Musing And Reminiscence
Ezra Sims (1928-2015) was known mainly as a composer of microtonal music. Surrounded by world-class performers who championed his music, he produced a large number of chamber and solo, choral, and two orchestral works. With his unwavering commitment to his unique vision, he made an enormous contribution to modern music. This retrospective spans his entire career, almost fifty years of compositional activity, and is an excellent introduction to his very distinctive sound world. Sims’s lyricism an…
Sonatas
Lejaren Hiller (1924-1994) is, understandably, best known for his computer-assisted compositions and works utilizing electronics. The three pieces included in this collection span a crucial fifteen-year period in Hiller's career. The first was written two years before Quartet No. 4 for Strings, The ILLIAC Suite. The second work was written three years into his time as a music professor at the University of Illinois, while the final sonata in this collection was written during his second year at …
Io
Born in Michigan but for most of his life a true Californian, Robert Erickson (1917-1997) had a reputation as a maverick. His musical path was never a straight line, nor, really, a line at all but a landscape, with ranges of features rather than mere points of interest. He was a profound and original musical thinker who embraced the expressive possibilities of all music, from the Western classics and moderns of his own early education to Indian and Balinese traditions and all manner of contempor…
Outlines of the Night
Elusive and illusory, Age Veeroos’ music captures a unique tension between focus and ambiguity. The album "Outlines of the Night" presents compositions in which, for example, violin and electronics, as in Schattenseele, evoke corresponding sensations of a “shadow soul” through obsessive, circling motifs. In Keha for bass clarinet, physical and biological processes are musically embodied, oscillating between registers. Fantasia “A Threadbare Chant” and Ma olen suur kuu su silmapiiril further demo…
Duo, Fives, Quintet, Trio
Born in Michigan but for most of his life a true Californian, Robert Erickson (1917-1997) had a reputation as a maverick. His musical path was never a straight line, nor, really, a line at all but a landscape, with ranges of features rather than mere points of interest. He was a profound and original musical thinker who embraced the expressive possibilities of all music, from the Western classics and moderns of his own early education to Indian and Balinese traditions and all manner of contempor…
Clusters: American Piano Explorations
Rory Cowal is a distinctive pianist, one who draws liberally on classical chops, ample experience with improvisation, and a predilection for the new and uncharted. This makes him especially attractive to composers who wish to blur the boundaries between traditional styles and genres. A musical adventurer at heart, Cowal seems drawn to challenging and unusual projects. The eight pieces on this CD reflect this willingness to experiment, to not just play the same old (now canonic) warhorses of the …
Paul Hindemith, Alfred Schnittke, Anna Gourari, Markus Poschner, Orchestra Della Svizzera Italiana Lugano
Paul Hindemith / Alfred SchnittkeAfter three acclaimed solo piano programmes for the label, here Anna Gourari widens the instrumental spectrum with the Lugano-based Orchestra della Svizzera italiana under Markus Poschner’s direction in striking performances of Alfred Schnittke’s Concerto for Piano and String Orchestra and Paul Hindemith’s The Four Temperaments. Gourari’s pianistic command is one of “virtuoso polish and with flawless action”, to quote the German daily Süddeutsche Zeitung, and her holistic, wide-reaching grasp of…
In Glow of Like Seclusion
Samuel Andreyev’s music is incredibly varied, from the sparse resonance of the Sonata da Camera, the ‘cartoon music’ – as the composer puts it -of Vérifications, characterised by primary colours and strong instrumental timbres; the Sextet in Two Parts which in contrast focuses on minute timbral shadings; and of course the cantata for solo voice and ensemble which is the title track of the album.
Performed by Ensemble Proton Bern, conducted by Luigi Gaggero with the magical soprano voice of Peyee…
Harpsichords
Tip! "Three harpsichords in various states of disrepair were kindly offered to me by Leeds Conservatoire. I accepted, and a memorandum of understanding was swiftly drawn up. The offer was made under the condition that I might make some music from them, given my penchant for infirm instruments, and their conventional worthlessness to anyone wishing to use them for their intended purpose. There seemed to be an auspiciousness surrounding these harpsichords, the stories they might reveal, and more i…
With love
Georgia Denham (b.1997) draws on anecdotal experience to create her music. She studied with Andrew Hamilton at Royal Birmingham Conservatoire and now with Richard Causton at the University of Cambridge for her PhD. She lives with her husband, a theoretical computer scientist, and their many beloved plants. “This collection of chamber music from 2018–2022 wakes scores I thought were long since sleeping, where I first learned to write the delicate sounds I loved. With music written during my studi…
Supports & Surfaces
Paolo Griffin is a composer and curator based in Toronto/Tkarón:to whose music has been described as placing “… the listener in a kind of sonic microgravity” (PANM360) and as “…uncompromising and thoroughly engrossing.” (LvT). Paolo’s work involves ongoing research about the sounding and perception of microtonal rational intonation (Just Intonation) combined with a rigorous, process-based approach to sonic form and structure. The work he creates explores the creation of colour/shading/densities …
Curva Triangulus
Catherine Lamb works at the boundary between perception and illusion. In Curva Triangulus (2018/21), the American composer takes Bridget Riley's geometric forms as starting point for "warping" Renaissance materials through geometric musical figures. The result is a 41-minute composition for eight instruments where the distinction between melody and harmony dissolves: one generates the other, rather than existing as separate entities.
The score demands an exceptional ensemble. Bern's Ensemble Pro…
Outermost Melodies
Ian Antonio discovered Jürg Frey via algorithm. About 15 years ago, SoundCloud kept leading him to the same piece, maybe Circular Music No. 2. "I wouldn't notice the piece starting but then realize I was in fact listening to it closely," he recalls. "The stillness and closeness and warmth were somewhat new to me." At the time, Antonio played "a lot of very loud and often very fast music" with groups like Wet Ink, Talujon, Zs, and Yarn/Wire. Frey's music was "very much the opposite."
This double …
Where Songs Go at Night
During the Covid doldrums of 2020, the wind faculty at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, like so many of us, experienced acute loneliness and isolation. As musicians accustomed to the musical and social connections that come from the intimate art of chamber music, they longed to channel their creative loss into something meaningful. Bandwidth – a mission as much as a group – emerged to champion chamber repertoire for wind instruments, foster connections between faculty, and provide a mode…
Eonta
*2024 stock* bastille musique presents its twenty-third release »Iannis Xenakis: Eonta« featuring recordings by Ensemble Schwerpunkt, Lorenzo Soulès (piano), Edicson Ruiz (double bass), Dirk Rothbrust (percussion) und Peter Rundel (conductor). The album includes Iannis Xenakis’s music for brass from four decades, from Eonta (1963-1964) to Linaia-Agon (1972), Khal Perr (1983) and Mnamas Xapin Witoldowi Lutosławskiemu (1994), amongst others. In addition to the recordings produced by the WDR, it al…
Inner Beauty
*150 copies limited edition* The Finnish composer, producer, and pianist Otto Taimela is ticking at 6000+ monthly listeners on Spotify with streams in the 100s of thousands. His discography covers everything from avant-garde piano to breakbeat, ambient-dub techno back to cinematic contemporary classical music, with releases on labels such as Cold Blow, Ultraääni, Cudighi Records, Reflections by Anjunadeep and Finite Source. Otto has performed in festivals such as Ilmiö and Solstice. Kimmeltie LP…
Motor Tapes
Closing the achingly long four years wait since her last full-length, the American composer/percussionist Sarah Hennies returns with “Motor Tapes”, her second release with New World Records. Comprising three astounding new pieces, made in collaboration with three acclaimed ensembles - ensemble 0, Talea Ensemble, and Ensemble Dedalus - that simultaneously encounter her moving into new uncharted territory, while remaining rooted in her singular practice, exploring musical, sociopolitical, and psyc…
Ensemble(s)
Seen from the outside, Ensemble(s) is in a sense a kind of compilation of unreleased or rare pieces covering nearly three decades. Five essential pieces that count in the evolution of the Jean-Luc Fafchamps' writing. Post-spectral works that definitively position Fafchamps as one of the important European composers. It also weaves subtle links between him and Jean-Paul Dessy and Musiques Nouvelles, once created by Henri Pousseur. This disc is undoubtedly the best introduction to his work. Perfor…
Mature Hybird Talking
On Mature Hybird Talking Frank Gratkowski, one of the world’s most advanced and original voices in the field of improvised music, teams up for the first time with one of the leading ensembles for composed contemporary music. He dedicates this 45-minute piece to James Joyce and Iannis Xenakis, who both had a major impact on him. Inspired by the rhythm and sound of Joyce's language, Gratkowski and the Ensemble Modern create a widely ramified, sensitive and incredibly vital musical organism. Energy…
Piano
Piano is an album of three pieces, 'A Luca Marenzio ll', 'Ma fin est mon commencement', and 'Gebrechlichkeit', written by Slovak composer Adrián Demoč between 2018 and 2023. 'Ma fin est mon commencement' and 'Gebrechlichkeit' were written with three performance options in mind: specific instrumentation, open instrumentation with a similar quality of timbre and register, and a "monochromatic polyphonic" instrument, preferably the piano. 'A Luca Marenzio ll' was originally written as 'A Luca Maren…