Composition / All styles

Before the premiere of his legendary WPA political musical The Cradle Will Rock, and his opera Regina (based upon Lillian Hellman’s The Little Foxes), Marc Blitzstein (1905-1964) produced striking chamber music that deserves a wider audience. Yet these scores, by the only American to study composition with both Arnold Schoenberg and Nadia Boulanger, remain unpublished and rarely played over the past 80 years. Other Minds is pleased to introduce these forgotten treasures, an unknown aspect of Bli…

Home to earthquake swarms and volcanic eruptions, the countries of the Pacific Rim also produce some of the world’s most groundbreaking composers. San Francisco’s Del Sol String Quartet leads an inspiring seven- country tour. 20-page booklet essay by Charles Amirkhanian with photos. Works by: John Adams, Jack Body, Kui Dong, Gabriela Lena Frank, Hyo-shin Na, Peter Sculthorpe, Chinary Ung, and Zhou Long. Performed by the Del Sol String Quartet: Kate Stenberg, Rick Shinozaki, Charlton Lee, and Han…

Originally released on LP by Columbia Records in 1964, this album features some of the most outstanding soloists of the day: Charles Bressler, Phyllis Curtin, Gianna D’Angelo, Donald Gramm, and Regina Sarfaty, accompanied at the piano by the composer, Ned Rorem. The original recordings were digitized and re-mastered on a Sonic Solutions system to minimize tape hiss and other sound artifacts. The resulting clarity and brilliance far surpasses that of the original release offering a fresh look at …

The rare SPA recordings and private audio documents, 1943-1958. Composer George Antheil (1900-1959) is most remembered for his mechanistic piano music hailed by 1920s Paris, but by 1948, when he’d become the third most-played American-born composer of orchestral music, his style reflected a more emotional, more mature personality. This centennial collection highlights selections from Antheil’s later “neo-romantic” period and includes the only recordings of Antheil himself at the piano. A 60-page…

This CD marks the first time that Igor Stravinsky’s own pianola version of his famous composition Les Noces has been released commercially. In addition, Rex Lawson’s ingenious arrangements of well-known classics, including Sergei Rachmaninoff’s Rhapsody on a Theme of Paganini, Handel’s “Arrival of the Queen of Sheba” from Solomon, and the ballet Pineapple Poll by Sir Arthur Sullivan.

The Stars of Hunger, was composed in 2007. It is based on three poems by the Austrian poet Christine Lavant: “Im rueckgrat aufwaerts glimmt ein licht,” “So also geht erleuchtung vor,” “Zeig an mir die kräuter welche bestärken” and “Lösch aus mein gesicht und führe mich blind.” Rather than set the poems themselves to music, Lang used the text generation program Abulafia to produce from them a cut-up in the tradition of William S. Burroughs. The composition contains only fragments of the po…

**250 copies** SN Variations fifth release features two tracks in three parts each composed for lock grooves recorded onto acetate, percussion by Sam Wilson (Riot Ensemble / Actress) and violin performed by Aisha Orazbayeva. The tracks also feature the piano of Mark Knoop and the voice of Josephine Stephenson. A lock groove is one cycle of one groove on a record. This is 1.8 sec cut at 33rpm and 1.33 cut at 45rpm. Adrian Corker used the cutting lathe currently residing in the living room of The …

**2020 stock** I was born in Detroit (1931), studied chemistry and music at Princeton (1949–53), and after the army, pro-baseball, and working as a chemist at Cape Canaveral, I went to “Koln State” (Music School) in Germany on the GI Bill, (1959-63) and spent a lot of time watching Karlheinz Stockhausen work. I then “visited” Rome (1964–87) where Frederic Rzewski, Alvin Curran, Jon Phetteplace and I put together a group, “Musica Elettronica Viva” (MEV), to create electronic- sounding music in co…

* Edition of 300 * The Clywdian Range in North Wales is a landscape of outstanding beauty, forged as much by the forces of nature as the hands of generations who lived and worked in its valleys and peaks from times of antiquity. It is a place of Neolithic mounds, Roman hill forts and a remarkable chain of Iron Age earthworks fashioned over two thousand years ago. In this borderland, close to Offa's Dyke, the eighth century boundary between England and Wales, a musician came wandering and wonderi…

Conductor Sebastian Gottschick presents an additional selection of songs and chamber music works from composer Charles Edward Ives that reflect this broad range, 20 mostly brief and innovative works composed between 1898 and 1921, blurring the boundaries between genres through unusual motifs, themes, gestures and phrases that appear in new vocal and/or instrumental contexts.

Following on from the wonderful "Cantilena", four new chamber works by the Paris-based Italian composer Giuliano d'Angiolini. Performers include Apartment House, Manuel Zurria, Mark Knoop and the composer.

**200 copies** "This is a study version composed in the studio from a single recording of a violin glissando. It was never intended to be performed live. The final version for 7 violins was the result of this study.""A single recording of the violin glissando of Johnny Chang has been turned into a multi-track recording. Here one violin becomes sixteen. Peter Ablinger’s Augmented Study Serie is focused on 'tension between redundancy of material and complexity of experience'. Because this work is …

**600 copies** In essence, the sound of the piano comes in two parts: its attack and its decay. The striking of a hammer is followed by the resonance of a string or strings. (Much the same might be said about the vibraphone, as it happens.) This dual quality of sound comes to mind when listening to Moments by New York-based composer Michael Vincent Waller. Performed by pianist R. Andrew Lee and vibraphonist William Winant, Moments − his third album, following Trajectories (Recital, 2017) and The…

Three fascinating contemporary classical compositions from Henry Cow alumnus Tim Hodgkinson for flute, oboe, clarinet, trumpet, horn, trombone, violins, violas, cello, bass, piano, percussion, virtual strings, accordion, Siberian frame drums, gongs, viola, electronics, bowed cymbals, lap steel guitar, Yamaha DX21 and bass clarinet -- an iconoclastic hybrid of materials, real, virtual, imaginary and observed that flatter and puzzle the ear, drawing from many disciplines and taking a phenomenologi…

Regular Music were early instigators of the UK post-systems movement whose work straddles the spheres of rock, minimalism and post-punk. The band was formed in 1980 by composer / performers Helen Ottaway, Jeremy Peyton Jones and Andrew Poppy who met at Goldsmiths College in SE London where they studied music in the 1970s. Rather than wait for commissions they looked to models such as Steve Reich, Philip Glass, Gavin Bryars and Michael Nyman who formed their own ensembles to play their music.The …

By any standards and from several directions, Hotel America is demanding work. It’s a five-movement piece stretching to 76-minutes. Composer Szilárd Mezei conducts an ensemble of 15 musicians and three actor/singers and employs musical methodologies ranging from densely composed to free jazz and free improvisation. The verbal content is also challenging: the actor/singers perform lengthy poems in Hungarian, a language little-used outside Hungary and a few surrounding territories.Hotel America is…

The third chapter in the Sufi Word's series. Jean-Luc Fafchamps on the release: "The Sufi Letters is a vast project of 28 compositions (for the 28 letters of the Arabic alphabet) undertaken in 2000 and still ongoing. I am drawing inspiration from the symbolic charts found in Sufi mysticism. Each Letter is a sonic meditation on the frontiers of conscience and the paradoxes of time. Today's word, 'Du seuil' ('From the threshold'), is the third word to be released by Sub Rosa. It is a journe…

Instruments which sound like instruments!!! Unbelievable real-time compositions for the unlikely instrumentation of piano, trumpet and violin courtesy of North Of North: Anthony Pateras, Scott Tinkler and Erkki Veltheim.Drawing from improvisation, Carnatic music, 20th and 21st century compositional strategies, mathematical theories and open forms of jazz, their music is fused together by virtuosic instrumentalism, critical listening and a shared philosophy of musical and physical discipline. The…

Milestones of electroacoustic music – from Edgar Varèse’s Poème électronique (1958) to Brian Ferneyhough’s Mnemosyne (1986) – are investigated from a music-historical perspective and presented in a contemporary 5.1 surround edition.The selection of works on this double CD mirrors the development of electroacoustic music over a period of 30 years, from the early analogue studios to the shift to digital technology in the 1980s. It includes electronic compositions and works for instruments and e…

Andrzej Chłopecki, the late critic and animator of the music scene, wrote extensively about Szymański's music as well as supporting the composer by means of his longtime role with the Warsaw Autumn festival. Chłopecki puts things thus: "the formal structure is beautiful while stylistic expression is calculated: for Szymański's music is a continual game." He then offers precedents in Johannes Ockeghem and Anton Webern, deducing that Szymański's "guiding principles would be speculation and con…

"My second complete Sufi word -- or cycle -- consists of five contrasting letters -- or movements -- calling for various combinations of soloists [2, 3, 4, 5], instrumental ensemble [1, 3, 5], and real-time electronics [2, 4, 5]. It confidently extends a global poetic design made of a quest for meaning, a taste for extraordinary adventures, an interest in the perfume of mystical ecstasy, and the pleasure of carefully sculpting the time and shapes that make up writing." Jean-Luc Fafchamps i…

The music of Xela is not easily described. The alias of Type Records main-man John Twells, he has over the last decade moved through a dense fog of musical styles from abstract electronics to rusty soundscapes. In recent years his output has allied itself with darker realms, taking a liberal dose of influence from Norway's darker exponents, but retaining a deep and measured experimental focus. "The Illuminated" was originally released on cassette, a format very fitting to the gloomy, waterlogged…

This amazing CD contains some of the great works for solo percussion by the authorities in the field of contemporary music. The performances and recording quality are both superb! Clearly all care and effort went into the recording and text however, the dual layered dvd /cd is in PAL format, and will require said player or a media transfer to see the studio footage and interview with Xenikas. Considering we spend much time searching for the "right music" to add to our collection, this disc…

Hard-to find self-published monograph and comprehensive catalog of works by the radical German avant-garde composer. With inserts.

Two duos with piano by composer Eric Wubbels: Field of Action, made with Charmaine Lee on voice, microphones and electronics, and contraposition for trombonist Weston Olencki and prepared piano.

Four pieces for solo (cello), duo (violin and piano) and ensemble spanning from 1945 to 1964 released on Italia in 1977.

Three 1979 compositions respectively for string quartet, chorus and cello solo, released on Wergo in 1979.

The epochal 1912 melodrama plus five other compositions performed by the London Sinfonietta conducted by David Atherton and released on Decca's Ace Of Diamonds in 1977.

Three compositions by the father of the Second Viennese School performed by the Ensemble Intercontemporain conducted by Pierre Boulez, Jessye Norman and John Shirley-Quirk, released by CBS Masterworks in 1982. With insert.

Four post-serialistic "sound compositions" with elements of traditional Korean music from the 1960's, respectively for chamber ensemble, piano and violin, orchestra and solo organ, released on Wergo's great "Studio Reihe Neuer Musik" experimental music series in the 70's. With insert.

Two works by Luc Ferrari: Chansons pour le corps, for voice and ensemble, built on interviews with women, and the symphonic tale Et si tout entière maintenant for actress, tapes and orchestra. First release in Mode's Ferrari series.

Vincent Royer plays viola with tape and electronics in three Ferrari-related works: Luc Ferrari's Ephémère (1974) in a 2012 version by Brunhild Ferrari, her Le piano englouti, and Royer's improvisation on Ferrari's Ce qu'a vu le Cers.

1998 release ** Music for recorder by Paul Hindemith, Harald Genzmer, Francis Poulenc, George Auric, Jacques Ibert, Walter Leigh, Gail Kubik, Ulrich Staeps, Benjamin Britten, Hans Poser, Ervin Henning, Konrad Boehmer, Marjo Tal. "In thinking of the recorder, one normally sets his or her sights upon the many composed musical works from the 16th and 17th centuries, when the instrument was accorded the status of an official court instrument, as well as being the choice for regional folk and ceremon…

Rough Magic features premiere recordings of four works created for and (significantly) with the group, is an explosive departure from their previous recordings, leading listeners through the beauty and struggle of language while showcasing, once again, the band’s unwavering commitment to pushing the boundaries of vocal music. From high-gloss, 80s-style synth-charged passages to early Steve Reich tape-piece-type sounds, Rough Magic articulates a grand experience of language, its limits, and its r…

Griffin works in Toronto on rational intonation and on process as a way of making form. One critic described the result as putting the listener in a kind of sonic microgravity, which is a fair account of what happens when the tuning stops beating.

Trio improvisations with Sophie Agnel - piano, Bertrand Gauguet - alto & soprano saxophones and Andrea Neumann - piano frame, electronic devices

*200 copies limited edition* A half-voiced sieve whose method is the title (Je me souviens de do dièse majeur dans un prélude en do majeur de Jean-Sébastien Bach), an impressionist loop that becomes a groovy construction (À mesure et au fur), a repetitive mechanic that fuses (Solar loops), rocket scales that color each other (La gamme qui teinte), an ecstatic, pulsating teenage cantabile (Morning song of the jungle sun), a harmonic march that traverses the keyboard, out of phase with itself (Les…

Neha is an album by Adrián Demoč featuring the Slovak Radio Symphony Orchestra and Ostrava New Orchestra. Each work extends beyond twenty-five minutes, exploring soft layers of orchestral sound, calmly repeating motifs, and silences that articulate the music’s emotional contour. The pieces are defined by their meditative atmosphere and gradual, unforced transformations.

Portrait of harpist-composer Anne LeBaron: two solo pieces for prepared and electric harp, excerpts from her blues-opera The E&O Line to a libretto by Thulani Davis, and two chamber works, one conducted by Leon Fleisher.

Robert Carl (b 1954) has long been interested in Japanese music and culture, and in the spring of 2007 he received a grant from the Asian Cultural Council to travel to Japan to interview Japanese composers between the ages of thirty and sixty—his contemporaries, whom he describes as the “post-Takemitsu” generation. The complex interplay of history, culture, and memory has long occupied Carl’s thoughts, and forms the basis of his musical exploration of Japan. Carl’s perspective of the relationshi…