Composition / Contemporary

* Edition of 200 * In what might appear to be a paradox of logic, much of the history of avant-garde music - from Eric Satie, John Cage, and Morton Feldman, through the minimalists, post-minimalists, and beyond - has presented new forms radicalism through remarkable, self-imposed constraint. Sometimes structural, others tonal, temporal, or a combination of any of the three, these limitations and focus not only place demands of focus and attentiveness on the listeners, drawing the ear toward subt…

This CD by Alessandro Perini combines electronic sound manipulation with the creation of electromechanical and electroacoustic instruments and a reflection on sound environment, tending toward the exploration of unusual compositional solution. In short, it is experimental music and as such, it deserves to be listened to and commented upon.  A few words about the composer. Alessandro Perini is a young musician: he studied composition (with Luca Francesconi and Ivan Fedele among others), electroni…

"Music for Violin Alone" was recorded in a makeshift studio in an empty house in Le Poujol sur Orb during the first two weeks of the French lockdown. Recorded both as a response to all loss of work due to COVID-19 and a way to be heard again. The pieces on the album are the pieces I’ve come to discover and learn during the two years of maternity leave. Two years of maternity leave have also been two years of creative silence, a search for new approaches, repertoire and ways of playing. Only afte…

"In the works of Martón Illés from the early 2000s, physically perceptible energy, gestural force, and visual conceptions of the sonic are already present. After 2010 the composer drew further implications from these for his work: since then, his musical thinking has no longer been based on fixed pitches, but rather on sounds – either as acoustic manifestations of imagined lines or as gestures modeled on the physical. The way he actually implements this by means of instruments is impressively de…

With their 2018–2019 Isang Yun Recording Project, ItalianCellist Luigi Piovano and Pianist Aldo Orvieto pay homageto the late Korean composer and the tragic course of his life. “The events that marked Isang Yun’s life emblematically show the miserable short-sightedness of the human being, unable to act authentically and with love towards others, in striving for a common good and reach a common spiritual elevation. When confronted with the exceptional musical depth and the dramatic power of Isang…

The music of Austrian composer Bernhard Lang (b. 1957) is one of in-betweens. Stylistically, Lang’s oeuvre occupies the space between a multitude of genres, ranging from contem porary composition and free improvisation to the wider realms of hip hop and DJ-culture. By virtue of Lang’s radical openness to creative conversation and collaboration, and to ideas and influences from other areas of artistic and scientific exploration, his oeuvre finds connections to the worlds of film, dance, theatre, …

Cezary Duchnowski, although perceived as a specialized composer with consciously chosen specialization, is very open to extremely versatile activity in the musical field. Apart from absolute music, he’s also keenly interested in relations between music and the word, music and theatre (or rather performance art) as well as visual arts in the wide sense. What he aims at with this kind of syncretism is a genuine interaction of various media. In his musical activity, he explores various areas of the…

** Und du… was composed in 1963, commissioned by the Austrian Broadcasting Co. It was supposed to be played “radiophonically,” i.e. on tape and with loudspeakers only, to reach and involve a group of listeners corresponding to the medium’s effective radius. My own involvement with the nuclear situation – the dangerousness of which against the background of Hiroshima was clear, but not nearly to the extent it is today among the broad public – prompted me to take the equally fundamental anxiety I …

This habit some experimental musicians have of applying forced context or stories to what is essentially pure improvised music does sometimes perplex me. Here Janek references Kaspar Hauser with the title and in the sleeve notes. He also states the intention “…to de- and reformulate the idea of beauty”. When referencing the case of Kaspar Hauser, I assume Janek sees himself as “…set free…” from traditional technique, and aims, on this disc at least, to “…redefine by discover[y] and recover the p…

Building on the back of their stunning release of Ensemble 0’s rendering of "Femenine" issued earlier this year, Sub Rosa returns with "Two Extended Pieces for Four Pianos", featuring brand new recording of two seminal works composed by Julius Eastman between 1970 and 1980 - "Evil N*gger" (1979) and "Crazy N*gger" (1980) - realised by Nicolas Horvath, Melaine Dalibert, Stephane Ginsburgh, and Wilhem Latchoumia.

A BBC recording released under licence by Discus Music

58' was composed in 2010 on the occasion of the tenth anniversary of d-zAkord. I wanted a very minimalist piece with few sound events and long silences. At that time we presented t'Drone(s)Scape', a sound/living installation lasting 3 hours. The public was invited to sit or lie down in the center of the sonic maelstrom for a multicast travel. It is in this context that 58' was imagined. Although unconventional, the 58' score is extremely precise. The musicians follow a graphic score, with time p…

A two-part composition that combines two antagonistic and complementary dimensions: a text of data read by the artist Orlan and a virtual orchestra composed of four singers (Loré Lixenberg, Joan La Barbara, Wills Morgan and Jacques Lizène) and 124 different instruments.

Frédéric Acquaviva's new album - a record sleeve with QR Code but no record, limited to 100 copies: a 69-minute opera for voice (with Joël Hubaut, author of the text, Dorothy Iannone and Loré Lixenberg), "dead electronics" and video.

The acclaimed recording of Arvo Pärt’s Lamentate with which Onutė Gražinytė marked her recording debut is now released on vinyl in a limited and numbered 180g edition of 1,000 copies. It is supplemented with Gražinytė’s wonderful interpretation of Pärt’s piano works Pari intervallo and Für Anna Maria - Nachdenklich.  “Onute Grazinyte and the Lithuanian National Symphony Orchestra under Modestas Pitrenas play Pärt’s music – especially the main work Lamentate – very expressively and communicativel…

**300 copies** Avant-garde and experimental musics are intrinsically connected to community, collectivism, support, and collaboration. Audiences and artists, stretching to every corner of the globe, continuously rely on each other to push into ever more ambitious realms. This spirit of discourse has always been central to the multigenerational contexts of avant-garde and experimental music from Italy. For decades, neglected and over looked by their international peers, the country’s musicians an…

Toshio Hosokawa explains his special interest in the flute as follows: “For me the  flute  is  the  instrument  which  can  most deeply realise my musical ideal. The flute can produce a sound by means of the breath, and can be a vehicle by which the breath transmits the sound’s life-power.“  When playing the flute, the breath  flow  is  directed  upon  a  sharp  edge or notch. The resulting vibrations excite the air contained in the resonant cavity  within  the  flute,  which  can  be  heard as …

Inspired by frescos by Giovanni Battista Tiepolo painted in the residence of Würzburg, again two so rich universes of intoxicating sonorities. Let us quote the composer: “Nothing is more inclined to suggest space than color, which becomes the true mean of the musician”. Difficult to imagine two pieces as dissimilar as this Africa and this Asia. Tiepolo's allegorical depictions of Africa and Asia inspired the French composer Hugues Dufourt (*1943) to write two of his most powerful ensemble works.…

**300 copies** Starting with an open dialogue seems like a good way to approach a collaboration. Almost a decade ago, that’s how Joana Gama (piano) and Luís Fernandes (electronics) started to work together, and both quickly understood that it was an ideal moment to develop and explore new paths in their music. “There’s no knowing” is their fifth album, 50 minute piece in which the two artists' have a dialogue while interacting with the void and silence around them. The origin of this work explai…

Defining the character of a composer’s music is always hazardous, especially if the composer is restless. But around Stefano Scodanibbio’s music we often return to the concept of wandering, which moreover reflects his life. This is testified by his writings, which tell us how travel, lack of stability, desire were factors to be found written or improvised in his works. An important and restless philosopher introducing the volume that collects those writings (Not enough for me, Quodlibet, 2019) g…

Painted Lights, a new album of compositions by Kui Dong is now available on Kairos Music. The record, which features performances by Juliet Petrus, Deirdre Brenner, Third Coast Percussion, Arditti Quartet, Koehne Quartett, Volti, Piedmont East Bay Children's Choir, Robert Geary, and Raphael Schlüsselberg, comprises four pieces of chamber and choral music written by Dong between 2009 and 2017. California Shoreline (2017) for soprano, string quartet and prepared piano opens the album, followed by …

Building on the back of their stunning release of Ensemble 0’s rendering of "Femenine" issued earlier this year, Sub Rosa returns with "Three Extended Pieces for Four Pianos", featuring brand new recording of three seminal works composed by Julius Eastman between 1970 and 1980 - "Evil N*gger" (1979) "Gay Guerilla" (1980) and "Crazy N*gger" (1980) - realised by Nicolas Horvath, Melaine Dalibert, Stephane Ginsburgh, and Wilhem Latchoumia. Released as a beautiful double CD with brand new liner not…

Robert Hughes, composer and author, is a graduate of the University of Buffalo (now SUNY Buffalo) and composition student of Aaron Copland, Carlos, Chavez, Luigi Dallapiccola, and Lou Harrison. He has written for symphony orchestra, chamber ensemble, voices, performance art events and a wide variety of media, including twenty film scores and a large body of electronic music. His compositions include commissions from the San Francisco Symphony, Cabrillo Music Festival, Oakland Symphony, Arch Ense…

*2022 stock* Robert Hughes, composer and author, is a graduate of the University of Buffalo (now SUNY Buffalo) and composition student of Aaron Copland, Carlos, Chavez, Luigi Dallapiccola, and Lou Harrison. He has written for symphony orchestra, chamber ensemble, voices, performance art events and a wide variety of media, including twenty film scores and a large body of electronic music. His compositions include commissions from the San Francisco Symphony, Cabrillo Music Festival, Oakland Sympho…

Wolfram Schurig's musical career began with instrumental playing. After basic training on the recorder, his concert studies with Kees Boeke, one of the protagonists of historically informed performance practice, left their mark on him. This experience plays an important role in Schurig's working method as a composer: "You simply write music differently when you are on stage yourself. You owe it to the performer to deliver something that is playable, and in which he can find himself as a co-creat…

The Plains at Gordium was composed from June to August 2004 and is dedicated to Charlotta Kotik. The incentive to compose the piece came from a percussion group in Brno, Czech Republic, who asked me for a piece of music. Not being a commission-disciplined composer, I wrote a piece for six percussionists, while the Czech group, DAMA-DAMA had only four members and could not perform it. The size of the piece also defies the scale of a standard percussion piece, 1,290 measures over a 108-page score.…

Just arrived, this is the newest edition RZ release focused on a radical electronic (+ Ensemble) music by Clara Maida "During the first years of my compositional research, my goal was to mark out, in my music, the flux of the psychic energy at work in the unconscious and its underlying structure. At the time, I was going through an analytical process favouring access to this unconscious activity, and my readings in the field of psychoanalysis were helping me in the effort to elaborate a musical …

Olivier Messiaen's Harawi (1945), a cycle of twelve songs for soprano and piano on the composer's own text, sung by Sarah Maria Sun with Stefka Perifanova, on a deluxe 2LP set with a 12-page book.

Steve Reich's Sextet (1984) and the Pulitzer Prize winning Double Sextet (2007) together on one release for the first time, played by the Danish ensemble Ekkozone under percussionist and conductor Mathias Reumert.

Six modern song cycles for soprano and piano by Holliger, Sciarrino, Lachenmann, Kurtág, Rihm and Bernhard Lang, sung by Sarah Maria Sun with pianist Jan Philip Schulze, with several first recordings.

John Cage works for a speaking percussionist, including Bonnie Whiting's realization 51'15.657" and Music for Two (By One), the early voice and piano songs, and a piece by Allen Otte built on Cage's methods.

Marc Chan's My Wounded Head 3, an open-ended piano piece inspired by Bach's Passion chorales, played in a 72-minute continuous recording by Rob Haskins.

Twenty-four tracks of saxophone music by Henry Cowell and Percy Grainger, many of them first recordings, for saxophone ensembles, piano and orchestra, directed and played by Ulrich Krieger with guest ensembles and the Glens Falls Symphony Orchestra.

Structured improvisation compositions by violinist Malcolm Goldstein, ranging from jazzy to dense microtonal sound, in which he plays with the Montreal-based Ratchet Orchestra as composer, soloist and ensemble member.

Volume 7 of Mode's Edition Christian Wolff, on 2CD: the composer plays his own Incidental Music (2003-04), written for a Merce Cunningham Dance Company Event, and the ongoing series Keyboard Miscellany, on piano and melodica.

DVD centred on Iannis Xenakis's Linaia-Agon for trombone, French horn and tuba, in two performances with Benny Sluchin, plus Zythos for trombone and six marimbas, a 78-minute film by Sluchin and an interactive interface.

Roger Reynolds's complete works for cello, on 2CD and composer supervised, with many first recordings, played by Alexis Descharmes with Ensemble Court-circuit, violin, electronics and piano, and readings by the composer.

Four chamber works by Chris Newman, all first recordings, played by Berlin's Ensemble KNM conducted by Steffen Tast, with Newman as vocal soloist in Cologne.

Five chamber works by Tim Hodgkinson, co-founder of Henry Cow, for ensemble and electronic sound, bass clarinet and strings, and string quartet with harp, trombone and synthesizer, played by Hyperion Ensemble and others.

Four-CD survey of American piano music from 1911 to 1991: 62 works by 48 composers, from Ives and Antheil to Zappa, including seven first recordings, played by Yvar Mikhashoff.