Chaz Underriner Reinterprets Anastassis Philippakopoulos
2015 release **
"The pieces by Anastassis Philippakopoulos that guitarist Chaz Underriner "reinterprets" here were written for instruments other than his own: flute (Song 6, which Wandelweiser Editions published earlier under the composer's name on Songs And Piano Pieces), string section (Song 8, which Underriner performs with three other guitarists: Armin Abdihodzic, Greg Dixon, and Robert Trusko), and bass clarinet (Song 9). Three songs that follow one another discreetly, moving slightly unde…
A Hint Of An Emotion
2017 release **
"The duo of Beat Keller and Philipp Bowee on electric guitars perform 6 subtle compositions from Turkish-born sound artists and composer Cem Guney's, including 'a bas relief of a talisman' dedicated to Charles Ives and 'soft kill incubator' dedicated to Sylvia Alexandra Schimag."
Harmony
With Harmony, Berlin-based Canadian composer Marc Sabat presents three substantial pieces for strings, performed by Jack Quartet - Ari Streisfeld and Christopher Otto (violins), John Pickford Richards (viola), and Kevin McFarland (cello) - with appearances by Christopher Otto (violin) and Kevin McFarland (cello) in a duo. Sabat’s oeuvre stands at the forefront of contemporary explorations of pitch and tuning, weaving rigorous systems of just intonation into scores that privilege sensitivity, lyr…
During a Lifetime
During a Lifetime stands as a portrait of Toronto-born, Berlin-based composer Chiyoko Szlavnics, commissioning three major pieces: “During a Lifetime” (2015), “Freehand Poitras” (2008), and “Reservoir” (2006). Szlavnics’s music is marked by tender asceticism and an immersive approach to process - her scores privilege long sustained notes, slow pitch glissandi, and luminous combinations of sinewaves with wind and string ensembles.
The title piece features Konus Quartett (four saxophones) entwined…
Les Espaces Électroacoustiques
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…
Explosion Of A Memory (A Literary Canvas For Orchestra)
An extended iterative, cycling, dissipating cloud of fragments, constantly shifting focus, which throws up detail, evolves, returns, settles and re-dissolves; it's a four-dimensional explosion in which stretches of baroque, folk themes and Byzantine liturgy exist contemporaneously alongside modern and (arguably) post-modern materials and techniques, all shaken loose out of the same experiential block, much as strata emerge as tectonic plates fold one time over another. Long, beautiful, to…
Gaps, Absences
A beautifully recorded and produced cycle of pieces that combine complexity and precision with rich and unfamiliar timbres. The ensemble pieces amplify and enrich a core piano with various combinations of harmonium, double bass, violin, percussion, Hungarian zither, citara bassa, bowed cymbals, alto clarinet, melodica, sampler and field recordings, all sparsely but powerfully deployed. This is a deep and powerful music with both crystalline clarity and cinematic low frequency power. And no fat o…
Solo ensemble
2016 release **
When I was small, my grandparents had an old upright piano in the living room of their terraced house. I never learned how to play the piano ‘properly’, but I remember spending hours sat at that instrument, stomping on the extreme upper and lower notes, always with the sustain pedal held down, marvelling at the sounds it produced. The “solo” disc of Johan Lindvall’s double album “solo/ensemble” reminds me very much of being at that piano, though the composer’s 24 short, sparse pr…
Funnel to a Thread
Since the late 1970s Biota has ploughed its own furrow, producing a body of work that resembles nothing anyone else has done or is yet doing. Their compositions evolve in long, constantly shifting timbral blocks filled with fragments and echoes of quasi-familiar musical languages and sounds – or none - and use instrumental resources that span half a millennium and two thirds of the planet to create unique combinations of timbral colour in constant motion; this is a music in which everything is i…
Sale Quanto Basta
Paolo Angeli’s latest is an extraordinary collection of pieces that explore the full range of his highly modified, extended and prepared Sardinian guitar; and although it’s just him and electricity, it seldom sounds like fewer than 3 people. Great compositions, each like a short novel, beautifully recorded. Paolo’s unique music defies genre or category - at once accessible, experimental, tuneful, tactile, ambient, with a folk root and a rock inflection and a contemporary outlook. And his instrum…
Propaganda
Written for theatre in 1987 using a host of avian and mammalian voices, snippets of unidentified musical material and electroacoustic noise- sculpting, as well as invented and real instruments played by Fred Frith. This was a hard time and the mood is intense, lean and not cheerful, though there are some gruesomely cheery inserts. There's no fat but a lot of meat here.
Dissociative Counterpoint Disorder
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…
Umbrae
2016 release ** The four works on this CD, ranging in date from 2004 to 2014, form an integral part of Andrzej Kwiecinski’s creative development and at the same time demonstrate his particular affinity with music for strings. Umbrae (2004) for string quintet. Mural (2008-10) for string quintet. Luci nella noote V (2014) for four string quartet. Contregambilles (2014) for string quartet. After studying composition, musicology and Baroque singing (countertenor) in Warsaw, Kwiecinski moved in 2005 …
Dirt Road
Dirt Road stands as a milestone in Linda Catlin Smith's catalogue - a single work expanding over an hour, composed in 2005 and commissioned for dance. Performed by Mira Benjamin (violin) and Simon Limbrick (percussion), the piece moves through fifteen loosely connected movements, each open to interpretation and marked by Smith’s trademark transparency. The violin floats above sparse percussion gestures - wood, metal, vibraphone, and bowls - sometimes in suspended dialogue, sometimes drifting acr…
Ordinary Objects and Other Distractions
In this episode, a number of short recordings of household objects and curious instruments become the core thematic material for a range of exquisitely conceived and realised pieces in which the recordings are shaped, stretched, tuned, combined and otherwise manipulated before being folded into a variety of musical structures with additional elements or parts added. Much use is made of rhythms derived from gravity – that is, dropping and bouncing - embedded into microtonal, poly-rhythmic and dee…
Crash
Crash was Robert Ashley's last opera. It premiered at the Whitney Biennial weeks after his death in 2014, and presented again in 2015 at Roulette, where this recording was made. Featuring the original cast: Gelsey Bell, Amirtha Kidambi, Brian McCorkle, Paul Pinto, Dave Ruder, and Aliza Simons. Music Director: Tom Hamilton. "What I have appreciated most about previous reconceptions of Ashley's operas was the extent to which newcomers found fresh possibilities. Already in Crash, broadened horizons…
dialogues with environments
2013 releae **
"Three works for solo piano in a kind of homage to Cage's "4'33"", insofar as the room in which the recordings took place is accorded coequal prominence, at least as the stated intention of Lee. So one hears various rustles, coughs and whatnot while the beginning of the last track, "Piano Solo No. 5" (2011) sounds as though recorded in close proximity to a number of aging fluorescent bulbs. More to the point, the piano sound is noticeably different in the three spaces. The music i…
Vokal / Instrumental
2013 release **
"Sometimes, music reaches my desk which I genuinely feel is beyond my ken to write about--I simply don't have the necessary tools. This wonderful disc, in large part, is one such so I'll pretty much stick to just giving my impressions and make no real attempt to put the music into context. I do feel confident in saying that, though I haven't heard everything released from Wandelweiser, the music herein will pretty definitely not coincide with your impression of the label, and I …
11 Microexercises
2013 release **
"11 Micro-Exercises were invented by Christian Wolff in response to a commission from the Miniaturist Ensemble. For Wandelweiser Editions, other miniaturists perform these eleven pieces (plus two bonus pieces): Beat Keller and Reza Khot. Keller and Khot are two electric guitarists who pierce the ivory (sometimes tear it) and respect the principle of a musical art free from preconceptions. Nine seconds, twenty-two, one minute and thirteen, or eleven minutes and forty-seven… The le…
drei, 1-21
2013 release **
From the early 2000s, Stefan Thut began a series of scores named according to the number of performers, somewhat like Cage's later works. Ranging from one performer to seven, including the more indeterminate "some" and "many," each score is very open, completely undefined, with a few written indications (limited mainly to volume restrictions), plus a kind of guiding thread to follow (composed of letters, lines, etc.) during the performance, without any indication of duration, for…