“But this new recording is enormously valuable—not simply because it is fantastic as a piece of music, but because of its tenacious scholarship, illuminating an aspect of Amacher that many would otherwise never see.”
History tends to remember the composers and musicians who left behind voluminous discographies. Other composers, who were just as significant, remain more enigmatic because their output is harder to track down.
Maryanne Amacher, who died in 2009 at the age of seventy-one, was a shining example of the latter: a towering figure in experimental music who released few recordings. While she left an expansive private archive, spanning several decades, in her rambling home in Kingston, New York, there haven’t been many releases that the general public could find, outside of two albums (Sound Characters and Sound Characters Vol. 2, both on the Tzadik label) and a few scattered appearances on compilations.
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