Music Autopsies - Music Essays And Interviews (1999-2022) (Book)
‘…music can conduct autopsies on received historical narratives and current ideologies of power and exploitation; it can tell things as they were, as they are, and perhaps, as they could be.’ (Benjamin Dwyer)
In this book, the direction of readers’ attention is naturally drawn into music; but more often it is drawn outwards. This is the metaphoric idea of ‘autopsy’: music can not only conduct investigations into extra-musical thoughts of discipline, but also into political and socio-cultural are…
Mieczyslaw Weinberg - In Search of Freedom (Book)
David Fanning’s book is the first full account of Weinberg’s life and works in any language. Drawing on unpublished materials in the family archives and on the personal reminiscences of those close to Weinberg, he tells the story of a composer who devoted his life to music against heavy odds, memorializing those who did not live to share in his problematic freedom.
Mieczysław Weinberg (1919–96) made two narrow escapes from the Nazis: in 1939 from his native Warsaw to Minsk, then in 1941 to Tashk…
Das Orgien Mysterientheater - Musik Des 6-Tage-Spiels 2022
24 years after Hermann Nitsch's first realization of the six-day play (1998), his Gesamtkunstwerk once again took place in July 2022, shortly after the artist passed away in April. "The six-day play of the Orgien Mysterien Theater, is to become the greatest and most important festival of mankind (it is an aesthetic ritual of the glorification of existence). It is at the same time a popular festival and a mystery of existence brought to consciousness. The festival of the orgien mysterien theatre …
Dieter Roth and Music
**Standalone 3LP set, few copies available** The oeuvre of the internationally renowned Swiss artist Dieter Roth reflects the multiplicity of his talents. He was active not just as a visual artist, writer, graphic artist, jewellery and furniture designer, publisher and musician, but also often united different media in works that one cannot assign definitively to any single field. Besides employing unusual materials such as foodstuffs, Roth also worked early on with the possibility of translatin…
Goodbye 20th Century
Goodbye 20th Century is a double album of covers of Avant-garde recordings by Sonic Youth and collaborators. SYR4 features works by avant-garde classical composers such as John Cage, Yoko Ono, Steve Reich, and Christian Wolff played by Sonic Youth along with several collaborators from the modern avant-garde music scene, such as Christian Marclay, William Winant, Wharton Tiers, Takehisa Kosugi and others. The album received mixed reviews, but most critics praised the group's efforts at popularizi…
Rethinking Reich (Book)
Described by music critic Alex Ross as "the most original musical thinker of our time" and having received innumerable accolades in a career spanning over fifty years, composer Steve Reich is considered by many to be America's greatest contemporary composer. His music, however, remains largely underresearched. Rethinking Reich redresses this imbalance, providing a space for prominent and emerging scholars to reassess the composer's contribution to music in the twentieth century. Featuring fourte…
Sikorsky
Sikorsky is an ambitious and highly original orchestral piece for 18 musicians — 8 clarinets, 4 drum kits, 4 double basses, trumpet and the alto sax of its composer and arranger, Danish, Copenhagen-based Niels Lyhne Løkkegaard. As on his previous release Vesper (2012), Løkkegaard is fascinated with the sound of clarinets and the sound of a closely-voiced clarinet ensemble plays a major role on his fifth release.The title of the 30-minute composition is associated with the sound of the Sikorsky h…
Superstructure - Holding up a Bridge
Austria pianist and composer Elisabeth Harnik has created a multi-faceted body of work by crossing genre boundaries through various collaborations in the field of improvised music, composition and sound art. Superstructure was written in 2006 and was recorded and produced live in concert by the Austrian Broadcasting Corporation ORF-Ö1 with "Jeunesse -- Musikalische Jugend Österreichs" at Radio Kulturhaus Vienna in 2007 and performed by All Ears Area Ensemble with Elisabeth Harnik (piano), Petra …
Matanzas
* 2021 Stock * The music on this album is a reflection on living in and listening to the sounds of Matanzas, Cuba. Neil Leonard's recordings of folkloric musicians, interviews, urban surface noise and wetlands were in my ear while composing this work but not heard on the final pieces. What remains is the sensation “after listening,” the stillness and sense of wonder that lingers after hearing Matanzas. This album seemed to compose itself. In August 2016, midway through developing new work for Do…
Acoustic Drawings
In the ensuing half century, Slovenian artist Milan Grygar, who trained as a painter, has dedicated himself to the relationship between sound and image. He has replaced paint wherever possible with sonic elements, interrogated the duration of a line, drawn with sticks, and integrated windup toys that leave noisy traces in his “mechanical drawings.” Grygar incorporates the acoustic frequencies that emerge during art making, but he also writes visual scores that musicians can interpret. His art is…
Visual Scores
In the ensuing half century, Slovenian artist Milan Grygar, who trained as a painter, has dedicated himself to the relationship between sound and image. He has replaced paint wherever possible with sonic elements, interrogated the duration of a line, drawn with sticks, and integrated windup toys that leave noisy traces in his “mechanical drawings.” Grygar incorporates the acoustic frequencies that emerge during art making, but he also writes visual scores that musicians can interpret. His art is…
On Perpetual (Musical) Peace?
This LP features the results of "On Perpetual (Musical) Peace?" realized in Mexico City in 2019 with Liminar, a Mexican ensemble that works at the boundaries between composed and improvised music, performance and sound installation, and regularly performs in Mexico City's main chamber music halls as well as in museums, galleries and alternative venues. An extensive PMP concert took place at Bucareli 69, an art and concert space in a late-19th-century villa near the city's historical centre. The …
Many Many Women
Digitally remastered from the original 1981 Labor Record release, and
originally released by Dog W/A Bone in 2000, Czech
composer/conductor/flutist Petr Kotik's Many Many Women has long been considered a masterpiece of underground music. The polyphonic composition sets Gertrude Stein's entire novella Many Many Women to music and marks the crystallization of Kotik's musical aesthetic. Described by Richard Kostelanetz as "continually austere and yet engaging, realizing a musical reinterpretati…