★Mode
Feldman Edition 14: Complete Music for Cello & Piano
Huge Tip! This release brings together all of Morton Feldman’s compositions for cello and piano, including unpublished works and a first recording. Together, these works tell the story of Feldman’s music. They span 35 years — over half his lifetime — from when he was searching for his voice as a student to when he was opening new doors in the last years of his life. The album is bookended by two realizations the graphic score “Durations 2” (1960), giving an opportunity to hear what the flexibili…
Insula Dulcamara
Paul Klee’s Naturstudium (1923) recalibrated the dialogue between art-making and the natural world. By peering closely at nature, Klee’s project was one of a magical de-mystification, seemingly a contradiction in terms until you realize that by looking clearly and dispassionately (the studium part of Naturstudium), he brought us full circle to wonder and awe. Spanish percussionist Luis Tabuenca also peers inward at his world—here the universe of percussion sounds—inviting us to a microscopic lis…
Héliophonie
This is a binaural release, compatible with Stereo. This release gathers two electroacoustic works by Gerard Pape.
The Weather Pieces
The set of The Weather Pieces are reflections on the perception of meteorological phenomena. The listener is immersed in a hybrid sound world, as the line between the live performer and the computer generated propositions becomes blurred. The musician follows a score that leaves room for interaction with the computer’s ever-changing proposals. The works also use the performer’s voice, using spoken texts to convey inner thoughts and feelings. Les si doux redoux for basset horn grew out of an…
Asking
Asking is a large-scale work for piano solo that is a meditation and reflection on all of the meanings of the word “Asking”. Asking was specially composed for Eve Egoyan.
Walkabout & Back: Electroacoustic Works
It is refreshing to note that Mode Records gets into the endeavor of issuing new CDs with electroacoustic music. We have labels solely issuing this brand of music (which within its – artificial – borders harbor many different styles and idioms), like for instance INA (INA – GRM: Groupe de Recherches Musicales), empreintes DIGITALes and so forth, but I feel it important that the electroacoustic music – also including the electronic music in purer forms – is embraced by labels indulging in a more …
Electroacoustic Chamber Works
Composed between 1993-97, this second volume of works by Gerard Pape on Mode continues his richly darkly dramatic style with new compositional turns. Born in Brooklyn, now living in Paris, Pape is the director of the Atelier UPIC – an electronic music studio utilizing the unique UPIC computer developed by Iannis Xenakis – since 1991. While a resident of Ann Arbor, Michigan he ran Sinewave Studios, a state of the art New Music and Electronic Music studio and organized of the annual TWICE Festival…
The Musical Railism Of Anne LeBaron
Anne LeBaron’s music us a mixture of elements and influences–a combination of modern compositional techniques with rock, blues and gospel. The many facets of her talent are showcased in The Musical Railism of Anne LeBaron.
The cornerstones of the CD are her two solo performances on harp: Dog-Gone Cat Act for extended techniques on prepared harp, and I Am An American…My Government Will Reward You, a blistering piece for harp, live electronics and tape dedicated to “those on foreign soil who suffe…
Plasmatic Music, Vol. 1
The three works on this disc explore different aspects of Radulescu’s theory of Sound Plasma as it evolved over the course of the 1970s, from Radulescu’s early to middle periods.
In the Asylum
This album collects works for piano through piano quartet by Irish composer Gerald Barry. All, except for In the Asylum are first recordings.
Volume 1: Electronic Works
*2022 stock* Although this might be labelled 'Volume 1', this large collection of Morton Subotnick's work (featuring three of his pieces - 'Touch', 'A Sky of Cloudless Sulphur' and 'Gestures') actually showcases some of his most recent compositions. The pioneering electronic composer shot into the public eye with his very well known album 'Silver Apples of the Moon', but his work didn't end there and here we get 'Touch' which was composed just after 'The Wild Bull' in 1969 set next to 'A Sky of …
I Like To Think Of Harriet Tubman
*2022 stock* 'A true Leninist would argue that art in a smoothly running socialist state would become redundant and disappear, though while waiting for such a perfect society to come about, we have an idea of what socialist literature, painting, sculpture and cinema are like. But what does socialist music sound like? Luigi Nono? Eisler? Robert Wyatt? The Ex? Well, all four. and you may add Christian Wolff to the list. Like fellow experimental composers Cornelius Cardew and Frederic Rzewski, Wolf…
Tempi Agitati
On April 6, 1327, a 22-year-old Italian poet named Francesco Petrarca caught a glimpse of a young woman, Laura, in a church in Avignon. He later reported that “living sparks issued from two lovely eyes”. Those sparks enflamed Petrarch such that he spent the rest of his illustrious career coming to terms with them. Madrigals were developed in the 16th century by Adrian Willaert and Cipriano de Rore, which took Petrarch’s agonized images as justification for violating the rules that had guided mus…
Rana, Ritual And Revelations
Diverse works from the 80s & 90s by composer and harpist Anne Lebaron. Taking inspiration from amphibians, peyote ritual, bowerbirds, and Noh theater, and performed by a plurality of ensembles, some including Lebaron herself, in these compositions animal, technology, and ritual are collided into something like Southern cyborg shamanism. Lebaron was a student of Ligeti, first catching his attention with “Concerto For Active Frogs” in which the musicians, dressed in green plastic bags, perform a g…
Makrokosmos
** 2022 remastered repress ** Pianist Margaret Leng-Tan - considered the leading exponent of “extended” piano techniques - is at her best with this music. George Crumb and Ms. Tan worked closely on the preparation of these works for the recording. Crumb’s Makrokosmos I & II were written to expand the world of color and sonic possibilities which a single piano and pianist could create. In addition to playing the keyboard, the pianist is required to strum and pluck the strings; apply glass tumbler…
Voces
Voces documents many of Walter Zimmermann’s compositions for voices from 1979–2016. The words set range from Meister Eckhart and Hadewijch to Lermontov, Mandelstam, Jabès, Tranströmer, Ingold and Robert Creeley (with his voice accompanying the musicians). Performers include: Claudia Barainsky, the musicians of the Merce Cunningham Dance Company (including David Tudor & Takehisha Kosugi), Tehila Nini Goldstein, KNM Ensemble, Meitar Ensemble, Neue Vocalsolisten Stuttgart, Peter Schöne / Jan Phili…
6 Pieces for Gamelan Slendro
For this recording project, the fearless French musical collective ensemble 0 (pronounced “zero”) began a new kind of collaboration with the Swiss percussion ensemble Eklekto and Gamelan Oksitan — this last the traditional Javanese ensemble of gongs and metallo- phones based in France. Their transcultural bridge has foundations that go back to Claude Debussy’s fascination with the radiant tones of gamelan music that he heard at the 1889 Paris Exposition. Yet neither Debussy nor many other sympat…
Roger Reynolds at 85, Vol II: Piano Etudes
Reynolds’ Etudes allows the performer to not only choose the number of Etudes to be presented (even repeating them, if desired) as well as their order. In this way, the performer becomes a co-creator with the composer. All 12 Etudes are presented in this recording by Eric Huebner. Each etude inhabits a world distinctly its own. Reynolds dares a remarkable leap from the first to the second book. Rather than merely continue the premises and promises established by the first six etudes, the second …
Stries
Bernard Parmegiani (1927–2013), the grand old man of French electroacoustic music, did not write much music for tape with live performers. Among them is “Stries” for the unusual combi- nation of three live synthesizer players and tape. Until recently, “Stries” had not been played live for some 30 years. This is the first complete recording, only part of it had been previously released on LP on the INA/GRM label. “Stries” was written for the three synthesizer players of the Paris- based electro…
Roger Reynolds at 85, Vol 1: String Quartets
This release documents Roger Reynolds’ most recent string quartets in composer supervised first recordings by the acclaimed JACK Quartet. “Flight”, commissioned by Jack Quartet, arose from a collaborative process lasting almost five years. Its four movements reflect upon the stages of humanity’s aspirations for flight. Of “not forgotten” Reynolds writes: “As the years pass, one notices that certain elements in one’s days have unusual persistence in the mind. Such elements may involve individua…