★New World Records
Ipsa Dixit
Kate Soper's (b. 1981) Ipsa Dixit (2010 - 16) is an
evening-length work of chamber music theatre for voice, flute, violin,
and percussion that explores music, language, and meaning through
blistering ensemble virtuosity and extended vocal technique. "'Ipsa dixit' is the feminized form of ipse dixit (literally
"he, himself, said it"), a fallacy in which an assertion is made based
not on proof, but on the supposed authority of the speaker alone. The
title seemed apt for a work that explores …
Piano Music
Robert Palmer (1915-2010) produced more than ninety symphonic, choral, chamber, and solo works throughout his career, earning a reputation in the mid-twentieth century as one of the country's leading, most daring, and -- at the same time -- appealing modernists. Palmer's unique musical language combined a deeply emotional impulse with complex counterpoint and rhythmic structures, drawing comparisons to Hindemith, Bartók, Lou Harrison, even Brahms. Aaron Copland famously included Palmer on his 19…
The Birthday Party
On first hearing, the piano music of Peter Garland (b. 1952) creates a feeling of dislocation, then astonishment: It is so very different from the contemporary concert music we are familiar with. The composer's intent, his emotional directness is immediate -- despite the unusual sound world and different sense of time that these pieces exhibit. The three pieces on this CD, 'The Birthday Party' (2014), 'Blessingway' (2011-12) and 'Amulet' (After Roberto Bolaño) for 4 pianos (2010), are quite diff…
Three Pieces in Polytempic Polymicrotonality
The author of these notes has spent his life explaining radical music, and the music on this disc may be the most radical I've ever written about. Peter Thoegersen (b. 1967) is not yet a name known to the music world; not for any lack of connection to other famous musicians, but because he came to composition late, and because his artistic aims are so broad and complex that they have taken years to evolve. His aesthetic is well defined, and he is upfront about having a name for it: "Polytempic P…
Endangered Species
Endangered Species states, restates, correlates, instigates, inflates and deflates, elevates, formulates, disintegrates, interrogates, percolates, granulates, germinates, Kiss Me Kates, Tom Waits, Norman Bates and W.B. Yeats, horripilates, adumbrates, prestidigitates, sophisticates, enumerates, integrates and contraindicates songs from the standard repertoire, Standards they were called. Old French, Frankish, estendard "place of formation." If you asked a jazz musician what he played, he'd proba…
Gertrudes
Music for violin and resonator guitar by Robert Ashley, Lainie Fefferman, Paula Matthusen, James Moore, Larry Polansky and Ken Thomson. Longtime friends and collaborators James Moore and Andie Springer began performing as a duo in 2011 while on tour with playwright Richard Maxwell's Neutral Hero. This anthology comprises compositions by their friends and colleagues, all written or adapted for the duo and their unconventional instrumentation of violin and steel-string resonator guitar. Lar…
Two Orchestra Pieces
This recording is the first ever devoted to the orchestral music of Christian Wolff (b. 1934) and thus documents a little-known aspect of his wide-ranging work. John, David (1998) introduces in its second part a prominent role for solo percussionist, playing a wide range of pitched and non-pitched instruments, including marimba, glockenspiel, a variety of drums, wood and metal instruments and other sources, the exact choice left to the performer. Rhapsody (2009), in contrast, uses instruments of…
Glorious Ravage
Glorious Ravage is a panoramic free jazz song cycle by San Francisco Bay Area bassist and composer Lisa Mezzacappa, that features a large ensemble of stellar California improvisers performing with films created by Bay Area moving image artists Janis Crystal Lipzin, Kathleen Quillian, Alfonso Alvarez and Konrad Steiner. The program takes as its inspiration the adventures and writings of lady explorers of the 19th century who trekked to the wildest parts of the earth, to escape, to discover, and t…
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 artists springing from the movements of Fluxus and free-jazz. American creative innovation issued unquestionable influence over the later half of 20th century, but the root of its radicalism was earlier, with its origins often misplaced. Rather growing f…
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 late twentieth century. This CD set offers complete recordings of one of the most important of Tenney's later sets of pieces-Spectrum Pieces 1-8, the first five of which were written in Toronto in 1995 and the last three in 2001, after he moved to Va…
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 recordings of two of his “orchestral” pieces, Superior Seven (concerto for flute), and Tract (for orchestra and voice), where the orchestra is provided by a MIDI synthesizer. In Superior Seven, the flute floats freely in and out of an atmospheric electro…
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, simple text scores outline complex musical processes that Polansky has theorized extensively; and the Dismissions are culminations of lifelong musicological investigations. His unique compositional style is unified through diversity and a constant reexam…
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 Steve Reich, Terry Riley, and La Monte Young (as a member of the Theatre of Eternal Music), in addition to Glass, the four composers widely regarded as the founding fathers of minimal music. Gibson also has a track record of composing for modern and …
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 the brief history of the San Francisco Tape Music Center, which not only provided its members with an opportunity to collaborate with Tudor, but also to promote their own work. Co-sponsored by KPFA, the Tudorfest demonstrated the artistic diversi…
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 extend the range of the traditional acoustic piano. Three of the pieces are played by the composer himself, and the other three are performed by some of the leading interpreters of contemporary piano music. The first piece, 'Intersections' (1963) is…
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, cello solo, with members of the San Diego Symphony. For nearly fifty years the work of Alvin Lucier (b. 1931) has marked off a space unlike any other in American music. By now a hero to three generations of experimentalists, Lucier continues to make…
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' (1972), 'Her Waltzing with Her' (1972). Nick Didkovsky, 'Mayhem (the hammer)' (2012), 'Mayhem (the arrow)' (2012), 'Mayhem (the blade)' (2012). Christian Wolff, 'Burdocks, Part VII' (1970Ð71). Larry Polansky, 'tween (k-tood #2)' (2002). Clinton McCallum,…
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 Fluxus artists in the 1960s, and also formed Joe Byrd And The Field Hippies, recording psych-rock album The American Metaphysical Circus in 1969. This release, Joseph Byrd NYC 1960–1963, recorded by contemporary music ensemble ACME, includes new recordin…
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 of seven CDs, the first truly comprehensive survey of Tudor's work as a composer, goes beyond any previous attempt to document that process of transformation. It captures his touch and sensitivity and offers an expansive, previously unavailable view…
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 experimental tradition ever since, and the eight works for pairs of instrumentalists here show how, in the right hands, the varying degrees of freedom his works allow their interpreters can produce astonishingly beautiful results. The common denomina…