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Search Result for Genre CLASSICAL
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OI 001-2024LP
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$24.00
PREORDER
RELEASE DATE: 2/23/2024
A live performance of four early works by Steve Reich: "Four Organs," "My Name Is," "Piano Phase," and "Phase Patterns." This 1970 performance marked an important moment in San Francisco Bay Area new music history with the triumphant return to the East Bay by Reich, who studied at Mills College with Luciano Berio and performed the 1964 world premiere of Terry Riley's seminal In C at the San Francisco Tape Music Center. The resonant acoustics of the University of California at Berkeley Museum's concrete interior were especially appropriate for "Four Organs", with its long additive sustained chords over a maraca pulse. 180-gram LP. Black vinyl. Limited edition of 500.
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4LP
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MOVCL 076LP
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$87.00
PREORDER
RELEASE DATE: 1/26/2024
"Through his operas, his symphonies, his compositions for his own ensemble, and his wide-ranging collaborations with artists ranging from Twyla Tharp to Allen Ginsberg, Woody Allen to David Bowie, Philip Glass has had an extraordinary and unprecedented impact upon the musical and intellectual life of his times. The operas -- Einstein on the Beach, Satyagraha, and Akhnaten among many others -- play throughout the world's leading houses, and rarely to an empty seat. Glass has written music for experimental theater and for Academy Award-winning motion pictures. Glass is the first composer to win a wide, multi-generational audience in the opera house, the concert hall, the dance world, in film and in popular music - simultaneously. Much of his early work was based on the extended reiteration of brief, elegant melodic fragments that wove in and out of an aural tapestry. Or, to put it another way, it immersed a listener in a sort of sonic weather that twists, turns, surrounds, develops. In the past 30 years, Glass has composed more than twenty-five operas, large and small; twelve symphonies; three piano concertos and concertos for violin, piano, timpani, and saxophone quartet and orchestra; soundtracks to films ranging from new scores for the stylized classics of Jean Cocteau to Errol Morris's documentary about former defense secretary Robert McNamara; string quartets; a growing body of work for solo piano and organ. Essential is available as a limited edition of 1500 individually numbered copies on crystal clear vinyl. The 4LP is housed in a deluxe 10mm slipcase sleeve and includes a four-page booklet."
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OMM 8008LP
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$29.00
PREORDER
RELEASE DATE: 1/26/2024
"Philip Glass will share a new album, Philip Glass Solo, via Orange Mountain Music. The collection is an intimate portrait of the renowned pianist at 84, as he takes a new look at some of his most enduring and beloved piano works. Philip Glass Solo was recorded at a time when the world was undergoing a major shift -- for Glass, that shift manifested in going from a busy tour and premiere schedule to time spent at home during the COVID-19 pandemic. Glass dedicated this time to revisiting some of his most critically acclaimed piano music, taking to them with a new view in his home studio in New York. It is his most personal record to date, offering a snapshot of his life, and a portrait of daily practice over eight decades through several cherished works. Philip Glass Solo will feature 'Opening,' originally written for the 1982 album Glassworks, which remains one of Glass' most transfixing pieces and established a sound that quickly became a calling card, 'Metamorphosis' I, II, III, and V, the series of music Glass arranged for his first solo piano concerts in the 1980s; one of his most beloved pieces and longest performances on record, 'Mad Rush,' which he composed as an organ piece in 1978 when the Dalai Lama made his first public address in New York; and a reworked version of 'Truman Sleeps' from the soundtrack of the beloved '90s film The Truman Show, where Glass appeared on screen performing the piano in one of the pivotal scenes of the film. His changes speak to the heart of all artists' evolution of both themselves, and their music, over time. 180gram, tip-on jacket, limited edition of 2000."
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GODREC 071LP
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$40.00
PREORDER
RELEASE DATE: 11/24/2023
Morton Feldman's last composition, Piano, Violin, Viola, Cello, was completed in 1987; although its instrumentation largely corresponds to that of Piano and String Quartet, with one instead of two violins, it differs in almost every other respect from the composition written only two years earlier, for here, in contrast to Piano and String Quartet, Feldman makes every effort to integrate the piano into the string section, and the basic formal components of the composition are no longer staves, as they were in Piano and String Quartet. Double LP with 4th side etched.
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BT 107LP
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Black Truffle announces its first release from celebrated London-based Canadian composer Cassandra Miller. Though her body of mature work stretches back almost twenty years, many listeners were introduced to Miller through the success of her astonishing 2015 Duet for Cello and Orchestra, which sets an imperturbable two-note cello part against a series of increasingly dense orchestrations of an Italian folk melody. Traveller Song/Thanksong, the first release of her music on vinyl, presents a pair of compositions for voice and ensemble that exemplify Miller's gently absurd, strikingly beautiful, and utterly unique work. Like many of Miller's compositions, these pieces originate in existing music. "Traveller Song" (2016/2018) begins from a 1950s song of an anonymous Sicilian cart driver recorded by Alan Lomax and Diego Carpitella, which Miller recorded herself singing along to, going on to then record herself singing to her own layered voices. Heard sometimes alone, sometimes layered, her pre-recorded voice is accompanied by a chamber sextet drawn from London's Plus-Minus Ensemble. "Thanksong" begins from recordings of Miller singing along to the third movement of Beethoven's late quartet in A minor (Op. 132), the "holy song of thanks" the composer wrote to express his gratitude for (temporarily) recovering from illness. Recording herself singing along repeatedly to each of the individual parts of the quartet, Miller created an aural score where each member of the string quartet listens to their own part on headphones, playing by ear. Performed on this recording by Montreal's Quatuor Bozzini, with whom Miller has a decades-long relationship, they are joined by the British soprano Juliet Fraser, who sings material from the Beethoven quartet "as slowly and quietly as possible." Presented in a stylish sleeve adorned with photography by Lasse Marhaug and liner notes by Cassandra Miller, this is a key release from a major contemporary composer whose work challenges and dazzles in equal measure.
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SR 553CD
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"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. Digipack and booklet.
Petr Bakla (born 1980) composes orchestral, chamber, and solo pieces. In his compositions, he often employs basic material, typically chromatic and whole-tone scales. He is interested in constructing situations and structural contexts in which these frugal musical elements can acquire a unique expressiveness and energy. A frequent feature of Bakla's work is a simultaneous course of two musical/sound layers which, although usually markedly differing in dynamics to allow for a sense of "figure and background", are not mutually subordinating -- they are of equal importance, their "friction" creating specific tension and ambiguity. Petr Bakla's music has been played in Europe and the USA, in many cases commissioned and/or performed by distinguished ensembles, soloists and conductors. Of particular importance for him has been his collaboration with the Ostrava Days festival, which has made possible the performance of numerous works of his for large ensemble or symphony orchestra.
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KR 102LP
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LP version. 180 gram vinyl; includes download card. zeitkratzer director Reinhold Friedl and his ensemble present new compositions, grounded on Domenico Scarlatti's piano sonata F-minor K.466. Commissioned by the dance company Rubato and dedicated to Mario Bertoncini (1932-2019). Little is known about Domenico Scarlatti (1685-1757). His music is, so to speak, left to its own devices: free, cheeky, playful, sonorous, surprising. Harmonically strolling again and again into unforeseen regions, the ear leads, not the theory; and also, the fingers get their right: playful and haptic it goes. Scarlatti explained, "since nature has given me ten fingers and my instrument provides employment for all, I see no reason why I should not use all ten of them." Freedom, friction, and listening pleasure instead of convention: "He knew quite well that he had disregarded all the rules of composition in his piano pieces, but asked whether his deviation from the rules offended the ear? He believes there is almost no other rule than that of not offending the only sense whose object is music -- the ear." Reinhold Friedl applied this principle and composed the music for a choreography by dance company Rubato. Dance music drawn from Scarlatti, who was so inspired by dance music. The material of the piano sonata F-minor K.466 is twisted anew in all its richness, shifted back and forth, declined, frozen, noise-ified, sound structures extracted, floating. Those who know the sonata, will more than smell its shadows. Dedicated to Mario Bertoncini (Gruppo di Improvvisazione Nuova Consonanza) who was particularly fond of K.466, on which all the music presented here is grounded.
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ZKR 028CD
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zeitkratzer director Reinhold Friedl and his ensemble present new compositions, grounded on Domenico Scarlatti's piano sonata F-minor K.466. Commissioned by the dance company Rubato and dedicated to Mario Bertoncini (1932-2019). Little is known about Domenico Scarlatti (1685-1757). His music is, so to speak, left to its own devices: free, cheeky, playful, sonorous, surprising. Harmonically strolling again and again into unforeseen regions, the ear leads, not the theory; and also, the fingers get their right: playful and haptic it goes. Scarlatti explained, "since nature has given me ten fingers and my instrument provides employment for all, I see no reason why I should not use all ten of them." Freedom, friction, and listening pleasure instead of convention: "He knew quite well that he had disregarded all the rules of composition in his piano pieces, but asked whether his deviation from the rules offended the ear? He believes there is almost no other rule than that of not offending the only sense whose object is music -- the ear." Reinhold Friedl applied this principle and composed the music for a choreography by dance company Rubato. Dance music drawn from Scarlatti, who was so inspired by dance music. The material of the piano sonata F-minor K.466 is twisted anew in all its richness, shifted back and forth, declined, frozen, noise-ified, sound structures extracted, floating. Those who know the sonata, will more than smell its shadows. Dedicated to Mario Bertoncini (Gruppo di Improvvisazione Nuova Consonanza) who was particularly fond of K.466, on which all the music presented here is grounded.
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BT 104LP
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Black Truffle announce Symphony No. 107 - The Bard, a previously unheard archival recording of the legendary improvising ensemble MEV (Musica Elettronica Viva), captured in concert at Bard College, New York in 2012. Formed by a group of American expat composers in Rome in 1966, the MEV ensemble played an important role in the development of free improvisation, bridging the live electronics tradition begun by Cage and Tudor and the high-energy squall of free jazz. Early recordings like Spacecraft (WELLE 104LP) or The Sound Pool unleash volleys of metal and glass amplified with contact microphones, howling winds, primitive synthesizer bleep, and raucous audience participation, the intensity of which puts much later "noise" to shame. In later decades, the ensemble would go through many iterations, often including legendary free players like Steve Lacy and George Lewis. In its final years, MEV settled into the core trio of founding members heard here: Alvin Curran, Frederic Rzewski, and Richard Teitelbaum, using piano, electronics, and small instruments. MEV is the sound of these three personalities coming together, their contributions radically individual yet attaining a state of "fundamental unity" that Rzewski, in a text written in the collective's earliest years, defined as the "final goal of improvisation". Of course, listeners familiar with aspect of the trio's individual works might hazard some guesses about who is doing what: the crisp piano figures are probably Rzewski's, the cut-up hip-hop samples most likely Curran's, the sliding, squelching synth possibly Teitelbaum's. But often these identities are dissolved in a constantly shifting hall of mirrors. The two side-long sets here occupy a similar terrain of constantly shifting texture and instrumentation, unexpected interruptions, and moments of sudden beauty. The first set is sparser, at times almost ominous, as a bell repeatedly sounds across wheezing harmonica, seasick orchestral textures, and creaking wood, making room for episodes of yodeling and delicate prepared piano before exploding into a storm of buzzing synth and piano fragments. The second set is more frenetic, moving rapidly across centuries and continents: cars crash into post-serial piano pointillism, wailing voices collide with chopped and screwed hip-hop samples, Hollywood strings are buried under layers of electronic gurgles. The performance slows in its final moments, making way for a sampled voice repeating the phrase "protest and the good of the world", reminding you that MEV's idea of freedom was always more than musical. Symphony No. 107 - The Bard is a beautifully recorded example of the endlessly multi-layered later MEV sound, accompanied by new liner notes by Alvin Curran and a selection of previously unseen photographs from across the many decades of the group's activity.
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WE 001X-LP
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Limited 2023 repress. In 1973, Stay On It turned the coordinates of avant-garde music on its head. It is minimal, but un-ashamedly groovy; it is open to improvisation, grants performers all the freedom they could need, but it isn't jazz and never slips into the non-committal. It is open to theatrical and performative elements, but also to poetic-lyrical ones. Cut to 1981. Julius Eastman releases The Holy Presence of Joan d'Arc. Where has the lightness gone? The relationship to pop music? The love for the musicians who have to develop the piece during its performance? It sounds like heavy metal: forceful, dark, urgent, sawing -- and then plaintive, heartbreaking.
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DLC 013CD
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As co-director of new music organization The Firm, Raymond Chapman Smith has quietly presented over 130 concerts of new music. But his uncomplicated disinterest in recognition or recording means his music is rarely heard beyond the walls of Adelaide's Elder Hall, where The Firm's annual concert series is presented to a regular audience of 50-100 initiates. This is the first album of his work, played by US born Australian-Iranian pianist Amir Farid. As a teenager in the 1970s, Chapman Smith began performing in AZ Music in Sydney with the recently returned Australian assistant to Cardew and Stockhausen, David Ahern, feeding new ideas into the local music scene, and fielding phoned-in performance instructions from La Monte Young for their improvisations at Brett Whiteley's gallery. After moving to Adelaide to study with Richard Meale, through the '80s and '90s Chapman Smith founded and co-helmed loosely Cageian composer-performer collectives. Since 1996 he has co-directed new music organization The Firm, reveling in the poetic aesthetic of 19th Century German romanticism. On Ländler from 2002, Chapman Smith says: "The references, the paying of homage to Beethoven, Schubert, Schumann, Brahms, Mahler, Wolf, and Zemlinsky are so obvious as to hardly need comment. They are heard through lenses polished by a later, more reductive aesthetic and a somewhat fortuitous arrival at a kind of diatonic serialism." Of 2003's Nachschriften: "Some of my thoughts while making this music revolved around a passage from a speech which Paul Celan gave in 1958. Celan, of course, was speaking of lyric poetry but I would respectfully paraphrase his words as follows ... 'Music is not timeless. Certainly, it lays claim to infinity, it seeks to reach through time -- through it, not above or beyond it. Music, as a manifestation of language and thus essentially dialogue, can be a message in a bottle, sent out in the -- not always greatly hopeful -- belief that somewhere and sometime it could wash up on land, on heartland perhaps. Music in this sense too is underway: it is a making toward something. Toward what? Toward something standing open, occupiable, perhaps towards an addressable Thou, toward an addressable reality.'"
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IMPREC 514CD
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"One Arm Bandits is an hour-long piece in four parts, scored for four cellists. The cellists play only open strings, thus using only their right arms, never fingering the strings with the left hand. Recorded in Alvin Lucier's dining room, this work features cellists Tyler J. Borden, Laura Cetilia, Charles Curtis and Judith Hamann. Lucier oversaw and produced the recording, and approved the final takes. One Arm Bandits was an important project for Alvin Lucier. The idea for the piece goes back to conversations we first had in 2007 about the relationship between bow direction changes and shifts in phase. In the summer of 2015 we worked these ideas out in long sessions with Judith Hamann and T. J. Borden in New York, and the resulting piece received its first performances in Graz and Zürich in 2016. Alvin thought of One Arm Bandits as a radical statement, I think primarily in view of the severe reduction in material -- even in the context of his music -- and the physical restraint required in performance. The unusually long duration attests to Alvin's recognition that an expansion of scale was required in order to magnify acoustical details of such subtlety. In November 2021 Alvin saw proofs for the CD artwork. He passed away at the age of 90 on December 1, before he could see the album in its final form. Work with Alvin was always joyful, stimulating, and surprising. We dedicate this recording to the continuing spirit of this remarkable musician and friend." --Charles Curtis
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LOVE 125LP
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Mary Jane Leach is a composer focused on the physicality of sound, its acoustic properties and how they interact with space. She has played an instrumental role in NYC's pioneering Downtown scene alongside Arthur Russell, Ellen Fullman, Peter Zummo, Philip Corner, and Arnold Dreyblatt, as well as devoting years to the preservation and reappraisal of Julius Eastman's work since his death in 1990, compiling Unjust Malaise (2005) and editing the book Gay Guerrilla: Julius Eastman and His Music (2015). Woodwind Multiples features four pieces for multiples of the same instrument: four bass flutes, nine oboes, nine clarinets, and seven bassoons. Each piece works closely with the unique sound of each instrument, combining pitches that create other, sometimes unexpected, tones, primarily combination and interference tones, as well as rhythmic patterns. What you hear is what happens naturally -- there is no processing or manipulation. 8B4 (1985/2022), played by Manuel Zurria, is for four bass flutes. It is a revision of 8x4, which was written in 1985 for the DownTown Ensemble and was only performed once, due to its unusual instrumentation: alto flute, English horn (originally bass oboe), clarinet, and voice. Xantippe's Rebuke (1993) was written for Libby Van Cleve, for eight taped oboes and one live, solo oboe. The eight taped parts are equal and dependent, while the solo part is meant to be a solo with the tape as accompaniment. The piece works with the unique sound of the oboe, starting with unison pitches that create the richest sound, building the piece from there. Pitches and rhythmic patterns that occur naturally are notated and then played later, which in turn create other pitches and rhythmic patterns. Charybdis (2020), played by Sam Dunscombe, is for solo clarinet and eight taped clarinets. It combines a somewhat obscured reference to Weep You No More, a John Dowland piece, which combines with the sound phenomena created from the melody and supporting chords of the Dowland. Feu de Joie (1992) was written for bassoonist Shannon Peet and is an homage to the bassoon and its wonderful sound. It is for seven parts -- six taped and one "live." The taped bassoons combine to create a bed of sound that exploits the unique qualities of the bassoon, creating combination and interference tones, starting off with unison pitches, creating a rich sound that builds from there. Most of the subsequent pitches and phrases occur naturally, and are then notated later on in the piece, which in turn creates other notes and phrases. Engineered by Manuel Zurria, Bryce Goggin, and Sam Dunscombe, mastered by Rashad Becker.
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STSLJN 414LP
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Flautist Johanna Orellana teams up with Carmen Villain for a collection of horizontal, pastoral field recordings and close mic-ed flute sounds that zero in on the instrument's unstable resonance and levitational magic. There's no cringe virtuoso business or fourth world firewalking here - just sonic purity, sublime minimalism and the precise capture of time, place and poetry. You might have come across Johanna Orellana before if you've listened to Carmen Villain's music (or seen her perform live), and Villain appears here in a producer's role, using her engineering expertise to impart a level of restraint and sonic fidelity that's quite startling. There are only really two central elements to the album: environmental recordings and flute. There's no psychedelic delay, no cavernous reverb; no audible treatments at all -- Orellana and Villain instead force you to consider the flute and its musical lineage. 'El JardÃn I' introduces the instrument as a physical conduit; Orellana allows her breath to distort the sound -- the padded pat-pat of the keys forms a kind of rhythm, closely recorded so it's amplified and jarring, linking to primal wind instruments like conch shells, bamboo flutes and wooden whistles. Recalling the way in which "Debit" interfaced with the ancient world using AIassisted tech on last year's The Long Count, Orellana uses a comparatively modern contemporary transverse flute, an instrument with roots that stretch back through the baroque era, into Medieval Europe, back to the Byzantine era and into Asia. The component that connects the instruments and eras is breath, and its amplification and modification through differently shaped pipes and vessels. Orellana lets the environment sing: insects, rushing water and zephyr-like winds form a stage that presents her mortal energy, suggesting a harmony between our use of breath and its environmental ubiquitousness. Her technique is steeped in folk history and decouples itself from expectation by rooting itself in nature. It allows her to bridge the gap between equal temperament and less ordered (less commercially-focused) microtonality without overstating the concept. Other sounds waft in from the sidelines; what might be an Indian bansuri, stray notes, a gust of air. There's a link to the foundational new age recordings that Joanna Brouk made with Maggi Payne back in 1980, but Orelanna also absorbs the outdoor folk magic of Fonal or Stroom, and the improvisational grist of Bendik Giske or legendary US horn duo Nmperign. Edition of 300 copies, pressed on white vinyl.
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2LP
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WRWTFWW 065LP
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Double LP version. WRWTFWW Records announce the first official worldwide reissue of Satsuki Shibano's Wave Notation 3: Erik Satie 1984, the final album from the sound-defining Wave Notation environmental music series curated by Satoshi Ashikawa. Originally released in 1984 on the Sound Process label, Wave Notation 3 followed Ashikawa's own Still Way (1982) and Hiroshi Yoshimura's Music For Nine Postcards (1982). The highly sought-after album is sourced from the original master tape. Wave Notation 3 is a splendid tribute to seminal French composer and pianist Erik Satie, himself one of the main influences behind kankyō ongaku/environmental music (alongside Brian Eno, John Cage, to name a few). The alphabetically-sequenced album features 26 pieces showcasing Shibano's unique piano interpretation of Satie's works. The artist explains: "For this album, I sequenced the compositions in alphabetical order of each title, irrespective of the period of each composition or style. By doing this, I attempted to effectively create 'Music as an environment' and at the same time, allow the listener to genuinely experience Satie's music." Satsuko Shibano's minimalistic approach to ambient classical is simply perfect and offers a beautiful and tranquil listening experience, furniture music with extra comfort and soothing simplicity, relaxing to the mind and to the soul. This Wave Notation deserves a spot among the pillars of Japanese environmental music, next to Midori Takada's Through The Looking Glass, Hiroshi Yoshimura's Green, and Satoshi Ashikawa's Still Way. For fans of furniture music, environmental music, music as an environment for furniture, ambient, Midori Takada, Satoshi Ashikawa, Hiroshi Yoshimura, Erik Satie, Brian Eno, minimalism. Includes English and Japanese liner notes by the artist, was supervised by Japanese ambient legend Yoshio Ojima.
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WRWTFWW 065CD
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WRWTFWW Records announce the first official worldwide reissue of Satsuki Shibano's Wave Notation 3: Erik Satie 1984, the final album from the sound-defining Wave Notation environmental music series curated by Satoshi Ashikawa. Originally released in 1984 on the Sound Process label, Wave Notation 3 followed Ashikawa's own Still Way (1982) and Hiroshi Yoshimura's Music For Nine Postcards (1982). The highly sought-after album is sourced from the original master tape. Wave Notation 3 is a splendid tribute to seminal French composer and pianist Erik Satie, himself one of the main influences behind kankyō ongaku/environmental music (alongside Brian Eno, John Cage, to name a few). The alphabetically-sequenced album features 26 pieces showcasing Shibano's unique piano interpretation of Satie's works. The artist explains: "For this album, I sequenced the compositions in alphabetical order of each title, irrespective of the period of each composition or style. By doing this, I attempted to effectively create 'Music as an environment' and at the same time, allow the listener to genuinely experience Satie's music." Satsuko Shibano's minimalistic approach to ambient classical is simply perfect and offers a beautiful and tranquil listening experience, furniture music with extra comfort and soothing simplicity, relaxing to the mind and to the soul. This Wave Notation deserves a spot among the pillars of Japanese environmental music, next to Midori Takada's Through The Looking Glass, Hiroshi Yoshimura's Green, and Satoshi Ashikawa's Still Way. For fans of furniture music, environmental music, music as an environment for furniture, ambient, Midori Takada, Satoshi Ashikawa, Hiroshi Yoshimura, Erik Satie, Brian Eno, minimalism. Includes English and Japanese liner notes by the artist, was supervised by Japanese ambient legend Yoshio Ojima.
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NW 80833CD
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"Chemistry for Gamelan and String Quartet is the culmination of a long-term collaboration between the JACK Quartet and composer and instrument builder Brian Baumbusch (b. 1987). Over the past ten years, Baumbusch has designed and built two separate sets of 'American gamelan' instruments. Based on various instruments from the Balinese gamelan tradition, these instruments depart in innovative ways from Indonesian traditions based on their unique tuning, inspired in part by the tuning theories published by musicologist William Sethares, as well as their design and performance techniques, which draw inspiration from instruments built by Lou Harrison and Harry Partch. Hydrogen(2)Oxygen (2015) uses a unique compositional technique called 'polytempo,' pioneered by composer Conlon Nancarrow and further developed by Baumbusch in his works for large ensemble. Hydrogen(2)Oxygen explores the unique tuning landscape that is created by combining Baumbusch's Lightbulb instruments with string quartet. This work in particular uses performance practices native to Bali and advanced instrumental techniques that are derived from the virtuosic tradition cultivated by the artistry of Balinese musicians. Therefore, to produce the recordings on this album, Baumbusch returned to Bali with his instruments to work with Nata Swara. This is the first instance of Balinese musicians performing on 'American gamelan' instruments within Indonesia. Three Elements for String Quartet (2016) is one of Baumbusch's earliest endeavors in composing with polytempo structures. The format of the three movements requires that the performers use individual click tracks in the first and third movements in order to execute the polytempo relationships in the music, and in the middle movement the ensemble is free from 'clock time' and can interpret the rhythms communally. Prisms for Gene Davis (2018-2021) involves a separate set of gamelan instruments from those used in Hydrogen(2)Oxygen. It is an exploration of Balinese compositional heterophony, though structured to contain irregular and compound meters that are less common in Balinese music. Prisms can be thought of as a refraction of Baumbusch's relationship to both American Minimalism and Balinese music. This album is the work of a diligent composer who has travelled deep down many rabbit holes (instrument building, tuning, spectral analysis, tempo technology, Balinese compositional techniques, and even microphone building) to learn the technical information needed to engage with these complex compositional worlds. He has resurfaced from these explorations with a sensitive and refined fusion that can be heard here."
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MOVCL 067COL-LP
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"Isao Tomita, also known as Tomita, was a Japanese composer, regarded as one of the pioneers of electronic music and space music, and as one of the most famous producers of analog synthesizer arrangements. Many of his albums are electronic versions and adaptations of famous classical music pieces. In 1976 Tomita released his fourth studio album, The Planets. On the album, Gustav Holst's The Planets can be heard in an arrangement for electronic musical instruments, in this case the Moog and Roland synthesizers. The Planets is available as a limited edition of 500 individually numbered copies on translucent pink colored vinyl and includes a poster with artwork designed by Stanislaw Fernandes."
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R 098CD
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Recital presents a new double album of rarely heard Robert Ashley compositions performed by baritone singer Thomas Buckner. In the 1960s, Robert Ashley pioneered the American avant-garde with the ONCE Group and festivals, before irrefutably changing the face of American opera later in the 20th century. Buckner, in addition to running the fabulous 1750 Arch record label in the 1970s and '80s, is a noted baritone who has collaborated for decades with the likes of Roscoe Mitchell, Annea Lockwood, and the late Noah Creshevsky, amongst countless others. The title of the album, Spontaneous Musical Invention, refers to Ashley's method of instructing the singer to do what he called "spontaneous musical invention based on the declamation of the text." A vocal practice that Thomas Buckner perfected over the 33 years that he collaborated with Ashley. First performing in Ashley's 1984 opera Atalanta (Acts of God), Buckner continued on as an integral performer in the ensemble until Ashley's death in 2014. The album is composed of two halves, the first is a new rendering of Ashley's second opera Atalanta (Acts of God). Robert Ashley wrote about ten hours of music for the opera Atalanta, divided into three acts: "Max", for the surrealist artist Max Ernst; "Willard", for the composer's uncle, Willard Reynolds, a great story teller; and "Bud", for Bud Powell, the great jazz pianist and composer. One is invited to construct a version using any material from these ten hours. Over the years they worked together, Thomas Buckner commissioned three reworkings of arias from Atalanta that he could perform in concert: the "Odalisque" aria from Max, "The Mystery of the River" from "Willard", and "The Producer Speaks" from "Bud". So, this first section of the album is one of many possible versions of Atalanta, albeit in strikingly different versions from the originals. The second section of the album is dubbed "Occasional Pieces", and holds two unpublished Ashley works. "When Famous Last Words Fail You" and "World War III Just the Highlights" are not from any Ashley opera. However, each is highly dramatic and theatrical. They were written as standalone pieces for Thomas Buckner. Buckner's distinct vocal cadence projects the sharp wit and wry storytelling of Ashley's librettos. A portion of the record was recorded live at Roulette in Brooklyn, NY, at an intimate memorial concert held for Robert Ashley in 2014. Spontaneous Musical Invention, in essence, functions as a tribute to both exceptional artists, and to their decades of collaboration. Includes 24-page booklet of Ashley librettos, scores, and program notes, with an introduction written by Alvin Lucier.
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R 098LP
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Double LP version. Edition of 350. Recital presents a new double album of rarely heard Robert Ashley compositions performed by baritone singer Thomas Buckner. In the 1960s, Robert Ashley pioneered the American avant-garde with the ONCE Group and festivals, before irrefutably changing the face of American opera later in the 20th century. Buckner, in addition to running the fabulous 1750 Arch record label in the 1970s and '80s, is a noted baritone who has collaborated for decades with the likes of Roscoe Mitchell, Annea Lockwood, and the late Noah Creshevsky, amongst countless others. The title of the album, Spontaneous Musical Invention, refers to Ashley's method of instructing the singer to do what he called "spontaneous musical invention based on the declamation of the text." A vocal practice that Thomas Buckner perfected over the 33 years that he collaborated with Ashley. First performing in Ashley's 1984 opera Atalanta (Acts of God), Buckner continued on as an integral performer in the ensemble until Ashley's death in 2014. The album is composed of two halves, the first is a new rendering of Ashley's second opera Atalanta (Acts of God). Robert Ashley wrote about ten hours of music for the opera Atalanta, divided into three acts: "Max", for the surrealist artist Max Ernst; "Willard", for the composer's uncle, Willard Reynolds, a great story teller; and "Bud", for Bud Powell, the great jazz pianist and composer. One is invited to construct a version using any material from these ten hours. Over the years they worked together, Thomas Buckner commissioned three reworkings of arias from Atalanta that he could perform in concert: the "Odalisque" aria from Max, "The Mystery of the River" from "Willard", and "The Producer Speaks" from "Bud". So, this first section of the album is one of many possible versions of Atalanta, albeit in strikingly different versions from the originals. The second section of the album is dubbed "Occasional Pieces", and holds two unpublished Ashley works. "When Famous Last Words Fail You" and "World War III Just the Highlights" are not from any Ashley opera. However, each is highly dramatic and theatrical. They were written as standalone pieces for Thomas Buckner. Buckner's distinct vocal cadence projects the sharp wit and wry storytelling of Ashley's librettos. A portion of the record was recorded live at Roulette in Brooklyn, NY, at an intimate memorial concert held for Robert Ashley in 2014. Spontaneous Musical Invention, in essence, functions as a tribute to both exceptional artists, and to their decades of collaboration. Includes 24-page booklet of Ashley librettos, scores, and program notes, with an introduction written by Alvin Lucier.
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FR 006LP
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2023 repress. Double-LP version, black vinyl in gatefold sleeve -- on vinyl for the first time, in a revelatory new remaster by Jim O'Rourke. In 2016, Finnish label frozen reeds published the première release of Julius Eastman's Femenine, for chamber ensemble. Laying unheard for decades prior, the release documented a 1974 performance by the S.E.M. Ensemble with the composer himself on piano. Lauded in Pitchfork (awarded "Best New Music"), The New Yorker, and The New York Times, the first release of Femenine served as the catalyst that propelled Eastman's music into the mainstream. Articles on Eastman's music and its immediate disruptive impact on the classical canon began to appear in every major news organ in the English-speaking world and beyond. His music began to be programmed in major concerts and festivals, several of these entirely themed around his life and work. New recordings sprang up from a fresh generation of musicians engaging with his ideas and interpreting them for a modern audience hungry to hear more. But the raw, emotionally cascading spirit of the original performance continues to inspire listeners. Joyous, insistent, and immersive, Femenine bathes the listener in surges of tonal color from intertwining winds, piano, violin, pitched percussion, synthesizer, and -- uniquely -- the composer's own invention of mechanized sleigh bells, which provide the 72-minute piece with its characteristic pulse. Femenine was recorded live by Steve Cellum -- co-producer of Arthur Russell's World of Echo -- and the new vinyl reissue has been remastered from the original high-definition tape transfer by Jim O'Rourke at his Steamroom studio in the Japanese mountains. Illuminating sleeve notes are provided by composer and author Mary Jane Leach, key figure of the Eastman revival and co-editor of the Gay Guerrilla collection of essays on his life and music. Gatefold. "Eastman's stated aim with Femenine was to please listeners, saying of the piece that 'the end sounds like the angels opening up heaven . . . should we say euphoria?" --Mary Jane Leach
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MOVCL 059LP
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"Hear the music of Philip Glass as you've never heard it before, as Donald Joyce performs Glass's haunting works on one of America's best tracker pipe organs. The intricate nuance and rich texture of Glass's music are given sonic splendor by this handcrafted instrument with 4861 pipes, four keyboards, and 70 stops. Glass Organ Works is available as a 2LP and includes an insert with liner notes."
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CD
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NW 80839CD
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"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 throughout the myriad projects he takes on as his life's work. The beautiful pieces on this album -- Lowlands (2017) for accordion and voices; Clair-Obscur (2018) for triple harp; Desolation Pops (2016-18) for piano and string quartet -- reflect those playful and curious penchants of this music-maker extraordinaire. You'll hear comforting clarity, choreographed awkwardness, sudden synchronies, and inexplicable noises on this record. Put on your coziest vintage sweater, grab a classy cocktail in a quirky heirloom glass and get ready to give your ears a treat as you tour the stringed and unstringed sounds of Desolation Pops." --Lainie Fefferman (from the liner notes)
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SLWCD 001CD
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To take something classical -- a mass for the dead -- a requiem, something most are familiar with as old church music and reinvent this as something new -- a requiem with synths, could just be a stroke of genius. Schlindwein has done exactly that Ein elektronisches Requiem, quite literally translates to "An Electronic Requiem", is the first and only one of its kind.
Schlindwein is a pianist, composer and music producer from Berlin. His music has been used on multiple major TV series like Grey's Anatomy or How To Get Away With Murder and his songs have been occupying some of the biggest editorial playlists. His debut LP Piano and Electronic Ensemble Op.1 has received much critical acclaim. Classically inspired compositions and electronic sounds merge into his own world of dreamy, lush atmospheres while creating seamless transitions between neoclassic, electronica, and deep house. After now multiple albums and EPs, Schlindwein is going into more brave and ambitious musical directions while cementing his vision of contemporary electronic music beyond fixed genres.
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NW 80827CD
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"Unsettled in more senses than one, these fourteen choral works, reaching across the central third of the 20th century, represent some special moments in the story of music for voices, and within the creative musings of their composers. Generations later, they remain as outliers, but also as bearers of central truths about musical materials of their times, evading common categorizations -- radical or moderate, experimental or formalist, Stravinsky or Schoenberg. The eight composers are eminent figures -- each represented in other productions of New World Records. Their pieces here, however, have found no settled place in the choral culture, let alone in recordings -- excepting Pauline Oliveros's Tuning Meditation and Ernst Toch's Geographical Fugue. Yet there could be something special about these choral cases. In their individuality and diversity -- a small cauldron of mid-20th-century energies -- they might raise questions still not settled in our 21st century. At the least, they seem to offer fresh experiences among the more conventional tonalities of recent choral creation, and the more uniform notions of what constitutes good choral sound. Since the earliest chant, choral singing has been poised between two poles of expression, both of great interest to modern composers: a meditative state of pure sonority -- humming, melismas on vowels, drones -- and a discursive state of phonetic movement -- words projected through collective utterance. Through our fourteen choruses, emanations from the poles of humming and phonetics lead to a sense of musical 'language' itself in a state of re-thinking, not by notions of post-tonal styles replacing 19th-century harmonic grammar, but more by combinations of different sonic materials available on the terrain -- chromatic, 12-tone, modal, neo-classic, noise, drone, sound poetry. This is choral music 'unsettled' by its own times and embracing the situation with creative enthusiasm." --John McCaughey (from liner notes)
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