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viewing 1 To 8 of 8 items
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2LP
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SLT 005LP
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New double-LP edition of a selection from Saltern's acclaimed collection of recordings surveying the career of renowned, American cellist, Charles Curtis. Selected by Curtis and Tashi Wada from recordings spanning two decades, Performances & Recordings 1999-2018 offers a broad, inclusive view of Curtis's activities across the diverse worlds of music he inhabits, featuring the music of Guillaume de Machaut, Tobias Hume, Silvestro di Ganassi, Terry Jennings, Morton Feldman, Anton Webern, Olivier Messiaen, Richard Maxfield, and Curtis himself. The wide-ranging scope of this release speaks not to a musical restlessness, but to a genuine spirit of inquiry, as these areas of activity for Curtis have existed concurrently in dialogue, not simply in succession, for decades. Includes liner notes by La Monte Young and Wada, as well as a new text by Curtis, and a download of the full original album. Listed as The Wire's #2 Archival Release of 2020. Mastered by Stephan Mathieu, and cut to vinyl via direct metal mastering by Hans-Jörg Maucksch at Pauler Acoustics. Pressed at RTI and printed at Stoughton.
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2CD
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SLT 008CD
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Saltern presents a thrilling new live recording of Naldjorlak for solo cello, composer Éliane Radigue's first piece for an acoustic instrument, paired with a remastered version of the long out-of-print, original 2006 recording. Composed in 2005 in close collaboration with cellist Charles Curtis, Naldjorlak marked a striking shift in the music of Radigue, who has since composed exclusively for instrumentalists with her celebrated Occam series. This double-CD album brings together two complete performances by Curtis, recorded nearly 15 years apart (Paris in 2006 and Los Angeles in 2020), drawing attention to the evolution of the piece and to its inherent mutability. The sound and spirit of Naldjorlak are centered around the re-tuning of the entire cello to the wolf tone, a uniquely unstable frequency, creating a haunting, almost feedback-like resonance within the instrument itself. Mastered by Stephan Mathieu with custom packaging and screen printing by Alan Sherry. Includes extensive liner notes by Gascia Ouzounian, Radigue, and Curtis, and a reproduction of Radigue's never-before published original drawing of Naldjorlak.
From Gascia Ouzounian's liner notes: "Even as it expands conceptions of what sound is, and thus what music can be, to understand Naldjorlak only as music would be to limit its scope. It is music, but it is also physics and philosophy. Naldjorlak is a detailed investigation of the physical properties of resonating bodies and dynamic systems; it is a meditation on the condition of instability; it is a metaphysics of chaos and uncertainty."
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2LP
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SLT 007LP
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2023 repress! Saltern's latest offering marks the first-ever release of "lost minimalist" Terry Jennings' visionary 1960 composition, Piece for Cello and Saxophone, as arranged in just intonation by legendary composer La Monte Young for renowned cellist Charles Curtis. Born in Los Angeles in 1940, Jennings was a close associate of Young, Terry Riley, and Dennis Johnson, and an early adopter of minimalist tendencies, creating slow, sustained music, influenced by jazz, modalism, and late romantic classical music. Jennings died tragically in his early forties, most of his work lost to a chaotic life; however, his forward-looking music quietly exerted a lasting influence on composers including Young and Harold Budd. Composed over sixty years ago, Piece for Cello and Saxophone, foreshadows a number of movements in postwar avant-garde music. Despite the title, there is no saxophone on this album. At over eighty minutes, La Monte Young's justly tuned realization of Piece for Cello and Saxophone for cello alone unifies and extrapolates Terry Jennings' dense harmonies, creating an extended field of complex sonorities in motion, all brought to life by the immaculate playing of Charles Curtis. The recording captures Curtis in a performance from 2016 reflecting more than twenty-five years of dedication to the piece. Piece for Cello and Saxophone is released physically on double-LP. Mixed by Anthony Burr, mastered by Stephan Mathieu, and cut to vinyl via direct metal mastering by Hans Jörg Maucksch at Pauler Acoustics. Pressed at RTI and printed at Stoughton. Includes a four-page insert with liner notes by Young, Curtis, Burr, and Tashi Wada, and a download of the full recording.
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LP
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SLT 006LP
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Saltern present the first-time vinyl edition of Yoshi Wada's The Appointed Cloud (1987), a work which Wada has often said is his favorite of his own. Staged at the Great Hall of the New York Hall of Science, The Appointed Cloud was Wada's first large-scale, interactive installation and featured a custom pipe organ, among other homemade instruments, controlled by a computer with a customized interface and software designed by engineer David Rayna, known for his work with La Monte Young. This recording captures the opening performance for which Wada brought together four musicians on bagpipes (Wada, Bob Dombrowski, and Wayne Hankin) and percussion (Michael Pugliese) to perform with the installation, operated by David Rayna. Remastered from the original master tape by Stephan Mathieu, and cut to vinyl via Direct Metal Mastering by Hans-Jörg Maucksch at Pauler Acoustics. Pressed at RTI and printed at Stoughton. Includes a digital download of the album. Edition of 600.
In Wada's own words: "This performance [of The Appointed Cloud] was one of most memorable performances I've done. The space itself -- the Great Hall of the New York Hall of Science -- was incredible. The building was designed for the 1964-65 World's Fair and had spaceships hanging from the ceiling so people felt like they were traveling in outer space. It was an amazing experience with the sound of the pipe organ, sheet metal, pipe gong, and bagpipes all together. 60 minutes may seem like a long duration, but it didn't feel like it."
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CD
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SLT 004CD
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Saltern presents Al Di Là, the first full-length collection of recordings by renowned dancer/choreographer, artist, and writer Simone Forti. Forti (born 1935, Florence, Italy) has influenced generations of artists through her innovative approaches to dance and movement. Forti is noted for her extensive work with musicians, including Charlemagne Palestine, La Monte Young, Jon Gibson, Peter Van Riper, and Z'EV, among others. With Al Di Là, we hear Forti musically in her own right through a diverse collection of never-before-released pieces, ranging from the early '60s to mid-80s, that highlight Forti's use of her voice, folk songs, handmade instruments, and physical space. The album, compiled by Forti with the assistance of Tashi Wada, includes a rare guest appearance by La Monte Young and Marian Zazeela and features a 28-page color booklet of writings, drawings, and photos by Forti. Al Di Là is a uniquely personal and intimate portrait of one of the truly visionary artists of our time. Edition of 550. Printed at Stoughton Printing Company. Mastered by Stephan Mathieu.
From Forti's liner notes: "I'm awaiting a song from afar, from afar, a song of goodbye from afar. For now I've seen the game I was playing, slowly leaving the earth and drifting far among the stars."
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LP
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SLT 003LP
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Sold out, to be repressed eventually, no ETA. First vinyl reissue of composer and Fluxus artist Yoshi Wada's second album, Off The Wall, originally released in 1985 by famed free jazz label FMP. Recorded in Berlin on May 11 and 12, 1984, by a quartet featuring Yoshi Wada and Wayne Hankin on bagpipes, Marilyn Bogerd on adapted organ (hand-built by Wada), and Andreas Schmidt Neri on percussion. Edition of 750. Mastered by Rashad Becker and housed in old-style gatefold jackets printed by Stoughton. "Off The Wall belongs somewhere between the exuberant harmolodic ritual of Ornette Coleman's Dancing In Your Head, a damp, medieval dirge and the inner ear soundings of composer Maryanne Amacher" --David Keenan, The Wire. "It may be more accurate to think of Wada as a sculptor than as a composer, because his music seems to be a physical reality, like wood or stone, and also because of the way he treats this material. Most composers work with ideas. Their basic interest is in melodies, harmonies, thematic relationships, tone rows, tonal centers, emotional qualities, and other rather abstract things, all of which can then be conveyed in sound, but none of which really are sound. Wada, on the other hand, works directly with the sound itself. His music would sound silly arranged for church organ for example. And if he prefers to preserve some improvisatory freedom rather than to notate specific musical ideas, this is at least partly because he is not so interested in the kinds of musical ideas that can be written down on paper. He wants to maintain direct contact with the physical reality of the sound." --Tom Johnson
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CD
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SLT 002CD
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Saltern returns with a gorgeous new recording of Morton Feldman's Clarinet and String Quartet (1983) performed by Anthony Burr (clarinet), Graeme Jennings (violin), Gascia Ouzounian (violin), Che-Yen Chen (viola) and Charles Curtis (cello). This performance highlights Feldman's interest in notation by treating the slight differences in intonation and rhythm literally and specifically. Recorded by Tom Erbe in the living room of a friend of the musicians. Edition of 400. Housed in jackets printed at Stoughton and featuring a cover image by artist Raha Raissnia.
From Anthony Burr and Charles Curtis's liner notes: "Near the end of the final Contrapunctus in The Art Of Fugue, Bach introduces a new four-note countersubject which, in the German note names, spells B, A, C, H (in our note names, B-flat, A, C, B-natural). To those within Bach's circle, and probably to any attentive musician of his day, the notes thus sounded would have unmistakably articulated Bach's name -- an embedded signature, not just a melodic motif but a salutation in musical code. Morton Feldman begins Clarinet and String Quartet with the same four notes in reverse order -- H, C, A, B, if you will. These four notes are repeated over and over by the clarinet and the cello simultaneously, the two instruments in minutely different rhythms and phrasings. These notes, however, are given anomalous names: in the cello, B, D-double flat, G-double sharp, A-sharp; and in the clarinet, C-flat, C, A, B-flat. Whether or not Feldman placed the retrograde B, A, C, H motif intentionally, it fits seamlessly into the pitch world of his late music, in which chromatic clusters (often four notes) are obsessively restated in different permutations, like anagrams."
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LP
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SLT 001LP
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Tashi Wada's Duets LP is the first release from Saltern, his new imprint distributed through Important Records. Duets features a recording of Wada's series of string duos brilliantly realized by cellists Charles Curtis and Judith Hamann. From Curtis' liner notes: "How far can we enter into a single moment, such that for that brief speck of time, for an instant, unison is registered? This would suggest a different sense of unison, as a state of complete integration hidden behind the disparity and change caused by the passing of time." Edition of 425. Recorded by Tom Erbe and cut at 45 RPM by Rashad Becker. Pressed at RTI and housed in jackets with design by Marco del Rio and printed at Stoughton. Cover image by Marcia Hafif.
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