Composition / Avant-Garde

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…

The first CD release of works by Franco Evangelisti (1926-1980), the founder of Nuova Consonanza (infamous early '60s Italian avant garde ensemble that included Mario Bertoncini, Roland Kayn, Ennio Morricone, Frederic Rzewski and others). This two disc retrospective features studio audio-footage and lab-experiments, featuring performers Aloys Kontarsky, David Tudor, Eberhard Blüm and the LaSalle Quartet. Spanning the last 40 years, virtually all forms of post-1950 invention are represented here …

Elliott Carter's Quintet for Piano and Strings, Quintet for Piano and Winds, Syringa, Tempo e Tempi and two miniatures, recorded under his supervision for his 95th birthday with Ursula Oppens, the Arditti Quartet and Ensemble Sospeso.

Two CDs covering 37 years of Christian Wolff's music, mostly first recordings including the graphic score For 5 or 10 People and Schoenen met veters, played by The Barton Workshop with James Fulkerson.

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…

All of Christian Wolff's works for violin and piano: the first recording of Pebbles (1999) and two performances of Duo for Violinist and Pianist (1961), played by the Canadian duo Sabat/Clarke with the composer present.

Five works by Alvin Lucier for solos and trios on beating tones and microtones: Piper for bagpipe, Fan for four kotos, 947 for flute, Silver Streetcar for triangle and Ever Present for flute, piano and alto saxophone.

Two microtonal works by Alvin Lucier written for the performers: Navigations for Strings, played by the Arditti Quartet, and Small Waves for string quartet, trombone, piano and two water pourers, with Hildegard Kleeb and Roland Dahinden.