★New World Records
Anthony Philip Heinrich, Syracuse Symphony Orchestra, Christopher Keene, Louis Moreau Gottschalk, Anthony Und Joseph Paratore
The Ornithological Combat of Kings/Night in the TropicsHere are two extremely entertaining concoctions by two nineteenth-century American Romantics who wrote music on a grand scale. After a broadly lyrical first movement in the grand tradition of his friend and mentor Hector Berlioz, Gottschalk introduce…
Loxodonta Africana
From 1977, seven tunes, five of them by Ricky Ford, the then 23-year-old tenor saxophonist and member of the Charles Mingus band and leader of the session. Accompanied by bassist extraordinaire Richard Davis and the great Dannie Richmond, Ford leads …
Songs of the Civil War
The Civil War, one of the most deeply felt episodes in America's history, has left a heritage of music that reflects those feelings in the most vivid way. Indeed, this music was so intimately involved with events of the time that it became part of th…
Cecil Taylor Unit
This record presents further evidence of Cecil Taylor’s genius and awesome ability to work within the group context, in which he furthers his exploration of the piano “as catalyst feeding material to soloists in all registers.” This music at times ge…
Voiceless Mass
Listening is the foundation of Raven Chacon’s (b. 1977) wide-ranging artistic practice. “I am a listener,” he simply declares, but the attention he gives to sound is complex and vast, encompassing far more than what is immediately audible. From his e…
Amistad
“Amistad is an opera that was ten years in the making. Thulani and I first discussed the idea of making an opera on the Amistad Rebellion in 1986, after the premiere of our opera X: The Life and Times of Malcolm X. We were drawn to the drama of the s…
The Music of John Cage and Harry Partch
Superb selection of historical recordings (1947 to 1973) of music by two undisputed masters of the American avant-garde.
Rewild
Inspired by the perspectives and timescales of nonhuman beings and distant orders of magnitude in the universe of life, Rewild seeks new strata in musical parameters, exploring the uncanny zones at which pitch becomes rhythm, harmonic interval become…
Wide as Heaven: A Century of Song by Black American Composers
"This collection of songs represents one hundred years of music produced by American composers and poets of color—the best of us. Some identify(ied) as Negro, some African-American, some Black, some men, some women, and some insisted they were beyond…
Antigone-Legend / Jefferson
Carol Plantamura and Frederic Rzewski met in 1965 when they were both at the Center for the Creative and Performing Arts at the State University of New York (SUNY), Buffalo. After beginning to work together in 1966, they collaborated in Rome as membe…
One Line, Two Views
One Line, Two Views features seven compositions for nine-piece ensemble by Muhal Richard Abrams. Works range from the subtle textural and tonal explorations of "Textures," "Hydepth," and the title track to the hard bop revisitations of "11 over …
Assemblage
George Lewis (b 1952) combines an astonishing level of creativity with trenchant critiques of many traditional conceptions about experimental music. The four compositions on this album reference a wide range of ideas, from rhetoric in Ancient Rome to…
Long Piano
The melodic and, in the case of the solo piano music, timbral materials from which Christian Wolff's (b 1934) music is made are rarely unusual; these are ordinary, everyday things. However, Wolff's rhythmic invention is of great range and variety: co…
Still
James Romig (b 1971) endeavors to create music that reflects the intricate complexity of the natural world, where fundamental structures exert influence on both small-scale iteration and large-scale design, obscuring boundaries between form and conte…
Dialogues and Contrasts / Colloquy
The title Dialogues and Contrasts describes the nature of the exchange which takes place between the performer and the materials committed to tape. In the first movement the exchange is more in the nature of an argument. Though initially each side ap…
Lower Limit
The immersive sonic textures that characterize Michael Winter's (b 1980) music are crafted from comprehensive lists of data, with each composition encompassing a musical question that is addressed algorithmically. A performance lasts for as long as i…
Musing And Reminiscence
Ezra Sims (1928-2015) was known mainly as a composer of microtonal music. Surrounded by world-class performers who championed his music, he produced a large number of chamber and solo, choral, and two orchestral works. With his unwavering commitment …
Sonatas
Lejaren Hiller (1924-1994) is, understandably, best known for his computer-assisted compositions and works utilizing electronics. The three pieces included in this collection span a crucial fifteen-year period in Hiller's career. The first was writte…
Io
Born in Michigan but for most of his life a true Californian, Robert Erickson (1917-1997) had a reputation as a maverick. His musical path was never a straight line, nor, really, a line at all but a landscape, with ranges of features rather than mere…
Duo, Fives, Quintet, Trio
Born in Michigan but for most of his life a true Californian, Robert Erickson (1917-1997) had a reputation as a maverick. His musical path was never a straight line, nor, really, a line at all but a landscape, with ranges of features rather than mere…