Organic Music Tapes Vol.3
*100 copies limited edition* In keeping with tradition, the new year brings another offering from Portuguese pianist and composer Tiago Sousa. "Organic Music Tapes Vol.3," the third instalment in Tiago’s ongoing series, continues to develop a freeform dual approach to organic and fluid compositions for Piano and Organ - this time adding a real church tube organ to the proceedings.
Evolving from the foundation laid in the first two volumes, Sousa introduces the pipe organ into his signature piano…
Works for Saxophone
"The music of Toshio Hosokawa invites us on a poetic journey of knowledge he has made throughout his life by bringing the cultures of East and West into dialogue.” - Paco Yáñez
A Curving Abacus
In 1968, Steve Reich coined the term Process Music to describe compositional designs that resemble “pulling back a swing, releasing it, and observing it gradually come to rest,” explaining that “once the musical process is set up and loaded it runs by itself.” In the mid-1970s, Brian Eno began using the expression Ambient Music to refer to atmospheric compositions that “must be able to accommodate many levels of listening attention without enforcing one in particular,” music that “must be as ign…
New American Music, Vol. 4
*2024 stock. Custon CDr* Noa Ain gives us a surreal portrait of violinist Yoko Matsua in “Used to Call Me Sadness,” Joel Chadabe encourages a solo percussionist to interact with an automated electronic system in “Echoes,” Ann McMillan manipulates animal sounds with recording techniques in “Whale I,” Gordon Mumma offers audience members “Do It Yourself” participation in “Cybersonic Cantilevers” and Vladimir Ussachevsky suggests a pre-biblical story of the creation of the world depicted by electro…
New American Music, Vol. 2
*2024 stock. Custon CDr* Trumpets and trombones twist through dense pockets of sound in Lucia Dlugoszewski “Angels of the Inmost Heaven”; the voice of a lone guitarist punctures the silence in James Fulkerson’s “Patterns” II and VII; flute, bassoons, viola and vibraphone are intended to “turn some dancers on” in Carman Moore’s “Youth in a Merciful House”; and a guitarist laments to the hum of an Elizabethan-type string and woodwind consort in Stanley Silverman’s “Planh.” This is a thoughtfully b…
(Amsterdam) Memory Space
*2024 stock* The openness of Lucier's instructions belie the difficulty in dealing with the idea of how one can translate a sound from one medium into another and what kind of transformation of information takes place in that exchange. While interpreting this work, a musician becomes intensely aware of the processes by which one listens, both consciously and subconsciously; how one is constantly decoding sounds in one’s environment, filtering out essential and non-essential information, discerni…
his master's voice / aus den fliegenden blättern eines fahrenden waldhornisten / lose verbunden -- Performed by Kei Kondo and Takahiro Kuroda
*300 copies limited edition* Eva-Maria Houben (born in 1955) is a German composer, organist, pianist and musicologist. She is a member of the Wandelweiser Group. Her compositions, performed by herself and many other musicians, have been released on CDs and LPs as well as digitally by Edition Wandelweiser and other international labels. On May 15, 2023, composer Takahiro Kuroda (born in 1989) presented the concert "Square of Thoughts Vol. 2: Eva-Maria Houben and Horn + x" in the performance space…
echo fantasy lI -- Performed by Takahiro Kuroda and Kei Kondo
*300 copies limited edition* Eva-Maria Houben (born in 1955) is a German composer, organist, pianist and musicologist. She is a member of the Wandelweiser Group. Her compositions, performed by herself and many other musicians, have been released on CDs and LPs as well as digitally by Edition Wandelweiser and other international labels. On May 15, 2023, composer Takahiro Kuroda (born in 1989) presented the concert "Square of Thoughts Vol. 2: Eva-Maria Houben and Horn + x" in the performance space…
Reverse Bloom
On the evening of July 13th, 2023, I trekked up to Arnold Hall for a very special performance at The Stone. I sat in the front row and took out my notebook then turned to my right and looked around the space. The dimly lit room buzzed with quiet activity and conversation. After a few more minutes, the lights went even lower and out walked three shadowy figures. Each clicked on a small bulb that lit their individual music stands. This was my third time seeing the Jessica Pavone String Ensemble. T…
Antoine Brumel: Earthquake Mass
Following on from their successful last recording, Josquin the Undead (GCDP32117) this new recording of Antione Brumel's Earthquake Mass is a welcome addition. Graindelavoix is an Antwerp-based music and art ensemble founded in 1999. Helmed by founder-director Bjorn Schmelzer, it is committed to offering a contemporary and critical interpretation of mainly historical, vocal repertoires. It would be difficult to find a composition that resembles the twelve-part mass Et ecce terrae motus by Antoin…
Feldman Edition 14: Complete Music for Cello & Piano
Huge Tip! This release brings together all of Morton Feldman’s compositions for cello and piano, including unpublished works and a first recording. Together, these works tell the story of Feldman’s music. They span 35 years — over half his lifetime — from when he was searching for his voice as a student to when he was opening new doors in the last years of his life. The album is bookended by two realizations the graphic score “Durations 2” (1960), giving an opportunity to hear what the flexibili…
Rome Open Music Experience
*2024 stock* "Rome: not only the capital city of Italy, but also an acronym standing for Roman Aleatoric Music Experience. The three musicians of the Rib Trio, featured in this Da Vinci Classics album are all among the leading experts in the field, and they decided to explore a quintessentially Roman phenomenon, i.e. the fertile ground found by aleatoric music in the Roman area, from the post-World-War II years until present-day. Aleatoric music is music whose notational parameters (such as pitc…
Mapping the Valleys of the Uncanny
Daniel M Karlssons Mapping the valleys of the uncanny is an investigation into a process and method, colliding with questions relating to what can be known to be real, within the field of algorithmic composition. This music and text-based work examines the roles and signifiers of instrumentation and timbre as they unwittingly conspire to designate access, power, status, work and ultimately class. Paradoxically, Karlsson uses this critical-analytical standpoint as a means to build a large-scale i…
3 Works for Strings, Giusto Chamber Orchestra
"Each composition arises from a clear idea that the listener can grasp. That is their beauty, I’d argue – there’s no need for, or possibility of, any process of beautification. They are conceptual art in the broadest sense, but vividly concrete in their sonorous properties. So they are a paradigm of musical art – for music is an art that is abstract in form, concrete in utterance." - Andy Hamilton
Near Blue-A Taste of Melancholy
"Near Blue – A Taste of Melancholy is a soundtrack for being unstuck in time, if just for an hour. It is a glide through a rich past and present, with glimpses of a future worth reaching." - Bill Shoemaker
Franz Koglmann - flugelhornGert Schubert - violinKurt Franz Schmid - clarinetSandro Miori - tenor & soprano saxophones & alto fluteRudolf Ruschel - tromboneRaoul Herget - tubaRobert Michael Weiss - piano
Insula Dulcamara
Paul Klee’s Naturstudium (1923) recalibrated the dialogue between art-making and the natural world. By peering closely at nature, Klee’s project was one of a magical de-mystification, seemingly a contradiction in terms until you realize that by looking clearly and dispassionately (the studium part of Naturstudium), he brought us full circle to wonder and awe. Spanish percussionist Luis Tabuenca also peers inward at his world—here the universe of percussion sounds—inviting us to a microscopic lis…
Passage
Jason Eckardt’s composition Passage is a profound exploration of the unsettling history surrounding the CIA’s interest in sensory deprivation and its impact on human psychology. Divided into three movements – Subject, Ascension, and Testify – Eckardt delves into the dark legacy of interrogation techniques, shedding light on the use of sound and light as weapons in various global conflicts. In a separate work, pulse-echo, Eckardt transforms the piano into a resonant body, drawing inspiration from…
Collected Works 2018-22
'Collected Works 2018-22' coalesces three deeply personal works that were created by Elms for three of the UK's most innovative ensembles and supporters of contemporary music. The three works explore misremembrance and the degradation of memory over time (Consolations in Travel), cyclical patterns of thought and resultant behaviour (The Age of Spiritual Machines), and the perception of reality orchestrated through expectation and misconstrued senses (100 Demons).
Colliding Bubbles
Colliding Bubbles (surface tension and release) is a composition for string quartet and harmonica quartet, meaning that Quatuor Bozzini is playing string instruments while playing harmonicas. "The title refers to different kinds of bubbly matter which are set to collide within the composition, leading to different ruptures and possible release of surface tension. The collision of bubbles unfolds partly in relation to sound, where small fluctuations appear in the encounters between harmonicas and…
Girl
"a glorious, shifting collage of sound" -BBC Music Magazine