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Compositional /

Flax
'Flax' is a 79-minute solo work for piano by the Canadian composer Martin Arnold. It was commissioned in 2020 by the pianist Philip Thomas, but sadly Philip became seriously unwell shortly afterwards. Martin Arnold completed the composition in 2021, and - as Philip was now unable to perform it - the project was taken on by Kerry Yong, with Philip's agreement and support. 'Flax' was premiered by Kerry Yong at the Huddersfield Contemporary Music Festival in November 2023, when the CD recording was…
Hereafter
Sofa is proud to mark its 100th release with the stunningly beautiful double album Hereafter, a new major work from guitarist/composer Kim Myhr, written for the 15-piece Stavanger-based ensemble Kitchen Orchestra. “Hereafter can be seen as a meditation on mortality and transience”, Myhr explains. “It was written at a time where the prime minister of Norway told the country’s population that ‘you have to be prepared to lose someone dear to you’. It was like taken out of Tarkovsky’s “Sacrifice”. T…
Four Fantasies For Synclavier
*2024 stock* In this 1982 Folkways release, Jon Appleton plays four compositions written for the Synclavier, a digital synthesizer he helped to develop in the late 1970s. “The Sweet Dreams of Miss Pamela Beach” was recorded in a studio using a 24-track recorder to “layer” portions of the music. The remaining three pieces were performed live with “some small sections and accompaniments contained in the digital memory of the instrument at the time of performance.” Liner notes contain brief descrip…
Extended Piano
*2024 stock* Elliott Schwartz plays four of his compositions for solo piano and pre-recorded tape, a project that remains "a continuing attempt to enhance, expand, obscure, develop or otherwise modify the piano sonority and the act of piano performance, through electronics." In his improvisatory piece "Grand Concerto" he uses fragments from the Grieg, Tchaikovsky No. 1 and Liszt No. 1 piano concertos; it is as epic in scope as the classical favorites.
Computer Music From The Outside In
*2024 stock* A 1983 Folkways release, Computer Music from the Outside In showcases three composers narrating the ideas and processes behind their computer music compositions, as well as the compositions themselves. The first two pieces are by Barton McLean: “Etunytude” is an etude-like piece made of gradually changing harmonic sounds, and “The Last Ten Minutes” is meant to be an abstract representation of the devastation of “the last nuclear holocaust.” “The Whistling Wind,” by Karl Korte, is ba…
Computer Music
*2024 stock* Computer Music serves as the official musical documentation of the November 1981 International Computer Music Conference, held at North Texas State University in Denton, Texas. The album features five compositions with music that ranges from electronic sounds to female vocals, flute and horns, stringed instruments, and percussion. The composers include Larry Austin, whose early works were recorded with the help of Leonard Bernstein; Bruce Pennycook, who now teaches music at the Butl…
A Different View
*2024 stock* Contrabass (double bass) solo virtuoso Bertram Turetzky performs seven solos on the contrabass in this 1981 release. Using bow, plucking strings, tapping on the instrument’s wood body, and employing a little audio technology, Turetzky demonstrates the full range of musical sounds that can be produced on the contrabass. His repertoire on this recording includes a piece dedicated to him (“The Last Contrabass in Las Vegas”), two of his own compositions, and the Lennon-McCartney ballad …
Girl
"a glorious, shifting collage of sound" -BBC Music Magazine
Sveglia
In May 2022, at the age of 88, Christian Wolff performed once again at AngelicA, nine years after the monographic concerts the festival had dedicated to him in 2013 (documented on the cd album Angelica Music, IDA 030). Among the greatest and most singular living composers (in 1950, at a very young age, he was already a member of the legendary New York School along with Morton Feldman, Earle Brown and John Cage), for the opening of the thirty-second edition of the festival he presented a world-ex…
Chorus at The Corner - A Joyfull Noise
Born in 1933, with a career spanning over 65 years, the American composer Philip Corner has explored the most diverse artistic and musical expressions: as a pianist and trombonist, he performed historic and contemporary authors such as Ives, Cage, Cacioppo, Hellerman (in 1963 he also took part in the first integral performance of Vexations by Satie curated by Cage in New York). As a composer and performer, he was a member of Fluxus (defining with his Piano Activities the most iconic performance …
Himorogi
Himorogi is the tenth album by Ironomi. Divining Japanese mythology and its relationship with nature, the new album is an aural pastorale that fosters deeper territory in the realm of spiritual searching through dreamy, drifting piano, 17-string koto (jūshichi-gensō) and new form electronic processing. ironomi’s desire to commune with mother Earth and its season’s colors has always served as a continual inspiration for their music. In himorogi, the duo delves into a more spiritual focus in their…
Infinita Domenica
Tip! For José Manuel López López it is essential to approach the works on this album with an open mind and to explore other forms of instrumental expressivity and sonic emotionality. He draws significant conclusions from these seemingly fragile figures, gestures and minimal elements, which evolve and multiply to achieve a great expressive and formal perspective. All this affirms a hallmark that reveals a great continuity and coherence among the works included on this album.
Un anno, a partire da lunedì. Dopo Silenzio (Book)
*Italian language edition* "I guess as contemporary music continues to change in the way I am changing it, what is to be done is to completely liberate sounds more and more from abstract ideas about them and let them with increasing exactitude be themselves physically, and that's it." - John Cage Considered the creator of experimentalism in the 1950s, John Cage was a major inspiration to conceptual artists in the 1960s, and his music was instrumental in the emergence of minimalism in the 1970s a…
Nothing Personal
*Limited edition numbered in metal box* Georg Graewe piano solo ultimate collection. cd 1 recorded in Köln, Loft 2012 (1) and 2014 and 2017 (2-11)cd 2 recorded in Köln, Loft 2018 and 2019 (12-22)cd 3 recorded in Nickelsdorf, Konfrontationen 2016 (23-27);and in Vienna, RKH 2018 (28-35)
Paesaggi con macerie
“Not all artists manifest social and political ideals. This is a contradictory fact in itself, since they are committed to improving society,” says Salvatore Sciarrino in his album Paesaggi con macerie, which presents four remarkable recordings for ensemble or voice and ensemble, written between 1986 and 2022 and performed by mezzo soprano Monica Bacelli and Icarus vs Muzak conducted by Marco Angius.
musique noire
Julia Purgina’s works tell musical stories. Abstract stories, which usually initiate her working process. It is her goal “to write works that are clearly located in the present through their musical language and by speaking of the present, but which both touch people in their innermost being and force them to reflect. In a way that would be ultimately timeless,” said the composer in an interview for the Ludwigsburger Kreiszeitung. Through the musical description of mysterious characters, clouds …
Lauschgut. Works for (Inside) Piano (1989–2022)
“In art, you can have a look at the world as the world wouldn’t see itself. I find that incredibly exciting,” says Charlotte Seither, presenting ten outstanding works for piano written between 1989 and 2022 – over a period of 33 years. All of these works on make use of playing techniques in which the grand piano is not structurally altered. The sounds are therefore only created in the act of playing and make the individual work a risky event. Some pieces were created in closer succession to each…
Born In Waves
“Born in Waves is Estonian composer Elis Hallik’s first album, a gateway into the sounds and thoughts of an original artist. The album mainly features chamber compositions that represent important ideas from her oeuvre over the past decade. A versatile soundscape unravels before the listener through nine pieces, shaped by composition studies in Estonia and France, and in particular by her contact with the expressive means of spectral and electronic music. At the heart of her musical thought are …
Works for Amplified Piano(s)
With this album, Yoshiko Shimizu presents a second outstanding recording of works for amplified piano(s) by American composer George Crumb, being the only pianist who has created ‘solo’ realizations of his compositions Celestial Mechanics (Makrokosmos IV), Zeitgeist and Otherworldly Resonances. George Crumb praised her superb 2018 Kairos release (0015029KAI), declaring, “I consider her to be one of my very finest interpreters. Bravissima!”
Propagation of Uncertainty
"Olivier Messiaen once said that all you need to make music is a note and silence. For the composer Arash Yazdani, born in 1985 and raised in Isfahan, Iran (and now based in Tallinn, Estonia), a slightly adapted adage applies: All you need to make music is two frequencies – though Yazdani has a clear preference for notes extremely close in pitch. His music is full of tightly coiled beatings, both stationary and set in motion. These beatings function like black holes in his works, drawing other s…
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