Founded in 1978, Lovely Music is one of the longest-lived and most distinctive independent labels active in the recording and promotion of new American music. According to label founder
Mimi Johnson
, the label is
'dedicated to releasing the best in avant-garde and experimental music, from electronics and computer music to new opera and extended vocal techniques.'
Placing emphasis on the artist's intent, Lovely Music recordings are always composer-supervised and produced.
Foremost among the artists represented in the Lovely catalog is composer
Robert Ashley
; almost all of Ashley's most important works have been released by the label, including the monumental electronic opera for television,
Perfect Lives
(which has been called the
'most influential music/theater/literary work of the 1980s'
). Other composers have released some of their most important achievements on the label as well:
David Behrman
's, "Leapday Night,"
William Duckworth
's "Time Curve Preludes,"
Alvin Lucier
's "I am sitting in a room" and "Music on a Long Thin Wire," and
Meredith Monk
's "Key" all rank among the more exceptional recordings to be found in the Lovely catalog.
|
|
|
viewing 1 To 25 of 77 items
Next >>
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
2xBLU-RAY
|
|
LBR 49178BR
|
2023 upgraded and remastered version of Robert Ashley's Perfect Lives -- in 1080P full HD video format, pressed on double-Blu-Ray (175 minutes; stereo; Region 0/worldwide). Perfect Lives has been called "the most influential music/theater/literary work of the 1980s." At its center is the hypnotic voice of Robert Ashley. His continuous song narrates the events of the story and describes a 1980s update of the mythology of smalltown America. Perfect Lives is populated with myriad characters revolving around two musicians -- "R", the singer of myth and legend, and his friend, Buddy, "The World's Greatest Piano Player". They have come to a small town in the Midwest to entertain at the Perfect Lives Lounge. As Robert Ashley describes in the opera synopsis, "they fall in with two locals to commit the perfect crime, a metaphor for something philosophical: in this case, to remove a sizable about of money from The Bank for one day (and one day only) and let the whole world know that it was missing." The eloping couple, Ed and Gwyn, the old people at the home, the sheriff and his wife (Will and Ida) who finally unravel the mystery, and Isolde who watches the celebration of the changing of the light at sundown from the doorway of her mother's house are some of the characters who journey through the seven episodes of the opera. Derived from a colloquial idiom, Perfect Lives transforms familiar material into an elaborate metaphor for the rebirth of the human soul. It has been called a comic opera about reincarnation. Remastered in 2022/23. 1080P HD Blu-Ray 49178 (two discs); 16-page booklet includes Robert Ashley's synopsis plus articles on the music by Kyle Gann and the video by Charles Hagen. Personnel: Robert Ashley- solo voice; Jill Kroesen and David Van Tieghem - chorus; "Blue" Gene Tyranny - keyboards; David Van Tieghem - non-keyboard percussion; Peter Gordon - music producer; John Sanborn - television director; Paul Shorr - soundtrack producer; Dean Winkler - image processing and videotape editor.
|
|
|
Artist |
Title |
Format |
Label |
Catalog # |
|
|
CD
|
|
LCD 5004CD
|
Robert Ashley's eL/Aficionado is a group of scenes from the life of an "agent". The scenes are a kind of "debriefing" to a jury of Interrogators, in which the Interrogators (chorus) challenge the Agent (soloist) in various forms of musical dialogue. The mood of the opera owes much to our fascination with espionage and with the character of those people who lead double lives. The opera was performed many times between 1987 and 1993, and Lovely Music released a recording of the opera in 1994 (LCD 1004CD). This new studio recording features the cast of the 2021 production (October 21-23 at Roulette, Brooklyn), with mezzo soprano, Kayleigh Butcher, taking over the role formerly inhabited by baritone Thomas Buckner. Recorded at Robert Ashley's studio in July 2021. Orchestration by Robert Ashley and Tom Hamilton. Recorded and mixed by Tom Hamilton. Produced by Tom Hamilton and Mimi Johnson. Personnel/Credits: Music and Libretto by Robert Ashley; Kayleigh Butcher - The Agent; Brian McCorkle - Interrogator No. 1; Bonnie Lander - Interrogator No. 2; Paul Pinto - Interrogator No. 3.
"As labyrinthine as a Robbe-Grillet novel, as pithy as a Pinter play, eL/Aficionado comprises a series of debriefing sessions between a secret agent and his three interrogators. For 70 minutes the work sustains an atmosphere of uneasy calm brilliantly: misty, microtonal electronics provide a sometimes barely audible backdrop to the vocal parts. But don't confuse this with ambient; Ashley's music requires your full attention to appreciate the subtle timbres of his unique sound world... This is another riveting work by one of the world's leading composers of experimental opera." --Chris Blackford, The Wire (1995)
"Enigmatic, cryptic, wonderfully mysterious, eL/ Aficionado has a story line and narrative structure, as do Ashley's previous operas. Though the characters hail from a parallel universe, familiar and alien. The music is austere, simple, even minimalistic, yet utterly compelling. The New York Times was dead-on in proclaiming Ashley 'opera's James Joyce.'" --Dean Suzuki, Wired, 1995
|
|
|
Artist |
Title |
Format |
Label |
Catalog # |
|
|
CD
|
|
LCD 5003CD
|
This new release from Lovely Music features Robert Ashley's famous ensemble, the "band" who interpreted his work for 20 years, from 1992 through 2012. They included Sam Ashley, Thomas Buckner, Marghreta Cordero, Tom Hamilton, Jacqueline Humbert, Joan La Barbara, and Amy X Neuburg. This recording was made at the Hebbel Theater, Berlin on May 12, 1995. The opera was also heard live at the Festival d'Avignon, the Brooklyn Academy of Music, Musica Strasbourg, and Site Santa Fe. Foreign Experiences is one of the opera tetralogy that Ashley wrote in the early 1990s, following Perfect Lives (LCD 4917CD/LDVD 4917DVD) and Atalanta (Act of God) (LCD 3301CD, LCD 3303CD). He would give it the overall title (also the name of one of the component operas) Now Eleanor's Idea. These four operas would follow the stories of some of the characters who populated Perfect Lives a decade earlier. We met Don last year when Lovely Music released a CD of a new Ashley "band" performing Improvement (Don Leaves Linda) (LCD 5002CD) at the Kitchen, New York. In Foreign Experiences "Don gets a job at a small college in the southwest. Once there, against all expectations, everything goes wrong. He loses his family and friends, he loses his car, he fears that he will lose his mind." He comes to believe that he has been given a mission, to learn about premonitions and he embarks on a journey to find the wise man who will give him priceless information. Linda thinks he plan is foolish; Don thinks he has no choice. But is the opera really "about" Don and Linda? "Opera likes to simplify and enlarge its characters to make them fit grand themes. Mr. Ashley goes in the opposite direction and arrives at the cosmos just as easily. Mundane chitchat about good eating habits or car repair turns to metaphysics, ontology, epistemology, not to mention psychiatry, before we know it." -- Bernard Holland, The New York Times (November 21, 1994) The live recording was made by Tom Hamilton and Cas Boumans, and this release has been edited mixed by Tom Hamilton. A slipcase includes a jewel case with a four-page folder, and a 96-page booklet of the full libretto.
|
|
|
Artist |
Title |
Format |
Label |
Catalog # |
|
|
LP
|
|
LML 1002LP
|
Repressed. Lovely Music present a reissue of Robert Ashley's Automatic Writing, originally released as an LP by Lovely Music in 1979. Over the course of Robert Ashley's career his preoccupation with language and the voice took many forms. He became known in his librettos as a wonderful, funny, moving writer. But with Automatic Writing he examines language at a very "primitive" level -- the human impulse make sounds to express his inner state, whether it be regret, embarrassment, fear, or happiness -- even though there is no one else to listen. Talking to oneself.
Personnel: Voices - Robert Ashley and Mimi Johnson; Electronics and Polymoog - Robert Ashley; Words: Robert Ashley; Translation: Monsa Norberg; Silhouette: William Farley. The switching circuit was designed and built by Paul DeMarinis. Recorded, produced, and mixed by Robert Ashley at the Center for Contemporary Music, Mills College (Oakland), the American Cultural Center (Paris), and Mastertone Recording Studios (New York). This reissue was remastered and cut, from the original reel-to-reel tape, by Scott Hull, Masterdisk (New York). Manufactured at Record Technology Inc/RTI (California). 180 gram vinyl; Stoughton Old Style sleeve. Includes an insert with a transcription of the words, and the Automatic Writing notes Ashley wrote for Lovely's 1996 CD (that included "Purposeful Lady Slow Afternoon" and "She Was A Visitor").
"On Automatic Writing, Robert Ashley composes under the influence of his 'involuntary speech.' (In his liner notes, Ashley revealed that he suffered from 'a mild form of Tourette's.') The piece starts quietly, with scraps of Ashley's mild, tremulous voice arranged next to more fluid French translations and barely-there touches of Moog. After Ashley's phrases lengthen enough to encompass sense-making phrases, a bass-register groove briefly appears, vanishes, then returns. Few pieces so quiet have proven as captivating; many that intend to be equally startling can't capture Ashley's range of surprises." --Seth Colter Walls, from Pitchfork's "Fifty Best Ambient Albums of All Time"
|
|
|
Artist |
Title |
Format |
Label |
Catalog # |
|
|
2CD
|
|
LCD 5002CD
|
Like John Bunyan's Pilgrim's Progress (1678), Improvement (Don Leaves Linda) is an allegory for an individual's self-realization. The opera takes its imagery from the history of the Jews --beginning with their expulsion from Spain in 1492 and ending 500 years later in the United States. Improvement (Don Leaves Linda) was first conceived as a recording for Nonesuch Records (1991). Ashley followed with three other operas, making up a quartet or tetralogy under the name Now Eleanor's Idea (LCD 1009CD), and all four operas were performed often during the first half of the 1990s.
The opera was revived in 2018-19, with a new cast: Gelsey Bell as Linda; Brian McCorkle as Don, Mr. Payne, and Companion; Paul Pinto as Junior, Jr.; Aliza Simons as Now Eleanor; Dave Ruder as The Doctor; Amirtha Kidambi as Mr. Payne's Mother; Robert Ashley (on tape) as Narrator I; Amirtha Kidambi and Aliza Simons as Narrator II. Improvement (Don Leaves Linda) was presented by the Kitchen, February 7th through 16th, 2019. Live Sound and Processing: Tom Hamilton. Live cast recording by Eric Sherman and Tom Hamilton. CD mixed by Tom Hamilton.
"Improvement is engrossing because Ashley was one of the finest American prose writers of the 20th century and his writing was made thrilling Thursday night by the beauty of the performance. These new artists incorporate Ashley wholly in their musical experience, taking the work beyond the objective presentation of the opera's means, style, and form. Thursday night they were as characterful and plainly human as one will experience on the opera stage. Gelsey Bell was exceptional, the warm glow of her voice a colorful contrast with Ashley's pleasantly parched midwestern twang. She expressed vocally Linda's mix of befuddlement and optimism, her sense that her own life is a mystery -- and through some imperceptible means she outlined Linda's aging while always sounding the same. Hamilton's digital reconstruction of the original audio was superb, true to the source material and with the subtlety Ashley requires, while also having ample open space, depth, and vividness. He was just as much a member of the ensemble as the artists on stage, and just as vital to the human feeling that grew throughout the performance to a gentle but moving coda at the end of the evening." --George Grella, New York Classical Review, February 8, 2019
|
|
|
Artist |
Title |
Format |
Label |
Catalog # |
|
|
CD
|
|
LCD 1903CD
|
2024 restock 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.
|
|
|
Artist |
Title |
Format |
Label |
Catalog # |
|
|
LP
|
|
LML 1041LP
|
Lovely Music present a reissue of David Behrman's On the Other Ocean, originally issued as one of Lovely Music's first six releases in 1978. This newly-mastered LP is a must-have for Behrman aficionados or a perfect introduction to his work.
"I've been engaged for many years in an exploration of ways to make music and intermedia installations in which software and electronic devices interact with human performers. I've wanted to make works that have personalities, which remain distinct and recognizable, yet are open to surprising changes that can come about when they are performed or exhibited." --David Behrman
"Remarkable achievements on a purely technological level. Behrman's carefully programmed Kim-I system listens to tones played by the live performers, instantly analyzes the situation, and responds by playing back electronic tones of its own. This is undoubtedly the first time that humans and electronic sound equipment have communicated with one another with high degrees of spontaneity and intelligence on both ends of the wire. But the music that results is perhaps even more remarkable. Subtle, sustained, serene, sophisticated, super." --Tom Johnson, The Village Voice, Dec. 18, 1978
Recorded at the Center for Contemporary Music, Mills College, Oakland, California, Sept. 18, 1977, and at the Electronic Music Studio, State University of New York at Albany, June 9, 1977. Personnel: On the Other Ocean: David Behrman - electronics; Maggi Payne - flute; Arthur Stidfole - bassoon Figure in a Clearing: David Behrman - electronics; David Gibson - cello. 180 gram vinyl, Stoughton Old Style sleeve.
|
|
|
Artist |
Title |
Format |
Label |
Catalog # |
|
|
LP
|
|
LML 1001LP
|
Repressed; Lovely Music presents a reissue of Robert Ashley's Private Parts, originally issued in 1978. This newly mastered LP release is a must-have for aficionados as well as a perfect introductory work to Ashley's oeuvre. Among Lovely Music's first six releases, it came to be known as "the yellow record". No one had ever heard anything like it; Ashley presented an unvarnished exposition of the inner workings of a man's mind. And on the other side, those of a woman. These two episodes were the foundation for Ashley's seven-part opera, Perfect Lives (LCD 4917CD, 2017), which was performed by his ensemble throughout the 1980s and was completed for television broadcast by Britain's Channel Four. New arrangements of Perfect Lives, notably Varispeed's site-specific version, continue to intrigue and enchant. Recorded at the Center for Contemporary Music, Mills College, Oakland, California, July 1977, produced by Ashley. Personnel: Robert Ashley - voice; "Blue" Gene Tyranny - keyboards; Kris - tablas. 180 gram vinyl, Stoughton Old Style sleeve, includes libretto.
|
|
|
Artist |
Title |
Format |
Label |
Catalog # |
|
|
CD
|
|
LCD 1002CD
|
2023 restock; 1996 release. Automatic Writing compiles three early Robert Ashley works from 1967-79 -- some of his most experimental works. Composed in recorded form over a period of five years, "Automatic Writing", originally issued on Lovely Music in 1979, is the result of Robert Ashley's fascination with involuntary speech. He recorded and analyzed the repeated lines of his own mantra and extracted four musical characters. The result is a quiet, early form of ambient music. The piece rather famously formed the basis for Nurse With Wound's A Missing Sense (1997). Steven Stapleton's commentary on the recording: "A Missing Sense was originally conceived as a private tape to accompany my taking of LSD. When in that particular state, Robert Ashley's 'Automatic Writing' was the only music I could actually experience without feeling claustrophobic and paranoid. We played it endlessly; it seemed to become part of the room, perfectly blending with the late night city ambiance and the 'breathing' of the building." The piece features the voices of Ashley and Mimi Johnson, with electronics and Polymoog backing, with a switching circuit designed and built by Paul DeMarinis. "Purposeful Lady Slow Afternoon" and "She Was A Visitor" are excerpts from an opera entitled "That Morning Thing", composed in 1966-67 as a result of Ashley's impulse to express something about the suicides of three friends. "Purposeful Lady Slow Afternoon", originally issued in 1968, is a woman's description of a sexual experience. Ashley attempts "to demonstrate the dichotomy between the rational-whatever can be explained in words-and its opposite-which is not irrational or a-rational, but which cannot be explained in words." The lead voice performed by Cynthia Liddell, the processed back-up chorus, the recurring bell tone, and the pervading tape hiss, create an unsettling mood. "She Was a Visitor" was originally issued on the electronic compilation Extended Voices in 1967. It is another form of description, intended to be understood as a form of rumor. The chorus is divided into groups, each headed by a leader. A lone speaker repeats the title sentence throughout. The separate phonemes of this sentence are picked up freely by the group leaders and are relayed to the group members, who sustain them softly and for the duration of one natural breath. The time lag produces a staggered, chant-like effect, with the sounds moving outward from the nearest performer to the farthest. Booklet notes by Robert Ashley.
|
|
|
Artist |
Title |
Format |
Label |
Catalog # |
|
|
CD
|
|
LCD 1018CD
|
1990 release. Three works for classical instruments and oscillators (1982-85). Alvin Lucier explains the process: "The three works on this compact disk explore interference phenomena between sound waves. When two or more closely tuned tones are sounded, their oscillations periodically coincide to produce audible beats of sound. The speed of the beating depends upon the distances between the pitches of the sounds. The further apart, the faster the beating; at unison, no beating occurs. Furthermore, under certain conditions, the beats may be heard to spin around the room....." Personnel: Alvin Lucier - electronics; Thomas Ridenour - clarinet; The New World Consort of Wesleyan University.
|
|
|
Artist |
Title |
Format |
Label |
Catalog # |
|
|
CD
|
|
LCD 2082CD
|
2023 restock; 1999 release. Two of Annea Lockwood's dramatic works dealing with issues of spiritual wholeness. Duende (1997), about shamanic transformation, is written with and performed by Thomas Buckner. Lockwood selected sounds which reminded her of certain vocal transformations heard in recordings of shamanic ceremonies. In such singing, changes in the voice mirror and also help to bring about changes in the singer's mind and awareness. Within an improvisational framework, Buckner explores the possibility of change of state through such transformations, moving through three stages: preparation, a first flight, and a final flight, in which he moves beyond the self he knows. Thus, Duende is a not a prepared, performed work, but a vehicle for experience. Buckner is partnered by a tape drawn from the sounds of the cuica (an African and South American instrument), a large glass gong and other glass sounds, wind, a Cameroonian rattle, a kea (New Zealand mountain parrot), and a bullroarer. Delta Run (1979-81) is an expression of the thoughts and experiences of a sculptor who talked with Lockwood just over a day before he died in 1979, aged thirty. He knew that he was dying and wanted to communicate his perceptions of death as something "only natural, you know - now is my time", seeing this piece as a form of continuing creativity now that sculpture was out of reach. Interwoven with his voice are wind, water, ambient sounds from the hospice where they talked, and some of the ordinary sounds of daily living, embodying the sense that dying is a part of living, not separate from it, and that in dying we are incorporated back into the elements from which we emanate.
|
|
|
Artist |
Title |
Format |
Label |
Catalog # |
|
|
CD
|
|
LCD 2011CD
|
1996 release. The works on this CD are all from what Paul Dresher considers to be his first phase of composition in his own musical voice, ranging from 1976 through 1985. They focus entirely on the three instruments he knew best and has worked with since childhood: the guitar, the piano and the tape recorder. Liquid And Stellar Music began as an idea for a sonic world while working with Terry Riley at Mills College and works exclusively with the electric guitar. Through the use of a four-channel tape machine with three playback heads located at various points in the path of a closed loop of variable speed, system, it is possible for the performer to build up complex textural, harmonic or rhythmic structures through what is essentially a process of live multi-track recording (and playback, erasing and mixing). Destiny draws its surface unabashedly from the idiom of rock and roll yet it is contrapuntally and polyrhythmically organized via processes normally associated with other domains. At this time, Dresher was "grappling with the diverse and contrary influences of both rock î roll, world music and contemporary 'art' music. This work was a direct attempt to reconcile these differences and incorporate the qualities of each which I find inspirational." In Water Dreams, the sounds of water in many contexts (rain, ocean waves, lakes, rivers, streams and drips) form the basic sonic palette. The composition is a hybrid of these acoustic sounds (manipulated only with equalization and tape speed alterations), synthesized sounds (Yamaha DX-7) and sampled acoustic sounds. This Same Temple was premiered by the East Bay New Music Ensemble in the fall of 1976 with Rae Imamura and Phil Aaberg at the pianos. Dresher says, "The work clearly owes a debt to Steve Reich, with whose ensemble I played briefly in the summer of 1974. It was through Steve that I met Nurit Tilles to whom I turned when I wanted to record the work." Personnel: Paul Dresher - Fender Stratocaster guitar; Dresher and Paul Tydelski - tape processing system; Double Edge (Edmund Niemann and Nurit Tilles, piano duo); Gene Reffkin - drums.
|
|
|
Artist |
Title |
Format |
Label |
Catalog # |
|
|
CD
|
|
LCD 1004CD
|
1994 release. The fourth opera in Robert Ashley's Now Eleanor's Idea tetralogy: Junior, Jr.'s story. A group of scenes from the life of an agent. The scenes are a kind of debriefing to a jury of interrogators, in which the Interrogators challenge the agent in various forms of musical dialogue. The mood of the opera owes much to American society's ongoing fascination with espionage and with the character of those people who lead double lives. Featuring Thomas Buckner as the agent and Jacqueline Humbert, Sam Ashley, and Robert Ashley as his interrogators. Orchestration, music, and libretto by Robert Ashley; Engineering and mixing by Tom Hamilton. Comes with a booklet with the full libretto.
|
|
|
Artist |
Title |
Format |
Label |
Catalog # |
|
|
CD
|
|
LCD 2021CD
|
1987 release. Pointillistic chamber compositions from Roscoe Mitchell: Nonaah, Duet for Wind and String, Cutouts, and Prelude. Delicate as to texture, dispassionate as to mood, these mostly notated woodwind, string, and piano chamber works are atonal, but collapse into tonal cadences. Personnel: Robert Cole - flute; Richard Lottridge - bassoon; Joan Wildman - piano; Vartan Manoogian - violin; Roscoe Mitchell - alto saxophone; Wingra Woodwind Quintet; Tom Buckner - voice; Roscoe Mitchell - bass saxophone; Gerald Oshita - contrabass sarrusophone; Brian Smith - triple contrabass viol. "Mitchell's atonal explorations here seem somehow earthier and more alive than most contemporary chamber music, perhaps a reflection of his cutting-edge jazz background." --Hayes, Capital Times, June 1992
|
|
|
Artist |
Title |
Format |
Label |
Catalog # |
|
|
2CD
|
|
LCD 1602CD
|
2022 restock; 1995 release. Neural Synthesis Nos. 6-9 combines the art of music, the engineering of electronics, and the inspiration of biology. In it, David Tudor orchestrates electronic sound in ways analogous to our biological bodies' orchestration of consciousness. The performance originates from a neural-network synthesizer conceived and built especially for Tudor. He surrounds this synthesizer with his own unique collection of electronic devices, and in the recording on this CD made for headphone playback, he uses a new binaural technique for translating sound into out-of-head localizations in which sound seems to originate from specific, changing points within a space around the listener. Performed by David Tudor; produced and recorded by David Tudor and John D.S. Adams. Binaural and stereo mixes on two CDs.
|
|
|
Artist |
Title |
Format |
Label |
Catalog # |
|
|
CD
|
|
LCD 3061CD
|
1998 release. Leroy Jenkins plays violin and viola in a concert recorded live at the Center for Contemporary Art in Santa Fe. Carl Baugher on the performance: "Among improvising violinists, Leroy Jenkins is preeminent where innovation, imagination and individualism are considered. Not only has he expanded the improvising violinist's palette via extended technique, but his sound and approach are unique. This solo concert recording can be seen as a follow-up to the much-admired 1977 India Navigation LP, Solo Concert (1977). Leroy Jenkins is an artist to be treasured. He makes music of great depth, passion and intellectual substance. The Santa Fe audience experienced the special magic of a Leroy Jenkins solo concert on October 24, 1992. Now, with this compact disc, you can too."
|
|
|
Artist |
Title |
Format |
Label |
Catalog # |
|
|
2CD
|
|
LCD 1007CD
|
2005 release. Following the ground-breaking work, Dust (LCD 1006CD), godfather of experimental opera Robert Ashley returns with Celestial Excursions. Ashley's endeavor explores remarkably uncharted territory -- the kind of language that is common among "old" people who talk all the time or not at all, to anyone passing by or to themselves. The opera premiered at the Hebbel Theater in Berlin, before coming to The Kitchen for its U.S. premiere in April 2003. Celestial Excursions delves into the wild intermingling of reminiscence, regret, love, nightmare, old sayings, and songs on the radio -- all seemingly to no purpose, except for the operatic end of relentless speed and precision in ensemble singing and the possible stage magic inherent in illusion, hallucination, and a physically changed state of the senses. The opera's originality lies in a use of a new vocal technique Ashley has built over the last 20 years, which enables several stories to be heard at the same time. In an intricate vocal system, a principal voice is "chased" by other voices whose parts rotate in sequence in a given order. The result of this technique creates a complex jungle of voices, delivered with an extraordinary rhythmic intensity rarely heard in ensemble singing. As for all of Ashley's latest works, the orchestra music of Celestial Excursions was composed in the computer-synthesizer studio. All the voices and the orchestra (on multi-track tape or on disc) are processed again during the concert in order to match the sound of the opera to the performance space. And for this CD release, Ashley went back to the studio with live recordings to rework the piece, extending the orchestra in the final act. Personnel: Sam Ashley, Thomas Buckner, Jacqueline Humbert, Joan La Barbara, Robert Ashley - singers; Joan Jonas - choreography; Robert Ashley and Tom Hamilton - electronic orchestra; Tom Hamilton - mixing and live electronics; "Blue" Gene Tyranny - piano; David Moodey - lighting design; Cas Boumans - technical coordination/sound system engineer; Melanie Lipka - stage manager. Double CD comes in a jewel box and includes the 104-page libretto in slipcase.
|
|
|
Artist |
Title |
Format |
Label |
Catalog # |
|
|
2CD
|
|
LCD 1006CD
|
2022 restock. Dust is an opera by Robert Ashley and Yukihiro Yoshihara (video direction) whose imaginary setting is a street corner anywhere in the world, where those who live on the fringes of society gather to talk, to each other and to themselves, about life-changing events, missed opportunities, memory, loss, and regret. Five "street people" recount the memories and experiences of one of their group, a man who has lost his legs in some unnamed war. As part of the experience of losing his legs, he began a conversation with God, under the influence of the morphine he was given to ease his pain. Now he wishes that the conversation, which was interrupted when the morphine wore off, could be continued so that he could get the "secret word" that would stop all wars and suffering. Personnel: Robert Ashley, Sam Ashley, Thomas Buckner, Jacqueline Humbert, Joan La Barbara - Voices; "Blue" Gene Tyranny - synthesizer; Tom Hamilton - live mixing and sound processing; electronic orchestration by Robert Ashley, Tom Hamilton and "Blue" Gene Tyranny; sound effects for "Friends" composed by Tom Hamilton. Double CD comes in a jewel box and includes the 160-page libretto in a slipcase.
|
|
|
Artist |
Title |
Format |
Label |
Catalog # |
|
|
CD
|
|
LCD 1001CD
|
2023 restock. 1990 release. Centered around the mesmerizing voice of Robert Ashley, presented here is early version (released on LP by Lovely Music in 1979) of "The Park" and "The Backyard", a masterpiece in its simplicity of form and in the purity and intensity of its effect on the listener. These two pieces were later to become the opening and closing segments of the seven part opera for television, Perfect Lives. Personnel: Robert Ashley - voice; "Blue" Gene Tyranny - keyboards; Kris - tablas.
|
|
|
Artist |
Title |
Format |
Label |
Catalog # |
|
|
CD
|
|
LCD 2022CD
|
1995 release. His reassertion as the composer into what has traditionally been an improvisational form, has placed Roscoe Mitchell at the forefront of contemporary music for over twenty-five years. Pilgrimage features eight works (including one by Henry Threadgill) performed by the Roscoe Mitchell New Chamber Ensemble. Texts by Thulani Davis, Lord Byron, e. e. cummings, and Joseph Jarman. The Roscoe Mitchell New Chamber Ensemble: Roscoe Mitchell - saxophones, winds, percussion; Thomas Buckner - voice; Joseph Kubera - piano; Vartan Manoogian - violin.
|
|
|
Artist |
Title |
Format |
Label |
Catalog # |
|
|
CD
|
|
LCD 3021CD
|
1991 release. Works by six composers from new music's acclaimed baritone, Thomas Buckner who's been called "the voice of the new". Works written by: Robert Ashley, Jon Gibson, Nils Vigeland, Peter Gena, Annea Lockwood, and Roscoe Mitchell. Personnel: Thomas Buckner - vocals; Tony Barrero - trumpet; Jon Gibson - clarinet, flute; J.D. Parran - bass clarinet, baritone saxophone; "Blue" Gene Tyranny - synthesizer; Joseph Kubera - piano; Tom Hamilton - synthesizer; Michael Pugliese - timpani, percussion.
|
|
|
Artist |
Title |
Format |
Label |
Catalog # |
|
|
CD
|
|
LCD 2081CD
|
2023 restock; 2003 release. Originally released on Lovely Music in 1989. An aural journey from the source of the river, in the high peak area of the Adirondacks, downstream to the Lower Bay and the Atlantic Ocean; Annea Lockwood traces the course of the Hudson through on-site recordings of its flow at 15 separate locations. Annea Lockwood has recorded rivers in many countries to explore the special state of mind and body which the sounds of moving water create when one listens intently to the complex mesh of rhythms and pitches. The listener will find that each stretch of the Hudson has its own sonic texture, formed by the terrain, varying according to the weather, the season and downstream, the human environment whose sounds are intimately woven into the river's sounds.
|
|
|
Artist |
Title |
Format |
Label |
Catalog # |
|
|
CD
|
|
LCD 1093CD
|
2000 release. Studio Retrospect is a collection of six compositions made in electronic music studios by Gordon Mumma from 1959 to 1984. All were composed for concert hall or theater performance with choreography, as well as for distribution on recordings. Music from the Venezia Space Theatre, The Dresden Interleaf, and Echo-D were composed for quadraphonic theater systems, and were later spatially remodeled for release on stereophonic recordings.
|
|
|
Artist |
Title |
Format |
Label |
Catalog # |
|
|
CD
|
|
LCD 2053CD
|
1998 release. John Holzaepfel on Music Of Changes: "Like the Pierre Boulez Sonata, Music Of Changes is a manifesto. It marks Cage's first comprehensive 'exploration of non-intention' through the systematic use of chance operations to create a complete, major work. Begun in May 1951 and completed on 13 December of that year, Music Of Changes was named in honor of the I Ching, or Book Of Changes, the ancient Chinese book of oracles that had become Cage's means of synthesizing chance with rigorous discipline. Cage's notation heralded a new concept of musical time, placing the performer in a new relation to the score, one in which orientation is to the occurrence of events rather than to the relations between them, which is to say to action rather than to memory. Performances of Music Of Changes have been rare since David Tudor ceased playing the work in the late 1950s; Herbert Henck and, more recently, Joseph Kubera are among the few pianists to have assayed the obstacles posed by its innovations. For all its prominence in the history of postwar music, Music Of Changes has remained more discussed than heard, more treatise than artwork." CD booklet includes John Holzaepfel's complete notes, as well as a memoir by Don Gillespie. Features Joseph Kubera on piano.
|
|
|
Artist |
Title |
Format |
Label |
Catalog # |
|
|
2CD
|
|
LCD 1009CD
|
2007 release. Now Eleanor's Idea was made possible by grants from The Rockefeller Foundation (1984 and 1993), the National Endowment for the Arts' Opera Musical Theater Program (1985) and InterArts Program (1992). Robert Ashley's Now Eleanor's Idea is a quartet of short operas based on the notion of a sequence of events seen from four, different points of view. At the same time, each opera is an allegory, like Bunyan's Pilgrim's Progress (1678), for an individual's self-realization within the context of a major religion found in the United States. Improvement takes its imagery and plot from Judaism, Foreign Experiences (LCD 1008CD) from Pentecostal Evangelism, eL/Aficionado (LCD 1004CD) from Corporate Mysticism, and Now Eleanor's Idea from (Spanish) Catholicism. The inspiration for these works came specifically from four sources: the work of the historian, Frances A. Yates (1900-1983), whose specialty of interests included the influence of Kabbalistic mysticism on the birth of modernism and scientific philosophy in Italy in the 16th century (as a result of the expulsion of Jews from Spain during the Inquisition); the writings of Carlos Castaneda (and the arguments about him as a writer and about the intentions of his work); Low Rider Magazine, the fan-cult magazine of the Low Rider movement in the Southwestern United States; and finally, corporate vocabulary, what it sounds like and how it is used in popular publications, like The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, or Fortune Magazine. While working at the bank, the title character, Now Eleanor, has a sort of "religious experience" that fills her with an "approach of the end of the world feeling." This feeling compels her to leave her job in the Midwest, move to New Mexico, and become a newscaster to try to discover the point where the religions of America -- Judaism, Protestantism, Business and Catholicism -- merge. But there is more in store for her than she realizes... Music and libretto by Robert Ashley. Featuring: Joan LaBarbara as Now Eleanor, Amy X Neuburg as Now Eleanor's Low Rider Double, Marghreta Cordero as Now Eleanor's Guardian Angel. Ensemble Voices: Robert Ashley, Sam Ashley, Thomas Buckner, Jacqueline Humbert. Mixing and electronics: Tom Hamilton.
|
viewing 1 To 25 of 77 items
Next >>
|
|