Complete Piano Works
This release brings all of Morton Subotnick’s piano music together on one album for the first time, along with four first recordings, all supervised by the composer.Liquid Strata is an important work in Subotnick’s oeuvre. Here the electronic component is what he calls “ghost electronics,” and this is the first of 11 Ghost Pieces. In these works, Subotnick sought to address technology in a way that highlights rather than compromises the inherent features and strengths of acoustical instruments. …
Dispersion
"Working with forces unknown to me has always been an exciting challenge,” says Elliott Sharp, “especially when those forces are in the form of younger musicians, highly skilled and enthusiastic.” For his work with the musicians of the Veni Academy, he chose three previously composed works that would be easily adaptable to a large ensemble whose instrumentation was not the result of prior design plus one newly composed for the occasion. The chosen pieces were based on well-defined processes that…
Absence
"The main focus of Gerald Eckert’s music is frequently not placed on a centrally triggered event or center of action, but on what has been triggered by this event and how the consequences are subsequently developed. In other words, he focuses his sights on what an impulse is followed by. For Außen, von tief innen (Outside, from Deep Within), the consistent subtle and quiet tonal structure of the work is the fine delineation of multiphonics in bass flute and double bass clarinet alongside the ton…
Works for Flute
"Flutist Roberto Fabbriciani continues his releases dedicated to the flute repertoire of single composers with works by Belgian composer Henri Pousseur (1929-2009). Previous releases on Mode featured Aldo Clementi and Bruno Maderna.As with Fabbriciani’s preceeding Clementi and Maderna releases, this Pousseur release marks the first time Pousseur’s works for flute have been collected in one recording. It is important to note that Fabbriciani had a long working relationship with the composer.The s…
Two Paths With Active Shadows Under Three Moons and Surveillance
"This piece and group developed over the course of a year. It was presented in concert over three initial phases. The concert recorded here (second phase) occurred six months into this process. However, this is not completely accurate; in different forms, the group continues to develop. This recording documents one of many possible manifestations."With: Marcia Bassett, Barry Weisblat, Ron Stabinsky, Che Chen, Laura Ortman, C. Spencer Yeh, Michael Bullock, Andrew Lafkas, Rick Brown, Ryan Sawyer, …
Augmented Study (2012)
**200 copies** "This is a study version composed in the studio from a single recording of a violin glissando. It was never intended to be performed live. The final version for 7 violins was the result of this study.""A single recording of the violin glissando of Johnny Chang has been turned into a multi-track recording. Here one violin becomes sixteen. Peter Ablinger’s Augmented Study Serie is focused on 'tension between redundancy of material and complexity of experience'. Because this work is …
The Fish That Became the Sun
This CD offers the first recording of Frank Denyer's extraordinary hour-long piece for large ensemble The Fish That Became the Sun (Songs of the Dispossessed), composed between 1991 and 1996. The ensemble includes a huge number of home-made percussion instruments made from discarded materials, as well as obscure instruments such as eunuch flutes, ocarinas and crumhorns. The album comes with a booklet with notes by Frank Denyer and an essay by Michael Turnbull.Musicians include:Octandre Ensemble …
Point/Wave
The first piece composer Catherine Lamb has written specifically for acoustic guitar was commissioned by Chilean guitarist Christián Alvear. Extending concepts from an installation piece titled Secondary Rainbow with Bryan Eubanks, Lamb employs electronics over an infinite cycle of four "environmental chords" which overlap and resonate with one another.
Gong Gongs
**Warehouse find, still sealed original copies 1987 edition** Gong action suported by catalan fussion percussionist Santi Arisa. Main attraction here is the percussions and electronics piece Secuencia I.
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…
Explosion Of A Memory (A Literary Canvas For Orchestra)
An extended iterative, cycling, dissipating cloud of fragments, constantly shifting focus, which throws up detail, evolves, returns, settles and re-dissolves; it's a four-dimensional explosion in which stretches of baroque, folk themes and Byzantine liturgy exist contemporaneously alongside modern and (arguably) post-modern materials and techniques, all shaken loose out of the same experiential block, much as strata emerge as tectonic plates fold one time over another. Long, beautiful, to…
Gaps, Absences
A beautifully recorded and produced cycle of pieces that combine complexity and precision with rich and unfamiliar timbres. The ensemble pieces amplify and enrich a core piano with various combinations of harmonium, double bass, violin, percussion, Hungarian zither, citara bassa, bowed cymbals, alto clarinet, melodica, sampler and field recordings, all sparsely but powerfully deployed. This is a deep and powerful music with both crystalline clarity and cinematic low frequency power. And no fat o…
Propaganda
Written for theatre in 1987 using a host of avian and mammalian voices, snippets of unidentified musical material and electroacoustic noise- sculpting, as well as invented and real instruments played by Fred Frith. This was a hard time and the mood is intense, lean and not cheerful, though there are some gruesomely cheery inserts. There's no fat but a lot of meat here.
Ordinary Objects and Other Distractions
In this episode, a number of short recordings of household objects and curious instruments become the core thematic material for a range of exquisitely conceived and realised pieces in which the recordings are shaped, stretched, tuned, combined and otherwise manipulated before being folded into a variety of musical structures with additional elements or parts added. Much use is made of rhythms derived from gravity – that is, dropping and bouncing - embedded into microtonal, poly-rhythmic and dee…
Accordion Music
2007 release **
Fold in; fold out: the breathing of the accordion. On this CD the accordion unfolds in a very special way, unusually close to the instrument. Four works, four worlds that seem to know each other; refer to each other like a greeting from far away.Hearing John Cage's ,,Cheap Imitation" played on accordion gives you the impression of folk music from an unknown, probably non-existent country. This music comes from nowhere, goes nowhere, is forever on its way.....Like ,,Sam Lazaro Bro…
Silent Pieces - Live At Dacapo II
1995 release ** Special members-only edition for the sponsors' circle of dacapo. Music by: Anton Webern, Morton Feldman, John Cage, Hans Otte, Malcolm Goldstein, Dietrich Eichmann, Yoshikazu Iwamoto.
Ensemble Music Vol.2
Recorded after performances at New York's prestigious 92nd Street Y in 1996 with the participation of the composer, Ensemble Music 2 is the follow up to the initial, critically acclaimed and best selling volume of Iannis Xenakis' Ensemble Works on Mode. This disc contains the first recording of Xenakis' memorial work A la Mémoire de Witold Lutoslawski, to the great Polish composer. A literal monument in sound, comprised of massive blocks of brass arranged as a dirge-like fanfare. Composed in 199…
Ensemble Music Vol.1
Iannis Xenakis' oeuvre is unique in modern music--it is music of great visceral power, energy and sheer sound. Music from another world. Music that grabs the listener, riveting his attention. Conductor Charles Zachary Bornstein is a Xenakis specialist. Bornstein learned that of the 700 to 800 performances of Xenakis' music worldwide each year, only a handful were in America. He formed New York's ST-X Ensemble (named after Xenakis' series of ST- compositions from the 1960s) in 1994 to fill the vo…
The Previous Evening
Former Henry Cow guitarist Fred Frith pays homage to three giants of contemporary classical music: John Cage, Morton Feldman and Earle Brown. In his own inimitable fashion, Frith has tried to incorporate the chosen composer's own working methods into each of the three pieces that make up The Previous Evening. As he explains in the enclosed booklet regarding his John Cage homage: 'Fragments of text heard in Part 1 were taken at random from Cage's book Silence. Tape editing, the structure of the e…
Stones
2009 release **
The score of "Stones" consists of just a few lines of text:Make sounds with stones, draw sounds out of stones, using a number of sizes and kinds (and colours); for the most part discretely; sometimes in rapid sequences. For the most part striking stones wfth stones, but also stones on other surfaces (inside the open head of a drum, for instance) or other than struck (bowed, for instance, or amplified). Do not break anything. Christian Wolff, STONES, (from: Prose Collection, 1968…