★Mode

Olivier Messiaen's Harawi (1945), a cycle of twelve songs for soprano and piano on the composer's own text, sung by Sarah Maria Sun with Stefka Perifanova, on a deluxe 2LP set with a 12-page book.

Expanded 3-CD reissue of Walter Zimmermann's Lokale Musik, first issued in 1982 as a 3-LP set: two CDs remastered from the analog tapes, a third with new supplemental recordings and revised works, and a 60-page book.

Morton Feldman's For Bunita Marcus (1985), an hour-long solo piano work, played by Aki Takahashi, for whom Feldman wrote all his piano music after Triadic Memories.

Live improvised concert by the John Heward Quintet, celebrating drummer John Heward and bassist Barre Phillips, both eighty at the time, with Lori Freedman, Joe McPhee and Dana Reason.

Sergio Sorrentino plays American music for electric guitar by Cage, Feldman, Wolff, Lang, Vees, Sharp, Curran, Polansky and Stiefel, including the first CD release of Feldman's The Possibility of a New Work for Electric Guitar.

Three long-form works from Joan La Barbara's first decade of recordings, with new stereo and surround mixes from the analogue tapes: As Lightning Comes In Flashes (1981), Autumn Signal (1978) and the previously unreleased CYCLONE (1976-77).

Italian Surf Academy, led by guitarist Marco Cappelli, reworks the 1968 film soundtrack of Barbarella by Bob Crewe and Charles Fox, recorded in Paris in 2013, post-produced by JD Foster and mastered by Brian Brandt and Paul Howells.

Live DVD of Trio PAJ, formed in 2007 by percussionist Roland Auzet, Pierre Jodlowski and Michel Portal, recorded at the Grenoble Jazz Festival in 2010 and exploring jazz, improvisation and electronic music.

Ten improvised duets recorded in June 2006 by Joe McPhee on pocket trumpet and alto saxophone and Montreal drummer and painter John Heward on drums, kalimba and percussion.

Steve Lacy on soprano saxophone and percussionist John Heward in a single long improvisation recorded live in Montreal on 20 June 2003, one of Lacy's last recordings, ending with a tribute to Oliver Johnson.

John Cage's works for speaking percussionist on Blu-ray, with Bonnie Whiting in 51'15.657" and other pieces and Allen Otte in his own Cage-related piece, plus a 73-minute video interview about Cage and the works.

Five first recordings of chamber works by Hilda Paredes, written between 1995 and 2013: Señales with Irvine Arditti and Ensemble Signal, solo pieces for piano and for bass clarinet, and two works played by ensemble recherche.

John Cage's early percussion chamber works from 1935-1942, including the three Constructions, Trio, Quartet and Living Room Music, played by Third Coast Percussion, with the first movement of Living Room Music recorded in the Ford House.

Karlheinz Stockhausen's early percussion works on two CDs: Zyklus, Kontakte for piano and percussion with tape, Mikrophonie for tam-tam, Refrain and Schlagtrio, with new transfers from the analog tapes.

DVD of Njinga: The Queen King, a play with music and pageantry written and directed by Ione with music and sound by Pauline Oliveros, based on the 1993 BAM Next Wave Festival performances, with 5.1 surround mix and a documentary.

The first complete CD of Bruno Maderna's music for flute, played by Roberto Fabbriciani for the 40th anniversary of the composer's death: works for flute and tape, piano and orchestra, and three first recorded arrangements.

Karlheinz Stockhausen's early percussion works on DVD-Audio with surround sound: Zyklus, Kontakte for piano and percussion with tape, Mikrophonie for tam-tam, Refrain and Schlagtrio, from new transfers of the analog tapes.

John Cage works for a speaking percussionist, including Bonnie Whiting's realization 51'15.657" and Music for Two (By One), the early voice and piano songs, and a piece by Allen Otte built on Cage's methods.

Six modern song cycles for soprano and piano by Holliger, Sciarrino, Lachenmann, Kurtág, Rihm and Bernhard Lang, sung by Sarah Maria Sun with pianist Jan Philip Schulze, with several first recordings.

Three orchestral works by Iannis Xenakis: Metastaseis A in its original version for 65 musicians (first recording), with the Orchestra Sinfonica RAI, and Terretektorh and Nomos Gamma, with the Residentie Orkest The Hague under Arturo Tamayo.

Suite by guitarist Marco Cappelli inspired by the characters of Fred Vargas's detective novels, played by the Marco Cappelli Acoustic Trio with Ken Filiano on double bass and Satoshi Takeishi on percussion.

Italian guitarist Marco Cappelli's take on Spaghetti Western music and 1960s surf sound as the Italian Surf Academy, with Luca Lo Bianco on bass, Francesco Cusa on drums and guest voice Gaia Mattiuzzi, plus a cover of Secret Agent Man.

Jazz settings of Langston Hughes's poems, including The Weary Blues, The Dream Keeper and Daybreak in Alabama, with Eric Mingus on voice, David Amram on piano and Larry Simon with Groove Bacteria. Avant series.

Twenty-four tracks of saxophone music by Henry Cowell and Percy Grainger, many of them first recordings, for saxophone ensembles, piano and orchestra, directed and played by Ulrich Krieger with guest ensembles and the Glens Falls Symphony Orchestra.

Marc Chan's My Wounded Head 3, an open-ended piano piece inspired by Bach's Passion chorales, played in a 72-minute continuous recording by Rob Haskins.

Morton Feldman's String Quartet No. 1 in the longest recorded performance, with Structures and Three Pieces for String Quartet, played by the Flux Quartet. Two CDs plus a bonus DVD of the uninterrupted 90-minute audio.

Morton Feldman's String Quartet No. 2, a work of more than six hours, played by the FLUX Quartet on a deluxe five-CD box with liner notes by Christian Wolff and FLUX founder Tom Chiu.

Four works by Alvin Lucier played by the Italian ensemble Alter Ego: Two Circles, Fideliotrio and Three Translations of the Works of Maurizio Mochetti, plus a new recording of I Am Sitting in a Room with the composer.

Three works for viola and tape or electronics played by Vincent Royer: Luc Ferrari's Ephémère in a 2012 version by Brunhild Ferrari, her Le Piano Englouti, and Royer's live improvisation on Ferrari's Ce qu'a vu le Cers.

First volume of Horatiu Radulescu's Piano Sonatas and String Quartets, with String Quartet No. 5 and Piano Sonatas Nos. 2 and 5, the quartet and Sonata No. 5 first recordings, played by the JACK Quartet and Stephen Clarke.

Volume 7 of Mode's Edition Christian Wolff, on 2CD: the composer plays his own Incidental Music (2003-04), written for a Merce Cunningham Dance Company Event, and the ongoing series Keyboard Miscellany, on piano and melodica.

DVD centred on Iannis Xenakis's Linaia-Agon for trombone, French horn and tuba, in two performances with Benny Sluchin, plus Zythos for trombone and six marimbas, a 78-minute film by Sluchin and an interactive interface.

Structured improvisation compositions by violinist Malcolm Goldstein, ranging from jazzy to dense microtonal sound, in which he plays with the Montreal-based Ratchet Orchestra as composer, soloist and ensemble member.

Survey of saxophonist Ulrich Krieger's chamber music, probing the ties between the rock and classical avant-gardes: six works from 1997-2005 played by California E.A.R. Unit, Sonic Boom, Ensemble Experimente and others, with Krieger himself.

Vincent Royer plays viola with tape and electronics in three Ferrari-related works: Luc Ferrari's Ephémère (1974) in a 2012 version by Brunhild Ferrari, her Le piano englouti, and Royer's improvisation on Ferrari's Ce qu'a vu le Cers.

Four works by Alvin Lucier, Carbon Copies, Risonanza, Music for Pure Waves, Bass Drums and Acoustic Pendulums and Broken Line, performed by the Berlin-based Trio Nexus.

DVD of two filmed portraits made by Luc Ferrari and Gérard Patris for French TV in the 1960s: Stockhausen rehearsing Momente, and Hommage à Edgard Varèse, released here for the first time with English subtitles.

Three first recordings of orchestral works by Roger Reynolds: Symphony[Myths] with the Tokyo Philharmonic and Kotaro Sato, Whispers Out of Time with the Cleveland Chamber Symphony and Edwin London, and Symphony[Vertigo] with the La Jolla Symphony and…

Complete piano works by Roger Reynolds on two CDs, from Epigram and Evolution (1960) to The Angel of Death (1998-2001), played by Yuji Takahashi, Eric Huebner and Marilyn Nonken, with new recordings and remastered analog reissues.

Roger Reynolds's complete works for cello, on 2CD and composer supervised, with many first recordings, played by Alexis Descharmes with Ensemble Court-circuit, violin, electronics and piano, and readings by the composer.