Sounded Voice, Voiced Sound
In the heart of 21st-century Japan, Yu Kuwabara emerges as a composer of remarkable versatility and resilience. Inspired by Japanese mythology, Buddhist chants, and Edo songs, Kuwabara explores the energy of the Japanese language through her compositions. Her works, such as Bai and Dharani and Toward the Brink of Water Or the Verge of Dusk, blend Western classical influences with traditional Japanese elements. Kuwabara’s research in traditional arts fuels her innovative approach, capturing the f…
Near Distant
Near Distant by Michelle Lou explores the intricate interplay of stasis, time and perception. Lou’s compositions challenge conventional interpretations, presenting music as a constantly evolving landscape. Through “static” or “stasis-variation” she reveals the complexity within seemingly unchanging sounds, inviting listeners to explore subtle transformations in pitch, timbre and dynamics. This album embodies Lou’s unique approach, emphasizing our active role in perceiving and transforming the in…
Zensolence
"Zensolence" embodies the auditory canvas of Osmo Tapio Räihälä, a synaesthetic composer who transforms the visual into the musical. For Räihälä, art forms transcend their mediums and speak a universal language through diverse expressions. His experience of colours, shapes and textures in music is reflected in this eclectic album, where the traditional meets the innovative. Räihälä draws inspiration from the abstract and translates it into a musical lexicon that is as diverse as it is distinctiv…
To Byzantium and Beyond
The album is inspired by the poetry of William Butler Yeats, in particular his work Sailing to Byzantium. The main composition, which features five recorder sizes from tenor to garklein, explores themes of time and transcendence, depicting a journey to an imaginary Byzantium where the poet is transformed into a golden bird. The four movements correspond to stanzas in Yeats’ poem, with recurring elements such as a lyrical refrain and a gyre reflecting the poet’s themes. The trajectory of the piec…
Vocal Trio
Marking its first decade of activity, Blume returns with the composer Ben Vida’s “Vocal Trio”. An intoxicatingly beautiful, groundbreaking work of compositional conceptualism - combining the ideas of systems based synthesis with real-time vocal collaboration - the album represents a striking step forward for one of the most ambitious and outstanding sonic artists working in the United States today. Mastered by Stephan Mathieu.
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…
12 Views on Life
Pianist Eunmi Ko’s latest double album, 12 Views on Life, offers a profound musical reflection on the tumultuous years of 2020 and 2021. Through two major projects, SPAM! for solo piano (and other objects she could find around her house) and Project GŪT for ensemble, Ko, alongside the Contemporary Art Music Project [CAMP], delve deep into the existential questions posed by the global pandemic and personal struggles with identity and creativity. Conceived for livestreaming from home, SPAM!, embra…
Postal Pieces
Marking its first decade of activity, Blume returns with the first ever vinyl release to attend to the seminal American composer James Tenney’s “Postal Pieces”, among the most important suites of 20th Century avant-garde composition.
…we return to ground…
Other Minds is pleased to present …we return to ground…, a new recording by Irish composer Karen Power and Quiet Music Ensemble. This double CD features three of Power’s large-scale pieces pairing natural sounds with musical instruments, written for and with Quiet Music Ensemble over an 8-year period. Beginning with instruments of ice in 2015, Power's experience of pairing natural sounds with musical instruments has evolved into a transformative body of work. Her approach to composition, creatin…
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 …
Ricercari for rainy days
Eden Lonsdale is a composer of acoustic music living and working between London and Berlin. His music focuses on exploring the various ways that movement and stasis can co- exist, as well as the inter-connectedness of harmony, timbre, melody and rhythm. Often using very limited materials, his dense and immersive sound-worlds attempt to draw the ear into the smallest details and hope to inspire the listener’s self-guided exploration into the music’s manifold layers. The three pieces from this alb…
Bodies of Water
Sarah Hennies (b. 1979, Louisville, KY) is a composer and percussionist based in upstate New York whose work is concerned with a variety of musical, sociopolitical, and psychological issues including queer & trans identity, psychoacoustics, and the social and neurological conditions underlying creative thought. She is primarily a composer of acoustic chamber music, but is also active in improvisation, film, and performance art. She is the recipient of a 2019 Foundation for Contemporary Arts Gran…
The Nordheim Tapes
*2024 stock* Arne Nordheim might not be the best known early electronic music composer, but with this fabulously presented double disc of work it should help his music achieve at least a little wider recognition. He might be best known (at least outside his native Norway) for the discs on Rune Grammofon, but here we get some of his earliest tape work from the 1960s, possibly his most interesting period, at least to me. As a die hard Radiophonic Workshop enthusiast this collection seems to come f…
Dystophilia
Dystophilia: A fascination with the rate of societal decline. An unravelling of order as it careens into a dystopian AI future where melodies pile helter-skelter over phrases, genres melt seamlessly into one another, metal textures crash into chamber-like enclaves, forms teeter on the edge of collapse, violent rhythms transform into ghostly voices, and spiralling polyphonies end in jazz riffs or pop songs.
The music of this album from MC Maguire’s apocalyptic aural imagination, is poured into tw…
Kinesis, Vol. 2
In 2021, the Galan Trio – an epic classical piano trio hailing from Athens – built a bridge from Greece to the USA in the form of ten new works for piano, violin, and cello from composers based in the Southeast and Northeast. The project, aptly named Kinesis, met with such acclaim that their odyssey now continues with another phase: twelve commissioned works covering the Midwest and South Central states. Praised by Fanfare magazine for the “open ears and flexibility they display in so many idiom…
The Night Shall Break
Violinist, Hanna Hurwitz, is a musician who champions the very latest contemporary classical works – she is a member of Chicago’s cutting-edge Grossman Ensemble and Ensemble Dal Niente after all – but she is equally at home among solo and chamber works from past eras. For this album, she goes back one hundred years into neglected jewels of the repertoire from that time, bringing her fresh perspective to current ears. She writes, “I wanted to highlight my orientation toward collaboration through …
Infinity Avenue
Robert Carl is no stranger to space. Standing on the shoulders of such visionaries as Charles Ives, Carl’s early compositions ranged far and wide through musical history, the “ultramoderns,” and beyond. Recently, however, his works have forged a new direction: a personal take on the ever-expanding spiral structures of the overtone series. Infinity Avenue offers six of these monumental sound experiences, taut in their simplicity yet expansive in consciousness. A state of being “close to nature” i…