Composition / Avant-Garde

Meander Selection features chamber works by John Lely performed by Apartment House, foregrounding melodic fragments, repetition, gradual change, and the interplay between structure and spontaneity. The album's six tracks move through distinct instrumentations and atmospheres, revealing a composer attuned to understated detail and poised sonic balance.

Somatic Refrain is a collection by Allison Cameron for varied chamber forces and ensemble, performed by Apartment House and the Allison Cameron Band. Her music combines delicate sound textures, unpredictable motifs, and hints of folk and experimental methods, rewarding attentive listeners with gentle surprises and new perspectives on instrumental color.

An Album by Tim Parkinson and Apartment House includes five works covering two decades of the composer’s creative evolution. From uncoordinated solo and ensemble pieces to re-imagined septets and violin-piano duos, the music is marked by matter-of-fact presentation, rhythmic independence, and a celebration of the mundane as fertile compositional ground.

*2022 Stock.* Music for flute and synthesizer is a collection of independent acoustic and electro-acoustic chamber pieces drawn from four of the Licht operas, highlighting the flute and voice of Kathinka Pasveer as well as the synthesizer playing/programming of Antonio Pérez Abellán. - Stockhausenspace.blogspot.com

Karlheinz Stockhausen's pivotal 1950-51 works reveal his transition from traditional forms to revolutionary serialism. Featuring Chöre für Doris, Drei Lieder, Sonatine, and groundbreaking Kreuzspiel, this collection captures the composer's systematic deconstruction of harmonic language while pioneering new approaches to musical time and space.

Fifth release in the MFR Contemporary Series. The Amsterdam-based ensemble MAZE (La Berge, Calderone, Davis, Kyriakides, Hijmans, van Houdt) realises two works by Annea Lockwood, both built around graphic scores derived from photographs of natural systems. Bayou-borne, for Pauline (2016) is dedicated to Pauline Oliveros and uses a map of Houston's bayous; Jitterbug (2007) interprets rocks from the Continental Divide with Lockwood's pre-recorded aquatic and terrestrial insect sounds.

Keyboard Studies presents pivotal works by Terry Riley as interpreted by John Tilbury. The performances offer a rare depth of touch and imagination, embracing the cyclical, improvisatory frameworks that define Riley’s minimalism and bringing to the fore Tilbury’s keen sensibility for architectural listening, color, and meticulous pacing.

Eight collaborative compositions for organ and percussion by the longstanding Canadian duo, who also appeared on Isaiah’s previous, and now sold out, CD ‘Bow’.

Kunsu Shim’s compositions explore the beauty of imperfection and fragility, of simplicity and complexity in natural life, operating at the peripheries of sound and noise. Perception, not purpose, lies at the core of this music. The creation of such sounds is happening in extremely soft and quiet volumes with small changes of character either in a structural or textural form.  In his scores Shim asks his musicians to act with tenderness, care and warmth, lightness or gracefulness - thereby evokin…

The first complete recording of William Russell's percussion ensemble works of the 1930s and 1940s, including Ogou Badagri, Three Cuban Pieces and a Trumpet Concerto, played by Essential Music. Released in 1993.

Four chamber works by the Toronto-based composer Martin Arnold, whose previous album ‘The Spit Veleta’ sold out last year. Beautifully played by Apartment House. "There are number of ways that the word 'ballad' could be applied to a lot of the music I make - clearly, I'm devoted to lyrical (if endlessly meandering) melodies, slow melodies that invoke a kind of vague, indistinct sentimentality. But it's significant to me that the word 'ballad' comes from the from Old French balade, from Provençal…

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 …

Original works for theremin from the 1920s "golden age" to the 1990s, all first recordings, by Schillinger, Grainger, Martinu, Achron, Antunes, Komarov and Lydia Kavina, played by Kavina with piano, string quartet and soprano.

Volume 2 of Mode's Scelsi Edition: the orchestral works Hymnos, Hurqualia and Konx-Om-Pax, played by the Carnegie Mellon Philharmonic and Concert Choir under Juan Pablo Izquierdo, interspersed with Canti del Capricorno sung by Pauline Vaillancourt and Douglas Ahlstedt.

John Cage's Five³ (1991), one of the late number pieces, for trombone and string quartet, played by Monique Buzzarté and the Arditti String Quartet. Cover etching by Cage, liner notes by James Pritchett.

Morton Feldman's String Quartet No. 1 in the longest recorded performance, with Structures and Three Pieces for String Quartet, played by the Flux Quartet. Two CDs plus a bonus DVD of the uninterrupted 90-minute audio.

The complete Imaginary Landscapes 1-5 and Credo in US by John Cage, with radios, phonograph records and percussion, played by Percussion Group Cincinnati in the first volume of the Mode Cage percussion works.

Cornelius Cardew's graphic score Treatise in the only performance of its 2-hour version, recorded live in Prague on 15 October 1967 by the QUaX Ensemble directed by Petr Kotik, remastered from the original analog tape.

Henning Lohner's 1993 composed film in memoriam John Cage, 130 minutes long, combining interviews, found footage and concert performances with 42 personalities in conversation, plus a complete video of 4'33".

First recording of Iannis Xenakis's Kraanerg (1968) for 23 instruments and 4-channel tape, with the tape restored from the analog masters, played by the Callithumpian Consort conducted by Stephen Drury.

Two live 1983 performances of John Cage conducting Atlas Eclipticalis with Winter Music at Seattle's Cornish Institute, first issued on LP in 1986, with a bonus disc of the 86-part Atlas Eclipticalis and Winter Music for 20 pianos.

First volume of Mode's Scelsi Edition and of the traversal of his piano works: Giacinto Scelsi's Sonatas No. 2 and No. 4 and the nine-movement suite Ttai, played by Louise Bessette.

Three works by Enno Poppe for Ensemble Resonanz: the viola concerto Filz with Tabea Zimmermann, Stoff in its version for nine strings, and Wald for four string quartets, conducted by the composer. First recordings, co-produced with Deutschlandfunk Kultur.

First recordings of Enno Poppe's Feld, the jointly composed Tonband by Poppe and Wolfgang Heiniger, and Heiniger's Neumond, played by Yarn/Wire (Ian Antonio, Russell Greenberg, Laura Barger, Ning Yu) with Sam Torres on live electronics.

Five works by Enno Poppe written for Ensemble Musikfabrik: Fell for drumset, Stoff for nine players, Brot, Haare for violin solo and Zug for seven brass, with Dirk Rothbrust, Hannah Weirich and Musikfabrik conducted by the composer.

Double album of solo and duo works by organist-composer Gerd Zacher, all first recordings, including 75 Event(ualitie)s for organ with Juan Allende-Blin's Siebeneinhalb Dezennien, played by Matthias Geuting, Hasti Molavian, Evelin Degen, Allende-Blin and others.

First recording of Enno Poppe's Rundfunk for nine synthesizers (2015-2018), played by Ensemble Mosaik with audio software by Wolfgang Heiniger, recorded in 2019 at the Haus des Rundfunks, Berlin. Co-production with Deutschlandfunk Kultur.

Piano music for two and four hands by Erwin Schulhoff, 1919 to 1927: Piano Sonata No. 3, Ironien op. 34, 10 Klavierstücke op. 30, Musik für Klavier op. 35 and 11 Inventionen op. 36, played by Monica Gutman with Erika Le Roux.

Percussionist Leonie Klein's debut: solo works by Stockhausen (Zyklus), Xenakis (Psappha), Lachenmann (Intérieur I), Nicolaus A. Huber (Póthos), Peter Eötvös (Thunder) and Johannes Julius Fischer (Gathering, first recording). Recorded May 2018 with SWR2.

Organist Dominik Susteck plays John Cage's Organ²/ASLSP and Toshio Hosokawa's Cloudscape and Sen IV, with three of his own improvisations using mobile MIDI instruments by Gerhard Kern, at Kunst-Station Sankt Peter, Cologne. Deutschlandfunk, 2015.

Helmut Lachenmann's Got Lost for high soprano and piano (2007/08), Streichtrio (1965) and Serynade for piano (1997/98), performed by soprano Yuko Kakuta, pianist Yukiko Sugawara and trio recherche. A Südwestrundfunk production.

Sabine Liebner plays Mauricio Kagel's Metapiece (Mimetics) of 1961 interleaved with his Cuatro piezas para piano, An Tasten and MM 51, then Metapiece solo. Recorded in 2017 at the Bayerischer Rundfunk, Munich, with first recordings.

Eight works for cello and piano by South African composer Michael Blake (1951), from Song Without Words (1972) to the Sonata (Hours with the Masters) of 2016, in first recordings by Friedrich Gauwerky and Daan Vandewalle. Coproduced with Deutschlandradio.

Dieter Schnebel's MOVIMENTO for musicians in motion (2015), performed by the AG Neue Musik of the Leininger-Gymnasium Grünstadt under Silke Egeler-Wittmann (SWR, 2016), with Gesums - Geknarrt from Schulmusik recorded in 1985 under Manfred Peters.

Mauricio Kagel's organ works, from Improvisation ajoutée (1962) to Rrrrrrr... (1980/81), plus Dominik Susteck's own K-A-G-E-L improvisations. Recorded by Susteck at the Kunst-Station Sankt Peter, Cologne, 7-9 April 2014, for Deutschlandfunk.

Choral works by Heinz Holliger: Shir Shavur on David Rokeah, Psalm, hölle himmel and Rosa Loui on Kurt Marti, and Utopie Chorklang; SWR Vokalensemble under Marcus Creed and Holliger, recorded 2006-2015, mostly first recordings.

Piano music by Henry Cowell and John Cage (1912-1948), including The Banshee, Aeolian Harp, The Perilous Night and Dream, played by Sabine Liebner; recorded at Bayerischer Rundfunk, Munich, December 2014.

Morton Feldman's 1976 trilogy Orchestra, Elemental Procedures (soprano, choir, orchestra; Beckett text) and Routine Investigations, with Claudia Barainsky, WDR Rundfunkchor and WDR Sinfonieorchester Köln under Peter Rundel; recorded 2010 and 2013.

Six works by John Cage for solo percussion, among them Variations I, Child of Tree, Inlets and 27'10.554", performed by Matthias Kaul on some ninety instruments and objects; recorded at Deutschlandfunk, Cologne, April 2014.

Five orchestral works by Chaya Czernowin (2010-13), including The Crescendo Trilogy, with the BR Symphony Orchestra, Berner Symphonieorchester, SWR Sinfonieorchester, West-Eastern Divan Orchestra and others, recorded live 2011-2013.