★Another Timbre
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…
Collection Gustave Roud
Collection Gustave Roud is a double album presenting five quietly radiant works by Swiss composer Jürg Frey, each created in dialogue with the poet and photographer Gustave Roud. The pieces - realized by a remarkable ensemble including Dante Boon, Stefan Thut, Andrew McIntosh, Regula Konrad, and others - parse the space between nature and imagination, fragment and wholeness. Frey’s music is intimately bound to Roud’s texts, which trace the passing of seasons, the mystery of the Haut-Jorat landsc…
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…
Piano, Violin, Viola, Cello
Piano, Violin, Viola, Cello marks the culmination of Morton Feldman’s late chamber writing, recorded at Henry Wood Hall in London in 2017 by a quartet comprised of Mark Knoop (piano), Aisha Orazbayeva (violin), Bridget Carey (viola), and Anton Lukoszevieze (cello). The composition, premiered in 1987, unspools over seventy-five minutes as an unhurried expanse - a landscape where micro-variations bring fragile changes within near-stasis, and the weight of each chord, sustain, and silence is palpab…
Spinet and Violin
Spinet & Violin captures an extended, unedited improvisation by Christoph Schiller and Morgan Evans-Weiler, recorded at Schiller’s workshop in Basel during Evans-Weiler’s European tour. In this single-track work, the duo operates with rare intensity and mutual instinct, favouring gradual permutations of pitch and the slow revelation of timbre. Schiller’s prepared spinet, played with plucking, muting, and inside techniques, forms a delicate alloy with Evans-Weiler’s violin, which hovers between f…
Places and Pages
Places and Pages gathers fifty text scores from Ryoko Akama, performed by an ensemble comprising Akama herself, Cristian Alvear, Cyril Bondi, D’incise, Stefan Thut, and Christian Müller. Each miniature acts as a sonic experiment - many lasting under a minute, some stretching further - where single instructions (“strike one page,” “listen to the laces slowing down,” “roll a ball until it stops”) yield fragile, ephemeral performances. The project, realized in Switzerland, embraces open instrumenta…
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…
Drifter
Drifter marks the beginning of Another Timbre’s Canadian Composers Series, assembling ten pieces from Linda Catlin Smith dating from 1995 to 2015. The album is a crossroads of chamber color, poised restraint, and poetic clarity - performed by members of Apartment House and Montreal’s Quatuor Bozzini in a spirit of intimate collaboration. Smith’s writing privileges patient melody and delicate counterpoint, bridging tough compositional rigor with textures of shimmering mystery.
The double disc jou…