensemble in 1963 on campus with the intention of exploring the outer limits of performance and composition. Mizelle became the youngest member…

Karlheinz Stockhausen's Kurzwellen (1968) in a new performing version by C.L.S.I. for four instruments, four shortwave radios, six computers and conductor, premiered in 2011 and conducted by Paul Mefano.

Albert Alan Owen was born in Wales in 1948 to parents of Welsh and Latvian heritage. His family later moved to Zimbabwe, where his father took up a teaching position. There, Owen was deeply influenced by local music and culture, while also exploring American RnB and jazz. It was during this period that he became acutely aware of the harsh inequalities under British colonial rule, which instilled in him a lifelong aversion to discrimination and racism. In 1967, Owen returned to Europe to pursue h…

Award-winning producer and composer Giorgi Koberidze offers up a head-spinning debut of Georgian modern classical music shot through with 360° electroacoustic textures.

Clarinetist Michele Marelli channels Stockhausen’s visionary spirit in this album of works for clarinet, basset horn, and bass clarinet—joined by pianist Gianluca Cascioli in Tierkreis—merging cosmic intensity with masterful interpretation and devotion.

2011 release ** "During the 1970s, the inspiring pianist Ursula Oppens commissioned Rzewski to write a set of variations that she would perform at Carnegie Hall together with Beethoven's Diabelli Variations. The result was a masterpiece of 20th century Romanticism, continuing the clear line from Beethoven through Brahms that faltered with the deaths of McDowell, Medtner, and Rachmaninov in the first half of the 20th century. Rzewski takes a catchy tune, a Chilean protest song, and pulls it apart…

2025 stock  Four masterpieces by one of the world’s greatest composers of classical concert music, including three pieces that have never been released before. The fourth quartet is perhaps Wuorinen’s most complex and exciting composition, and it receives a passionate performance by the prestigious Brentano Quartet. Also included is the intense and colorful chamber piece On Alligators, conducted by the composer, and a moody piece for organ performed by one of the world’s greatest organists on on…

1992 release **Vinko Globokar (born 7 July 1934) is a French-Slovenian avant-garde composer and trombonist. Globokar's work is noted for its use of unconventional and extended techniques, closely allying him to contemporaries Salvatore Sciarrino and Helmut Lachenmann. His music places great emphasis on spontaneity and creativity, and, unlike the work of Sciarrino and Lachenmann, often requires improvisation. His extensive output is largely unknown outside of experimental music circles. As a trom…

1991 release **Vinko Globokar (born 7 July 1934) is a French-Slovenian avant-garde composer and trombonist. Globokar's work is noted for its use of unconventional and extended techniques, closely allying him to contemporaries Salvatore Sciarrino and Helmut Lachenmann. His music places great emphasis on spontaneity and creativity, and, unlike the work of Sciarrino and Lachenmann, often requires improvisation. His extensive output is largely unknown outside of experimental music circles. As a trom…

1994 release **Vinko Globokar (born 7 July 1934) is a French-Slovenian avant-garde composer and trombonist. Globokar's work is noted for its use of unconventional and extended techniques, closely allying him to contemporaries Salvatore Sciarrino and Helmut Lachenmann. His music places great emphasis on spontaneity and creativity, and, unlike the work of Sciarrino and Lachenmann, often requires improvisation. His extensive output is largely unknown outside of experimental music circles. As a trom…

The relationship between Ludwig van Beethoven’s "op. 132 string quartet" and Luigi Nono’s "Fragmente – Stille, an Diotima" spans 155 years while sharing several conceptual dimensions – among them, their respective composers’ intense idealism in the pursuit of art as a transformational, unifying experience; their utopian visions of political and social justice; and the struggle to translate a profound personal expression into a consequential public reality. - Art Lange

"Near Blue – A Taste of Melancholy is a soundtrack for being unstuck in time, if just for an hour. It is a glide through a rich past and present, with glimpses of a future worth reaching." - Bill Shoemaker Franz Koglmann - flugelhornGert Schubert - violinKurt Franz Schmid - clarinetSandro Miori - tenor & soprano saxophones & alto fluteRudolf Ruschel - tromboneRaoul Herget - tubaRobert Michael Weiss - piano

"Each composition arises from a clear idea that the listener can grasp. That is their beauty, I’d argue – there’s no need for, or possibility of, any process of beautification. They are conceptual art in the broadest sense, but vividly concrete in their sonorous properties. So they are a paradigm of musical art – for music is an art that is abstract in form, concrete in utterance." - Andy Hamilton

Temporary Super Offer! "This CD, the third album of my piano works played by Satoko Inoue, presents all the pieces written for piano between 2015 and 2020, along with an introductory miniature piece." – Jo Kondo

Temporary Super Offer! "Extended II seems to me to illustrate the same point as its predecessor. These are men at work. The work is sound, as projected in three dimensions and across time. The composition is the realization of that process of work. Old philosophers used to refer to reality – the solid bricks-and-mortar and fellow-beings that surrounded us – as “the extended world” or as “extensions”, and that applies to the music you are holding. It extends because it exists in space and time, a…

Temporary Super Offer! Compositori sardi contemporanei produced by the Swiss label Hat Hut Records Basel and directed by Werner X. Uehlingeris a snapshot of the Sardinian contemporary music world with an initial focus on eight composers Luciano Chessa, Andrea Granitzio, Paolo Pastorino, Riccardo Collu, Giuseppe D'Amico, Giovanna Dongu, Claudio Sanna, and Luca Sirigu. The project is conceived as a work in progress, therefore with constant updating of the repertoire and attention to what is happen…

Temporary Super Offer!  John Cage was an evangelist for a new mode of listening in which we would listen to everything with the same attention that we bring to music. For John Cage proposes instead that we listen to this music as if it were everything. While these two instruments are playing there is nothing else, just a violin and a piano. Even the process of remembering, normally so important in helping us make sense of what we hear, is altered: the ‘tenuous’ rhythms of For John Cage articulat…

Perhaps more than any of Feldman other piano music Triadic Memories is about that reality, the acoustic space created bythe piano’s strings and soundboard, and in Judith Wegmann’s recording that space is withina magnificent Bösendorfer 280VC piano

Six compositions for solo piano written by English composerb Christopher Fox between 1991 and 2015, performed by Netherlands pianist John Snijders at Abbey Road Studios in London, each work uniquely approached in both writing and performance, each a concept or style that brings something unique to Fox's music while still retaining his voice and character in composition.

West Coast composer and saxophonist Noah Kaplan, associated with Anthony Coleman, David Tronzo, Peter Erskine, Rinde Eckert, Joe Morris, Mat Maneri, Joe Maneri, &c., here in his 3rd album with his Noah Kaplan Quartet, in a set of original compositions and one standard performed with Joe Morris (guitar), Giacomo Merega (electric bass) & Jason Nazary (drums, electronics).

The innovative acoustic free improvising ensemble Polwechsel, bridging contemporary music and free improvisation in ways that sound deceptively electroacoustic and comprised of Michael Moser on cello, Werner Dafeldecker on double bass, and Martin Brandlmayr & Burkhard Beins on cymbals & percussion, are joined by Klaus Lang performing on the church organ of St. Lambrecht's Abbey.

Active since 2010, the German/Swiss duo of classical guitarist Christian Buck and improviser Christian Wolfarth occupies a space between music and sound art, as they perform two works each by Ed Haubensak and Tomas Korber, pieces that make use of time, microharmonies, multiphonics, unusual tuning systems, interference patterns, and other conceptual approaches to music.

Through preparations, computers, contact microphones, gongs, feedback and other tools, Swiss pianist, composer & improviser Judith Wegmann's work transform the sound of the piano into an otherworldly instrument, set against more traditional acoustic pieces of a reflective nature, together creating a conceptual set of ten pieces in a uniquely flexible approach.

As part of her Colonial Piano Project, Australian pianist Gabriella Smart commissioned and performs "Kaps Freed" by Cat Hope, a contemplation of composer Percy Grainger's Free Music ideals, with Stuart James on electronics; and the alliterative "Two New Proposals for an Overland Telegraph Line ..." by Erkki Veltheim, inspired by the 1st piano to arrive in Alice Springs, AU.

The second album of piano works from Japanese composer Jo Kondo performed by pianist Satoko Inoue--a noted interpreter of solo works by Feldman, Ferrari, and Cage--here presenting all of Kondo's works for solo piano written from 2001 to 2012, alongside two early works from 1975, exploring a wealth of harmonic, rhythmic, and conceptual ideas from a diversity of projects.

Seven works composed in the 21st century by Sebastian Gottschick, who arranges and conducts the Ensemble Fur Neue Musick Zurich, configured as an ensemble with percussion, a sextet, a chamber ensemble with baritone and soprano, and performing himself solo on viola; sophisticated and modern works that employ complex tonality, timbre and playing techniques.

The immersive sonic textures that characterize Michael Winter's (b 1980) music are crafted from comprehensive lists of data, with each composition encompassing a musical question that is addressed algorithmically. A performance lasts for as long as it takes to "answer" the question, expressing all results as efficiently as possible. Winter leaves room for unanticipated results by keeping things open, notably in the instrumentation, which, rather than specifying instruments, tends to designate ce…

The title Dialogues and Contrasts describes the nature of the exchange which takes place between the performer and the materials committed to tape. In the first movement the exchange is more in the nature of an argument. Though initially each side appears to favor an independent thematic course, as the movement progresses the performers engage in direct response to the statements on tape. The second movement is more subdued and reflective, with many solo passages, particularly from the French ho…

Ezra Sims (1928-2015) was known mainly as a composer of microtonal music. Surrounded by world-class performers who championed his music, he produced a large number of chamber and solo, choral, and two orchestral works. With his unwavering commitment to his unique vision, he made an enormous contribution to modern music. This retrospective spans his entire career, almost fifty years of compositional activity, and is an excellent introduction to his very distinctive sound world. Sims’s lyricism an…