Unisono Diviso
* 2021 Stock * About 1960, when serialism was pushed into an abundant mathematically structured complexity by composers such as Stockhausen or Boulez, young Ernstalbrecht Stiebler choose a completely different way - a radical backlash to the successors of Webern in Darmstadt: "No ‘mediations’, no permutations of sound material, but a way towards a further reduction of the material instead. At that time I had the feeling of entering onto new ground," Stiebler recalls.
The string trio Extension I …
Baum
* 2021 Stock * As if an incantatory ritual, Drums Off Chaos and Maria De Alvear create "acoustic images". The inherent spirit of the object - the essence of the tree comes to life through the interplay of voice and drums, assuming a clear shape in the listener’s mind.
Maria De Alvear’s colourful and expressive singing and the repetitive, insistent rhythms provided by the Drums Off Chaos work towards the same musical idea: from the specific material of each, unusual, highly differentiated sounds …
Llena
* 2021 Stock * To me, Maria De Alvear composes like a natural phenomenon: guided not as much by the coming and going of ideas and emotions, nor addressing them, but like a law of nature impassively displaying a sort of automatic writing that moves the body and courses through the psyche, ultimately demanding full awareness. - Reinier van Houdt
Vagina
* 2021 Stock * Vagina is the longing for the man. This simple sentence holds enormous secrets, starting with the word longing and not least with the word man. Recognizing a man is probably very difficult from a woman's perspective: for several reasons. The most important sine qua non is the fact that a female being must be able to be a woman. In other words, an adult female being, not only in a sexual sense, but - and here is the trick - psychologically. - Maria de Alvear
Maria de Alvear - voice…
Sexo
* 2021 Stock * "Maria de Alvear writes confrontationally personal music along sexual themes ... the same kind of spiritual revolution that John Cage ... did here 30 years ago. The work Sexo for female narrator/performer and orchestra is a passionate examination of all the taboos and all the advantages and disadvantages involved with sexuality. A poetic explosion of feeling, emotions, sexual fantasies and deep mystical and metaphysical thought. Sexo is in fact an imaginary journey that the listen…
World
* 2021 Stock * A sprawling, wandering hourlong geological survey of the composer’s ambitious spiritual world. Her music does not develop; it accumulates. - Bernard Holland, New York Times
The only single, continuous orchestral movement I know of to surpass the finale of Mahler’s Eighth Symphony in duration. - Kyle Gann, Village Voice
Hildegard Kleeb - pianoJoseph Kubera - pianoThe Orchestra of the S.E.M. Ensemble Petr Kotik - conductor
Libertad
* 2021 Stock * "There are pieces which must be done. The work Libertad is one of them. Inspired by the lyrics of Tsolagiu M.A. RuizRazo, it is one of those compositions that gave me enormous pleasure while working and that accompanied me with a wave of very great power [...] Perhaps this work [...] is one of those that carry the most power. There is an enormous mysterious protective circle around it. It is one of the works that has given me the most riddles, that contains knowledge that I can on…
Flute and Bass
Kairos presents Flute and Bass, a Bernhard Lang's composition performed by Manuel Zurria on Flute and Dario Calderone on double-bass. Recording Date: 4 Nov 2018 & 16 May 2020. Recording Venue: tudioZ, Amsterdam/Netherlands. The work of Austrian composer Bernhard Lang (b. 1957) is difficult to fit into any one musical category. His oeuvre references a wide variety of musical styles and genres, ranging from free jazz and improvisation to hip hop and DJ culture. The three works on this release show…
Hyperchromatica
On his latest recording, Hyperchromatica, Kyle Gann expands on Conlon Nancarrow’s work with player pianos and multiplies it. This expansive new work was written for three computer-controlled disklavier pianos that Gann tuned to an intricate system of his own design, with the express goal to “reinvent tonality.” Gann treats the work not as a piano trio but a work for a single instrument with 243 keys. Hyperchromatica extends the possibilities of the piano well beyond the range of human possibilit…
Composer-Critics of the New York Herald Tribune
For a brief period between 1940 to 1954, the now-defunct paper The New York Herald Tribune maintained a staff of music critics who were valued for their ability to write about music (especially less accessible modern music) in clear language for a general audience. This groundbreaking department was headed up by composer Virgil Thomson and over the years included John Cage, Paul Bowles, Lou Harrison, and Peggy Glanville-Hicks. Around the same period, Thomson was asked to curate a series of recor…
Lexical Music
When Charles Amirkhanian’s Lexical Music was released on pioneering Bay Area record label 1750 Arch Records in 1980, it was heralded as a masterpiece of the then nascent text-sound poetry scene. The New York Times called Amirkhanian “expert at the sort of things his imitators do not do half so well as he.” Lexical Music is a sort of high water mark for American text-sound poetry; it sounds like nothing before or since.
Single words lose their meaning through repetition; nonsense phrases build in…
A Sweeter Music
Other Minds’ recent release of new works commissioned and performed by pianist Sarah Cahill. A Sweeter Music is a collection of new compositions based on the theme of peace and war.The composers on this disc are Frederic Rzewski, Terry Riley, Meredith Monk, Yoko Ono, The Residents, Phil Kline, Kyle Gann, and Carl Stone (in the entire project there are eighteen composers involved). Sarah commissioned these particular composers because of their commitment as anti-war activists or their strong poli…
Scenes from a New Music Séance
At some point it seemed appropriate that Other Minds honor the deceased progenitors of American experimental music by presenting their music side by side with their spiritual offspring. And thus was born “A New Music Séance.” Other Minds composers are mostly individualists who have forged their own paths that are very personal and that announce their creators as boundary pushers. These individualists flourished because others, equally daring, led the way. The series was subtitled, somewhat tongu…
First Life: The Rare Early Works
Before the premiere of his legendary WPA political musical The Cradle Will Rock, and his opera Regina (based upon Lillian Hellman’s The Little Foxes), Marc Blitzstein (1905-1964) produced striking chamber music that deserves a wider audience. Yet these scores, by the only American to study composition with both Arnold Schoenberg and Nadia Boulanger, remain unpublished and rarely played over the past 80 years. Other Minds is pleased to introduce these forgotten treasures, an unknown aspect of Bli…
Ring of Fire
Home to earthquake swarms and volcanic eruptions, the countries of the Pacific Rim also produce some of the world’s most groundbreaking composers. San Francisco’s Del Sol String Quartet leads an inspiring seven- country tour. 20-page booklet essay by Charles Amirkhanian with photos. Works by: John Adams, Jack Body, Kui Dong, Gabriela Lena Frank, Hyo-shin Na, Peter Sculthorpe, Chinary Ung, and Zhou Long. Performed by the Del Sol String Quartet: Kate Stenberg, Rick Shinozaki, Charlton Lee, and Han…
Songs of Ned Rorem
Originally released on LP by Columbia Records in 1964, this album features some of the most outstanding soloists of the day: Charles Bressler, Phyllis Curtin, Gianna D’Angelo, Donald Gramm, and Regina Sarfaty, accompanied at the piano by the composer, Ned Rorem. The original recordings were digitized and re-mastered on a Sonic Solutions system to minimize tape hiss and other sound artifacts. The resulting clarity and brilliance far surpasses that of the original release offering a fresh look at …
Albertina Quartett
** 3 lp box, housed in a sturdy cardboard, with linen and goildembossed print. comes with a lp sized big booklet** Hermann Nitsch's String Quartet No. 2 in six movements for two violins, viola, and violoncello, was performed by the Viennese Koehne Quartet. Recorded during the exhibition Nitsch. Spaces of Color at the Albertina Museum, Vienna on the May 29th, 2019.The music is played by The Koehne Quartett: Joanna Lewis - 1. Violine; Anne Harvey-Nagl - 2. Violine; Lena Fankhauser - Viola; Mara Ac…
Música Callada / See the Welter
The imagery of musical forms emptied of earthly meaning, of solitude, and of a connection to the divine were irresistible to Federico Mompou. A desire to be alone had shaped Mompou’s early musical direction: as natural shyness ended his ambitions to be piano virtuoso, after studies at the Paris Conservatoire he turned to composition instead. His approach remained introspective – far removed from the overt and public expressions of the avant-garde, both before and after the Second World War – and…
Face
* Beautiful gatefold vinyl designed by the studio Experimental Jetset, Amsterdam with 12 page booklet featuring the photographic work of Johannes Schwartz and text of Maria Barnas used in the multimedia production of the work. * Face is a multimedia composition for voice, violin, piano, recorders, live electronics and video, based around the use of facial and emotion recognition software. Performers: Electra, Diamanda Dramm (violin), Susanna Borsch (recorder), Michaela Riener (soprano), Saskia L…
Foliage
* Edition of 300 * Foliage by Elliott Sharp is a long-form graphic music score that offers abstract instructions allowing for infinite possible interpretations by performing musicians. Featuring a series of 80 risograph prints, Foliage is, in Sharp’s words, “a graphic score open to interpretation and realization by any instrumentalist or ensemble of any size… [it] is a piece of retinal art as much as it is an instruction set for sound, form and function interlocked.” Graphic notation, which evol…