★Elsewhere
Les Signes Passagers
'Les signes passagers' is an album of seven pieces for solo fortepiano written by Jürg Frey in 2021, commissioned by the Amsterdam-based pianist Keiko Shichijo. It was premiered by Shichijo on February 5, 2022 at the Concertgebouw Brugge during the Slow Festival. In the same year, Shichijo performed the piece again at the November Music 2022 and later recorded it for this album in April 2023 at the Concertgebouw Brugge in the presence of the composer.
“As a listener, I have experienced with musi…
A room outdoors
'A room outdoors' is a 48 minute piece written in 2006 by Michael Pisaro-Liu for sustaining instrument, harmonium and field recordings. This was the first work in which Pisaro-Liu incorporated field recordings into his score. This double CD contains two different realizations of the piece, one made in Brussels during the lockdown in April 2020 and one set up in Cremona in June 2023, each realized by the following artists: Disc 1 features Belgium-based Guy Vandromme (keyboards) and Adriaan Severi…
Slow Roads
'Slow Roads' is an album of eight pieces written by Hague-based Serbian composer Ivan Vukosavljević between 2019 and 2022, for solo 1/4 comma meantone organ. All eight pieces were recorded in 2022 on five different historic organs, dating from the early 16th to mid-17th centuries, located in medieval churches scattered throughout the countryside of the northern Netherlands. Each piece was adapted for a specific organ, as they vary considerably in their disposition. All eight pieces are written i…
Continuité, fragilité, résonance
'Continuité, fragilité, résonance' is a 51-minute piece written by Jürg Frey in 2020-2021 for octet: string and saxophone quartets. The Montréal-based Quatuor Bozzini and the Bern-based Konus Quartett premiered the piece in September 2021, and later recorded it for this album with the presence of the composer, during a three-day recording session in August 2022 at the Auditorium of Zentrum Paul Klee in Bern, Switzerland. Both quartets have premiered other works of Frey's in the past and have a d…
Circles, Reeds, and Memories
This release brings together three Dutch composers/performers, Reinier van Houdt, Germaine Sijstermans, and Koen Nutters, who have each released their own work on elsewhere music in recent years. Nutters, who has collaborated in the past with both van Houdt (Cornelius Cardew project) and Sijstermans (DNK Ensemble, The Names), conceived the idea of a trio performance with the two musicians, which later developed into this three-way collaborative project.
Last December the trio played a concert at…
L’Occhio Del Vedere
L’Occhio Del Vedere is a one-hour piece by the trio of Giovanni Di Domenico (piano), Silvia Tarozzi (violin, 1/16th of a tone tuned violin), and Emmanuel Holterbach (large frame drum). In July 2022, while Di Domenico was working on an artistic residency at GMEA in Albi, France, he and Tarozzi and Holterbach made a trio recording, which was later completed by Di Domenico as a one-hour piece. Within a ‘triptych’ structure framework, sparse melodies discreetly and repeatedly emerge from the three i…
Lieues D'Ombres
Swiss composer Jürg Frey and Dutch pianist/composer Reinier van Houdt are reunited on this triple CD, 'lieues d'ombres', after their successful collaboration on 'l'air, l'instant - deux pianos' (elsewhere 014), during which the two built a close rapport.
'lieues d'ombres' contains seven of Frey’s solo piano works, written from 1984 – 2018, including one previously unreleased work, ‘Three Piano Pieces’. All seven pieces were recorded by Micha de Kanter at The Muziekcentrum van de Omroep (MCO) in …
Betula
Dutch composer/clarinetist Germaine Sijstermans is one of the emerging artists of the new generation of the contemporary classical music scene, regularly and closely working with artists associated with Edition Wandelweiser. This is her debut album as a composer, a double CD containing seven of her recent pieces, all composed between 2017-2019 and performed by the ensemble of six musicians who had worked closely together from the very start of the project: Antoine Beuger (concert flute), Germain…
Monochromes
*In process of stocking* “Tolimieri makes a universe of micro-nuance audible, with each piece consisting of hundreds, thousands or even tens of thousands of points of contact. Each point is just a little different from its predecessor. One by one, the points carry the music outwards, until the sound canvas is radiantly filled with the sensation of a particular touch.
The succession of Monochromes on these discs has a beautiful logic. I hear it as an attempt to “begin again”, to rediscover the pi…
drift nowhere past / the adventure of sleep
Rotterdam-based composer/pianist Reinier van Houdt created six pieces from March 22 to August 22, 2020 for a monthly 'quarantine' series of the online festival AMPLIFY 2020: quarantine, commissioned by Jon Abbey. Each of the six pieces on 'drift nowhere past' was recorded on the 22nd of each month (#18, #75, #128, #155, #194, #211). "I've made these pieces from what I played, listened to, recorded, played back, read, watched, heard, or imagined, each during one specific day in the quarantine of …
Tombstones
Tombstones is a collection of twenty songs composed by American composer Michael Pisaro-Liu between 2006 and 2010, journeying into experimental pop with pieces that are "experimental or indeterminate but still a song". This disc features eleven songs under the artistic direction of the Lille-based pianist Barbara Dang. Dang and six members of the Muzzix collective (Yoann Bellefont, Ivann Cruz, Raphaël Godeau, Peter Orins, Christian Pruvost, Maryline Pruvost) recorded the pieces in June 2020, wit…
l'Infini des Possibles
l'infini des possibles is a set of twelve studies for solo piano, written by French composer Bruno Duplant in 2019. The score consists of lowercase letters (a, b, c, d, e, f, g) and spaces in between, which leaves the pianist an openness for interpretation and artistic determinations. The Belgian pianist/conductor Guy Vandromme intensely studied these 12 pieces via in-depth discussions with Duplant over two years, and realized them for this recording of a double CD in the spring of 2021, on a St…
In Better Shape Than You Found Me
* In pocess of stocking * In Better Shape Than You Found Me is a one-hour piece jointly composed and realized by American composer/violist Jordan Dykstra and Dutch composer/musician Koen Nutters in the year 2020. Dykstra plays viola, pitch pipe, crotales, piano EBow, electronic programming, field recordings, and Nutters delivers the piano programming and field recordings. The two bring together their sounds and structures in very organic ways, merging into a single, intriguing sound world. Maste…
Wind and Light
Greek composer Anastassis Philippakopoulos has been a member of the Wandelweiser composers collective since 2003. He pursues his own compositional style to create a new kind of tonal music, deeply associated with his individuality and the surroundings of his life in Athens, a unique blend of stoic minimalism, the warm colors of modern romanticism, and the introspective depth of Zen.
"For many years I have concentrated my attention on modal monophonic melodies. In my pieces I want to bring a bala…
Night Blossoms
'Night Blossoms' is French composer/pianist Melaine Dalibert’s sixth solo album, consisting of new compositions from 2019-2021. Of the six pieces on this album, 'A Rebours', 'Windmill', 'Eolian Scape', and 'Sisters' were written around the same time as most of the pieces for his 2020 album 'Infinite Ascent'. While 'Infinite Ascent' featured his intuitive compositions in a pop style, 'Night Blossoms' features works further developed with his algorithmic approach, which has been his long-term purs…
Suite No.9 / Quattro Illustrazioni / Un Adieu
Shira Legmann is an Israeli concert pianist, with a wide repertoire from Baroque to contemporary and experimental music. This album contains three piano works by Italian composer Giacinto Scelsi: Suite No.9 "Ttai" (1953), Quattro Illustrazioni (1953), and Un Adieu (1978/1988). This is Legmann's second CD on Elsewhere Music, following the 2019 album "Barricades" in which she was the pianist for Michael Pisaro's composition for piano/electronics.Legmann's clean, supple yet solid piano sounds, whic…
L'Air, L'Instant - Deux Pianos
Jürg Frey’s unique compositional approach places him at the cutting edge of contemporary classical music. 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 musical materials. In recent years, Frey's focus on 'lists' has extended more toward the connections of items with each other, forming melodies.Frey wrote two compositions for two pianos in 2017-2019: Entre les deux l'instant (2017/20…
Infinite Ascent
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 …
Earth Leaps Up
The Giving Shapes is a collaborative project between harpist/vocalist Elisa Thorn and pianist/vocalist Robyn Jacob that formed in fall 2017 at the Banff Centre for the Arts. This is the duo’s first release. This project triangulates aspects of new music, creative music, and song-writing, combining their classical training and their involvement with the Canadian creative and indie music scenes. Though they originally met while both pursuing degrees in classical music at UBC in 2007, they share an…
Piano Works
The French pianist and composer Melaine Dalibert possesses an exquisite touch and engagement with his repertoire. On this new album he tackles the stripped-down music of Greek composer Anastassis Philippakopoulos, a key member of the post-Cagean Wandelweiser Collective, tracing out the delicate, sparsely mapped notes from a dozen contemplative, spacious miniatures. The pieces are built around austere melodic fragments, all of which hang pregnant in the air, unfolding carefully before the next p…