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Search Result for Genre CLASSICAL
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LCD 1903CD
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$11.50
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RELEASE DATE: 5/10/2019
2019 repress on CD; 1990 release. Commissioned by Mabou Mines, the experimental theater group from New York, for their interpretation of King Lear, Pauline Oliveros's Crone Music is a subtle and haunting electronic music endeavor. Interfacing an abundance of digital delay processors, reverb effects, and foot pedals to bend pitches from piercing to twisted, sonorous tones, with her one-of-a-kind expanded accordion, Oliveros produces rich, eerie textures. Personnel: Pauline Oliveros -solo accordion; Panaiotis - processing and mixing.
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ERGODOS 030CD
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$16.50
PREORDER
RELEASE DATE: 5/10/2019
Winter is the debut release from Ficino Ensemble, a group of flexible size specializing in the rich repertoire of classical chamber music -- a tradition of intimacy, introspection, poise, and exchange to which they bring such insight in performance. Here, they present three works -- Brahms's "August Clarinet Quintet of 1891", Ravel's virtuosic "Introduction and Allegro" (1905); to the title track, "Winter", by Irish composer Garrett Sholdice, composed especially for this project in 2018 In some respects Brahms's "Clarinet Quintet" looks back to the elegant designs of Mozart's "Clarinet Quintet". Yet in its deliberate patterns of speech its richly dark hues, the music is deeply personal -- each movement the revelation of a secret. Ravel's "Introduction and Allergo", for harp, flute, clarinet, and string quartet, is brighter -- evoking, perhaps, the particular radiance of sunshine on a December morning. In "Winter", for harp, clarinet, and string trio, Garrett Sholdice provides a fulcrum about which the Brahms and Ravel may balance each other. This is a work entirely concerned with re-colorings and shadings of musical material. At its core, it is a ritual that simultaneously moves and stays still. Ficino Ensemble was formed by its artistic director Nathan Sherman in 2012. Their concerts have been described as exciting and intimate with a high caliber of ensemble playing. The members of the group are recognized in Ireland and abroad as soloists and chamber musicians.
Garrett Sholdice (b. 1983) is an Irish composer. His music has been described as possessing an "exquisite delicacy" (The Irish Times). Notable recent works include "The Root and the Crown", a twenty-minute ensemble work, commissioned by Crash Ensemble.
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NW 80809CD
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"Robert Palmer (1915-2010) produced more than ninety symphonic, choral, chamber, and solo works throughout his career, earning a reputation in the mid-twentieth century as one of the country's leading, most daring, and -- at the same time -- appealing modernists. Palmer's unique musical language combined a deeply emotional impulse with complex counterpoint and rhythmic structures, drawing comparisons to Hindemith, Bartók, Lou Harrison, even Brahms. Aaron Copland famously included Palmer on his 1948 list of seven composers whom he considered 'the best we have to offer among the new generation,' a list that included Lukas Foss, Leonard Bernstein, and John Cage. This recording, the first devoted solely to the work of this enigmatic and still-unsung hero of American composition, comprises the bulk of his landmark piano works. (All but three are premiere recordings.) A long-overdue and important addition to the canon of recorded modern American music, it serves as a timely portrait of one of the most fascinating figures of a lost generation of mid-century American composers, introducing contemporary listeners to music that sounds as audacious, rousing and emotionally raw today as it did half-a-century ago. Several important pianists have recognized Palmer's music for its haunting beauty and unique rhythmic tide, including John Kirkpatrick, William Kapell, Claudio Arrau, and Yvar Mikhashoff. Palmer's music, full of pathos and joy, illuminates for a whole new generation of musicians and listeners the possibilities of tonal writing. He is part of the chain of events that brought us to our contemporary environment of tonal freedom, and it's time to make amends and include him in that timeline. This album is a start." Performed by Adam Tendler.
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NEOS 11902CD
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The organs that Hans Eugen Frischknecht plays on this CD are extraordinary, one-of-a-kind instruments. He wrote his compositions precisely for these instruments, turning each one's characteristic sound and capabilities into a main feature of each piece. Among these "special organs" are two quartertone organs, one is tuned in meantone temperament with split sharps and two prototypes from the INOV-ORGAN-UM research project. On these latter organs it is possible to adjust the air pressure, even after pressing the keys, to cause variations in the loudness and even pitch of the notes. Hans Eugen Frischknecht has traveled to many countries as an organist, often performing his own works. He studied with Boris Blacher and Michael Schneider, and later also with Olivier Messiaen in Paris.
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NEOS 11812CD
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Stefan Schulzki is known for his especially creative implementation of live electronics. While this can be heard on Chamber Music, the program offers a much more comprehensive overview of Schulzki's work. The recording features chamber works with various instrumentations, from a simple piano song (a new setting of Goethe's "Erlkönig") to a piano concerto with chamber ensemble and electronics written in 2018, from the bitterly ironic Politisches Lied 2011 to the lyrically expressive theater music Die Zeit und das Zimmer (Botho Strauss). All of the recordings were studio productions except for the piano concerto, which is a live recording of the première.
"Piano Concerto (2018)" performed by: JU[MB]LE (Jugendensemble für Neue Musik Bayern); Vincent Neeb - piano; Stefan Schulzki - electronics; Johannes X. Schachtner - conductor. "Politisches Lied 2011 (2011)", with text by Norbert Niemann, performed by: Salome Kammer - mezzo-soprano; Alexander von Hagke - tenor saxophone; Claus-Dieter Jäkel - trombone; Johannes Öllinger - electric guitar; Stefan Schulzki - piano; Walter Bittner - percussion; Kai Wangler - accordion; Yasuka Morizono - violin; Uli Fiedler - double bass. "Widerschein II - fragment / auskopplung -- another place (2009)" performed by: Evgeni Orkin - soprano saxophone; Stefan Schulzki - Hammond organ and electronics. Erlkönig (2012) (4:45), with text by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, performed by: Peter Schöne - baritone; Stefan Schulzki - piano. "Drei Epigramme nach Bertolt Brecht (2014)" performed by Beatrice Ottmann - soprano; Stefan Schulzki - electronics and piano. "Die Zeit und das Zimmer (2001)" performed by Aaron Dan - flute; Andrej Makiy - viola; Simonetta Ginelli - harp.
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NEOS 11814CD
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Ataç Sezer draws inspiration for his compositions from highly varied sources: the 24 different tonal systems of Turkish makam music, for which he has developed new forms of notation, and also from microtonality and electronic music. He likes to experiment with new playing techniques and loves combining Western and Eastern instruments. Ataç Sezer studied piano and musicology as well as the ney, the traditional flute of Ottoman court music. On Simultaneity, a portrait CD which offers an exclusive selection of chamber, ensemble and orchestral works, it becomes clear how present the influences of two musical traditions are in Sezer's work.
"mirror-reversed" performed by: Sercan Halili - kemençe; Young Euro Classic Festival Orchestra Turkey-Germany; Cem Mansur - conductor; "relativity of simultaneity" performed by: Soloists of Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra; TrioCoriolis; "infinitimal" performed by Studio Musikfabrik; Peter Veale - conductor; "Toned Melisma" Münchener Kammerorchester; Alexander Liebreich - conductor; "time loop" performed by Johannes Öllinger - electric guitar; MGNM Festival Ensemble; Peter Hirsch - conductor; "A-Circle" performed by Stefanie Schumacher - accordion; TrioCoriolis.
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NEOS 11816CD
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The Slovenian clarinetist Uros Rojko and his compatriot, accordionist Luka Juhart, are performing composers -- as well as composing performers. They are both quite determined to leave this issue undetermined. They have known each other for many years, and, over time, a deep friendship has grown, which is documented on this CD. Their ensemble playing has a natural ease, but also a great intensity. They know and enjoy not only their own works, but those of the other. The program on this CD is supplemented with miniatures by Iris ter Schiphorst that currently belong to the standard repertoire for this special instrumentation. Personnel: Uros Rojko - clarinet; Luka Juhart - accordion.
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NEOS 11829CD
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Since its founding in 1993, Collegium Novum Zürich has advanced to become one of the leading international ensembles for contemporary music. Just in time for their 25th anniversary, NEOS is releasing an exclusive collection of live recordings that represent the ensemble's programmatic identity. When selecting these works, preference was given to world premieres and first performances. Works by Vinko Globokar, Martin Jaggi, Sascha Janko Dragićević, and Marko Nikodijevic.
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NEOS 11906CD
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In recent years, Maja Mijatović has tirelessly commissioned new compositions for her instrument, the harpsichord. This album contains the works of eight composers who not only come from different generations, but also strongly contrasting cultural backgrounds. This has resulted in a collection of pieces that demonstrate the great potential for discovery that the harpsichord still has to offer to new music. Features works by: Margareta Ferek-Petrić, Rafael Nassif, Christian Diendorfer, Sylvie Lacroix, Peter Jakober, Tamara Friebel, Manuela Kerer, and Hannes Dufek.
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NEOS 11825CD
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Contemporary music is a central component of conservatory training today and is practiced at the University of the Arts Bern at the highest level, as this recording attests. When they were written (between 1983 and 1995), these three pieces would have been neither technically nor logistically possible to play at a music conservatory. Each work poses its own challenges. In "Ryoanji" by John Cage it is the unusual structure, which is based partially on chance and requires the interpreters to go beyond merely executing the notation. In his "Two men meet, each presuming the other to be from a distant planet", James Wood employs electronics in a way that exhausted the capabilities of the equipment in the 1980s such that it is necessary to perform the work using these "historical" electronic devices to get the proper sound today. In terms of its instrumental technique, Brian Ferneyhough's "La Chute d'Icare" is music of an almost absurd difficulty.
"Two men meet, each presuming the other to be from a distant planet (1995)" performed by: Brian Archinal - percussion; Ensemble VERTIGO der Hochschule der Künste Bern; Lennart Dohms - conductor. "Ryoanji (1983-1985)" performed by Livia Schönbächler - flute; Ensemble VERTIGO der Hochschule der Künste Bern; Lennart Dohms, conductor. "La Chute d'Icare (1988)" performed by Shuyue Zhao - clarinet; Nouvel Ensemble Contemporain; Lennart Dohms - conductor.
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NEOS 11907CD
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With his new CD, Quiet Stone, Laurie Altman abducts the listener into a musical world that is completely different to that of his previous three NEOS recordings. In a certain sense, his background as a jazz pianist shines through; Instead of large, fully composed works he offers miniatures with some improvised passages. The recordings are strongly characterized by the presence of a 13-string guitar belonging to Laurie Altman's stage partner of many years, Anders Miolin.
Performers includes: Andreas Kühnrich - cello; Laurie Altman - piano; Nedyalko Petkov - clarinet; Anders Miolin - 13-string guitar; Isabel Pfefferkorn - mezzo-soprano; Matthias Mueller - clarinet.
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NEOS 11818CD
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The music of Wolfgang Jacobi is worth (re)discovering. Born in 1894 on the island of Rügen in Germany, he pursued university studies and worked in Berlin until his music was banned by the Nazis. Following a brief exile in Italy he resettled in Munich in 1935 where he played a significant role in the public music scene of the post-war era. Jacobi had a pronounced affinity for instruments considered unusual at the time such as the harpsichord, saxophone, and especially the accordion, his use of which is pioneering in contemporary music. In 2018, the Megève Festival Savoy Truffle dedicated a series of performances to Jacobi's music using prominent musicians. These performances, which include a world premiere recording of Jacobi's string quartet by the Arditti Quartet, are now being released on NEOS to commemorate his 125th birthday.
"Concerto for Harpsichord and Orchestra Op. 31 (1927/1947)" performed by: Andreas Skouras - harpsichord; Orchestre des Pays de Savoie; Sándor Károlyi - conductor; "Italian Songs for Soprano and Piano (1954)" performed by: Marion Grange - soprano; Ambroise de Rancourt - piano; "String Quartet (1948)" performed by Arditti Quartet (Irvine Arditti and Ashot Sarkissjan - violins; Ralf Ehlers - viola; Lucas Fels - violoncello); "Serenade and Allegro (1958)" performed by: Dimitri Bouclier - accordion; Union Accordéoniste Mixte Genève; Pierre-André Krummenacher - conductor.
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DCLP 009LP
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LP version. Gatefold sleeve; edition of 500 (hand-numbered). Dark Companion label head Max Marchini on Hamdelaneh Intimate Dialogues (January 2019): "Another true masterpiece from Dark Companion Records. I met Markus Stockhausen after inviting him and his wife to 'Musiche Nuove In Piacenza' festival in autumn 2018. Immediately I felt a strong empathy towards him. That doesn't happen very often. I knew his work and had always admired it, especially the spontaneous compositions he performs and the way his unique talent blossoms in these situations. We talked at lunch and I dared propose to him to record an album for our small Dark Companion label. The dream came true when Markus, after a few minutes in silence, phoned Alireza and suggested he be a special guest at our concert that very same evening. After some thought he kindly agreed. Alireza soon arrived in Piacenza and I had the opportunity to get to know one of the most charming and kind persons in the world. And an extraordinary musician -- a master of the old Persian santoor, an instrument of many voices that sings like an angelic choir under Alireza's hammers. When they performed the third and last movement of the concert, the audience was mesmerized, and so was I. Once more, the Magic Fairy was with us. Sometimes it happens, sometimes not. I saw someone in tears when Markus started to sing a sort of mystic, ancestral chorus with the audience. The music in this album is absolutely new but within it breathes a very ancient, sunken soul, a hidden root. Alireza and Markus were so kind as to give me this beautiful recording they made in Italy three years ago. I also have to thank Simon Stockhausen, Markus's brother, who mixed and mastered this album with a state-of-the-art quality. I am very proud to now have Markus and Alireza in our catalog and I hope this album may give you the same intimate, graceful, peaceful atmosphere these musicians have given me. The meaning of Hamdelaneh is 'with the same heart'."
Personnel: Markus Stockhausen - trumpet, flugelhorn, piccolo trumpet, voice; Alireza Mortazavi - santoor.
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IMPREC 469CD
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Orpheus Variations is a new composition by Alvin Lucier for solo cello and seven wind instruments. It is based on a particular sonority from the first movement of Igor Stravinsky's ballet score, Orpheus; a sonority that has haunted Lucier for decades. Orpheus Variations is one of eight large-scale compositions made expressly for Charles Curtis by Alvin Lucier in the last 15 years. This performance was conducted by Petr Kotik, with Charles Curtis playing solo cello alongside members of the SEM Ensemble.
"Lucier speaks first of a sonority, and only then of a chord. He discusses the chord, its notes and their disposition, but what haunts him is a 'particular sonority.' A sonority is the product of physical action on physical materials: the instruments, the registers in which they are activated, the breath of the musicians, the waveforms thus produced, their merging and interfering, and finally the moment and place of these actions. An energy field, certain to vanish completely once the musicians put down their instruments. However concrete and real the actions and materials, the sonority they produce is a phantom."
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2CD
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NW 80810CD
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"Changes: 64 Studies for 6 Harps (1985) is a large-scale work that combines and connects many of James Tenney's (1934-2006) most important theoretical and musical ideas, including gestalt segregation principles and complex intonation systems. Composed with the aid of a mainframe computer at York University, the piece also marks a return to computer-aided, algorithmic composition after a long hiatus. It was one of the first pieces Tenney composed with a computer after he left New York City in the late 1960s to teach at the California Institute of the Arts. After Changes, the majority of Tenney's works involved computer software and formal, algorithmic processes. Tenney was both a prolific composer and theorist but rarely wrote in detail about his own pieces even though his music consistently implemented his theoretical ideas. One exception is his article, 'About Changes,' originally published in the journal Perspectives of New Music. 'About Changes' is a detailed and exhaustive theoretical companion to and description of the piece that carefully documents his compositional procedures, many of which are highly technical and/or mathematical. At the beginning of the article, Tenney writes, 'My intentions in this work were both exploratory and didactic. That is, I wanted to investigate the new harmonic resources that have become available through the concept of 'harmonic space' much more thoroughly than I had in any earlier work. At the same time I wanted to explore these harmonic resources within a formal context that would clearly demonstrate certain theoretical ideas and compositional methods already developed in my computer music of the early 1960s, including the use of stochastic (or constrained-random) processes applied to several holarchical perceptual levels, both monophonically and polyphonically. The references to the I Ching, or Book of Changes, in the titles of the individual studies derive from correlations that were made partly for poetic/philosophical reasons but also -- and perhaps more importantly -- as a means of ensuring that all possible combination of parametric states would be included in the work as a whole. I must confess that I frequently thought of the twenty-four preludes and fugues of J.S. Bach's Well-Tempered Clavier as a kind of model for what I wanted to do with the work, although it seems highly unlikely that these studies themselves will ever betray that fact to the listener."
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RZ 1030CD
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Edition RZ presents Jakob Ullmann's Fremde Zeit Addendum 5, a supplement to Fremde Zeit Addendum (RZ 1026-28CD, 2011). CD comes in carton sleeve with flap (to be added to Fremde Zeit Addendum box -- CDs 1-4), with booklet in German and English.
"Do we hear what we know? How, if this is obscured? Sent on a journey of discovery into the audible, at first almost nothing appears here. But once the ear has become accustomed to the intermediate realm of the pianissimo, an abundance of timbres becomes apparent, everyday noises unexpectedly dispersing in their non-spatial aura, then the surprising appearances of short tonal shapes, which enter the flow of time standing still as if they were revelations of the ear itself with no possibility to guess their origin, verifiable on the instrument. After all, it is in fact the tone which is the improbable, out of all that is weaving in and out within the grounding, static sound, like a distant army of constellations below, taking place uneventfully at the level of the permanent. 'solo V' is not an instrumental piece for a soloist in the ordinary sense. The grand piano becomes an unknown sound body. Although there is a soloist, they could hardly carry out the performance on their own, requiring either pre-produced electronic playback or, as in the present recording by Lukas Rickli, the participation of three assistants sustaining a soundscape. Ullmann conceived a sonic space in which sound is subjected to the laws of a specific 'gravity'. Its meridians range continuously from noise to tone and from shortest single event to sustained continuity, but what constitutes the true aura of this space is its reduced dynamics, and a rhythmic sense that is averse to any kind of melody in the usual sense. 'solo V' is also 'solistic' in another way: there is no fixed notated score, it must first be created individually, and so hardly ever will any performance score be the same as another. Rickli and his partner Zora Marti had a variety of graphic and notated material at their disposal for the development of the temporal form. Following the composer's graphically notated glissandi, Rickli and Marti modify the sound of the centers and generate transitions with them. The piece to be heard unfolds in a pulsating, breathing pianissimo. Hardly bringing any instrument to mind, it opens up a harmonic cosmos, urging the listener into it -- because other than through listening to the barely recognizable, nothing is revealed. --Rainer Schmusch, translated by Peter Gebert.
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DCLP 009CD
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Dark Companion label head Max Marchini on Hamdelaneh Intimate Dialogues (January 2019): "Another true masterpiece from Dark Companion Records. I met Markus Stockhausen after inviting him and his wife to 'Musiche Nuove In Piacenza' festival in autumn 2018. Immediately I felt a strong empathy towards him. That doesn't happen very often. I knew his work and had always admired it, especially the spontaneous compositions he performs and the way his unique talent blossoms in these situations. We talked at lunch and I dared propose to him to record an album for our small Dark Companion label. The dream came true when Markus, after a few minutes in silence, phoned Alireza and suggested he be a special guest at our concert that very same evening. After some thought he kindly agreed. Alireza soon arrived in Piacenza and I had the opportunity to get to know one of the most charming and kind persons in the world. And an extraordinary musician -- a master of the old Persian santoor, an instrument of many voices that sings like an angelic choir under Alireza's hammers. When they performed the third and last movement of the concert, the audience was mesmerized, and so was I. Once more, the Magic Fairy was with us. Sometimes it happens, sometimes not. I saw someone in tears when Markus started to sing a sort of mystic, ancestral chorus with the audience. The music in this album is absolutely new but within it breathes a very ancient, sunken soul, a hidden root. Alireza and Markus were so kind as to give me this beautiful recording they made in Italy three years ago. I also have to thank Simon Stockhausen, Markus's brother, who mixed and mastered this album with a state-of-the-art quality. I am very proud to now have Markus and Alireza in our catalog and I hope this album may give you the same intimate, graceful, peaceful atmosphere these musicians have given me. The meaning of Hamdelaneh is 'with the same heart'."
Personnel: Markus Stockhausen - trumpet, flugelhorn, piccolo trumpet, voice; Alireza Mortazavi - santoor. CD version comes in a gold paper sleeve; Edition of 500 (hand-numbered).
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IMPREC 468CD
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Anthony Burr and Charles Curtis present a collection of curated compositions from Alvin Lucier and Morton Feldman. Two Lucier pieces, "August Moon" and "Trio For Clarinet, Cello & Tuba" are presented here for the first time. Liner notes are excerpted from a lecture on Morton Feldman given by Alvin Lucier. A selection from Alvin Lucier's liner notes: "For Feldman, dynamics serve an acoustical function. When he mitigates a piano attack he reduces that spike of noise that's at the onset of every piano sound leaving only the sinusoidal pure after-sound. It's as if he invented electronic music with the piano."
"Lucier manages to hear a layer of acoustical physics in Feldman's music that perhaps no one else would hear. He's hearing something in Feldman that is actually coming from his own musical world; in a way, hearing his own music in Feldman's, and drawing inspiration from that."
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OME 1018LP
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Alessandro Moreschi (1858-1922) was the last known castrato, and the only one to have ever made recordings. He was born into a Catholic family in one of the so-called Roman castles, where he was castrated either for health reasons, or because of his singing talents, the history is unclear. But either way he was discovered soon after for his talents and by a very young age was known as "l'Angelo Di Roma" and quickly became the first soprano of the Sistine Chapel choir, a position he held for more than 30 years. In Roma at the time members of the Sistine Chapel choir, and castrati in particular, held much esteem, bordering on celebrity, and Moreschi was probably the most famous of them all. His recordings were made in 1902 and 1904 at the Vatican. Most of them are extremely rare and are collected here for the first time. This historic re-issue includes all twelve records which Professor Moreschi is known to have made, as well as five choral records on which his voice is clearly discernable. 425 gram sleeve; hand-numbered sticker.
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HH 8160746CD
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$23.50
PREORDER
RELEASE DATE: 3/29/2019
2016 release. Jack Symonds is a composer, conductor, pianist and the Artistic Director of Sydney Chamber Opera. His productions are always daring, both musically and theatrically. They tend to garner five-star reviews and affronted walkouts in equal measure. He studied composition at the Royal College of Music and the Sydney Conservatorium of Music, where he received the university medal. He has written pieces for Jane Sheldon and JACK Quartet and staged almost 20 modern opera productions including three of his own. Jack has conducted works by Pascal Dusapin, Fausto Romitelli, George Benjamin, and Gyorgy Kurtág. He has been involved in the Sydney Festival, Sydney Biennale, Bendigo Festival of Exploratory Music and Resonant Bodies Festival. Deluxe CD and booklet; limited edition.
Jack on the pieces: "The pieces on this album reflect my obsession with miniaturization and love of song. They are all related by a desire to cannibalize - in the most loving way - vocal works I find endlessly fascinating from composers as diverse as Schubert and Sciarrino. 'Song Cycle', the earliest work here is modelled on the proportions of the songs that its various movements reflect. At the time I wanted to find a rigorous way of making a very personal 'history of art song' coexist across purely instrumental movements of extremely diverse expression, without pastiche or sarcastic deconstruction. It has been an ongoing preoccupation of mine to filter a kind of Romanticism through what I believe to be a still-living tradition, and 'Song Cycle' showed me the way to find hundreds of points of connection along the complex continuum of harmonic history. This is equally true of 'Ein Fremder in fremden Land - another suite-like piece but here a portrait of a single composer who I shockingly omitted from Song Cycle due to received ignorance - Zemlinsky. I find enormous personal resonances with the way he viewed the world and the music around him. The two smaller violin works perhaps betray my immersion in Kurtág as I was preparing to perform his life-changing song cycle 'pas à pas- nulle parte'. Dealing with his music for an extended period applied a harsh mirror to any extraneous development or gesture and I felt a healthy compression of my own ideas take place. These pieces' focus on warped classical processes gave me a platform to apply the same to actual song: the 'Rilke Lieder' give literal and metaphorical voice to the whole gamut of my preoccupations, all in the smallest possible space.
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BLUME 014-15LP
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$52.00
PREORDER
RELEASE DATE: 3/29/2019
Very limited double-LP bundled version of the two individual LPs, 180 gram color vinyl. Includes printed inner, Nagaoka anti-static record sleeve, plus and Obi-style insert in a fold-out outer sleeve. Only a handful of years ago, the name Julius Eastman would have been met by a unanimous blank look. The legacy of this once-darling of the New York post-minimal avant-garde had, since his untimely death at the age of 49, in 1990, been almost entirely lost. Eastman's story is as fascinating as they come: black, angry, and queer in an all too polite, straight white musical world. A prodigy and genius whose music took him to astounding heights, whose unwillingness to conform and play by the rules took him down the path of drug abuse and homelessness, as well as the loss of his scores. Even before his death, he was already a forgotten name. Eastman belongs to a generation of composers who inherited the mantel left by minimalism, but despite being highly respected by his peers, he was given few chances to record his work, relegating most of his talent as a singer and pianist to the realization of others' work. It was Eastman who conducted the iconic recording of Arthur Russell's Tower of Meaning, and whose piano cuts its way across the 1976 recording of Morton Feldman's For Frank O'Hara. It's likely that Eastman's work would have been entirely lost, had it not been for rigorous efforts of a few close friends, the most persistent of whom was the composer, Mary Jane Leach, who spent years tracking down his lost scores. These efforts eventually led to the comprehensive CD collection, Unjust Malaise (2005). It was the beginning of a turning tide, and over the 13 years since, Eastman's singular voice has slowly returned to the audience he always deserved. It also represented the recorded debut of some his most thrilling and controversial work, three compositions for piano from what he called the N*gger Series: Gay Guerrilla, Evil N*gger, and Crazy N*gger. The three pieces are now issued across two LPs in their first-ever vinyl release with extensive liner notes by Leach and Bradford Bailey. These three seminal works by one of the most important, but neglected, American composers of the 1970s and '80s, return to the light once more. Not only are they an entire rethinking of musical minimalism, but they ferociously blow the doors off of what classical music can be. Mastered by Giuseppe Ielasi.
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2LP
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HH 3160745LP
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$52.00
PREORDER
RELEASE DATE: 3/29/2019
2017 release. Chicago-based Australian vocalist Jessica Aszodi is a performer of notated and improvised music, a researcher, and curator. She bridges the worlds of contemporary art music and the experimental with total conviction. In her genre-bounding career Jessica has premiered over 70 new pieces of notated music, performed works that have lain dormant for centuries and collaborated with a constellation of artists. She is co-director of the vocal festival Resonant Bodies Australia. Prayer for Nil is a composer/performer experiment for electronics and voice. Each piece is its own microcosm of unfolding connections, decisions and influences, negotiating varying degrees of control and freedom. If there is a common thread amongst them, it is that they all push her vocalic body towards its limits. The voice on this record is not the voice of a unified and cogent human, it is the mutable voice of someone wailing unrestrained in passionate argument. The composers are Anthony Pateras (Mike Patton, PIVIXKI, Pateras/Fox), James Rushford (Oren Ambarchi, Golden Fur), Alexander Garsden (Erkki Veltheim, Melbourne Symphony), and Jeanette Little (Speak Percussion).
"In Anthony Pateras' "Prayer for Nil" the electronics are a swell of voices so dense they seem inhuman, amassed like a threatening cloud. As the piece unfolds the masses thin to a taper. By its conclusion the solitary singer is left brutally alone, though it's hard to tell if she wasn't alone the whole time - every voice in the throng was my own. In "[ja] maser" Alexander Garsden deals with relationships between groups of pitches and non-traditional vocal utterances to create cresting swarms of vocality that grow, splinter and re-germinate. In the second half of the piece, a more vulnerable voice emerges, broken and crumpled in the low depths of my range. James Rushford's piece is the most overtly inspired by composer-performer relationship. Composed material was conveyed to me though an audio-score, piped point-blank into my ear. In Jeanette Little's "Mechanical Bride", my singing voice represents anima in an automated world. The text comes from Enrico Cavacchioli's 1914 poem, Let the moon be damned, in which he describes a decaying environment where humans entwine with machines. The dystopic picture painted in this poem still convinces. As I perform this piece, I stage inside myself a battle between flaw-filled human expressivity and savage, ancient machines. Jeanette's sound world pays homage to an analog era, mid-century modernist instrumental and electronic techniques in a milieu that is something like a space-western."
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LP
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BLUME 014LP
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It's little wonder that Julius Eastman (who died in 1990 under unexplained circumstances), remained the supreme underground composer. He was Afro-American and gay, a composer who rocked the cerebral world of process music with his explosions of free improvisation. Crazy Nigger is the first time any of Eastman's music has been available on vinyl, and is one of three extended pieces for four pianos, along with Gay Guerrilla and Evil Nigger, written and performed around 1980. All three works generate their epic soundscapes through adamantly restated patterns and interlocking canons, not fragmenting, but preaching urgent truths. To quote the brilliant Mary Jane Leach liners: "He wrote what can be categorized as minimal music, but also wrote 'post-minimal' music -- before minimal music was fully established." His pieces straddle both styles of minimal music; rhythmic/pulse-driven music (Steve Reich and Philip Glass) and spectral drone music (La Monte Young and Phill Niblock). There is a flexibility that lends an organic feel to his music, a muscularity missing in a lot of other music from that time; with the re-emergence of this powerful music, a missing gap in the history of contemporary music has been filled. Not released commercially upon their recording, they were instead shared on cassettes, copied and passed from one admirer to another. Unlike today's instant access to music, at that time each new copy represented a time commitment, since it took as long to copy as its playing time, while also removing itself further from the original recording with a resultant deterioration in sound quality. The three pieces occupy a high point in Eastman's oeuvre, the culmination of his mature style. Crazy Nigger is a sprawling sonic study, the last section exploring canonic form both harmonically and rhythmically, using the same process as James Tenney's Spectral Canon, but notated in a more intuitive way. Offering extensive liner notes by Leach and Bradford Bailey, this is a seminal work by one of the most important, but neglected, American composers of the 1970s and '80s, returning to the light once more. Not only is Crazy Nigger an entire rethinking of minimalism, but it ferociously blows the doors of what classical music can be seen to be. Mastering by Giuseppe Ielasi. Includes printed inner sleeve housing a Nagaoka anti-static record sleeve, plus obi-style original insert in a fold-out outer sleeve. 180 gram, color vinyl.
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LP
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BLUME 015LP
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Julius Eastman's seminal classics are now reissued on vinyl for the first time ever. Gay Guerrilla and Evil Nigger, both composed in 1979 with a third work Crazy Nigger, make up what Eastman called The Nigger Series. Some of the most challenging and beautiful works composed for piano during their era, they double as a window into the intricate thought process and contentiousness of their creator. When the composer was asked to perform the series at Northwestern University in 1980, due to protests by African American students, their titles were censored in the event's program. His response was a flamboyant foreshadowing of the sentiments toward bigoted language which later arose within hip-hop culture -- to publicly take back these words, assert ownership of them, and deploy their power for positive change. What Eastman was early to recognize, was that there is a fundamental difference in what happens when these words are spoken by white people toward people of color, and when people of color deploy them toward a white audience. The balance of power shifts. Eastman's audience was largely heterosexual and white. He knew exactly what he was doing, and to whom he spoke. The object in your hands contains some of the most striking and important music composed during the later decades of the 20th century -- music which remained lost and unheard for years, not because of what it is, but because of who its composer was. It is music, doubling as the voice of a man, which, because it refused to be oppressed, was suppressed or ignored. Eastman's work is a conscious act of intervention, plowing into a context defined by heterosexual whiteness, attacking its unjust demands from within. It is Christ-like -- metaphor and beauty which is impossible to separate from the evils of the world. It is a music which carries the body of a man. As it speaks to our hearts, as it offers a glimpse of the freedoms implied by the sublime, a shackle is bound -- a consciousness of our complicity with unforgivable sin. Mastering by Giuseppe Ielasi. Includes printed inner sleeve housing a Nagaoka anti-static record sleeve, plus an original insert that functions as obi; Housed in a fold-out outer sleeve. 180 gram, color vinyl.
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CD
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NW 80812CD
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"The author of these notes has spent his life explaining radical music, and the music on this disc may be the most radical I've ever written about. Peter Thoegersen (b. 1967) is not yet a name known to the music world; not for any lack of connection to other famous musicians, but because he came to composition late, and because his artistic aims are so broad and complex that they have taken years to evolve. His aesthetic is well defined, and he is upfront about having a name for it: 'Polytempic Polymicrotonal Music.' That means he has musical layers simultaneously moving in different tempos, plus, even more radically, that he has different microtonal scales playing at the same time. Few composers have aimed at such fervent and heterogeneous multidimensionality. And yet, while Thoegersen's music can seem overwhelming at first, running through it is a level of charm and simplicity that belies the initial impression. In total, these three pieces emphasize a particular side of Thoegersen's output. The image his music creates of ornately mathematical structures filled with intuitively friendly melodies maps on to the personality of the man himself: outspoken and acerbically ruthless in his musical opinions, Thoegersen is also marked by a jolly sense of humor and an inexhaustible love of cats and other animals that make him ultimately less imposing and more personable than he might seem at first. The same can be said for his music. And by going further than anyone else has gone in terms of this particularly American concept of fusing the polytempic with the polymicrotonal -- extending and combining the conceptual worlds of Ives, Cowell, Nancarrow, Partch, Carter, even Frank Zappa, and many others -- he has created a special place for himself within American music. --Kyle Gann (from the liner notes)"
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