Lovely Music, Ltd.
Lovely Music (full name Lovely Music, Ltd.) is an American record label devoted to new American music. Based in New York City, the label was founded in 1978 by Mimi Johnson, an outgrowth of her nonprofit production company Performing Artservices, Inc. It is one of the most important and longest running labels focusing exclusively on new music and it is devoted to recording American experimental/avant-garde music.
Two Lines
1995 release. Two legendary composer/performers, David Rosenboom and Anthony Braxton, join forces on Two Lines to unite composition with improvisation, "new music" with "new jazz". Starting from David Rosenboom's notated score for Two Lines and his musical computer program, these musicians have achieved, to paraphrase Rosenboom, created a composition that is immediately heard. Duets with interactive HMSL software. Includes Rosenboom's Two Lines, plus compositions in collaboration with Braxton: L…
Free Delivery
1990 release. Some of "Blue" Gene Tyranny's greatest keyboard works/performances can be found here on Free Delivery. The Nocturne With and Without Memory was commissioned by Lois Svard and has also been recorded by her for Lovely Music (LCD 3051CD, 1994). Sunrise or Sunset in Texas is from Philip Makanna's film The Crack of Dawn (1983). Personnel: "Blue" Gene Tyranny - acoustic and electronic keyboards; Timothy Buckley - accordion; Joel Ryan - computer analysis.
Summer Music 1970
**original 1979 copy, still sealed** E. Jedidiah Denman, bass; Phil Harmonic, piano, accordion and harmonica; Anne Klingensmith, cello; George Lewis, trombone and bowed trombone; Frankie Mann, electric bass and flute; Maggi Payne, flute and psalter; David Rosenboom, violin and viola; Joel Ryan, stereo rotation; John Sackett, clarinets; Mimi Shevitz, voice; Tony Truhang, piano; "Blue" Gene Tyranny, piano
A collection of eleven charming vignettes, portraits in sound of Bekaert's friends. It is a g…
Automatic Writing
Lovely Music present a reissue of Robert Ashley's Automatic Writing, originally released as an LP in 1979. Following on the heels of Private Parts, forming some of the early building blocks for his long-standing preoccupation with language and the human voice. Here he examines language at its primitive and impulsive root, where it seeks to express an inner state - to speak into the silence, to oneself, even if no one is listening. At one deeply personal - drawing on Ashley’s notions of 'involunt…
Improvement (Don Leaves Linda)
Improvement (Don Leaves Linda) is the first of four operas about the "American" consciousness. The tetralogy, including Foreign Experiences, eL/Aficionado and Now Eleanor's Idea, is based on the notion of a sequence of events seen from four, different points of view. The operas share principal characters and vocal techniques (including the relationship of the voice to instrumental settings). The singers are used interchangeably as soloists and members of a chorus. The immediacy of choral respons…
Crystal
Maggi Payne's musical imagination is vivid: she is interested in the surreal, the inward, the micro, and the accumulation of physical and psychological tension. Periods of silence gently evolve into flowing drones of complex resonances. Oozing drones evolve into dense and powerful peaks of short duration. On one cut, multi-tracked voices shift in and out of phase, creating alternately shimmering and percussive patterns; on another, digital delay and 32 separate flute tracks create a rain forest …
Crone music
2019 repress on CD; 1990 release. Commissioned by Mabou Mines, the experimental theater group from New York, for their interpretation of King Lear, Pauline Oliveros's Crone Music is a subtle and haunting electronic music endeavor. Interfacing an abundance of digital delay processors, reverb effects, and foot pedals to bend pitches from piercing to twisted, sonorous tones, with her one-of-a-kind expanded accordion, Oliveros produces rich, eerie textures. Personnel: Pauline Oliveros -solo accordio…
Music as a second language
2019 Repress. Speech melodies extracted from sources as various as language instruction recordings, hypnotists and televangelists are re-synthesized and applied to digital musical instruments, becoming eerily beautiful, "the singing of voices more ancient than language." Performed by Paul DeMarinis Hidden beneath speech's words and music's melodies I hear the singing of a voice more ancient than language. Brain's secret convulsions making muscles articulate, shaking the world with a song now lo…
On the Other Ocean
**Limited Edition 180 gram vinyl, Stoughton Old Style sleeve** Lovely Music present a reissue of David Behrman's On the Other Ocean, originally issued as one of Lovely Music's first six releases in 1978. This newly-mastered LP is a must-have for Behrman aficionados or a perfect introduction to his work. "I've been engaged for many years in an exploration of ways to make music and intermedia installations in which software and electronic devices interact with human performers. I've wanted to make…
73 Poems
Joan La Barbara's composition, 73 Poems, was commissioned, produced and recorded by Permanent Press (Brooklyn, NY) to accompany the publication of Kenneth Goldsmith's 73 Poems as a book and as a suite of lithographs. La Barbara's works often involve multiple layers of her own voice, creating a kind of sonic canvas on which she throws splashes of vocal colors. On this CD, her potent combination of vocal and studio expertise makes it possible for her to represent in music some of the most distinct…
Crash
Crash was Robert Ashley's last opera. It premiered at the Whitney Biennial weeks after his death in 2014, and presented again in 2015 at Roulette, where this recording was made. Featuring the original cast: Gelsey Bell, Amirtha Kidambi, Brian McCorkle, Paul Pinto, Dave Ruder, and Aliza Simons. Music Director: Tom Hamilton. "What I have appreciated most about previous reconceptions of Ashley's operas was the extent to which newcomers found fresh possibilities. Already in Crash, broadened horizons…
Atalanta (Acts Of God) Volume II
2010 release. Three of the satellite songs from Robert Ashley's opera Atalanta (Acts of God) - each inspired or revolving around one of the main characters of the opera, Max, Willard and Bud. Atalanta (Acts of God) was written in the 1980s, begun while Ashley was still in production for the television opera, Perfect Lives.
The many hours of material were performed throughout the world in many
different configurations, but this is the first time these songs have
been available on CD. Personnel…
Sferics - Music for solo performer
'Sferics is the shortened term for atmospherics, natural radio-frequency emissions in the ionosphere, caused by electromagnetic energy radiated from nearby or distant lightning. These signals - resonant clicks and pops, called tweeks and bonks by scientists - occur in the audible range of humans and may be picked up by antennas and amplified for listening. They are best received at night, far from power lines. Occasionally, certain sferics get caught on and travel long distances along the magnet…
Vernal Equinox
Early experiments (76-77) in fourth-world algorithms from this oft-overlooked composer. Features the dynamic/tasteful instrumental stylings of Nana Vasconcelos, David Rosenboom (recent Braxton collaborator), William Winant, Nicholas Kilbourn, and someone/thing monikered to the known universe as 'Drone'. Mostly light island rhythms augmented by Hassel's alien effector-trumpet. Recalls the peaceful slumber of Miles's In a Silent Way in spots. Don't forget the most important credit; "256hz pitch st…
A sound map of Hudson River
An aural journey from the source of the river, in the high peak area of the Adirondacks, downstream to the Lower Bay and the Atlantic Ocean; Annea Lockwood traces the course of the Hudson through on-site recordings of its flow at 15 separate locations. Annea Lockwood has recorded rivers in many countries to explore the special state of mind and body which the sounds of moving water create when one listens intently to the complex mesh of rhythms and pitches. The listener will find that each stret…
The Intermediary
Digital remaster of this Lovely Music LP release from 1982. The Intermediary gathers all of 'Blue's' musical impulses together in one, sweeping work for prose, improvisation, electronics, and piano. A program records, processes, and plays back the changed sounds so that 'Blue' Gene must act as an 'intermediary': both the sender and receiver of information.
Just For The Record
Digital remaster of this Lovely Music LP from 1979. Just For The Record is a musical snapshot of West Coast post-classical music via Mills College: multiple-keyboard works by Robert Ashley, Phil Harmonic, Paul DeMarinis and John Bischoff.
Star Jaws
Digitally remastered reissue of an old Lovely Music LP from 1978. Peter Gordon and 'Blue' Gene Tyranny are long-time Lovely Music stalwarts, having contributed their talents to many a LML release: Peter Gordon has acted as producer for a few early Robert Ashley recordings; 'Blue' Gene Tyranny is Robert Ashley's go-to pianist. Gordon and Tyranny have also collaborated in Gordon's Love of Life Orchestra (aka LOLO) and on Jill Kroesen's Stop Vicious Cycles. So, it's only fitting that when we dug in…
A Sound Map of the Danube
Annea Lockwood has been recording rivers since 1970, "not to document them, but rather for the special state of mind and body which the sounds of moving water create when one listens intently to the complex mesh of rhythms and pitches."' Lovely Music, Ltd. released Annea's seminal work A Sound Map of the Hudson River in 1989. Nineteen years later, we are proud to present A Sound Map of the Danube, her largest river recording project to date. Recorded over three years and five trips to Europe, A …
Key
1995 release. Originally released in 1971. Key contains Meredith Monk's earliest compositions for voice. The songs that make up Key
were composed and performed in a three year period between 1967 and
1970, when Monk collected them into this 45-minute "invisible theater"
experience. Meredith Monk on the release: "In Key I wanted to
create a constantly shifting ambience. Each song dealt with a different
vocal character, landscape, technical concern or emotional quality. I
was trying for a vi…