Michael Pisaro
Michael Pisaro, born in Buffalo in 1961, is a composer and guitarist, and one of the central figures of the Wandelweiser group, where quietness and duration are not effects but the material itself. He has written more than eighty works, among them thirty-six solo pieces for the three-year concert series at the Zionskirche in Berlin and July Mountain, a reading of Wallace Stevens for field recordings and layers of percussion. Much of his recent music for percussion has been recorded with Greg Stuart.
anabasis (1)
anabasis (1) is a composition in 72 parts for five musicians, based on four kinds of materials: Sand, Wind, Tone and Wave; these materials are arranged and intertwined with a fifth ‘Interludes’ strand that interacts with the four materials. All of th…
Forming - Concentric Rings in Magnetic Levitation
In late fall of 2018, Ryan traveled to Valencia, California to meet with Michael for a weekend of informal conversations at California Institute of the Arts. Before Ryan returned home to Colorado, Michael gifted him a recently released recording of T…
Fata Morgana
Fata Morgana is a work in two parts; The first part, took place and was recorded in a a forest close to Niels Lyhne Løkkegaards childhood home in the western part of Jutland, and is a recording from 2021 of Løkkegaard playing the alto recorder.
The s…
Within (2) / Appearance (2)
Within (2) / Appearance (2) by Michael Pisaro-Liu presents a contemplative exploration of duration and silence, foregrounding gradual transformation. These extended works for guitar and double bass, created with Michael Francis Duch, reward patient l…
Congaree Nomads
Congaree Nomads takes as its basis 24 three-minute recordings Greg Stuart and I made in the park, along Cedar Creek and the Kingsnake, the Weston Lake and the River trails. It is a “nomadic” series that moves very gradually from the Creek to the Cong…
Kingsnake Grey
Michael Pisaro and Greg Stuart's Kingsnake Grey is a field recording of sundown in the Congaree National Park in South Carolina. The beautiful and erratic sonic transformation that occurred over the 72 minutes was the model for the other two pieces. …
Anabasis
Anabasis is a composition in 72 parts for five musicians, loosely based on four kinds of materials: Sand, Wind, Tone and Wave. The musicians featured on this recording (in addition to Michael Pisaro and Stuart) will be Patrick Farmer, Joe Panzner and…
A room outdoors
'A room outdoors' is a 48 minute piece written in 2006 by Michael Pisaro-Liu for sustaining instrument, harmonium and field recordings. This was the first work in which Pisaro-Liu incorporated field recordings into his score. This double CD contains …
Mind Is Moving (IX)
Mind is moving (IX) is a composition for guitar by Michael Pisaro-Liu, affiliated with the avant-garde composers group The Wandelweiser Composers Ensemble. Pisaro's work can be characterized as experimental minimalism, often utilizing silence, a mini…
Revolution Shuffle
Michael Pisaro-Liu's latest work. 106 tracks, one minute each. Six-panel digipak with two discs.
Tombstones
Tombstones is a collection of twenty songs composed by American composer Michael Pisaro-Liu between 2006 and 2010, journeying into experimental pop with pieces that are "experimental or indeterminate but still a song". This disc features eleven songs…
20 Years Of Experimental Music
**Edition of 300 copies** Nantes trio Formanex celebrates 20 years of activism in experimental music with a 10 CD edition full of amazing collaborations with ONsemble (contemporary music group from Nantes and Saint-Nazaire) and composers they have wo…
Barricades
**500 copies** This album contains LA-based composer Michael Pisaro's recent composition Barricades, a 63-minute piece for piano and electronics. Consisting of thirteen studies (piano pieces, some with electronics) and two electronic interludes, the …
Nature Denatured and Found Again
5 CD Box. The five discs come in an oversized box with cover art by Marcus Kaiser and Yuko Zama. The box set also includes a 24-page full-color booklet containing additional photos by Joachim Eckl, Marcus Kaiser, Emmanuelle Waeckerle, and Michael Pi…
Lines and Tracings
Two compositions, one by composer Michael Pisaro and performed by the electroacoustic ensemble "Ordinary Affects" including violinist Morgan Evans-Weiler, then an acoustic composition from Evans-Weiler himself performed with violin, clarinet, cello, …
Étant Donnés
A six-track album based almost entirely on samples (from Curtis Mayfield to John Carpenter). "The really striking thing, though, is the kinship between Pisaro’s approach here and his other music. Many of his previous compositions have taken simple, g…
Shades of Eternal Night
Field Recordings from Syros, Greece and Southern California in 2015 and 2017. Piano performed by Reinier van Houdt, recorded in The Wild Beast, CalArts, June 2015Inside image by Michael Pisaro / Thanks to Keith Rowe.The sounds come and go against a b…
13 Thirteen
Keith Rowe and Michael Pisaro: 13 Thirteen | On this two-and-a-half hour, semi-improvised opus, the two guitarists and composers approach finely wrought detail and vast empty space in ways that can warp one’s perception of time itself. On this two-an…
Sometimes
“Sometimes (harmony series 1)”, realization for female voice and three electronics players by Colectivo maDam. This piece was, as the title indicates, the first of the 34 pieces that would eventually become the harmony series. in this and all the ot…
Resting in a Fold of the Fog
Resting in a Fold of the Fog includes two Michael Pisaro's pieces for percussion, guitar and laptop. They are performed by two Dedalus Ensemble members Stéphane Garin and Didier Aschour, and by Michael Pisaro himself. Pieces titles are inspired by a …
The Earth and the Sky
Erstwhile is proud to announce the first release on the new ErstClass imprint, an epic collection of Michael Pisaro's work for piano from 1994-2016, 11 pieces totalling 223 minutes. The pieces are performed by the brilliant Dutch pianist Reinier van …
Looking Around
Christian Wolff, prepared piano, whistles, stones. Michael Pisaro, electric guitar, harmonica, stones. Recorded in 2014. Chistian Wolff (1934), American composer of avant-garde music. Michael Pisaro (1961), guitarist andcomposer, member of Wandelweis…
Accordion Music
2007 release **
Fold in; fold out: the breathing of the accordion. On this CD the accordion unfolds in a very special way, unusually close to the instrument. Four works, four worlds that seem to know each other; refer to each other like a greeting fr…
Transparent city (volumes 1 and 2)
Field recordings, electronic sound. Field recordings made in greater Los Angeles from December, 2004 to August, 2006. Each recording is an unedited ten-minute take from a single location. Sine tones and mixing completed in Michael Pisaro's home st…
Harmony Series 11-16
In the 'Harmony Series 11-16', very small events are happening in every nook and cranny of the music, and these subtle changes give magical effects to the music. This is in fact not magic at all - all the events are due to the theoretical structure o…
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Transparent city (volumes 3 and 4)
2007 release **
"Between 2004 and 2006, Pisaro began a series of field recordings. Each time, it consisted of a single sound recording made in Los Angeles, in a single location, strategically placed so that nothing stood out, places without a center,…
Mind Is Moving IX
Intonema is proud to present the first CD release of an album by a Wandelweiser composer in Russia ! In April 2013 Denis Sorokin played Michael Pisaro's 'Mind Is Moving IX' at the Teni Zvuka Festival which became its Russian premiere performance. …
A mist is a collection of points
Michael Pisaro (b. 1961) is a member of the Wandelweiser collective, an international organization of musicians which he has defined as 'a particular group of people who have been committed, over the long term, to sharing their work and working to…
Schwarze Riesenfalter
An evocation of “Nacht,” Graham Lambkin and Michael Pisaro’s chilling, malefic collaboration directly references Giraud’s collection of poems, Pierrot Lunaire, and Arnold Schoenberg’s melodrama of the same name. Despite the continental subject matter…
Melody, Silence (For Solo Guitar)
Michael Pisaro - Melody, Silence (for guitar solo). Cristián Alvear. Melody, Silence is a collection of materials for solo guitarist, written by Michael Pisaro in 2011. There are up to 12 fragments (or pieces) which can be played in any order and wh…
Continuum Unbound
Michael Pisaro's Continuum Unbound is a three CD box set, featuring three individual as well as linked CD-length pieces, each 72 minutes long. 'Kingsnake Grey' is a field recording of sundown in the Congaree National Park in South Carolina. The beaut…
West coast soundings
2014 release **
New compilation of works by emerging west coast composers who somehow belong within a John Cage lineage. Music by James Tenney, Michael Pisaro and their students, Mark So, Michael Winter, Chris Kallmyer, Tashi Wada, Liam Mooney, Scott…
White Metal
“White Metal” is a new piece by Michael Pisaro, realised by the composer and Miguel Prado. “When I first heard that Michael was thinking of working on a project with the name “White Metal”, I contacted him, excited to know more about it. At first we…
Closed categories in cartesian worlds
Four crotales, each bowed for sixteen minutes, with sine tones set against them four minutes at a time. The score offers ten possibilities for each crotale, two hundred and fifty across the range of the instrument. Greg Stuart chose four and sent Pis…
This Place / Is Love
An extended work from Antoine Beuger and Michael Pisaro, defined by six stanzas written by Beuger, Anna Swir, Mei-Mei Berssenbrugger and Edmond Jabes, a subtle cycle on love and permanency realized in tone and voice."
"The work begins in very un-Wa…
Tombstones
Comes on milky clear vinyl with grey splatter, housed in a gatefold sleeve. The long-awaited, groundbreaking, pop album by acclaimed composer Michael Pisaro. Featuring Julia Holter, Tashi Wada, Cassia Streb and Rob Esler. "Voice: soft, pure (no vi…
The Middle of Life (Die ganze Zeit)
Pisaro's fascinating composition created with guitar, bass, percussion, radio, electronics, and field recordings, using long gaps of silence resolved through a dynamic set of rich audio sections."The most convincing way to avoid reality is to lose yo…
The punishment of the tribe by its elders'
Pisaro's fascinating composition created with guitar, bass, percussion, radio, electronics, and field recordings, using long gaps of silence resolved through a dynamic set of rich audio sections."The most convincing way to avoid reality is to lose yo…
D minor / Bb major
Composed by Michael Pisaro and Taku Sugimoto. Performed by Casey Anderson: computer, Matt Barbier: trombone, Eric KM Clark: violin, Devin Disanto: clarinet, Paul Fraser: trumpet, Kristin Haraldsdottir: viola, Stefan Kac: tuba, Ingrid Lee: piano, D…
Crosshatches
Crosshatches was composed, recorded and assembled by Tsunoda and Pisaro over a period of 14 months, as a single 85 minute work in eight sections.
