★Another Timbre
Awirë
awirë stands as a luminous act of collective listening and minimalism, conceived by Cyril Bondi, Pierre-Yves Martel, and Christoph Schiller - veterans of exploratory small-group improvisation - and further energized by the searching violin of Angharad Davies. The recording merges the intimacy of chamber music with techniques of indeterminacy and radical reduction, using the distinctive timbres of Indian harmonium, viola da gamba, prepared spinet, and violin to weave an uncanny sonic fabric. Bond…
Windfell
British composer James Weeks (b.1978) presents windfell, an hour long composition for violin and voice written for and performed by Canadian violinist Mira Benjamin. Released by Another Timbre in May 2019, this extended solo work evokes the image of a violin alone on a remote hill, played only by the wind. Benjamin requested Weeks write a long duration piece for her. The challenge of making something for a single player over the span of an hour led Weeks to find ways to enrich the timbral and ha…
Femenine (Apartment House)
Femenine, composed by Julius Eastman in 1974, stands as a landmark for American experimentalism - bringing minimalist structure together with exuberant, open-form collaboration. In their intensely engaged rendering, Apartment House conjures music that listens as much as it declares. Simon Limbrick’s insistent vibraphone motif and a persistent field of sleigh bells anchor the performance, as piano, strings, winds, and keyboard join, layering intricate phrases, timbral color, and nuance. The music…
Dethick
In Dethick, three singular voices - Angharad Davies (violin), Rie Nakajima (sound objects), and Alice Purton (cello) - trace the edges of collective improvisation and material inquiry. The project began from a shared fascination with resonance: how certain preparations and actions could invigorate stringed instruments and inanimate objects alike, blurring the distinction between music, sound art, and noise. Each musician brings a distinct lexicon - Davies known for extracting spectral sonorities…
Beissel
Beissel is the fruit of a remarkable alliance between Austrian composer Klaus Lang and the Australian ensemble Golden Fur - Samuel Dunscombe (clarinet), Judith Hamann (cello), and James Rushford (keyboards). Conceived for the distinctive resonance of a church setting, the music deploys organ, winds, and strings in a patient unfolding where the boundaries between composition and collective improvisation gently blur. Lang, celebrated for his quietly radical music, draws inspiration from eccentric …
Nun, Es Wird Nicht Weit Mehr Gehn
Nun, es wird nicht mehr geh’n is a quietly arresting work that places Magnus Granberg at the forefront of contemporary, post-Feldman chamber composition. Written for and performed by Skogen, Granberg’s long-running collaborative ensemble, the album develops over extended durations, favoring a distinctive blend of improvisation and composed materials. Drawing inspiration from literary and musical ancestors - including the haunting lyricism of Olivier Messiaen and the structural clarity of Morton …
Un Lloc entre Dos Records
Un lloc entre dos records stands as the third piece in Ferran Fages’s trilogy for guitar and sinetones, plunging listeners into an environment of memory, duration, and pure perception. Composed and performed by the Catalan musician on Another Timbre, the work deconstructs traditional guitar sonority, instead proposing a landscape shaped by precise tunings, persistent resonance, and the interplay of acoustics with brief, pure electronic sinewaves. Fages draws on the legacy of Morton Feldman, Alvi…
Aftermaths
Aftermaths assembles a series of solo piano meditations from Mark R Taylor, each miniature realized with extraordinary nuance by pianist Teodora Stepančić. Taylor’s writing gathers its force not from spectacle, but from distilled detail, calibrated pacing, and a disciplined embrace of small form. The works—ranging from twelve-second “flashes” to pieces that stretch over nine minutes - invite a listening experience grounded in patience, repetition, and subtle surprise. Taylor leverages the piano’…
Lines and Tracings
Lines and Tracings documents the unique meeting of American experimentalist Michael Pisaro and Boston-based composer-performer Morgan Evans-Weiler, realized with the forward-thinking ensemble Ordinary Affects. Through two expansive works, the album melds field recording, slow-motion counterpoint, and Wandelweiser-influenced reduction, opening vast temporal landscapes for the listener. Pisaro’s composition foregrounds resonance and contingency, using glacially-paced lines and occasional electroni…
Momentary Encounters
Momentary Encounters, the debut portrait album from Canadian composer Alex Jang, distills transience and intimacy into four quietly radical works, realized by members of Apartment House. Jang calls forth an aesthetic of close listening, where gestures - sometimes just a single sustained note or harmonics, sometimes glimmering melodic fragments - reflect on the boundary between event and non-event. The ensemble traverses clarinet, piano, violin, and cello, moving in and out of tone with pauses as…
O Zomer!
In O Zomer!, Canadian composer Cassandra Miller brings together two ensemble pieces and two solo works, each realized with her trademark blend of warmth and radiance. The title track, performed by Apartment House, captures moments of gentle humor and whimsical lyricism, echoing Toon Tellegen’s writing—which Miller cites as an inspiration for its “simple and plain” style. From the first bars, Miller’s music sidesteps abstraction in favor of direct communicative ease: phrases loop, refrains echo, …
Just So
Just So delivers four engaging string quartets from Canadian composer Cassandra Miller, performed by the ever-adventurous Quatuor Bozzini. Miller’s approach, marked by bold quotation, direct lyricism, and inventive repetition, allows each piece to breathe with immediacy and sincerity. The title track opens the album with gentle humor - a brief, buoyant play on gesture and motif, sketching out the record’s ethos without pretension. Throughout, Miller’s music draws on folk textures, swirling patte…
Es Schwindelt Mir, Es Brennt Mein Eingeweide
Es Schwindelt Mir, Es Brennt Mein Eingeweide ("I’m Dizzy, My Viscera Burns") finds Swedish composer Magnus Granberg refining his art of meditative ensemble writing in a single long-form work. Drawing inspiration from Schubert’s "Die Winterreise," Granberg selects and processes melodic fragments, filtering them through his unique syntax of open-form composition and collective improvisation. Rather than direct quotation, the references to Schubert are spectral: shuffled and stretched, turned into …
Tse
Tse, a collaboration between Cyril Bondi, Pierre-Yves Martel, and Christoph Schiller, offers five tracks of immersive, slow-burning chamber music at the intersection of composition and improvisation. Using harmonium, viola da gamba, and prepared spinet, the trio develops an original timbral palette - drones, delicate chord changes, and subtle percussive textures unfold through extended forms. Rather than relying on conventional melody or virtuosic gesture, Bondi, Martel, and Schiller favor proce…
H
H documents the intersection of Japanese composer Taku Sugimoto and Chilean guitarist Cristián Alvear, realized in an unassuming but luminous live performance. Originally written for Sugimoto’s duo project ‘Songs’ with Minami Saeki, the piece was rearranged for two guitars when Sugimoto and Alvear came together in Tokyo. The composition’s title signals its creator’s ongoing departure from elaborate naming conventions - only single letters, roman numerals, or numbers. For H, this stripped-down fo…
Early To Late
Early to Late presents an inspired commission for Magnus Granberg and Jürg Frey, inviting each to compose for Ensemble Grizzana using the same brief: build a new work from Renaissance fragments. Granberg’s “How Vain Are All Our Frail Delights?” draws on William Byrd’s choral music, transforming melodic kernels into shimmering, spectral textures. Ensemble voices - celesta, glass harp, dulcimer, violin, winds - float through cycles of open-form improvisation and carefully weighted silence. The res…
Chamber and Field Works 2015 - 2017
Bruno Duplant’s Chamber and Field Works is a double album that elegantly straddles the boundaries between composed and environmental sound. On disc one, the Suidobashi Chamber Ensemble brings to life three works composed between 2015 and 2017: “all that I learned and then forgot,” “where our dreams get lost,” and “a place of possibilities.” Duplant’s music here is characterized by extended tones, elongated melodies, and the intricate balancing of classical instruments - string, wind, and subtle …
Do Nothing
Do Nothing distills the philosophy and craft of Clara de Asís into a series of luminous solo statements realized for acoustic guitar and percussion. Each piece - “Do Nothing,” “Know Nothing,” “Nothing lasts I,” “Say Nothing,” “Nothing lasts II,” and “Be Nothing” - explores a different approach to sparseness and resonance, with de Asís charting a path that is precise yet open to surprise. Repetition, ringing harmonics, subtle percussive gestures, and the careful arrangement of silence define the …
13 & 27
13 & 27, realized by The Insub Meta Orchestra and composed by Cyril Bondi & d’incise, unfolds as a double suite exploring the power and flexibility of the large electroacoustic ensemble. Recorded in Geneva with 32 musicians, each part is shaped by precise, minimalist instructions - players are limited to a handful of possible gestures, often just two sounds per person or long filaments of feedback. This framework, restrictive on the surface, opens a field of possibilities for dynamic interaction…
Ockeghem Octets
Ockeghem Octets continues Antoine Beuger’s radical series of ensemble pieces, starting from intimate duos and building incrementally to groups of twenty. In this installment, eight performers - including Ryoko Akama (melodica), Kate Halsall (harmonium), Ecka Mordecai (cello), Leo Svirsky (accordion), Seamus Cater (concertina), Sarah Hughes (e-bow zither), Harriet Richardson (flute), and Kathryn Williams (alto flute)- join in a practice of sustained listening and collective restraint. Beuger’s pr…