Composition / All styles

“Give me some music!” These words from Shakespeare’s Antony and Cleopatra, which open Cleopatra’s Songs, seem particularly well chosen to characterize Agata Zubel’s relationship to music. Music: a vital need, a thirst, but also something that you give. This portrait album with three major works, performed by leading ensembles, including the Klangforum Wien and Ensemble intercontemporain, follows her receipt of the Erste Bank Kompositionspreis in 2018.

Kontakt Audio and Infinite Fog Productions proudly present the 25-th anniversary reissue of the one of most unique albums on avantgarde/neoclassic music - Ihor Tsymbrovsky - Come, Angel.

Jeux d’eau by Copenhagen Clarinet Choir and Anders Lauge Meldgaard is an electro-acoustic meditation inspired by the fountains of Villa d’Este. Blending clarinet resonance with the fluid timbres of the New Ondomo, the work reveals a continuous dialogue between water, sound, and human presence—where improvisation and structure merge like converging streams.

Timothy Archambault’s unaccompanied flute pieces for this album have been inspired by Indigenous brontomancy (divination by thunder). Each piece highlights a different extended flute technique metaphorically related to types of thunder sounds: claps, peals, rolls, rumbles, inversions, and CG (cloud-to-ground). The Indigenous flute used in this recording is made of cedar respective to the traditional woods used by the Kichesipirini and other tribes who live along the Ottawa & Saint Lawrence River…

*2025 stock* Renowned percussionist Shiniti Uéno unveil this latest recording project: Music for Percussion Ensemble by Japanese Composers. This remarkable album offers a profound exploration of Japan’s contemporary music landscape, highlighting the diversity, refinement, and innovation that can be found in its modern percussion repertoire.   The recording showcases six visionary composers whose works have shaped and expanded the language of percussion music in Japan: Joji Yuasa, Akio Yasuraoka,…

*2025 stock* A new recording brings together the refined artistry of Japanese composer Jo Kondo, the visionary musicians of Ensemble Nomad, and the distinct pianism of Satoko Inoue in a captivating exploration of sound, texture, and form. Orient Orientation offers a rare and illuminating entry into Kondo’s world, where silence, resonance, and subtle contrasts guide the listener through an intimate sonic landscape.   The album presents works that showcase Kondo’s unique compositional language—mar…

Live recording from the “Yuji Takahashi Piano Recital: Bach and Cage” held at Kanagawa Prefectural Music Hall on 30 May 1974. Originally released on LP in 1977, this work is now reissued on CD and for download. The Cage works include: Cheap Imitation, employing chance operations; Metamorphoses, an early work utilising serial manipulation; and The Seasons, ballet music choreographed by Merce Cunningham expressing India's traditional seasonal perspective. In Bach's Toccata No. 2 in C minor, two di…

*2024 stock. Deluxe packaging*  "This CD features some great performances by Pärt specialists of a variety of shorter works. The clamorous Arbos for brass makes a startling opening for those who expect abstracted reverence; the lament, An den Wassern, has a startling ending that builds in intensity and volume only to break off mid-phrase. The static Pari Intervallo for organ leads into De Profundis, with its sense of slow but unstoppable movement (every note the same length, every measure the sa…

2010 release **  ZeitLet is a variable organism with multiple line ups, ranging from small ensembles to the full ten element electric chamber group. The band started as a mixed ensemble with a composer/electronic musician, an electric guitarist and a bass player meeting a flute player, a violinist and a cello player in February 2005. between 2006 and 2007 the project grew bigger, and more articulated. The presence of musicians coming from different backgrounds meant starting a dialogue between t…

*200 copies limited edition* Undertones is a composition for percussion idiophones, electronics, and variable field recordings, originally composed for four channels. It develops in four movements and is expressed through a graphic score which provides multiple instructions to the musicians and, simultaneously, requires their input and interpretation of the given instructions, including a particular part of the instrumentation. The field recordings, identified as variable, change with each perfo…

With this album, Heleen Van Haegenborgh returns to her roots as a pianist. In recent years, she has primarily composed works on commission for a diverse range of ensembles, from recorders to foghorns. On this solo album, her entire journey of musical encounters and compositions comes together subtly.Van Haegenborgh doesn't think in terms of stories or boxes, but rather in colours, energy, and texture - without drifting into the abstract. She remains true to her personal inside piano world, inclu…

*300 copies limited edition* Valby Vokalgruppe returns with Solids for Voices — a new album landing on 7th November 2025 via Hands in the Dark. Initiated in 2008 by Anja Jacobsen, the Danish collective’s current line-cup is completed by Lil Lacy, Sonja LaBianca, Cæcilie Trier and Laura Marie Madsen. The group has written and performed a large number of cross-aesthetic pieces over the years, including an album Bah New Era released in 2012 on Eget Værelse. Sharpened to its core, the group dives de…

From the always remarkable hands of Blank Forms come two new stunning LPs from the Stockholm based composer Ellen Arkbro: “Nightclouds”, comprising five minimalist improvisations for solo organ, and “How do I know if my cat likes me?”, made within a trio comprising Hanne Lippard and Hampus Lindwall, interweaving wry conceptualism and topical humor with poetics, voice, texture, and tone. Each absolutely brilliant and distinct, they stand as some of the most exciting works we've encountered from A…

Aeris is the ninth ECM New Series album to feature the vibrant and highly expressive music of Erkki-Sven Tüür. Olari Elts, a long-time champion of Tüür’s compositions, conducts the Estonian National Symphony Orchestra in compelling, intensely-focused performances of Phantasma, De Profundis and Tüür’s tenth symphony ÆRIS, a vast drama of shifting energies and interactions, which is scored for horn quartet and orchestra. The symphony is in four movements that transition seamlessly. Tüür: “Each mov…

The influence of Alvin Lucier’s work on acoustic phenomena and the interplay between sound and space is difficult to overstate. His legacy continues to echo through the work of countless composers and sound artists today. Lucier’s  music is marked by a sense of childlike wonder and sonic simplicity - shifting our perception from what we hear to how we listen.At the heart of his compositions lies the sine wave: the purest, most elemental form of sound. Clarinetist Dries Tack pays tribute to this …

Three world premiere recordings by Carol Robinson that pair a live soloist (basset horn, double bass, electric guitar) with computer music, each inspired by weather: a winter thaw, a green sky over South Dakota and a hurricane.

The pieces brought together here were assembled as the fruit of collaboration undertaken by Falzone and Evans-Weiler. Instrumentation is the strongly unifying element. The reed organ, once ubiquitous in the private music setting of the home as well as a default practice instrument for organists, is now regarded as something of a relic of the past. However, the instrument continues to afford certain distinct advantages, particularly with regard to dynamic variation by virtue of the player’s direc…

Piano is an album of three pieces, 'A Luca Marenzio ll', 'Ma fin est mon commencement', and 'Gebrechlichkeit', written by Slovak composer Adrián Demoč between 2018 and 2023. 'Ma fin est mon commencement' and 'Gebrechlichkeit' were written with three performance options in mind: specific instrumentation, open instrumentation with a similar quality of timbre and register, and a "monochromatic polyphonic" instrument, preferably the piano. 'A Luca Marenzio ll' was originally written as 'A Luca Maren…

Jürg Frey’s unique compositional approach places him at the cutting edge of contemporary classical music while simultaneously maintaining a touch of impressionistic/romantic aesthetics in its roots. Since the late 90's, Frey started to work with 'lists' as a basis of his compositions, sometimes words, sometimes chords, from which he developed and organized the musical materials. In recent years, Frey's focus on 'lists' has extended more toward the connections of items with each other, forming me…

This is French composer/pianist Melaine Dalibert’s fifth solo album since 2015, all featuring his own compositions. This time, the album consists of melodically structured song pieces, an area that Dalibert has been exploring in the last couple of years as a new compositional approach outside his signature algorithmic method of composition. This series of eight short pieces appeal in a new way from his previous music, and shows his maturity as a composer. Dalibert wrote all eight pieces in 2019 …

2007 release ** calme, silence, solitude for piccolo solo, quelques riens for mauritius flute and moments musicaux for bass flute constitute a trilogy, composed by eva-maria houben for flutist anne horstmann.they may also be performed individually.the mauritius flute is a traverse flute made of speckled bamboo.its seven holes are burned into the wood.the scores of this trilogy contain the note: "hector berlioz abgehört" ("upon listening to hector berlioz").the titles allude to  french composer h…

2007 release ** voiceswhat is music made of?of voices.and what is a voice?a sequence of sounds and silences, with its own  consistency.perfectly self-contained: each voice voicing a world.and what is a world?a proportion: a specific distribution of movement and repose.perfect repose, incessant movement.in between: the infinite plurality of possible worlds.writing voices means:to traverse this universe of possibilities, one voice at a time, that is: from world to world.to dwell in worlds, in spac…

2006 release ** I like that which is the extremely refined sound of a note made by an instrument. I find the sound of a note to be a very extraordinary, elusive and indefinable experience. I like the sound of one note next to another, or at the same time as another. The decisions to be made, from all the myriad array of sounds of notes, from all the potential possibilites of how to present and experience these sounds, is what draws me into the process which results in the making of a piece. I wr…

2004 release ** "Another joint production by Edition Wandelweiser and Radio Bremen testifies to the originality of the Japanese composer Makiko Nishikaze. Her idiosyncratic diptych pianopera l & II (2002), with its unpredictably alternating sound structures, follows no discernible logic, yet its musical structure never seems arbitrary, so that the music, despite the great aesthetic distance, certainly seems related to Luigi Archetti's CD discussed at the beginning. It is the varied penetration i…

2004 release ** Few composers have the self-control seen here to allow the silence that surrounds all we do to be so present, to bring to the forefront that which is covered by all of our daily activities, only present when we let ourselves realize the stillness at the base of all action, all sound. The regular presence of notes in calme étendue (oboe) provides for the listener a feeling similar to that of a light on top of a lighthouse as it regularly turns in the night – a feeling of grounding…

2005 release ** this piece uses 17 tones in whole-numbered proportions to a virtual fundamental of G'' (25Hz).the piece is a kind of analysis of the overtone region from the fifth to seventh partials and the corresponding regions one and two octaves above (10th to 14th, 20th to 28th partials).the tones are played and recorded during the first three parts and played back as samples at specific times.as many as 28 tones may sound simultaneously.the flute sounds are amplified, which allows us to he…

2009 release ** "In case you're surprised to find a Tom Johnson album on Wandelweiser – after all, I reckon there are more actual notes on Counting Keys than on the rest of the albums released on the über-redux label put together – it's worth remembering that Tom Johnson and Wandelweiser prime mover Antoine Beuger know and greatly respect each other's work. This collection of four pieces spanning nearly three decades of Johnson's career is one of the composer's more accessible (though no less ri…

2014 release ** "Beethoven’s fifth symphony begins with that now-iconic but aphoristic “short-short-short-long” musical motive about which so much has beenwritten and said, a radical statement for string melody without harmonic accompaniment.  On his 2008 composition “Song 2,” for bass flute, Wandelweiser composer Anastassis Philippakopoulos essentializes the very concept of a similarly constructed four-note phrase, presenting each gesture in isolation, long silences allowing for listener recont…

2011 release ** "Shepard, in 2005, set himself the task of hiking 250 miles across Switzerland, composing a new piece each day (performing it as well, in some public setting). Six of these works are collected here, performed by various Wandelweiser-involved folk. The music has an aura of folk song to it, however attenuated, heard clearly in Christian Wolff's melodica rendition of "Crêt de la Neuve, le 20 juillet 2005" with it's gentle ups and downs, similarly the second brief track with Katie Po…

2013 release ** "The Chord Catalogue is sort of a sister to Music for 88. It is also an examination of pianistic possibilities done with a focus so tight that obscuring any intrinsic aesthetic qualities in the execution seems to be the intention. (Also like Music for 88, Johnson recorded the piece for Phill Niblock’s Experimental Intermedia imprint). Beginning with “The 78 Two-Note Chords” (the section titling further eliminates risk of artistic suggestion), the set of pieces exhausts its way th…

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…

2015 release ** "The tromba marina is a huge single-stringed instrument, played with a bow. For "in memory of james tenney", in four parts, Möller and Maldfeld each wrestle with one such beast, using instruments from the 17th and early 18th centuries. And f it's grain you want, step right up--this thing, especially Part I, sounds like the bow is severely serrated, close to being able to saw wood. A huge rumble that encloses myriad tones high to low. Think of an Eliane Radigue cello piece with yo…

2013 release ** "True, there are 24 pieces contained on this disc, which range in duration from 2:00 to 3:45, but in part due to the large amount of silence in which the single notes are swathed and also because the composition are "of a piece", the recording reads almost as a continuous work. The preludes seem to consist of sets of two to five notes, generally, perhaps always, in a rising pattern and very often diminishing as they appear, purely struck, with incredible gentleness, so much so th…

2014 release ** "Shepard walks around, often traveling impressive distances, and composes music, generally playing on route. I had previously heard the excellent documentation of his perambulation through Switzerland in 2005, "On Foot", but in 2012, he chose to navigate far more dangerous territory, namely Brooklyn, doing so for thirteen weeks, penning a composition per week and organizing on-site performances of same by varied musicians which are heard here, usually along with the environmental…

2018 release ** "Two versions of Cage's 'One' and one of his 'One5' performed by pianist Guy Vandromme. 'One' was written in 1987, a ten-minute long piece for solo piano. Per the Cage Works page, the commentary is: "This work comprises 10 systems of piano chords, varying in dynamics, selected by chance. Each system is roughly 1 minute long, and all but one is flexible. Each system contains 2 sets of chords. The order of each set is maintained, but the relationship between the two sets of chords …

2005 release ** “select a sound of one or three tones within the range of an octavedistribute the pitches between the keyboards (use each pitch only once)select 3 – 31 stops from principals, flutes and reeds and distribute them evenly between the keyboards (do not use mixtures)play the pitches and hold the keys down (e.g. with lead weights)push the stop very slowly until you hear a change – then stop the movement, listen for a while and pull  another register in the same way  for a long time, on…

2010 release ** "Arrayed neatly, but in dislocated sequence, across clean white pages using a standard music notation software, the material of Tim Parkinson's piano pieces suggests anonymity. Traces of other musics may be suggested by some of the material, though the focus for the performer is on projecting the sounds without the clutter of imposed interpretative rhetoric. In so doing both composer and performer declare themselves and this beautiful music is revealed."

2007 release ** Fold in; fold out: the breathing of the accordion. On this CD the accordion unfolds in a very special way, unusually close to the instrument. Four works, four worlds that seem to know each other; refer to each other like a greeting from far away.Hearing John Cage's ,,Cheap Imitation" played on accordion gives you the impression of folk music from an unknown, probably non-existent country. This music comes from nowhere, goes nowhere, is forever on its way.....Like ,,Sam Lazaro Bro…

2009 release ** The score of "Stones" consists of just a few lines of text:Make sounds with stones, draw sounds out of stones, using a number of sizes and kinds (and colours); for the most part discretely; sometimes in rapid sequences. For the most part striking stones wfth stones, but also stones on other surfaces (inside the open head of a drum, for instance) or other than struck (bowed, for instance, or amplified). Do not break anything.  Christian Wolff, STONES, (from: Prose Collection, 1968…

Documentation '20 Years Inventionen', CD III. The string quartet 'sei-jaku' by German composer Klaus Lang, documented on this CD, was performed on 6/30/2002 in the Großer Sendesaal of the SFB Berlin by the Arditti String Quartet during the festival Inventionen 2002.