Composition / Contemporary

Arvo Pärt's 1999 album with several versions of Für Alina for solo piano and Spiegel im Spiegel for violin or cello and piano, two of his tintinnabuli pieces, on vinyl for the first time.

2025 stock The sound of silence: Estonian-born Arvo Pärt is considered the contemporary composer par excellence, a cult figure of the avant-garde, a man who redefined modernism with music of hypnotic tension and fascinating spirituality. The performers of the orchestral and choral music on this release are top-quality artists and ensembles from Pärt’s native Estonia, notably the conductors Paavo Järvi and Tõnu Kaljuste, who present uniquely authentic readings.

*300 copies * 'Another fantastic Af Ursin release. Af Ursin is Timo van Luijk’s solo project. The first piece, Sylphide, is a side-long wonder. Long drawn out brass tones with some other accompaniment. I could listen to this music all day. The closest parallel I can think of is Davide Mosconi’s divine LP of foghorn recordings. But Sylphide has a bit more of a musical element. This will be my go-to last side of the night for my (rare these days) late night Salons. The second side features two tra…

Outras Flores de Música (2026), ‘Other Flowers of Music’ is an album of contemporary Portuguese music dedicated exclusively to works written for the Portuguese historical organ, a unique national instrument from the 18th century. Here we find compositions by Bruno Gabirro, Diogo Alvim, Cláudio de Pina and Vítor Rua. Performed, recorded, edited, mastered and under the artistic direction of organist Cláudio de Pina. Outras Flores deMúsica takes its title from another collection of keyboard works, …

*2026 stock* The connection between these works is subtle. Nevertheless, there is an incessant search for a new sonic language, breaking an imposed norm of a secular legacy. The organ, an apparatus that is the sum total of wind, pipes and keys, becomes bigger with the imagination of those who operate it. It is a device that incites the audacity of its operator, rivalling the sonic potential of any modern instrument. This is my contribution: using a Portuguese organ that is over 200 years old in …

The three albums Reich made for ECM between 1978 and 1982, reissued as facsimile sleeves in a card box: Music for 18 Musicians, the Octet / Music for a Large Ensemble / Violin Phase LP, and Tehillim. Cut all-analogue from the original tapes.

Other Minds is excited to bring you an EP of two archival works from Bay Area composer Charles Boone. Both pieces take their inspiration and titles from man-made landmarks across California. Solar One from a monumental power station near the desert city of Barstow, The Watts Towers from Simon Rodia’s outsider art masterpiece in the Los Angeles neighborhood of Watts. In much of his work, the composer seeks to create sonic landscapes that are simultaneously static and dynamic. Certain elements, ha…

Sofa is proud to mark its 100th release with the stunningly beautiful double album Hereafter, a new major work from guitarist/composer Kim Myhr, written for the 15-piece Stavanger-based ensemble Kitchen Orchestra. “Hereafter can be seen as a meditation on mortality and transience”, Myhr explains. “It was written at a time where the prime minister of Norway told the country’s population that ‘you have to be prepared to lose someone dear to you’. It was like taken out of Tarkovsky’s “Sacrifice”. T…

*2024 stock* Berlin Strings is a string quartet consisting of Lisa Marie Vogel, Johanna Wundling, Tabea Haarmann-Thiemann and Luisa Babarro Fernández. Since meeting in the National Youth Orchestra and founding Berlin Strings 13 years ago, they have developed into explorers of their own sound. A sound that has always been imbued with the discipline of classical music, pure craftsmanship, the sublime rules of composition that make communication wordless. But also experimentation, flirting with dis…

Music for New String Instruments, composed and performed by Allan Bryant. A pioneer of underground American electronic music, Bryant helped push the boundaries as a founder member of Musica Elettronica Viva alongside Alvin Curran, Frederic Rzewski, and Richard Teitelbaum. Following his departure in 1968 he continued to independently compose, record, and archive live vintage MEV sets on his own IRML imprint until his death in 2019. During a period in the early to mid 1970s, Bryant channelled his …

Originally released by CRI in 1974 and now reissued on vinyl for the first time by Death Is Not The End, Music by Earle Brown is a concise overview of the composer's landmark early experiments with graphic notation, open form structures and magnetic tape.

Almost Starlight is the extraordinary new album by Jem Finer (hurdy-gurdy) and John Matthias (violin). Produced by Jay Auborn and recorded in a Medieval Church, deep in the Devon countryside, in the Summer of 2025, the music is suffused with light, heat and the natural acoustics of the space. The album defies categorisation; forced to pigeon hole it the nearest approximation would be ‘modern-classical’ but this ignores its myriad influences and explorations which encompass inspiration from Arvo …

The concert version of Einstein on the Beach by Ictus, Suzanne Vega, and Collegium Vocale Gent distills Philip Glass’s pioneering minimalism into a mesmerizing sound ritual. Stripped of Robert Wilson’s grand staging, Vega’s measured narration weaves through the ensemble’s crystalline precision, revealing the raw musical architecture of this modernist epic.

The album Works for Organ documents and brings to life Bernhard Lang’s engagement with this instrument – which dates back to his youth – in its most diverse forms. The musical roots lie in his own improvisational practice as part of a band, in his ongoing interest in microtonally composed music, and in his long-standing exploration of loops, a technique that can relate to various musical parameters. Furthermore, the exceptional skills of Lang’s performers and their artistic interests play a sign…

“The role of the composer is to act as a filter between reality and the listener, transforming real life into something different from what the listener is accustomed to,” summarizes composer Mioko Yokoyama, reflecting her personal view on her profession. She wants to show that contemporary music is not difficult or hard to listen to. In order to compose, she must first open up new realms of experience, not only through writing, but also through study and analysis. Her aim is to enable people to…

Composed especially for the main hall of the Orgelpark in Amsterdam, with its historical organs, Descendants was realized in the just-intonation “Dreyblatt” tuning system, derived from the first eleven harmonic overtones and their extensions based on the fundamental C (A = 415 Hz). The following intervals, identified on the four organs and corresponding to my tuning system, were used in the composition: 1/1, 9/4, 3/2, 7/4, 11/16, 21/16, 25/16, 35/32, 63/32, 77/64, and 81/64. These pitches and th…

Morton Feldman’s New Directions in Music 2 is one of the true cornerstones of modern classical music. Originally released in 1959, the album captures Feldman at the very beginning of his radical journey into sound, space and silence, developing the sparse, floating language that would go on to influence generations of experimental composers and ambient musicians alike. With cover artwork by abstract painter Philip Guston and clear parallels to the chance-based ideas of John Cage, the record perf…

Bionic Environments by Qba Janicki is an illustrative sonic work in which organic matter and mechanical intelligence merge into a single, continuously evolving organism. Composed for amplified soundboard, electronics, electromechanics, extended voice, and string orchestra, the piece unfolds as a cinematic yet deeply material journey through hybrid environments suspended between biological mutation and synthetic architecture. The composition is based on controlled aleatorism and open improvisatio…

The album Mômo comprises a collection of Adam de la Cour’s concert pieces – more specifically, his most important solo keyboard-based compositions. De la Cour draws his inspiration from languages where abrupt tonal shifts and grotesque exaggeration are simply how things function. His influences come as much from psychotronic cinema, rubber-mask practical effects, vaudeville, genre tropes, and forms of satire as from contemporary classical music. De la Cour shares a particularly close artistic pa…

"The piano was the favourite instrument of Morton Feldman (1926 – 1987). “What is the difference between an orchestra and a piano? A piano has pedals”, he once said. The three works on the CD – Triadic Memories (1981), For Bunita Marcus (1985) and Palais de Mari (1986) – are iconic of Feldman’s compositional trajectory. Firstly, because of their length. The first two pieces each last almost an hour and a half, Palais de Mari 25 minutes. Furthermore, the limitation of the musical material is stri…

The Lost Genesis of Ambient Minimalism: Harold Budd's Seminal The Oak Of The Golden Dreams Returns to Vinyl

*200 copies limited edition* "A Moment Beyond" is the result of a dialogue between Gunnar Smoliansky's photographs (who passed away in 2019) and the composer and musician Danny Clay, initiated by IIKKI, between February 2026 and May 2026. Danny Clay is a composer who often utilizes classical instruments, open forms, found objects, analog media, and digital errata in his work. He has collaborated with musicians and ensembles throughout the US, including Kronos Quartet, Eighth Blackbird, Third Coa…

Huck Hodge, an American composer and multi-talented artist, writes, as the New York Times puts it, “harmonically fresh works […] full of splendour and thunder”. Both intellectually and immediately poetic, his music explores the many invisible connections between the most diverse artistic and philosophical traditions of East and West. His passion for learning both ancient and modern languages, his own poetic output and his original choice of texts are reflected in the interplay of colour, light a…

Saltern presents a thrilling new live recording of Naldjorlak for solo cello, composer Éliane Radigue’s first piece for an acoustic instrument, paired with a remastered version of the long out-of-print, original 2006 recording. Composed in 2005 in close collaboration with cellist Charles Curtis, Naldjorlak marked a striking shift in the music of Radigue, who has since composed exclusively for instrumentalists with her celebrated Occam series. This album brings together two complete performances …

2000 release ** On His Tone Of Voice, Thomas Buckner offers three works about man's spiritual quest for truth and goodness. The central character in "Blue" Gene Tyranny's collection of songs, His Tone of Voice at 37, realizes something that he had always known, but forgot that he knew -- a secret that frees him to search for a place where there are no more wars or suffering. Mel Graves draws his inspiration for Mediations on Truth from the poems of the 15th-Century Sufi poet, Kabir, whose style …

2025 stock 1992 release. Flutist Barbara Held presents works by Alvin Lucier, Nils Vigeland, and Yasunao Tone and a composition of her own. Known for her collaborations with composers, Held has beautifully chosen and performed this wide-ranging sampling of contemporary musical styles. Vara features Joseph Kubera on piano.

1991 release ** Works by six composers from new music's acclaimed baritone, Thomas Buckner who's been called "the voice of the new". Works written by: Robert Ashley, Jon Gibson, Nils Vigeland, Peter Gena, Annea Lockwood, and Roscoe Mitchell.

*The only edition ever released that has all his piano works collected* The piano has been with Lachenmann almost throughout his composing life of seven decades. Yet the instrument is by no means always the same. Lachenmann’s determination has been to go on finding new possibilities – almost a new voice for the piano in every piece, a voice with which it can speak that piece, as it has not spoken before. Perhaps the Schubert variations of 1956 could be understood as a farewell to traditional pia…

Morton Feldman’s Rothko Chapel is a hushed yet monumental soundscape that resonates with the spiritual austerity of Mark Rothko’s paintings. Combining solo viola, voices, celesta, and percussion, the LP explores silence and timbre with a reverence that transforms listening into a meditative experience, while the composition For Frank O'Hara offers a tender lyrical counterpoint to its profound stillness.

This one carries real weight. Issued by Another Timbre on the occasion of his 90th birthday, At Home - a 4-CD box set gathering five hours of domestic and archive recordings - marks the end of John Tilbury's recording career. There will be no more. What remains is this: a final, quietly monumental document from one of the most singular pianists of the last sixty years. Tilbury's place in the history of contemporary, improvised, and experimental music is beyond dispute. A member of AMM for decade…

Six Pianos is a minimalist piece for six pianos by the American composer Steve Reich. It was completed in March 1973. Music for Mallet Instruments, Voices and Organ – again – emerged in the same year. The piece is scored for glockenspiels, marimbas, metallophone (vibraphone without resonator fans), women's voices and organ. The piece is in four sections, played without a break, marked off by changes in key and meter.

Bastille Musique presents its thirty-ninth release »Morton Feldman: Piano and String Quartet« featuring Florence Millet (piano) and the Jack  Quartet. The album contains a new studio production of Feldman’s late Piano and String Quartet (1985). The recording, produced by the WDR, is complemented by a 48-page bilingual booklet (EN, DE) with texts by Michael Struck-Schloen, a conversation with the performers and the recording producer, autograph pages and two concertina-fold inserts with photos of…

Éclat-Multiples unmasks Pierre Boulez’s music at its most mercurial and sensorial. Michael Wendeberg leads Collegium Novum Zürich and Ensemble Contrechamps through shifting prismatic textures, capturing Boulez’s fascination with timbre, spatial construction, and the suspended motion of silence and sound. Each gesture is meticulously contoured, reinforcing the line between energetic outburst and architectural poise.

*2024 stock* bastille musique presents its twenty-fourth release »Gérard Grisey: Dérives« featuring recordings by the WDR Sinfonieorchester, Katrien Baerts (soprano), Kora Pavelić (mezzo-soprano), Sylvain Cambreling and Emilio Pomàrico (conductors). The album includes Gérard Grisey’s key works Dérives (1973-1974) and L’icône paradoxale (1992-1994) as well as the world premiere recording of Mégalithes (1969). In addition to the recordings produced by the WDR, it also contains a 64-page trilingual…

New vinyl reissue in facsimile gatefold edition, includes original liner notes by Wolfgang Sandner in enclosed booklet.

*2025 stock* The celebrated pianist Aki Takahashi presents an essential interpretation of Morton Feldman’s monumental work "Triadic Memories", a cornerstone of late 20th-century piano music. Known for its meditative expansiveness and delicate shifts in color, this composition stretches the boundaries of time, inviting listeners into Feldman’s unique sound world where silence and resonance carry as much weight as the notes themselves.   Recorded with Takahashi’s characteristic sensitivity and tec…

Estonian vocal ensemble Vox Clamantis and their leader Jaan-Eik Tulve have established themselves among the leading interpreters of Arvo Pärt’s music over a quarter-century of close collaboration with the composer – a relationship that builds on the almost half a century long artistic partnership between Pärt and producer Manfred Eicher. Of the ensemble’s ECM New Series recording The Deer’s Cry, the BBC Music Magazine wrote that “the level of artistry necessary to achieve the kind of living, bre…

*2024 stock. Deluxe packaging* Premiere recordings of Arvo Pärt’s music belong on ECM New Series. This recording of the 4th Symphony – Pärt’s first symphonic work in more than 30 years – documents also the premiere concert performance at L.A.’s Walt Disney Concert Hall. Before Pärt started work on the composition, his thoughts had been circling around texts related to guardian angels. Then he received the commission from Los Angeles, a city whose very name means ‘the angels’. His decision to mak…

*2024 stock. Deluxe packaging* "His music makes the basic human need for a link between aesthetics, ethics and spirituality clear and perceivable – a need so often subordinated to politics and economics in our society." Thus the words with which Arvo Pärt was awarded the International Bridge Prize of the twin cities Görlitz and Zgorzelec in 2007. His new CD, ‘In Principio’, demonstrates the extent to which his more recent music manifests this very link. Twenty-five years ago ECM launched its New…

*2024 stock. Deluxe packaging* “An exceptional and musically important release” – Gramophone, Editor’s Choice. The long-awaited new album by the great Estonian composer brings new colours to his unique body of work. The purity and the sense of timelessness remain; the harmonic palette is subtly expanded. These recordings of “Orient & Occident”, “Ein Wallfahrtslied” and “Como cierva sedienta” have been widely praised.