★New World Records
The Zürich Concert
Just when you think you are grasping the breadth and quality of the music of Julius Eastman (1940 - 1990), a recording such as Julius Eastman: The Zürich Concert shows up, and you have to go back and reassess his work and wonder what will show up nex…
And On The Seventh Day Petals Fell In Petaluma
The history of American avant-garde music is a snarled knot, twisting through the decades, spanning genre, practice, and approach. Most narratives plant its origins within the post-war period, orbiting around John Cage, Morton Feldman, and those arti…
Ariadne's Lament
The music of Mary Jane Leach on this album draws on several sources of inspiration. The first is early music, with its polyphony and modal harmonies. Modal writing, as adapted to twentieth-century thought, focuses on the prolongation of a fixed colle…
Spectrum Pieces
James Tenney (1934-2006) was one of the most versatile figures in contemporary American music. Apart from creating a large, wide-ranging, and fascinating body of compositions, more than a hundred of them, he was one of the key music theorists of the …
Superior Seven / Tract
“I am finally able to say that I write for orchestra— even if I have to make the orchestra myself.” — Robert Ashley Robert Ashley is known primarily for his theater-based pieces and television operas. This new release presents the world premiere reco…
Three Pieces for Two Pianos
This album exemplifies the depth to which Larry Polansky (b. 1954) explores and connects different musical ideas: In Three Pieces for Two Pianos and Old Paint, mathematical models and algorithmic processes are used to set folk songs; in k-toods, simp…
Relative Calm
Jon Gibson (b. 1940) is one of the less frequently mentioned pioneering composers of minimal music and is probably best known as a founding member of the Philip Glass Ensemble. Gibson also holds the unique distinction of having performed with Stev…
A Portrait
A Milestone, this is it! Selecting illustrative works from the lifetime of a creative person is a daunting task; doing so with a singularly individual artist like Harry Partch is all the more difficult. In the more than four decades since Partch’s de…
A mist is a collection of points
Michael Pisaro (b. 1961) is a member of the Wandelweiser collective, an international organization of musicians which he has defined as 'a particular group of people who have been committed, over the long term, to sharing their work and working to…
Words Fail Me
The majestic beauty and savage turbulence that one often beholds while witnessing an awesome act of nature is also evident in Lois V Vierk's vigorous and delicate music. In her meticulously wrought works, she enfolds the rapture of opulent expressio…
Music from the Tudorfest: San Francisco Tape Music Center, 1964
In the spring of 1964 Pauline Oliveros organized a festival celebrating the work of pianist David Tudor, which featured compositions by Oliveros, George Brecht, Toshi Ichiyanagi, Alvin Lucier, and John Cage. The Tudorfest was a watershed event in …
Works for String Quartet and Percussion
"The evolution of the string quartet repertory has accelerated during the last half of the twentieth-century and beyond as composers from both the mainstream and the avant-garde have mined its seemingly inexhaustible creative resources. This CD featu…
Piano plus
Piano Music 1963-1998. Piano Plus is a collection of six piano pieces written by Richard Teitelbaum (b. 1939), a pioneer of interactive electronic and computer music, between 1963 and 1998. Piano Plus illustrates the use of cutting-edge technology to…
Orchestral Works
Diamonds for 1, 2, or 3 orchestras' [for three orchestras] (1999), 'Slices' [for cello and orchestra] (2007), 'Exploration of the house' (2005). Janá ek Philharmonic Orchestra, Christian Arming, Petr Kotik, and Zsolt Nagy, conductors; Charles Curtis,…
Underwater Princess Waltz
A Collection of One-page Pieces by Karl Berger, Earle Brown, Alvin Curran, Nick Didkovsky, Joel Ford, Daniel Goode, Clinton McCallum, Larry Polansky and Christian Wolff. Joel Ford, 'Gauss Cannon' (2006). Alvin Curran, 'Underwater Princess Waltz' (197…
Nyc 1960-1963
Recordings of works by Joseph Byrd, student of Morton Feldman and John Cage and frontman for The United States Of America, are finally available by the American Contemporary Music Ensemble via New World Records.Byrd collaborated with a number of Flux…
The Art Of David Tudor 1963-1992
Milestone release! David Tudor's (1926-1996) identity morphed seamlessly from interpreter of mainly acoustic music to composer-performer of predominately electronic music over a period of about ten years, from the mid-1950s to the mid-1960s. This set…
8 duos
Born in 1934, Christian Wolff is the last surviving member of the group of composers that also included Morton Feldman and Earle Brown, which gathered around John Cage in New York in the 1950s. Wolff's own music has remained faithful to that Cageian …
In the Beginning
David Rosenboom (b. 1947) is a composer/performer known as a pioneer in American experimental music. This series of eight works, created between 1978 and 1981 and presented on these discs in chronological order of their composition, demonstrates a…
Granular Modality
In many respects Earl Howard’s (b. 1951) music is an anomaly that resists categorization and the seductiveness of genre. He is an important force in improvised music and yet his work employs complex structures and rigorous transitions of sound and te…