Chroma
1991 release ** This disc features a colourful array of contemporary works by international and Canadian composers. From the reflective and lyrical Little Venice to the dazzling, virtuosic percussion piece She Who Sleeps with a Small Blanket, Toronto’s premier contemporary chamber ensemble, Arraymusic, provides the listener with a five course meal for the ears. Linda C. Smith Little Venice, Steve Reich New York Counterpoint, José Evangelista Merapi, Rodney Sharman Dark Glasses, Kevin Volans She …
Chanson
2019 release ** "Rippling piano lines fill the air, once again rethinking the possibly of what contemporary Italian music is and was."
Michael Pisaro-Liu - Tombstones II
After a first album made up of 11 pieces from Tombstones by Michael Pisaro-Liu — works with delicate tones and dusty melodies that wrap us in an intimate atmosphere — the musicians of the Muzzix collective, brought together under the direction of Barbara Dang, present this second recording, which completes the entire collection. This new opus continues the sonic exploration: timbres become more diverse, textures thicken, and silence — in its rawest materiality or its faintest breaths — becomes a…
Passages... À Travers Le Temps
Huge tip! *Hardboard linen LP box including + 8 page booklet in silkscreen printed hardboard linen box + dl code.* Metaphon label unveils a landmark reissue of Passages / À Travers Le Temps, showcasing Romanian spectral music visionary Octavian Nemescu at his most radically inventive. These two seminal works from 1981-1983 represent the composer's profound engagement with temporal perception and sonic cosmology, now available in their first complete authorized edition.
In Passages (1981), Nemesc…
Piriforms
*150 copies limited edition* A beautiful edition of only 150 glass mastered CDs in a clear poly sleeve with hand stamped cover and a 22 page full color booklet featuring photos, drawings, and text by Laura Steenberge, with additional text by Michael Winter, Rebecca Lane, and Catherine Lamb.
"In medieval chant, music seems to have come from elsewhere. It is the angels that are singing, they said, like gourds hung up for purple martins. By the time notation started coming around, hundreds of …
Chamber Works 1943-1951
"There is something quite ephemeral and special about the prepared piano – it’s mostly to do with how every instrument responds differently to these treatments but also that it’s not very exact, even if, in the case of Cage, is quite precise. His instructions seem quite prescriptive: although, unless you know actually piano model he was using and the objects he was talking about, you’re always making adjustments. The preparing is just like other notation – there is quite a bit of interpretation …
Mine but for its sublimation
A 64-minute piano solo composed in 2021, performed by Jack Yarbrough. "'Mine but for its sublimation' is about resonance, register, and touch. It is about where we lead ourselves when we trust ourselves. It is experiencing trust as a chain of clearings, a sequence of becomings, openings, centerings. It is about letting go; othering; finding presence through evaporation. Obliteration." - Timothy McCormack
Homestead
"The idea for Homestead came in 2023 during my time as Artist in Residence at Homestead National Historical Park in Beatrice, Nebraska, in whose archives I found the materials referenced in the titles of the movements, as well as the images on this album. As a fifth-generation Nebraskan, growing up on the native lands of the Chatiks si chatiks people (Pawnee), this project is a part of my process of learning, listening, and developing a relationship with the land and its stewards in my home stat…
Listening Time
A 45-minute piece from 2024 composed by Ferdinand Schwarz in collaboration with AREPO ensemble.
Dust Book
A 50 minute solo for viola d'amore played by Marco Fusi. The piece was composed in 2022-2023, and has six movements.
Very Slow Disco Suite
2007 release ** "In Very Slow Disco Suite (2006), De Bièvre slows down a disco song from 120 bpm to 20 bpm. Against this languid harmonic background, three musicians play material that is dictated at random by a microcontroller. In this way, De Bièvre tried to guarantee the spontaneity of the performance."
Degrees Of Iconicity
2000 release (visible storage wear) ** "These ten singular compositions by Gregorio share one thing in common: a rare ability to express astonishing collages of sound, interspersed with outstanding individual improvisation, resulting in surprisingly accessible sounds that baffle as they fully absorb the listener. In an incisive essay the composer cites varieties of constructivism and concrete art as influences and wisely eschews the self-expression of so much of free improvisation in favor of ".…
On Thin Ice / Sub Music And Song For Solo Flute / Obomobile / Triptych, For Brass Trio / Sensazione II / Refractions / Moreso
1995 release (visible storage wear) **
Bending The Tonic (Twice)
2005 release ** "Bending the Tonic (2004), a work for ensemble that November Music commissioned De Bièvre to compose. In this work, a computer records all the audio signals of the musicians (except for those of the contrabass and percussion) and plays these signals back according to a fixed temporal system. The harmonic basis is formed by a stereotypical blues progression, that De Bièvre stretches over 144 measures. The title refers to the importance of the tonic in blues music."
In Resonance With Elsewhere
"Composer-performer & visual artist Charlotte Hug: Shaman of contemporary music. Reflections on her solo-album «In Resonance with Elsewhere». This fourth solo album by Charlotte Hug presents the distilled version of a composition commissioned by the Ruhrtriennale in 2022. On that occasion, Hug performed in a huge former machine hall and created various acoustic-imaginary spaces with Son-Icons (expansive Visual-Music on semi-transparent paper, usually painted on both sides with both hands and lon…
Zahra Fugues
2009 release ** "Part two of the epic, numerology-inspired Tetralogy series, Zahra Fugues is Frank Rothkamm's first all-acoustic release since his Chamber Ensemble, which dates back to 1984. These 26 individual pieces, all in the fugue form, are the results of the composer's experiments with the Steinway Model M grand piano that resides in Zahra's apartment in Manhattan. Rothkamm demonstrates that he knows his way around a piano, crafting his counterpoint-fuelled missives as effortlessly as most…
Piano
1994 release ** "Ivo Janssen recorded these works more than 30 years ago. The album presents music by Dutch composers written between 1964 and 1991. Janssen plays these pieces with great authority. "Men Go Their Ways", by Ton de Leeuw,consists of 5 movements and is inspired by a Haiku poem. It is dedicated to Xenakis. I think the piece would be best heard in a resonant, small concert hall in which the delicate reverberated effects could come alive more effectively than over speakers. The movemen…
Musica Per Percussione
2008 release ** "Among contemporary composers I may be the one who is most determined to conserve links with the past generation whilst still being set upon the constant acquisitions of the new. Tradition, modernity, respect for formal classical values, the search for new sounds: these are constants in my idiom which strives to maintain a balance between the different factors. Some critics have seen in my works a stylistic coherency that is remarkable in the context of contemporary music, charac…
Musica Da Camera
2019 release ** "Among contemporary composers I may be the one who is most determined to conserve links with the past generation whilst still being set upon the constant acquisitions of the new. Tradition, modernity, respect for formal classical values, the search for new sounds: these are constants in my idiom which strives to maintain a balance between the different factors. Some critics have seen in my works a stylistic coherency that is remarkable in the context of contemporary music, charac…
Musica Per Chitarra, Pianoforte E Orchestra
2019 release ** "Among contemporary composers I may be the one who is most determined to conserve links with the past generation whilst still being set upon the constant acquisitions of the new. Tradition, modernity, respect for formal classical values, the search for new sounds: these are constants in my idiom which strives to maintain a balance between the different factors. Some critics have seen in my works a stylistic coherency that is remarkable in the context of contemporary music, charac…