Composition / Modern Chamber Music

All my music is night music, says the composer Petr Bakla. Three pieces featured on the new album Late Night Show span almost a decade and provide varied examples of his style, 'so specific and personal, so allergic to fashion or aesthetic trend', as Eric Wubbels puts it in the insightful liner note. The central instrument is the piano, operated by Bakla´s longtime collaborator Miroslav Beinhauer, accompanied by the musicians of Brno Contemporary Orchestra.

*Limited Edition Handmade CDR in cardboard string sleeve with liner notes and album art.* "cubes (2020) commissioned, interpreted and recorded by Erik Carlson and Greg Stuart, is a set of instructions for constructing sound and recording events. The score consists of 24 “cubes,” rectangular figures containing various graphics, which are the building blocks of sound for the piece. Throughout the process of realization, Erik and Greg devised and structured these building blocks depending on variou…

*Limited Edition Handmade CDR in cardboard string sleeve with liner notes and album art.* "During the period spanning from 2016 to 2020, I underwent a profound realization that led me to feel lost within myself. As each year passed, I found myself feeling a sense of rupture and absence, far from home. In search for comfort, I turned to my native language of Farsi. However, even within the confines of my language, I was unable to escape the feeling of fragmentation. Each sentence I read seemed to…

‘Scapegoat’ is the new album by Triola, the project led by the prolific Tokyo-based composer & experimental string musician Atsuko Hatano, featuring the Japanese violinist Anzu Suhara. Conceived as a string project, with Hatano on viola, cello, bass and Suhara on violin, Triola involves a rotating ensemble of guest musicians, including the likes of Chicago-born musician, composer & producer Jim O’Rourke (Drag City, Sonic Youth, Steamroom), the composer & musician Eiko Ishibashi (Drag City, Black…

"James Moore (b. 1979) is a composer with an eye toward the world of games and experimental theater. He’s an electric guitarist who’s willing and eager to treat his instrument as a playground, not a reverent, static tradition. He’s a tinkerer, a charmer, and a fella who’s always up for another round at the bar of wacky ideas and intellectual questioning. He’s excited for new and unexpected opportunities for collaboration, but always maintains a voice that seems to stay recognizably his own throu…

The string quartet Current that provides the centerpiece of Adams’ new album dates from 2016, when Spektral Quartet commissioned the composer to write a short work that became the 12-minute study Quartet Movement. Though that piece stands alone, Adams sensed that it might also be used as the basis for something larger, so over the next few years he expanded its scope. The present five-movement work, completed in 2019, was co-commissioned by Spektral Quartet and Cal Performances, with additional …

A set of compositions by composer Kate Moore written around the concept of connecting memory of places and sensory experience, the album centres on the two major pieces, Ridgeway (2009) and The Dam (2015). Moore is at her most expressive in those immersive, visceral works, as she refers to personal experience and memories. In the title piece, Ridgeway, the giant white horse of Uffington, set in the dramatic prehistoric landscape where Moore lived for a time as a child, comes to life as in a powe…

Evening Star, Vesper Bell by Magnus Granberg with Apartment House is a nearly hour-long meditation bridging composed structures and improvisational nuances. Drawing on remnants from Schubert and Cole Porter, the ensemble crafts an intricate tapestry of sound, embracing openness, patience, and detailed interplay. It is a work that rewards repeated, attentive listening and the discovery of subtle, shifting textures.

Sound Pieces is a collection from Pauline Oliveros performed by Apartment House. The album spans seven works from 1975 to 1998, comprising both open text scores and a structured seven-movement composition, "Tree/Peace." The ensemble channels Oliveros’ philosophy of deep listening and interpretive openness, delivering performances full of nuance, attentive silence, and subtle interplay.

With Discreet Music (1975), Music for Airports (1978), and Thursday Afternoon (1985), Brian Eno invented a new music genre, ambient music, which he defined as "able to accommodate many levels of listening attention without enforcing one in particular; it must be as ignorable as it is interesting." These versions performed and arranged by Dedalus Ensemble, according to the musicians and the critics who listened to it, goes beyond what you expect from it. A mental base that takes you far away. One…

Five chamber works with tape and electronics composed by Gerard Pape between 1993 and 1997, performed by soprano Janet Pape, the Arditti Quartet, bassist Nicholas Isherwood, Vox Nova, saxophonist Daniel Kientzy and Ensemble 2e2m.

Portrait of harpist-composer Anne LeBaron: two solo pieces for prepared and electric harp, excerpts from her blues-opera The E&O Line to a libretto by Thulani Davis, and two chamber works, one conducted by Leon Fleisher.

Venturing into untapped realms of creative exploration, the Genoa born, Bologna based, guitarist and electroacoustic composer, Stefano Pilia, returns to Die Schachtel with “Spiralis Aurea”, a double LP of material that intertwines traces of sacred geometry, collective experience and elusive connections between nature and human kind.

Another young composer who you’ve probably not heard of, but whose music you really should get to know. Four stunning pieces, three played by Apartment House, and one by the Rothko Collective. Brilliant music that really shouldn’t be possible from someone so young.

Another Timbre is back with yet another incredible statement from the contemporary landscape of experimental sound, “Vesperi”, the debut album by the Italian composer Marco Baldini from the Florence-based ensemble, Blutwurst. A striking series of minimal works for acoustic instruments, drawing their inspiration from early music and North Indian (Hindustani) classical music, and executed by two remarkable ensembles - a quartet of two cellos and two double bass, and a trio of cello, double bass, a…

*2023 stock* Inspired by the kinetic physicality and aesthetics of balance found in Ken Unsworth's work, the music embodies a feeling of suspension between movement and stasis. Evolving and revolving melodies, poised skilfully in polyrhythmic structures, the music creates an intoxicating and emotional impression. There is a feeling of constant motion and flow of sonic currents that typifies much of Kate Moore's music. The music shifts from the material world, the gradually shifting stone-like cy…

*In process of stocking. 2023 stock* "Gottschalk’s works and if you are looking for new-to-you works, this album would be a welcome one to the audio library. The title work of the album starts an eerie flicker of sound from hollow trills that swell to the orchestra’s entrance with a similar character and trills echoed. As the first movement continues, Parisi’s aptitude for both conventional and contemporary techniques are apparent with technical passages sounding effortless as he spans the range…

*In process of stocking. 2023 stock* "As a chamber music ensemble the saxophone quartet has a surprisingly long pedigree. The first work for it was written in 1857, less than twenty years after Adolphe Sax invented it, a Saxophone Quartette Club was founded in New York in 1879, and by 1896 a California Saxophone Quartet was on tour. While the modern saxophone quartet is now most likely to be associated with the jazz tradition, the standard ensemble of soprano, alto, tenor and baritone saxophones…

Tip! *In process of stocking* "On "When the Streets Were Quiet", composer, bassist, and bandleader Max Johnson turns the focus to his finely wrought chamber music. Active in many contexts, Johnson is voraciously eclectic and impressively versatile. The works on this collection betray little overt reference to his wide range of stylistic activities, instead zeroing in on his craft centered approach to composition. With an emphasis on counterpoint, imitative textures, structural markers defined by…

Gondwana Records announces 'Goodbyes' the debut album from Estonian pianist and composer, Hanakiv, a deeply beautiful, meditative piano album featuring special guest Alabaster dePlume.

*2022 stock* "Leroy Jenkins, free jazz's greatest violinist, has always worked best in intimate situations with equally talented partners. He certainly had the optimum conditions on this duet date pairing him with outstanding pianist, composer, arranger, and conductor Muhal Richard Abrams. The duo played six Jenkins compositions for the session, which was recorded live. Abrams and Jenkins frequently alternate roles, letting each other set the pace, never colliding, and forging a highly effective…

With Solo Piano, Glass presents himself “unplugged” - no electronic keyboards or synthesizers, and no overdubs, either - just solo piano. “Metamorphosis” was written in 1988 and takes its name from a play based on Kafka's short story. Its second track, “Metamorphosis Two”, formed the basis of one of the main musical themes in the film “The Hours”. It is also the song that the American rock band Pearl Jam uses as their introduction music to concerts. “Mad Rush” was written for the occasion of the…

*2022 stock* 'We can appreciate some musical works for a variety of reasons. Some unleash a narrative that can read our present and its problems very well, others prefer to move on abstract codes, whether experimental or electronic. Still others may propose ethnographic readings as much aimed at an examination of the past and tradition as they try to probe the future through spatial or psychedelic atmospheres. Then there are proposals capable of going beyond any stylistic framework and floating …

Ark Hive of A Live is a 4 CD set of recordings by Andrew Poppy, along with a 128 page book, including writing by Andrew Poppy; an introduction by Paul Morley; other writing by Leah Kardos, Nik Bärtsch and Rose English; and archival photographs.

This 2 CD album features Japanese pianist Miharu Ogura’s jaw-dropping rendition of Karlheinz Stockhausen’s Klavierstücke I–XI, for solopiano, recorded live at Monopiano festival 2021. Includes a 20 page booklet with an essay by Robin Maconie, former Stockhausen pupil and author of the book “Other Planets: The Complete Works of Karlheinz Stockhausen 1950–2007”.

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…

*In process of stocking.* Other Minds is pleased to present Lockdown Fantasies, the new album from composer Neil Rolnick. The album features two new works for piano and electronics written for and performed by Geoffrey Burleson and Kathleen Supové. Both works are dense and thoughtful with an emotional edge, much like the oeuvre that Rolnick has built up over his 40 year career as a composer. The album opens with its titular piece, "Lockdown Fantasies," performed by Geoffrey Burleson. The piece w…

*In process of stocking. 2022 stock.* Born in Seoul and now a resident of Brooklyn, Ha-Yang Kim is a cellist, composer and improviser who has developed a unique language of extended string techniques and electronics. Drawing upon influences as far ranging as Balinese and Karnatic traditions, jazz, rock, western classical music and downtown experimentation, she has created an original music of imagination and passion. Her first CD features a startling solo piece, two pieces for her long running d…

*In process of stocking. 2022 stock.* Ha-Yang Kim is a cellist and composer of striking originality whose musical influences draw equally from a range of western classical music, American experimentalism, rock, noise, and improvised music, to non-western musical sources from Bali, Korea and South Indian classical music. For her second CD on Tzadik she presents a major new composition for string quartet, performed here by the world renowned JACK quartet. Dedicated to Jewish poet Paul Celan, “Thre…

Meander Selection features chamber works by John Lely performed by Apartment House, foregrounding melodic fragments, repetition, gradual change, and the interplay between structure and spontaneity. The album's six tracks move through distinct instrumentations and atmospheres, revealing a composer attuned to understated detail and poised sonic balance.

A 75-minute piece for septet in nine movements by the young Texas-based composer.

Somatic Refrain is a collection by Allison Cameron for varied chamber forces and ensemble, performed by Apartment House and the Allison Cameron Band. Her music combines delicate sound textures, unpredictable motifs, and hints of folk and experimental methods, rewarding attentive listeners with gentle surprises and new perspectives on instrumental color.

An Album by Tim Parkinson and Apartment House includes five works covering two decades of the composer’s creative evolution. From uncoordinated solo and ensemble pieces to re-imagined septets and violin-piano duos, the music is marked by matter-of-fact presentation, rhythmic independence, and a celebration of the mundane as fertile compositional ground.

Chamber works by Irish composer Gerald Barry for solo piano, violin and piano, piano trio and piano quartet, played by the Fidelio Trio with Rose Redgrave and the composer. All but In the Asylum are first recordings.

*2022 Stock.* The Stockhausen Edition no. 105 contains chamber works recorded between 2011-15. In Freundschaft was written as a clarinet solo for (and dedicated to) woodwind player Suzanne Stephens for her birthday and was first premiered by her in 1978, though a flute version was performed earlier during Stephens' actual birthday celebration. In the following years, Stockhausen composed versions for many more instruments, including recorder, oboe, bassoon (w. teddy bear costume), basset horn, b…

*2022 Stock.* The Stockhausen Edition no. 102 contains five new arrangements of the solo work In Freundschaft (In Friendship). In Freundschaft was written as a clarinet solo for (and dedicated to) woodwind player Suzanne Stephens for her birthday and was first premiered by her in 1978, though a flute version was performed earlier during Stephens' actual birthday celebration. In the following years, Stockhausen composed versions for many more instruments, including recorder, oboe, bassoon (w. ted…

*2022 Stock.* The Stockhausen Edition no. 101  contains four new arrangements of the solo work In Freundschaft (In Friendship). In Freundschaft was written as a clarinet solo for (and dedicated to) woodwind player Suzanne Stephens for her birthday and was first premiered by her in 1978, though a flute version was performed earlier during Stephens' actual birthday celebration. In the following years, Stockhausen composed versions for many more instruments, including recorder, oboe, bassoon (w. te…

*2022 Stock.* Hoffnung (Hope, 9th Hour from Klang, for string trio, 2007) and Glanz (Brilliance, 10th Hour from Klang, for septet, 2007) both adapt and re-sequence melodic and rhythmic material from Schönheit (on The Stockhausen Edition no. 87) to create a similarly hypnotic web of lyrical polyphony, approaching and receding from the listener. - Stockhausenspace.blogspot.com

*2022 Stock.* Balance (7th Hour from Klang, 2007) and Glück (Bliss, Eighth Hour from Klang, 2007) are both wind trios which adapt and re-sequence melodic and rhythmic material from Schönheit (on The Stockhausen Edition no. 87) to create a similarly hypnotic web of lyrical polyphony, approaching and receding from the listener. - Stockhausenspace.blogspot.com

*2022 Stock.* Harmonien (Harmonies, 5th Hour from Klang, 2006) consists of three adaptations (for bass clarinet, flute, trumpet) of a composition for a solo melody instrument, in which broad melodic fragments are answered by brisk cycles of related arpeggio figures (or broken chords). These ostinato figures are modulated dynamically so that they subtly approach and recede. In Schönheit (Beauty, 6th Hour from Klang, 2006) the material from the three arrangements of Harmonien are layered and synch…