Works for Instruments
Edition RZ presents John McGuire's Works For Instruments. Performers: Ensemble Modern -- Julia Rempe (soprano); Pellegrini-Quartett: Antonio Pellegrini, Thomas Hofer (violin); Fabio Marano (viola); Helmut Menzler (violoncello); musikFabrik: Hermann Kretzschmar, Paulo Alvarez, Irmela Roelcke, Eun-Ju Kim, Ulrich Löffler, Jürgen Kruse (piano), Christine Chapman, Jodie Lawson, Charles Putnam, Rohan Richards (horns), Dirk Rothbrust, Carlos Tarcha (percussion). Each of the compositions of post-minimal…
The Harry Partch Collection, Volume 4
Meticulously remastered from the original mono master tapes! The Bewitched was Harry Partch’s first work solely intended for dance (and mime-dance at that; he was not overly enamored in his lifetime of so-called “modern dance”). Drawing heavily from his deep affection for the music-theatrical performance traditions of Greek theater, as well as those from Africa, Bali, and Chinese opera, Partch conceived of a contemporary American music ritual-theater where musicians not only play, but also funct…
ShamanSong
Composer/performer Joan La Barbara (b 1947) has been an influential figure in experimental music since the early 1970s. She has devoted her career to the exploration of the human voice as a multi-faceted instrument. Going far beyond traditional boundaries, she has created works for multiple voices, chamber ensembles, music theater, orchestra and interactive technology. ShamanSong features three premieres of vintage La Barbara "sound paintings" of pensive beauty and spiritual resonance.
ShamanSo…
Yellow Man With Heart With Wings
1990 CD issue of Robert Ashley's 1978 piece for voice and electronics. A two-part composition with narration (part one in Spanish and part two in heavily altered English) commissioned by public radio station KUNM in Albuquerque, this music has a plain, serene beauty. Part one is a narration by Guillermo Grenier in dreamy, flatly inflected Spanish, backed by a four-note synthesizer track, and punctuated by mysterious, heavily processed vocalizations. Ashley throws in extensive sound washes and ot…
Michael von Biel
An astonishing CD with the usual RZ deluxe touch by the well-known fluxus related cellist. Michael von Biel (born 30 June 1939 in Hamburg) a German composer, cellist, and graphic artist. Von Biel studied piano, theory, and composition in Toronto (1956–57), Vienna (1958–60), New York (1960, with Morton Feldman, amongst others), London (1960, with Cornelius Cardew), and Cologne (with Karlheinz Stockhausen). From 1961 to 1963 he attended the Darmstadt Vacation Courses for New Music. In 1964 he rec…
Simoom
On Simoom we hear three of Lois V. Vierk's works for "big instruments," that is, multiples of the same instrument, treated more like single entities than like groups of voices: Go Guitars for five electric guitars tuned microtonally around "E," Cirrus for six trumpets, and Simoom for eight cellos. All three works employ what Vierk describes as "Exponential Structure," which utilizes exponential relationships to control time, pitch movement and rates of change. Within this system, Vierk creates v…
Trauermusiken
Two compositions by the young Austrian composer/organist Klaus Lang who currently lives in Berlin/Germany. Der Wind und das Meer for viola (Barbara Konrad, viola) The Sea of Despair for String Quartet (Amras Streichquartett)
Clepsydra, Astray
**Restock of a rare, must-have record for contemporary music lovers. Comes with 4-page 12" booklet ** Great dense orchestral scraping and bowing from 1982 & 1983 by Romanian composer Horatiu Radulescu (1942-2008), among the great masters of Spectralism and subharmonics. This absorbing LP includes two groundbreaking works centered around the 'Sound Icons' - pianos standing on their sides, played with bows between the strings. On side A is the hypnotic, otherworldly Clepsydra for 16 Sound Icons (E…
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…
Franco Evangelisti
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 …
Music for piano
Douvle CD set with recordings by the legendary 20th century avantgarde pianist performing compositions by (and with) John Cage, Sylvano Bussotti, Morton Feldman, Christian Wolff.
Horbare Okosysteme: Live elektronic compositions 1993-2005
Live electronic compositions from 1993-2005 by composer Agostino Di Scipio, using acoustic instruments and digital sound processing to create unusual and previously unheard sound worlds.