Composition / Contemporary

1994 release **

1991 release **

In his album Tarió, Manuel Contreras Vázquez presents a profound engagement with Latin American history, sound exploration, and experimental notation. Through intricate timbral textures and an architectural approach to composition, his works navigate themes of memory, resistance, and human experience. From intimate solo pieces to collective vocal and instrumental forces, Contreras Vázquez challenges conventional musical boundaries, blending silence, phonetics, and social narratives. This album o…

This compelling album presents works by Israeli composer Chaya Czernowin, exploring the fragile balance between destruction and communication, control and surrender. Seltene Erde transforms the double bass and ensemble into a shifting landscape of illusion and resonance, evoking the invisible forces shaping our world. Atara, born from the isolation of 2020, is a powerful orchestral lament, where vast sonic masses collide with the delicate voices of two singers, lost yet luminous. Through these w…

1995 release ** "This reading by Anthony de Mare of pianist Frederic Rzewski's compositions is a revelatory reading, in that those works that were written for piano and voice have never been heard outside of the composer's own interpretations. There's the amplified heavy breathing at the beginning of "De Profundis" that gives way to an angular series of scalar arpeggios and staccato phrasing before a long written oratory inspired by Oscar Wilde. At over 26 minutes, and composed for de Mare, Rzew…

2015 release ** "The Albanian patrol boat Katër i Radës sank in the Strait of Otranto in 1997 after being rammed by an Italian corvette that was trying to repel it. Around 100 women, men and children died while fleeing the civil war. Almost twenty years after that tragedy, the Albanian composer Admir Shkurtaj, who has lived in Salento by adoption, has written a contemporary chamber opera for the 2014 Venice Biennale (which commissioned it), with a libretto by Alessandro Leogrande and staged by t…

*250 copies limited edition* "Play" is a work by Berlin-based composer Hannes Lingens. The score consists of 100 cards on which brief instructions to the musicians are written. The CD "Play" (hitorri-963), which contains two performances of this work, was released on the Hitorri label in October 2023. Tom Soloveitzik, a musician from Israel who was living in Tokyo at the time of that release, had participated in one of the performances on the CD. As a result, a performance, produced by Soloveitz…

*2025 stock. 300 copies limited edition* Tokyo-based composer Yuka Shibuya released the album "Works for Piano," a selection of piano compositions performed by Satoko Inoue, on the Ftarri Classical label in 2021. This new CD release, also from Ftarri Classical, documents performances of six compositions by Shibuya. "Found Moment" is comprised of live performances held in the concert space in Ftarri, Tokyo. In a concert that took place on September 20, 2021, “View from the Round Window 2” (2018) …

1993 release ** "When the founders of the University of California, San Diego (UCSD) set out to develop a Department of Music, they decided to start with composers and leave it to them to attract performers and scholars to an environment that could be a home for exploration and invention, unceasing challenge and debate. The intention was to have musicians as committed to new perspectives and discoveries as, say, UCSD's physicists. Even before the department was established, Harry Partch was invi…

1991 release ** This disc features a colourful array of contemporary works by international and Canadian composers. From the reflective and lyrical Little Venice to the dazzling, virtuosic percussion piece She Who Sleeps with a Small Blanket, Toronto’s premier contemporary chamber ensemble, Arraymusic, provides the listener with a five course meal for the ears. Linda C. Smith Little Venice, Steve Reich New York Counterpoint, José Evangelista Merapi, Rodney Sharman Dark Glasses, Kevin Volans She …

1988 release ** Four innovative acoustic works played by the excellent Canadian ensemble Arraymusic. Contains: Claude Vivier Et je reverrai cette ville étrange, James Tenney Harmonium # 5, Henry Kucharzyk Beating, Michael J. Baker Unfinished Business.

1992 release ** "'Rebonds' (I. Xenakis), 'Akea' (I. Xenakis), 'Epicycles' (I. Xenakis), 'Mania' (C. Tsoupaki), 'Concerto For Oboe And Chamber Ensemble' (D. del Puerto) - Machiko Takahasi (fl.), Ernest Rombout (ob.), Mark Dijcks, Ria Kleinjan (cl.), Jonathan Reeder, Stefanie Liedtke (bsn.), Fokke van Heel, Guillermo Zarzo (h.), Peter van Dinther (tp.), Willie Verdievel (tb.), Jan van der Sanden (tu.), Mifune Tsuji, Izumi Okubo, Paul Hendriks (vl), Susan Bierre (vla), Tadashi Tanaka (cel.), Thom d…

2019 release ** "Rippling piano lines fill the air, once again rethinking the possibly of what contemporary Italian music is and was."

Nachschriften: A set of 26 short pieces that cycle through all the major and minor tonalities, Nachschriften are a series of reflections and variations on themes - sometimes, variations on variations. For the most part they are simple dances - minuets, mazurkas, waltzes and ländler. Ländler: The references, the paying of homage to Beethoven, Schubert, Schumann, Brahms, Mahler, Wolf and Zemlinsky are so obvious as to hardly need comment. They are heard through lenses polished by a later, more red…

Gary Graffman and I have been staunch friends since we met as students at the Curtis Institute in 1943. The notion of pooling our talents, however, arose only when we returned to that Institute nearly five decades later, Gary as director, I on the faculty. Now Gary, who has not made professional use of his right hand since 1980, felt an urge to expand the admirable but restricted literature of left-hand works (most of them composed long ago for the elder brother of philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstei…

Eric Chasalow (b 1955), who grew to aesthetic maturity as Postmodernism was evolving, points (not at all surprisingly) to jazz as part of the family tree. In 1983, Chasalow created a set of three works for soloist and electronic sounds. The composer fashioned each, for cello, for soprano, and for flute, with particular accomplished performers in mind, taking his inspiration, he says, "from their personal styles and energy." Chasalow composed Hanging in the Balance (1983) for the redoubtable cell…

As its almost tradition now we start the year with a meditative album from Portuguese pianist and composer Tiago Sousa. Using the piano as its primary tool of expression, Tiago has been slowly cementing his place as one of the most distinct voices to emerge out of the modern wellspring of piano driven minimalism. After last years Angst (CREP81, Discrepant) and 2015’s Um Piano nas Barricadas (CREP23, Discrepant), Tiago returns with a deeply meditative album of synesthetic organic musical patterns…

*100 copies limited edition* As its now tradition we start the year with yet another fluid album from Portuguese pianist and composer Tiago Sousa. Presenting now the second volume of his ongoing series Organic Music Tapes, Tiago now adds the electric organ to his trademark piano compositions, broadening his palette of sounds into an even more fluid and organic world with references to American minimalism of the 60’s, in particular Terry Riley and Steve Reich’s influence both looms heavily over t…

*100 copies limited edition* In keeping with tradition, the new year brings another offering from Portuguese pianist and composer Tiago Sousa. "Organic Music Tapes Vol.3," the third instalment in Tiago’s ongoing series, continues to develop a freeform dual approach to organic and fluid compositions for Piano and Organ - this time adding a real church tube organ to the proceedings. Evolving from the foundation laid in the first two volumes, Sousa introduces the pipe organ into his signature piano…

Michelle Ekizian (b 1956) and Louis Karchin (b 1951) represent a generation of American composers that has seen postwar American serialism enriched by other compositional approaches, both new and old. The process of stylistic synthesis and individualization, evidenced in the works presented here and in others, continues unabated today. Written in between the first and second installments of her ongoing orchestral cycle, The Exiled Heart Series, which now includes “The Exiled Heart” (1986), “Morn…

The music of the Chinese-American composer Bright Sheng (b 1955) sometimes floats like delicate fragrances on a breeze and sometimes screams and writhes in actual or remembered agony. This is music, to paraphrase William Blake, of innocence and of experience. The innocence and experience are not simply those of a boy growing up amid the terrors of China's Cultural Revolution—they are also components of a well-trained composer's creative equipment: the beloved folk music of a land left behind and…

Listening is the foundation of Raven Chacon’s (b. 1977) wide-ranging artistic practice. “I am a listener,” he simply declares, but the attention he gives to sound is complex and vast, encompassing far more than what is immediately audible. From his earliest works, Chacon has been dedicated to amplifying the unheard, calling attention to what is absent or unknown. Although Chacon classifies the compositions on this recording as chamber music, all three of these works “zigzag” through his noise st…

This double-CD set combines two of the key titles of Columbia Records's legendary "Music of Our Time" series curated by David Behrman. Jeanne Kirstein's recording of Cage's early keyboard works remains a touchstone of Cagean interpretation notwithstanding the passage of time. Christian Wolff recalls, "I remember Cage saying that Jeanne Kirstein's playing caught the spirit in which the pieces were written at the time he wrote them-a kind of simple excitement and enthusiasm (also, surely, ou…

This long-awaited reissue of the CRI recording of Earle Brown’s (1926–2002) music is the best overview of his seminal early works. “It is obviously a great pleasure for me that Cri is re-releasing its 1974 recording of my work, and an even greater pleasure that I am able to add to the repertoire. The performance of Times Five and Novara still seem very fine representations of the works and are performed brilliantly by the Dutch musicians. December 1952 as realized by the late, brilliant pianist …

The Third Essay was Samuel Barber’'s last completed work and its drama and lyricism are entirely characteristic of the neo-Romantic style he composed in for his entire life, a style which won him a large and faithful audience. In his avowed concern for writing music that communicates with the listening public, John Corigliano could be seen as an inheritor of Barber’'s mantle. The Concerto for Clarinet and Orchestra is a large-scale work that demonstrates his eclectic style at its finest. Corigli…

, for vibraphone and tape, I attempted to enter Pietro Grossi’s sound spectrum of six Ostinati (OSTN) intended as moving soundscapes, maintaining the specific grain of each field as the centre of sound gravity. The vibraphone motor was conceived at different speeds for each field in the search for a vibrant and luminous sound, maintaining, within a sound unit of organic character, two dimensions: figure and background in the dialectic relationship of listening. In the first ostinato, a constant …

*250 copies limited edition* Composer Taizo Hida was born in 1972 and lives in Osaka. In 2022, the album of rain, in which pianist Satoko Inoue performs compositions by Hida, was released on Ftarri Classical and received high praise. Two new albums have been issued simultaneously on Ftarri Classical in order to showcase the richness of Taizo Hida’s creativity. One of these is the CD Yunagi. The CD consists of five tracks, "Yunagi 1" to "Yunagi 5." Hida composed "Yunagi 1" in June of 2020. He lat…

2014 release ** "Alessandra Novaga plays the electric guitar and this is her solo debut, with five songs composed for her by Paula Matthusen, Travis Just, Sandro Mussida, Vittorio Zago and Francesco Gagliardi: all top-notch musicians, who left in Alessandra's hands scores that were very little "classical" on which she was able to give space to her personality by interpreting and shaping the sound. Because the sound is the basis of the whole album, in this case that of an electric guitar and an a…

*2025 stock* Erased Tapes releasex ‘Give It to the Sky: Arthur Russell’s Tower of Meaning Expanded’ by composer and producer Peter Broderick and French 12-piece group Ensemble 0; a complete re-recording of Russell’s epic minimalist orchestral composition originally released in 1983. ‘Give It to the Sky’ also includes unreleased tracks by Russell which have been restored and re-recorded, resulting in an 80-minute reanimation that threads several lost songs into a meticulous and gorgeous rendering…

2009 release ** "Denissow avoids postmodern clutter by putting critical distance between himself and the music - this is a fantasy. Jürg Henneberger and Hedwig Fassbender avoid the hard sell, keeping the make-believe sound world allusive and inscrutable. And they bring comparable qualities to one of the best Folk Song cycles around - a work whose charms have, arguably, been dinted by overfamiliarity but that has now been calmly reassessed."

*150 copies limited edition* A beautiful edition of only 150 glass mastered CDs in a clear poly sleeve with hand stamped cover and a 22 page full color booklet featuring photos, drawings, and text by Laura Steenberge, with additional text by Michael Winter, Rebecca Lane, and Catherine Lamb.   "In medieval chant, music seems to have come from elsewhere.  It is the angels that are singing, they said, like gourds  hung up for purple martins. By the time notation started coming  around, hundreds of …

Kory Reeder composed Homestead (2024)—a nearly hour-long string quartet in four movements with an interlude—during his residency as Artist in Residence at Homestead National Historical Park in Beatrice, Nebraska in 2023. As he explains: "As a fifth-generation Nebraskan, growing up on the native lands of the Chatiks si chatiks people (Pawnee), this project is a part of my process of learning, listening, and developing a relationship with the land and its stewards in my home state: a beautiful pla…

A 50 minute solo for viola d'amore played by Marco Fusi. The piece was composed in 2022-2023, and has six movements.

*300 copies limited edition* Students of Decay presents "Kaivajaiset" by Finnish composer Niko-Matti Ahti. Best known for his work alongside his partner Marja as Ahti & Ahti, Niko-Matti has been an active participant in the Finnish underground since the late 1990s. "Kaivajaiset" is his first solo recording and was originally conceived of as an installation. Part horspiel, part musique concrete, it is a piece of music that draws comparisons to the work of pioneering avant-garde composers such as …

*300 copies limited edition* Patience is the debut full-length album by Sante Fe-based artist Theodore Cale Schafer. Alternately murky and narcoleptic and bristling with grit and light, this collection of eight pieces is a delicate play of contrasts. Impressionistic settings unfurl with an unhurried gait, opening with the dream-like disorientation of "Gold Chain" in which a degraded location recording gives way to a soft web of treated piano motifs. Schafer's compositions are sumptuous yet unfus…

2007 release ** "In Very Slow Disco Suite (2006), De Bièvre slows down a disco song from 120 bpm to 20 bpm. Against this languid harmonic background, three musicians play material that is dictated at random by a microcontroller. In this way, De Bièvre tried to guarantee the spontaneity of the performance."

2000 release (visible storage wear) ** "These ten singular compositions by Gregorio share one thing in common: a rare ability to express astonishing collages of sound, interspersed with outstanding individual improvisation, resulting in surprisingly accessible sounds that baffle as they fully absorb the listener. In an incisive essay the composer cites varieties of constructivism and concrete art as influences and wisely eschews the self-expression of so much of free improvisation in favor of ".…

1995 release (visible storage wear) **

The music of Fabien Lévy thrives on ambiguity, paradox and sonic illusion. With a deep interest in cognitive perception, he creates complex textures where clarity meets mystery, virtuosity blends with playfulness, and every composition becomes a daring exploration. Influenced by spectralism and his mentors Grisey and Risset, Lévy embraces musical allusions – from visual arts to world traditions – creating pieces that challenge and transform the listener’s perception. Whether through kaleidophoni…

*2025 stock* Austrian composer Thomas Larcher’s new album features premiere recordings of three strongly contrasting works. The Times has hailed Larcher’s music as a world “of haunting landscapes and dreams, stylistically disparate but fused by the composer’s astonishing ear and quizzical attitude to traditional forms”, a description borne out by the compositions here. The Living Mountain, for soprano and ensemble, draws upon the memoir of the Scottish poet and nature writer Nan Shepherd. Unerzä…