Music For The Kama Sutra
*2022 stock* Robert Hughes, composer and author, is a graduate of the University of Buffalo (now SUNY Buffalo) and composition student of Aaron Copland, Carlos, Chavez, Luigi Dallapiccola, and Lou Harrison. He has written for symphony orchestra, chamber ensemble, voices, performance art events and a wide variety of media, including twenty film scores and a large body of electronic music. His compositions include commissions from the San Francisco Symphony, Cabrillo Music Festival, Oakland Sympho…
Sonatas And Interludes For Prepared Piano
**2022 stock** Sonatas and Interludes for Prepared Piano, a cycle of 20 short pieces for prepared piano (a piano modified by inserting nuts and bolts and other objects between the piano strings in order to produce percussive and otherworldly sound effects) by American composer John Cage. Created in 1946–48 after the composer had been introduced to Indian visual and performing arts, the cycle was intended to represent the so-called permanent emotions—the heroic, the erotic, the wondrous, the comi…
Because a circle is not enough
music for bowed string instruments consists mostly of music composed by Malcolm Goldstein (b. 1936) between 2018 and 2019 while living in Montréal, Québec. The impulse to compose this series came from Goldstein’s experience as a teacher and performer of Béla Bartók’s 44 Duos for Two Violins (1931). Whereas Bartók’s series features a clear progression to the pieces, gradually increasing in technical and musical complexity from beginning to end, music for bowed string instruments has no such seque…
3 String Quartets
Starting with his music of the 1960s and early 1970s, with works such as For 1, 2 or 3 People (1964), the Prose Collection (1968–71), and Changing the System (1974), Christian Wolff (b. 1934) quietly re-invented chamber music. He created music in which the activities of the performers— timing, cueing, assembling and selecting materials—were foregrounded. Although to some extent these activities were always a part of classical music, Wolff opened them up for creative decision-making by the musici…
Together on the Way
A concert-length work for pipe organ, piano and percussion, created by the composer and the GBSR Duo (Siwan Rhys and George Barton) at the recent Huddersfield Contemporary Music Festival. Wonderfully brooding music, beautifully played.
Discreet Angel
Three works written over 25 years ago by a virtually unknown Canadian composer. The pieces were originally performed just once or twice, but have recently re-emerged and sound extraordinarily contemporary. New recordings by Apartment House and Cristian Alvear, as well as one historic recording by the composer himself. Brilliant stuff.
Luft.Inneres
Four chamber works for strings by Korean composer Kunsu Shim, plus six short pieces written for Kunsu by composer friends.
Performed by the Luna String Quartet.
Cycle & Song
Jack Symonds is a composer, conductor, pianist & the Artistic Director of Sydney Chamber Opera. SCO is a resident company at Carriagworks, Australia’s answer to The Park Avenue Amoury. His productions are always daring, both musically & theatrically. They tend to garner 5-star reviews and affronted walkouts in equal measure. He studied composition at the Royal College of Music, London & the Sydney Conservatorium of Music, where he received the university medal. He has written pieces for Jane She…
Intermediate Obscurities III (Live At Spontaneous Music Festival October 5th 2019)
**200 copies limited edition** Live recording from Dirk Serries’ Tonus project, which explores long-form, minimal, graphic score pieces.
Dimanche | Masques | Cartoon Circus
**150 copies limited edition** "Although he had accepted my request for an interview about his practice as a rhythmist, Fernand Schirren observed me with a more interrogative look than my questions could ever warrant. From the outset, he warned me that he preferred to be called ‘Schirren’ without the addition of his first name, which he despised. It is of course a contraction of Ferdinand, the name of his father, a painter, but we did not discuss the reasons for his aversion any further. On the …
Voces
Voces documents many of Walter Zimmermann’s compositions for voices from 1979–2016. The words set range from Meister Eckhart and Hadewijch to Lermontov, Mandelstam, Jabès, Tranströmer, Ingold and Robert Creeley (with his voice accompanying the musicians). Performers include: Claudia Barainsky, the musicians of the Merce Cunningham Dance Company (including David Tudor & Takehisha Kosugi), Tehila Nini Goldstein, KNM Ensemble, Meitar Ensemble, Neue Vocalsolisten Stuttgart, Peter Schöne / Jan Phili…
Mind Is Moving (IX)
Mind is moving (IX) is a composition for guitar by Michael Pisaro-Liu, affiliated with the avant-garde composers group The Wandelweiser Composers Ensemble. Pisaro's work can be characterized as experimental minimalism, often utilizing silence, a minimum of musical material, and extended composition durations. This version is executed by Slovenian guitarist Primož Sukič.
The Works for Piano 11: Cheap Imitation
All of these works by Cage are influenced by Satie. Cage’s friend and colleague Morton Feldman made an arrangement of Cage’s solo piano “Cheap Imitation” for a trio of piano, flutes/piccolo and glockenspiel. Feldman’s admiration for the pianist Aki Takahashi caused him to gift this arrangement to her. And, full circle, we have the repertoire of this album. The major discovery is Feldman’s arrangement of Cheap Imitation for this very Feldmanesque instrumental ensemble. It is unknown why Feldman …
My Wounded Head 3
An indefinite, open-ended composition of short sections that allows the performer to decide what and when to repeat or to go on to the next phrase is not new. Terry Riley's In C is the milestone score of decades ago. Slow, prolonged, quasi repetitive and contemplative works in the Western classical style are also familiar though the scores of Morton Feldman, John Adams, Brian Eno, John Luther Adams, and Gavin Bryars. Thus, Marc Chan's piano piece, My Wounded Head 3, inspired by Bach's Passion Ch…
Señales
Señales —Señales, “Homenaje a Jonathan Harvey” for violin & ensemble (Irvine Arditti, violin. Ensemble Signal/Brad Lubman); Páramo de voces for piano & tape (Alberto Rosado, piano); Intermezzo malinconico for bass clarinet solo (Adrián Sandi); Homenaje a Remedios Vario; Recuerdos del Porvenir (ensemble recherche)
On the Edges
"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…
Afterglow
** 2021 Stock ** Keeril Makan composes without assumed expectations of an instrument’s sound or a performer’s capabilities, but by exploring the possible, by discovering the beautiful in the unexpected and following where that beauty leads. Makan’s relationship to the world of sounds has its connection to the work of Edgard Varèse and John Cage and by a broad American experimental tradition, with touchstones in the work of some of the European modernists. Afterglow is the outcome of hours spent…
Songs Of Innocence & Experience
** 2021 Stock ** This is the first complete recording of Walter Zimmermann’s string quartets. The 10 Fränkische Tänze, from the project Lokale Musik (Local Music) explore the folk music of Franconia in Germany. They are built on research of old peasant books of dances, some dating back to the early 19th century and the beginning of the notation of folk music. The many dance melodies including waltzes, Schottische [German polka], mazurka, galop etc. are captured, rejected and presented in just in…
Undersong
** 2021 Stock ** An American who came of age in the late 1980s, Jason Eckardt’s music captures the essences of the genres that led him first to performance (as a guitarist), and then to composition: heavy metal and art rock, jazz, gagaku and p’ansori, the Second Viennese School, American post-serialism, and the new complexity. It evokes the power of inspired, virtuosic improvisation, the incisiveness of classical ensemble playing, and the raw expressivity of ethnic music. The first complete CD o…
Signs, Games and Messages
This is the first complete recording of the 24 Signs, Games and Messages by Hungarian composer György Kurtág. Signs, Games and Messages is a collection of very personal miniatures which Kurtág began writing almost 50 years ago, and which he continues to add to through the present day. Many have been written, dedicated or inspired by a particular person; they pass, sometimes impertinent, sad, serene, cheerful, joyful, thoughtful, or melancholic. This CD is completed by the first recordings of fo…