★Mode
Les Nuages en France
Marco Cappelli, guitar. Ken Filiano, double bass. Satoshi Takeishi, percussion. “… La Nuages en France is what happens when you cross one of Europe’s best and brightest new music classical guitarists/composers with the best of New York’s avant jazz/improv scene. The sonics recall the lusciousness of Ralph Towner’s ECM work, but the compositional/improvisational smarts and depth of Marco’s classical chops and background on this recording are unlike anything I’ve heard. Also, Marco has devel…
Italian Surf Academy : The American Dream
Marco Cappelli, electric guitar, Luca Lo Bianco, bass guitar, Francesco Cusa, drums, with special guest Gaia Mattiuzzi, voice.
The Dream Keeper
Jazz interpretations of Hughes' poetry with Eric Mingus (voice); David Amram (piano); Larry Simon (director, arranger, guitar), Groove Bacteria.
Italian Surf Academy : Barbarella Reloaded
"Italian Surf Academy has been exploring the sound related to 1960’s cinema since its first record, The American Dream (Mode Avant 13), a collection of music from Italian noir, horror and spaghetti western movies. In 2013 the Italian/French festival “Suona Francese” commissioned us to make a monographic program, but with the concept that it must somehow relate to French culture. We choose Barbarella — the classic 1968 sexual revolution icon directed by Roger Vadim, and starring Jane Fonda — beca…
The Great Works For Voice
Mode's reissue of Christine Schadeberg's 1995 recital of vocal music by Luciano Berio is a welcome addition to the catalog. While her performances don't make the listener forget the individuality and panache of Cathy Berberian, for whom most of these pieces were written, Schadeberg more than holds her own in her technical and expressive mastery of the music. Her voice is not large, but is remarkably flexible and secure, and her tone is pure. These performances are models of precision and clarity…
Sonic Encounters
The second recording from Margaret Leng-Tan, the "diva of the avant-garde", featuring works by three composers whom she specializes in: John Cage (USA), Somei Satoh (Japan) and Ge Gan-ru (China/USA). With Sonic Encounters: The New Piano, she explores the effect of Asian aestehtics on contemporary American composers and the influence of American composers on their Asian counterparts.The first recordings of two early works by Cage impart a hard-edged brilliance not usually associated with the prep…
The Early Immersive Music of Joan La Barbara
**Milestone recordings. Joan La Barbara's controlled experiments into the limits of the human voice took her beyond music** Joan La Barbara is one of great figures in the history of the American musical avant-garde – holding equal standing as an innovator, composer, and performer. She has defined the field of extended vocal technique for the better part of half a century, pushing our understanding of the sonic possibility of the human voice – drawing on its primal root, and thrusting it into the…
Incidental Music and Keyboard Miscellany
“Incidental Music and Keyboard Miscellany, though both consisting mostly of quite short musical items, have as a whole different origins and different shapes. Keyboard Miscellany is an ongoing collection, a place to deposit occasional pieces which seem to have no place else to go. The earliest is “Variation on Morton Feldman’s Piano Piece 1952” (1988). The piece came about when I was asked to contribute an analysis of a Feldman piece to a collection of essays on Feldman’s music. To do this I tri…
Soweto Stomp
Malcolm Goldstein, violin & direction. The Ratchet Orchestra. Composer/performer Malcolm Goldstein (b.1936) has been active in the presentation of new music and dance since the early 1960s. He received an M.A. in music composition from Columbia University in 1960, having studied with Otto Luening. In the 1960s in New York City, he was a co-founder with James Tenney and Philip Corner of the Tone Roads Ensemble. His 'Soundings' improvisations have received international acclaim for having reinvent…
New Piano Works From Europe And The Americas
A debut recital of incredibly varied and fascinating music from Argentinean pianist Haydée Schvartz. Her teachers include Roberto Brando, Dora Castro and Nikita Magaloff. Ms. Schvartz continued her studies in London with Maria Curcio and subsequently received a a Fulbright Scholarship to study in Buffalo, New York with Yvar Mikhashoff, where she won the Cameron Baird Competition in 1990. Mikhashoff brought Ms.Schvartz's incredibly sensitive pianism to our attention, and together they imag…
Urban Dreamings
This survey of saxophonist Ulrich Krieger’s chamber music illuminates his ongoing penchant, as a composer, improviser, and interpreter, for probing the affinities between the rock and classical avant-gardes. Krieger says of his music: “At the moment my interest is mixing band-type instrumentation with classical instruments (think Doom Metal meets Scelsi).”
A classicaly trained saxophonist, Krieger gained notoriety for his transcription of Metal Machine Music, which orchestrated rock legend Lou R…
Complete Cello Works
This first complete recording of Roger Reynolds' cello works is being released to celebrate the composer's 80th birthday. This special 2-CD set contains many first recordings. French cellist Alexis Descharmes and Reynolds have a close artistic relationship which led to this composer supervised set. Alexis Descharmes is an internationally regarded musician and specialist in contemporary music. He has worked with the Ensemble Intercontemporain, Ensemble Alternance and Ensemble Court-circuit…
Brazil 84
Brazil 84 is from Phil Niblock’s series “The Movement of People Working.” 16mm, unedited long shots, carefully framed to compress single movements, shot in rural and urban settings, capturing people in their working environments, men and women using their hands and body to an eternal working choreography that seems tuned to the microtonal universe of Niblock’s music. All these images are timeless, they could have been shot today, in the ‘60s or even earlier in the century. All these images…
Ensemble Works 3
'Palimpsest' (1979) for piano & ensemble. Cory Smythe, piano. 'Echange' (1989) for bass-clarinet & ensemble. Joshua Rubin, bass-clarinet. 'Akanthos' (1977) for soprano & ensemble. Tony Arnold, soprano. 'Thalleïn' (1984) for 16 instruments. 'O-Mega' (1997) for percussion & ensemble. Steven Schick, percussion & conductor. Steven Schick, conductor. 'Zythos' (1996) for trombone & 6 marimbas. Benny Sluchin, trombone.
An exhilarating Xenakis progran, built around works for soloist and ensemble. Most…
Onsets
Ici-bas' (2009) for ensemble & electronic sound. Hyperion Ensemble with members of Talea and the Bergersen Quartet. Tim Hodgkinson, conductor. 'Ulaaraar' (2005) for bass clarinet & strings. Tim Hodgkinson, bass clarinet and conductor. Ioan Marius Lacraru, Cornelia Petroiu, violas. Theodor Iancu, Andrei Kivu, cellos. Ion and Ciprian Ghita, basses. Anon, small gong. 'Amhas/Nirriti' [2001) for ensemble & electronic sound. Hyperion Ensemble. Tim Hodgkinson, conductor. 'Jo-Ha-Kyu' (2000-2010) for str…
Complete String Quartets
'Gran Torso' (1972), 'Reigen seliger Geister' (1989), 'Grido' (2000-01). For the JACK Quartet. 'With a little help from my friends'. Once they called me their 'father.' But when with them I feel fifty years younger, and they are my admired brothers. Each work - not only mine - when performed by the JACK, be it Beethoven or Feldman, becomes an incredible adventure of perception, a festival of intensity, touching our emotions and touching our intellect, making us remember that as human creatures w…
The Piano Works 9
'Haiku' (1950-51), 'Sixteen Dances' (1950-51), 'Alternate versions for piano & percussion'. Jovita Zhl, piano. Thomas Meixner, percussion. 'It is rare to discover a previously unknown work by John Cage today. So, what are the chances to discover two major piano pieces from the same period of 1950-51? Thanks to the dedicated work of Don Gillespie (who was Cage's contact at his publisher, C. F. Peters Corp.) and composer Walter Zimmermann, we have the two works recorded here. Both works were disco…
The Works for Organ
This release is the first complete recording of all of Cage's works for organ, plus 4'33' (on the DVD version only). Gary Verkade, organ of Gammelstad Church, Sweden. 'Some of 'The Harmony of Maine' (Supply Belcher)' (1976). 'Souvenir' (1984). 'ASLSP' (1985). 'Organ2ASLSP' (1987). Bonus Track on DVD only: 4'33' (1952). The organ is ideally suited to Cage's aesthetic - its multitude of stops make it the ultimate 'prepared' instrument. The fact that sound emanates from a number of pipes placed at …
Clouds and Sky
Clouds and sky (2010), for piano and orchestra. Jan-Philip Schulze, piano. WDR Sinfonie-Orchester. Peter Rundel. 'rota' (2008) for contrabass-clarinet & string quartet. Gareth Davis, contrabass clarinet. The JACK Quartet. 'red and blue' (1999) for percussion sextet. Ensemble S. 'a self-same song' (2010) for contrabass-clarinet solo. Gareth Davis, contrabass-clarinet. Johannes Schöllhorn (b.1962), is a student of Ferneyhough, Huber and Nunes, and is among Germany's leading younger generat…
Electronic Works 3
Until Spring was first conceived in 1975 on the Buchla synthesizer using only analog techniques. “It was about 10 years from Silver Apples to Until Spring,” Subotnick explains, “and I’d evolved a whole concept and a technique, but I had gone as far as I could go with it. I could do everything I wanted to do, but I couldn’t do it in real time.” As computers and software developed in the coming decades, Morton Subotnick created a software-based instrument that he felt could allow him to compl…