Gasser is the portrait CD of the American composer Jonah Haven, in whose music extreme expression meets fragile beauty. Haven sees his work as an exploration of his own life and of existential human experiences such as despair, loss and isolation. The six works here are mostly for small forces, from duos to an octet.

Haven grew up in rural Ohio and works as a composer, improviser and pianist. He studied composition at Oberlin Conservatory with Josh Levine and Aaron Helgeson, then with Brigitta Muntendorf at the Hochschule für Musik und Tanz Köln, and went on to doctoral studies at Harvard with Chaya Czernowin and Hans Tutschku. Five groups share the programme. Wolftone plays aren't wet, Ensemble Proton Bern plays the title piece under Gregor Mayrhofer. ensemble recherche plays another ditch and slip letting by hand, Trio Catch plays strange nest, and Duo XAMP plays the accordion duet. The recordings are coproductions of Deutschlandfunk and the German Music Council, except gasser, coproduced with Schweizer Radio und Fernsehen. The booklet text is by Gordon Kampe.

Driven by a constant search for the new, Haven works with a wide palette of sounds. i burn a million years, for microtonal accordion duet, is built on microtonal shifts. In slip letting by hand, for prepared violin and unprepared cello, remnants of tonal, traditional music shine through distorted and perforated sounds, made largely with multiphonics. Many pieces push the players to their physical limits. In aren't wet, for prepared bassoon and violin with prepared bow, the two very different instruments converge through preparation and amplification. In gasser, for eight musicians, high registers and the lack of breathing pauses produce a gasping that can hardly be avoided whenever the players take in air.

Kampe writes that in gasser a supposedly austere beauty tilts into a human beauty, human because imperfect, through various sonic contaminations. That process, he adds, links nearly all the pieces. another ditch, for alto flute, percussion and viola, and strange nest, for bass clarinet, piano and cello, complete the set.

CD, Wergo WER 6441 2, released in 2023 in the German Music Council's Edition Zeitgenössische Musik, running 61 minutes.