- "This radio work (radio poem) celebrates the 100th birthday of the cuban poet Nicolas Guillen (1902-1989) and uses his marvelous, powerful, strong and musical voice, coming from old LP recordings, introducing, for certain texts, the voice of my colleague at the Pompeu Fabra University, the cuban Ruben Hinojosa. The piece is divided in three parts and uses a vocal processor developed by the Music Technology Group of the Pompeu Fabra University of Barcelona, a processor that allows to program in real time 4 voices independently, and each voice may be manipulated separately in real time. The present composition is a selection of recordings mixed according to studio work. Caminando means walking, we all walk in life, we never cease to walk until the very end, all changes and keeps changing. Guillén uses a mervelous afro-cuban-spanish language full of rhythm and expression in his poetry."
In 1966 Lewin-Richter founded the Estudio de Música Electrónica del Conservatorio de Música in Mexico City.
In 1968, he returned to Spain and established the Barcelona Electronic Music Studio. He then widened his scope by becoming a founding member -together with Josep Mestres Quadreny and Lluís Callejo i Creus- and vice-president of the Phonos Electronic Music Studio in 1973. He has served as artistic and executive director for the music ensemble Conjunt Català de Música Contemporània (1968-1973).
Always centering on electronic methods, his work has used tape, other instruments combined with tape, and instrumental collage techniques. Many of his pieces also use voice in a prominent role and have been used for dance, theater and cinema. Two of his most influential recordings are Musica Electroacustica and Secuencia III Para Anna, both issued on the Hemisferio label. Rich notes, His skillful use of gradual phase lag has led to some of his major achievements, bringing great beauty and expressiveness to his music. He has toured the world performing, lecturing, teaching and beginning electronic music studios. Since 2003, Lewin-Richter has been a professor of electronic music history at the Universitat Pompeu Fabra and the Escola Superior de Música de Catalunya de Barcelona."
- "The first part of the "Vantdraught" series was called "Vantdraught 10 · Vol. 1" and featured ten classical instruments - 4 violins, 2 violas, cello, vibraphone, marimba and piano. The now appearing second part is "Vantdraught 4", a quartet album written for violin, clarinet/bass clarinet, trombone and piano. The minimalistic style of Vantdraught 10 is preserved although the music is less repetitive and much more intimate. Instinct and intuition is the main force behind the writing process, usually avoiding typical chord progressions and the classical cadential technique. In contrast to "Vantdraught 10 · Vol. 1", the rhythm domain is also less important, thus allowing the melody and harmony to come to the fore. The pieces of "Vantdraught 4" are mainly tonal music but Kapsa also makes use of atonal and polytonal harmonies which requires the listener to put more effort into listening to these parts. The unusual set of instruments is what makes this quartet album unique and fresh sounding. "Vantdraught 4" is certainly linked to classical and minimal music in general but one can find other influences such as jazz and "new music".
Much like its predecessor, "Vantdraught 4" features an astonishing artwork based on "The Reluctant Conscript" by the seminal artist duo Kahn & Selesnick."
Kuba Kapsa is a Polish pianist and composer being the leader of the avant-jazz combo Contemporary Noise Sextet (2006-2014). Beyond that he is a renowned composer for film and theater plays. His latest venture is the first of a sophisticated series of projects of modern classical music bearing the common title "Vantdraught".
The Industry Records is an independent label creating
high-quality recordings of The Industry’s productions and diverse
projects that share the spirit of our organization. We strive to be an
artist-friendly label: all artists and creators involved in the
recording receive royalties from the first album sale. The Industry Records is an extension of our artistic mission to find new pathways to support, document and disseminate contemporary operatic works.
THE EDGE OF FOREVER
Music by Lewis Pesacov
Libretto by Elizabeth Cline wild Up ensemble, Christopher Rountree conducting.
- "The Edge of Forever is a chamber opera in five scenes inspired by the
ending of the Mayan Long Count Calendar. It is a time-responsive opera,
written for one moment in time and performed once on December 21, 2012,
the final day of the Mayan Calendar.
The Edge of Forever explores the nature of consciousness and its
relationship to time through a prophecy of divine love. It is the story
of an ancient astronomer and a distant beloved, a cosmic union that will
begin a new, undocumented era of time. Pesacov's score manifests his
journey from dark emotional states of yearning to the warm glow of
infinite love. The sound world balances imaginary ancient and future
musics, from conch shell to electronic oscillations: Deep earth sounds
ripple, murmur and surge into shimmering ritualistic music.
To remain true to the concept and experience of the work, this recording
is the only documentation of the production. It is comprised of both
live and post-performance studio recordings, produced by the composer
with the utmost sensitivity to creating the best possible representation
of the live experience.
The Edge of Forever was site specific to the historic Philosophical
Research Society, a Mayan Revival architecture style building in Los
Angeles. The audience entered the opera in Act III, at that present
moment in time on December 21, 2012 at 8pm—an event that has been
recorded in stone since the 9th century by the Mayans as the end of
their calendar. The opera was staged as an immersive experience that
begins with a procession of chorus members leading the audience into the
theater with their voices. Once inside, the audience was immediately
transported to the cenote where the action is already taking place."
- "Lewis Pesacov is a musician, producer and composer based in Los Angeles, California. LA Weekly writes "Lewis
Pesacov is living the dream. Not only has he learned to make a career
out of being a musician, but he's learned to separate his personal
projects from his work, and therefore never lose his passion."
As
co-founder of Afro-pop group, Fool’s Gold, Pesacov has co-written,
performed and produced the group's three studio albums. Fool's Gold has
toured extensively throughout the US, UK and Europe in a wide range of
settings, including appearances at the Austin City Limits, Glastonbury,
Reading, and Leeds Festivals; at the historic Hollywood Bowl in Los
Angeles with legendary desert rockers Tinariwen. In 2012, Fool's Gold
supported the Red Hot Chili Peppers in arenas across the UK, as well as
in Tel Aviv at one of the largest concerts in Israel's history.
An
accomplished songwriter and guitar player, Pesacov has been featured in
American Songwriter, Guitar Player, LA Times Magazine, The Village
Voice and LA Weekly. As a guitar player, he has immersed himself in
diverse guitar styles ranging from Mande and Tuareg desert blues of Mali
to the Soukous fingerstyle from the Congo. Currently Pesacov is
studying North Indian Hindustani classical music and the Hansa Veena
Indian slide guitar.
As a producer, Pesacov has made numerous albums, including Best Coast’s
2010 Billboard-charting debut Crazy for You, as well as a variety
singles/EPs for influential independent artists including FIDLAR,
Oberhofer, Superhumanoids, and Guards to name but a few. He was
co-founder of the influential Echo Park-based indie label, White Iris
Records, which released over thirty 7" singles, EPs and full-length
albums over the course of it's four years.
As a composer, Pesacov
is inspired by the transcendent potential in sounds, heard. His works
have been featured in festivals, museums and galleries including The
Walker Art Center (Minneapolis), the 2013 Biennial of the
Americas (Denver) performed by the Colorado Symphony Orchestra and at
Machine Project (Los Angeles) performed by the Calder Quartet. His work
has also been performed internationally at the Darmstadt Ferienkursen
and the Conservatory of Music Trossingen (Germany), the Dissonanz
Festival (Switzerland) and by the Orchestre de Sceince-Poiltiques Paris
(France). In 2013, Pesacov's chamber opera The Edge of Forever,
inspired by the ending of the Mayan long count calendar, was performed
by LA-based chamber music ensemble wild Up, conducted by Christopher
Rountree, at The Philosophical Research Society (Los Angeles)."
- "wild Up is an experimental classical ensemble. A flexible band of Los
Angeles musicians committed to creating visceral, thought-provoking
happenings. The group, led by artistic director and conductor
Christopher Rountree, unites around the belief that no music is off
limits, and that a concert space should be as moving as the music heard
in it: small, powerful and unlike anything else. Our projects are meant
to bring people together, defy convention and address the need for
heart-wrenching, mind-bending experiences."
Hand Eye, the newest project from multiple Grammy award-winning “super musicians” (Los Angeles Times) Eighth Blackbird, features a musical dream team of performers and composers in an album of great beauty, energy, and immediacy. Eighth Blackbird won Grammy awards for all three of its Cedille recordings released between 2007 and 2013. Its next Cedille album, FILAMENT, was released in September 2015 and won the 2016 GRAMMY for Best Chamber Music/Small Ensemble Performance.
The new-music sextet joins forces with Sleeping Giant, six young American composers “rapidly gaining notice for their daring innovations, stylistic range and acute attention to instrumental nuance” (WQXR Radio). The result is an album of world-premiere recordings of works written for eighth blackbird and inspired by stunning pieces of contemporary art. In Timo Andres’ Checkered Shade, the aural perspective zooms out as musical fragments coalesce into an expressive chorale. Andrew Norman’s Mine, Mime, Meme places the cellist in a sonic space where the other instrumentalists mimic his playing. Robert Honstein’s three-movement Conduit takes its cue from an interactive digital sculpture pulsing with colors and the world of touch-screen electronic devices. Christopher Cerrone’s South Catalina reflects both an audio-responsive interactive light sculpture and the composer’s discomfort with Southern California’s perpetual sunshine. Ted Hearn’s By-By Huey is a soul-infused jam session. Jacob Cooper’s Cast assembles an array of distinctive musical gestures around a vibraphone line.The sextet features flutist Tim Munro, clarinetist Michael J. Maccaferri, violinist Yvonne Lam, cellist Nicholas Photinos, percussionist MatthewDuvall, and pianist Lisa Kaplan.
Hand Eye producer Elaine Martone and engineer Michael Bishop are multiple Grammy winners. Martone was awarded Producer of the Year, Classical in 2006. Audio editor is Cedille’s own Grammy-nominated engineer Bill Maylone.
Nathalie Joachim, flutes • Michael J. Maccaferri, clarinets • Yvonne Lam, violin & viola •Nicholas Photinos, cello • Matthew Duvall, percussion • Lisa Kaplan, piano
Eighth Blackbird’s “super-musicians” (Los Angeles Times) combine the finesse of a string quartet, the energy of a rock band, and the audacity of a storefront theater company. The Chicago-based, four-time GRAMMY Award-winning sextet celebrates its 20th anniversary in 2016: two decades of performing for audiences across the country and around the world with impeccable precision and a signature style.
A winner of the 2016 MacArthur Award for Effective and Creative Institutions, Eighth Blackbird has been described as “one of the smartest, most dynamic contemporary classical ensembles on the planet” (Chicago Tribune). The group began in 1996 as a six entrepreneurial Oberlin Conservatory students and quickly became “a brand-name…defined by adventure, vibrancy and quality….known for performing from memory, employing choreography and collaborations with theater artists, lighting designers and even puppetry artists” (Detroit Free Press).
Over the course of two decades, Eighth Blackbird has commissioned and premiered hundreds of works by dozens of composers including David T. Little, Steven Mackey, Missy Mazzoli, and Steve Reich, whose commissioned work, Double Sextet, went on to win the Pulitzer Prize (2009). A long-term relationship with Chicago’s Cedille Records has produced seven acclaimed recordings and four impressive GRAMMY Awards for Best Small Ensemble/Chamber Music Performance: for strange imaginary animals (2008), Lonely Motel: Music from Slide (2011), Meanwhile (2013), and Filament (2015).
Filament centers around a live recording of Philip Glass’s early masterpiece, Two Pages, and includes world premiere recordings of works by Bryce Dessner (Murder Ballades), Nico Muhly (Doublespeak), and two remixes by Son Lux, whose tracks gather sounds from the other compositions on the album, stringing together the album’s musical ‘filament’ and adding the voice of Shara Worden (of My Brightest Diamond). Filament was selected as Album of the Week by WQXR/Q2 Music, Seattle’s Second Inversion, and the Chicago Tribune. The San Francisco Chronicle called it “wonderful…a fine release…comprising both restless energy and reverence.”
The centerpiece of Eighth Blackbird’s 2015-16 touring season is the concert-length production Hand Eye, which pairs Eighth Blackbird with Sleeping Giant—a superstar composer sextet (Timo Andres, Andrew Norman, Christopher Cerrone, Jacob Cooper, Ted Hearne, Robert Honstein) who each contribute one movement to the piece. For the fully produced version performed in select cities, the evening is complemented with projections by the acclaimed visual performance designer Deborah Johnson, aka CandyStations. The New York Times says, “Each piece of this diverse, eclectic and colorful suite had its own voice and character, qualities that came through in Eighth Blackbird’s exhilarating performance. Yet, as the creators intended, the overall work had narrative thrust and a structural arc, even a shared aesthetic, common among younger composers today, that values the mixing of styles from all realms of contemporary music.” A recording of Hand Eye will be released April 8 on Cedille Records.
Eighth Blackbird’s mission—to move music forward through innovative performance, advocacy for new music by living composers, and a legacy of guiding an emerging generation of musicians —extends beyond recording and touring to curation and education. The ensemble served as Music Director of the Ojai Music Festival (2009), enjoyed a three-year residency at the Curtis Institute of Music, and holds ongoing Ensemble-in-Residence positions at the University of Richmond and the University of Chicago. The 2015-16 season brings a lively residency at Chicago’s Museum of Contemporary Art, featuring open rehearsals, an interactive gallery installation, performances, and public talks.
Eighth Blackbird’s members (Nathalie Joachim, flutes; Michael J. Maccaferri, clarinets; Yvonne Lam, violin & viola; Nicholas Photinos, cello; Matthew Duvall, percussion; Lisa Kaplan, piano) hail from the Great Lakes, Keystone, Golden, Empire and Bay states. The name “Eighth Blackbird” derives from the eighth stanza of Wallace Stevens’s evocative, aphoristic poem, Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird (1917). Eighth Blackbird is managed by David Lieberman Artists’ Representatives.
Cistern is the second album by prodigiously talented multi-instrumentalist and composerJherek Bischoff.
Gloriously cinematic, these modern orchestral recordings showcase
Jherek’s unerring ability to pull at the heartstrings. It comes hot on
the heels of Strung Out In Heaven,
a moving string quartet tribute to David Bowie, conceived with Amanda
Palmer and featuring the significant talents of Anna Calvi, John Cameron
Mitchell and Neil Gaiman. A prolific and divergent collaborator,
working with the likes of David Byrne, The Kronos Quartet, Caetano
Veloso, Xiu Xiu and Australian star Missy Higgins, it can be difficult
to pin the real Jherek Bischoff down. Here then, is an intensely
personal work. Like his previous album Composed, Cistern is a real labour of love.
This is a record intrinsically linked to the space in which it was
conceived, born from time spent improvising in an empty two million
gallon underground water tank. A space which forced Bischoff to slow
down, to reflect, to draw on his childhood growing up on a sailing boat -
an unexpected journey of rediscovery, from the city back to the Pacific
Ocean via the Cistern.
Jherek first discovered the cistern while mixing previous album Composed
at Fort Worden, an old army base in Washington state. Intrigued by
rumours of a 45 second reverb and Pauline Oliveros’ 1989 Deep Listening
album (which was recorded in the same space), his adventurous spirit
drew him to this subterranean world to explore the acoustic
possibilities. Hooking his computer and bass amp up to his car battery
and armed with an arsenal of instruments he descended into the darkness.
“I spent three days in the cistern improvising, one day by myself and
two days with a couple friends I invited,” explains Jherek. “They were
fascinating days of music-making. I found it so interesting how much the
space itself seemed to tell us how to play, in essence becoming a
collaborator. Things certainly worked best when we slowed down and gave
the room time to sing.”
Being forced to work at this pace ignited something in Jherek. What
started as musical experimentations soon allowed time for reflection and
recollections of a slower pace of life, prompting a deeper emotional
response to the space that stayed with him long after his visit. “The
experience of being in that space brought back so many memories of my
time spent travelling by sailboat on the open ocean. Compared to city
life, the pace of moving on the ocean and the speed at which you travel
is so slow.”
Practical implications thwarted plans to record a chamber orchestra
in the cistern, not least the lack of adequate oxygen. Instead, the
record was realised in Future-Past Studios in Hudson, NY, a converted
19th-Century church. Enlisting the New York based Contemporaneous
ensemble, and using the church’s reverberant spaces, Jherek set about
recreating the immersive sound world of Cistern. This is an
album of sumptuous dynamics. Jherek revels in exploring the musical
space afforded him by the lengthy reverb tails, and is unafraid to
unleash the full power of the orchestra when necessary.
Broad vistas are painted in cerulean tones on ‘Headless’ and the
meditative ‘Attuna’, while ‘The Wolf’ offers a glimpse into murky
depths. The album builds to the climactic title track, one of the first
to come from those early improvisations: ‘Cistern’ is majestic, huge in
scope and utterly devastating.
Fittingly, the journey ends on ‘The Sea’s Son’, where the pace is
slowed and buoyed on swelling strings, and the lines between Jherek as
musician, collaborator, composer, arranger and producer vanish on the
horizon. It is here that he is most at home. It took an empty water tank
to inspire his return to the sea.
Out on Ondine (no homepage found) from the late Einojuhani Rautavaara who seems to have been active composing up until recently.
Gerald Finley, bass-baritone Mika Pohjonen, tenor Helsinki Music Centre Choir Helsinki Philharmonic Orchestra John Storgårds, conductor
Rubáiyát (2015) is a song cycle based on the poetry of Omar Khayyam (1048–1131). The work was written for Gerald Finley who in this recording sings the solo part of the orchestral version of the work.
Balada (2014), based on texts by Lorca, is a large-scale work for tenor, mixed choir and orchestra. Tenor Mika Pohjonen sings as the soloist. This cantata was premiered in Madrid in May 2015.
Into the Heart of Light (Canto V; 2012) is the composer’s latest installment in a series of works for string orchestra that share the title Canto. Rautavaara wrote the first of his Cantos in the 1960s, and each piece in the series have represented well the latest stylistic developments by the composer.
The concluding work of the recording is Four Songs from the opera Rasputin. These dramatic songs were arranged by the composer for mixed choir and orchestra in 2012.
In the last two decades the Helsinki Philharmonic Orchestra - conducted in this present recording by John Storgårds - has released several award-winning recordings of the music of Einojuhani Rautavaara.
To my surprise, this thread have reached 4k views with just 277 posts. It means to me that I must be doing something of value.
- Some time ago I posted a flagcounter saying that there has been visits from 24 different countries, but just 1500 views. It hasn't moved for a very long time, though . .
But whatever the stats are, here's fantastic news from Morton Subotnick and his wife Joan Labarbara:
Morton Subotnick is a living legend in the development of electronic
music. A leading innovator in works involving instruments and other
media, he used many of the important technological breakthroughs of his
time in his work as a composer. Many of his compositions contain
electronic or computer-generated parts. The works compiled on this CD
form part of the larger work "Music for The Double Life of Amphibians",
conceived as a symphonic poem, the title of which can be understood as a
metaphor: "The metaphor suggests that the ‘doubleness’ of the
amphibians, needing its past-present environment (the water) while
reaching for a new present-future world (the air), is our ‘doubleness’ –
the past-present and present-future – that beast-spirit and
angel-spirit in us all." (Subotnick)
"Axolotl" is a Mexican salamander with two filigree wing-like
appendages, extending from either side of the body. These are its lungs
for the future transition from water onto land, but the axolotl never
goes through the final stage of its potential development – it never
reaches air – it remains forever in water.
"Ascent Into Air" starts with section 1 as a dark and intense musical
environment without articulation of rhythmic or melodic material. This
is followed by more dance-like materials in section 2. The third section
is a playful interaction between the pianos, percussion and computer
sounds which flows into the fourth section which is more emotional and
forceful – even violent. The last section transforms into an ethereal,
flowing chorale-like material.
"The Last Dream of the Beast" is a theatrical work, an electronic media
drama in which both music and images will be emotional, clearly
articulated, forceful and at times violent. "The Beast" means a creature
caught between man and beast.
"A Fluttering of Wings" is in four parts played without pause. The
opening is fast music of continuous semiquavers. The dance is also quick
and continuous. In the third section, the music pauses for the first
time. Here individual plucked notes and chords are altered by frequency
changes produced by the electronics which help to create a halo-like
sound. The final song hovers quietly while the landscape gradually
evolves into its ultimate ecstatic form.
Home, the debut solo album from bassist Eleonore Oppenheim,
is a musical core sample in which each track represents a different
approach to the double bass as a modern solo instrument, and to the ways
in which it can interact with electronic media. By turns glitchy and
pure, gritty and shimmering, Home releases the bass
from its traditional obligations and takes the listener on a surprising,
unfettered journey through several strata of sound which explore the
breadth of the instrument’s emotional and physical range. This album is
part of a years-long collaborative commissioning project that Oppenheim
embarked on in 2006, that includes works by some of today’s most
innovative and original early- to mid-career composers. Not beholden to
any one style, all of the pieces draw from a variety of influences, from
noise rock to jazz and synth pop. Several of the pieces also
incorporate Oppenheim’s unadorned, folky voice, which blends and
dialogues with the bass, acting both as another texture and as an
offshoot of the instrument.
“Quietly virtuosic” (Alan Kozinn, the New York Times)
double bassist and electric bassist Eleonore Oppenheim has a reputation
as both a valued ensemble player and an engaging soloist. Her “…subtle
expressivity” and “…particular eloquence” (Joshua Kosman, the San
Francisco Chronicle) have made her a worthy collaborator for composers
of her generation, and through these relationships she has built a rich
repertoire of solo pieces. Eleonore has performed and recorded with a
variety of different artists and groups, among them the Philip Glass
Ensemble, Tyondai Braxton, Bang on a Can, Wordless Music Orchestra,
Meredith Monk, My Brightest Diamond, Signal Ensemble, Steve Reich, Jonny
Greenwood, and the “All-star, all-female quintet” (Time Out New York)
Victoire, of which she is a member.
. . . . ."A musical omnivore and polyglot, Eleonore is at home in a wide range of
musical idioms, and has worked with a variety of different artists and
groups, among them the Philip Glass Ensemble, Tyondai Braxton (Battles),
the Wordless Music Orchestra, Shara Worden (My Brightest Diamond),
Ensemble Signal, Norah Jones, Bryce Dessner (the National), Meredith
Monk, Jeff Mangum (Neutral Milk Hotel), Steve Reich, and Jonny Greenwood
(Radiohead).
Eleonore also performs and records regularly with the “All-star,
all-female quintet” (Time Out NY) Victoire, whose debut album Cathedral
City reached top-10 and best-of lists in the New York Times, Time Out
NY, and NPR in 2010, and whose latest album Vespers for a New Dark Age, a
collaboration with Wilco drummer and percussionist Glenn Kotche, was
released on New Amsterdam in 2015.
She has appeared at a number of national and international festivals and
venues, most notably the Norfolk Chamber Music Festival, Ravinia,
Spoleto USA, the MADE Festival in Sweden, Festival de Otoño Madrid, and
Carnegie Hall, BAM, Lincoln Center, the Guggenheim and Whitney Museums,
the Barbican Centre, the Pritzker Pavilion in Chicago’s Millennium Park,
Disney Hall, and the Sydney Opera House and Melbourne Recital Centre in
Australia.
Eleonore was a Bang on a Can Fellow in 2006, where she met many of the
fantastic musicians and composers she now collaborates with. She is
currently a doctoral candidate at SUNY Stony Brook, and is also an
alumna of the Yale School of Music and the Juilliard School."
David First, Esther Sandrof and Brian Charles on Casio CZ-1000 and Kevin Sparke on Casio CS-101
David First’s Gramavision
Session Liner Notes:
- "The WCQ was born out of a misunderstanding. In 1986 I
purchased a Casio CZ1000 digital synthesizer in order to
further my ongoing experiments with microtonal drones. Prior
to this I had been using an old Heathkit tone generator,
overdubbing pitches on a Tascam Portastudio. Using an
electronic tuner to measure deviations, I would transcribe
my results and have them realized by members of my ensemble
at the time, The Flatland Oscillators. Yearning for a more
elegant workflow, I began using the Casio for this same
purpose. At first, I used the pitch control on the Tascam to
bend things toward the relationships I was looking for. But
then a better solution revealed itself. As with most
synthesizers, it was possible on the CZ1000 to detune one
oscillator against a second oscillator to create chorusing
effects. Which meant less than nothing to me until, fiddling
around one day, I figured out a way to shut off the main
oscillator’s amplitude envelope, leaving the detunable
oscillator, with its 61 discrete steps per ½ step (or 732
pitches per octave), all alone and available for microtonal
duties.
I was now able to create repeatable results—with precise
detune rates assigned to each pitch. The first work I made I
called Four Casios
(an homage to Steve Reich’s Four
Organs), and I began including it on demos I sent
to potential performance spaces, on grant applications, etc,
with the cheeky appellation “The World Casio Quartet”. I
probably should have known that people would not realize
that it was a bit of a send-up and, indeed, that was exactly
what happened—not long after the first batch went out I
received a request from a space that was interested in
arranging a performance by The World Casio Quartet.
Luckily, I was already beginning to think in this direction
anyway. I was growing weary of asking people to interpret my
scores on instruments not truly designed for such things.
And since these CZ1000s were fairly inexpensive ($259 as I
recall) and so ubiquitous at the time, it was easy to find
three other members of my ensemble that already had one. And
thus the work (and fun) began.
From 1987 to 1991, the WCQ was my main compositional outlet.
We played live quite often both around NYC and out of town,
working through various procedures I’d developed. For the
most part this consisted of using the instrument’s keys as
triggers rather than as pianistic, melody/harmony
manipulators—we rarely used more than one at a time. The
real action would be happening in the program banks where,
for each particular piece, there would be dozens of
iterations of the same exact sound differing in the detune
rate only (from 0-60). These program banks became the
playing arena and the virtuosity was in switching patch
buttons smoothly between each new event. There was also
real-time use of the detune function itself, whereby one
would be asked to execute glissandos between two given
values, as well as glacially slow rocking of the good ol’
pitchbend wheel. I would often use this last device as a
wildcard to subvert and enhance more deliberate,
predetermined elements. This was important, as I was always
on the hunt for unique flaws in a room during sound check—a
window, air duct, or heating pipe that I could get to rattle
sympathetically with a particular frequency. Inevitable
apologies from the sound person would follow, but I had
found just what I was looking for.
The recordings here were done in a single one-day visit to
Gramavision Studios in lower Manhattan. Only one piece was
released prior, and since the masters were on 2” reels, I
hadn’t heard the rest till the fall of 2015 when I went with
my friend, Garry Rindfuss, to his old stomping grounds,
Avatar Studios (née The Power Station), to have them
digitally transferred. Listening to the stuff now, I’m
struck by how free it all sounds—I had yet to really dive
into any microtonal or just-intonation tuning theory and was
merely following my ear and intuition. I miss that innocence
sometimes…"
Very much recommended to everyone with a soft spot for Colin Stetson:
"A musician is an ambassador who presents the views and
values of a culture, a catalyst of thought and emotion, who employs
sound to communicate in a universal language."
- "On his debut album, Rushing Past Willow,
saxophonist and composer Nick Zoulek refines the idiomatic sound of the
saxophone and brings the fruits of this intense research and dedication
to the wider world.
Zoulek’s works for solo alto, tenor and bass saxophones
were conceived as improvised moments and refined over a decade of
performance and reflection. They coalesce into a narrative that is set
against a solitary willow tree, serene and poised, serving as witness to
a story of lost love, compassion, connection, cognition, perception,
chaos, and time.
Through repetition, vocal techniques, circular breathing
and unconventional articulation, Zoulek pushes past the typical sound of
the saxophone. What often begins as a recognizable line eventually
circles back on itself, erasing ideas about beginnings and endings in
the process. Recorded with an array of carefully placed microphones, the
live performances were assembled into an immersive whole by sound
artist Jason Charney.
At once evocative and contemplative, Rushing Past Willow is an invitation to know an instrument better and, through it, the energetic world."
- "A modern artist with an impassioned eye toward the
unification of contemporary art and sound, American saxophonist Nick
Zoulek’s focus on collaboration, improvisation, and commissioning new
works has led to a diverse portfolio of distinctive performances and
artistic ventures. Working with a unique array of musicians and
performers, including Wildspace Dance Company, multimedia musicians
Netmoiré, and saxophonist Tommy Davis as part of Duo d’Entre-Deux,
Nick’s craft has been lauded as “a delight”, and with the capacity to
“[take] you to other worlds” (Milwaukee Magazine). Uniquely skilled as a
bass saxophonist, the prowess and versatility Nick displays on the
instrument has been praised as “[b]eautiful harmonies [singing] in
contrast to mysterious knockings and hums, and finally to ungodly,
soul-shattering blasts” (Shepherd Express).
Zoulek is currently pursuing his DMA in Contemporary Music
Performance at Bowling Green State University. He has studied under
John Sampen, Jean-Michel Goury, Matt Sintchak, and Jon Amon."
- "Ecstatic Music: TAK plays Brook presents four recent works by
composer Taylor Brook, interpreted by TAK Ensemble, a “stellar” quintet
(flute, clarinet, violin, percussion, and voice) featuring some of New
York’s most adventurous new music performers. The album is the product
of years of collaboration between Brook and TAK, and captures the range
of Brook’s compositional voice, as well as TAK’s dedication to bold,
highly communicative new music.
Ecstatic Music, the album's title track, is a frenetic and
virtuosic work for violin and percussion, performed brilliantly by the
violinist Marina Kifferstein and percussionist Ellery Trafford. The
work's ecstatic state is achieved through a musical language that
employs fragile instrumental techniques and microtonal tuning systems.
Throughout Ecstatic Music, the violinist and percussionist (playing two
microtonally tuned guitars) work as a single unit, often playing in
rhythmic unison to create a truly otherworldly sound.
The haunting song cycle Five Weather Reports uses text from David Ohle's novel Motorman
to comment on current environmental and societal concerns. The five
songs, performed exquisitely by soprano Charlotte Mundy and her
instrumental colleagues, showcase the group’s ability to find extreme,
powerful contrasts of sound, as they blend various timbres and extended
techniques to create striking new textures.
Idolum draws connections between the work's title, which
suggests a phantom or spirit, and the sensors that control the piece's
guitar machines. As Brook explains in his notes, the title also refers
to the nature of music which, "can become a spell or hypnosis, pulling
thought and emotions this way and that." Amalgam explores ways
in which sonic and musical amalgamation can be achieved through
orchestration. In the first half of the piece, Brook presents a fusion
of sound in the instrumental consort, matching disparate musical
elements to create a unified monophonic texture. The work's second half
achieves a different type of unity, with single lines fused into
heterophony united through connection and contrast. In keeping with the
rest of the album, this work celebrates the virtuosity of the individual
voices and explores the possibilities of this unique ensemble blend."
- "Taylor Brook has studied composition with Brian
Cherney in Montreal, Luc Brewaeys in Brussels, and George Lewis, and
Georg Haas in New York. Brook has also studied Hindustani musical
performance in Kolkata, India, with Pandit Debashish Bhattacharya.
Brook writes concert music, music for video, and music for theater
and dance. His work has been performed around the world and has been
described as “gripping” and “engrossing” by the New York Times. Brook
has won numerous awards and prizes for his compositions, including the
MIVOS/Kantor prize, the Lee Ettelson award, and five SOCAN young
composers awards. Brook has been a finalist in the Gaudeamus prize and
was awarded honorable mention for the Jules Leger prize two years in a
row. His music has been performed by ensembles and soloists such as the
Nouvel Ensemble Moderne, Quatour Bozzini, JACK Quartet, MIVOS quartet,
Talea Ensemble, Ascolta Ensemble, and many others.
Brook’s current projects include a new piece for Talea Ensemble, an
album of his music with TAK ensemble, and a piece for solo flute and
ensemble for Enesmble Contemporaine de Montreal. Brook holds a master’s
degree in music composition from McGill University. He currently resides
in New York City, where he is completing a doctorate in music
composition at Columbia University."
- "TAK is a quintet that delivers energetic and virtuosic performances
of contemporary classical music and “impresses with the organicity of
their sound, their dynamism and virtuosity — and, well, just a dash of
IDGAF as they slay the thorniest material like it’s nothing” (Q2 Music). Described as “stellar” (Oneirics), and note for their “restless strands of ever shifting color and vigor” (Feast of Music),
TAK concerts are consistently dynamic and engaging. Dedicated to the
commission of new works and direct collaboration with composers and
other artists, TAK promotes ambitious programming at the highest level,
fostering engagement both within the contemporary music community,
through bringing in guest artists and collaborators, and the musical
community at large. Through working with installation artists, theater
companies, and video artists, TAK aims to broaden the scope and
diversity of their audience interaction.
The members of TAK are
each "individual virtuosos" in their own right (Lucy Shelton), and have
performed individually across North America and Europe with ensembles
such as the London Sinfonietta, International Contemporary Ensemble,
JACK Quartet, Wet Ink Ensemble, and Grammy-winning ensemble Roomful of
Teeth. TAK has performed throughout New York City in spaces such as
Roulette, New Amsterdam Records Headquarters, DiMenna Center for
Classical Music, and Issue Project Room. In recent seasons, they have
been invited to perform in collaboration with the American Composers
Alliance, Innovations en concert (Montreal), the Queens New Music
Festival (Queens, NY), and the Public Theater (NYC); they have held
artist residencies at Avaloch Farm (New Hampshire) and Mount Tremper
Arts (New York). TAK has had the pleasure of working with esteemed
composers Mario Diaz de Leon, Lewis Nielson, Tyshawn Sorey, Sam Pluta,
Ashkan Behzadi, Natacha Diels, David Bird, and Taylor Brook, among many
others.
TAK is dedicated to working with young composers, and has
collaborated with a number of university composition programs to
produce concerts of new commissions. Among these institutions are the
Oberlin Modern Music Guild, the graduate composers of the "First
Performance" student organization at New York University, and both the
graduate and undergraduate composers of Columbia University for their
Columbia Composers Concerts.
Upcoming projects include a
commissioning collaboration with Montreal-based, Architek percussion
quartet; performing at i/o Fest at Williams College; headlining
Niente/Forte Festival in New Orleans; performing works by students of
University of New Orleans; performing works by Columbia graduate
Composers; and the premiere of JingJing Luo’s ASHIMA presented by American Opera Project."
Music composed by Nico Muhly & Valgeir Sigurðsson
Produced by Valgeir Sigurðsson
Orchestrated & Conducted by Nico Muhly
- "The Scent Opera, a strange olfactory & music collaboration that
dates back to 2009, is the first release on Bedroom Community’s HVALREKI
digital-series. Written by Nico Muhly & Valgeir Sigurðsson for
Green Aria: A Scent Opera. ‘An opera for your nose’ by Stewart Matthew,
with scents by Christophe Laudamiel. Premiered at New York’s Guggenheim
Museum in August 2009, this is the first time the recording has been
released.
The opera’s premise is that a sequence of smells guides us through a
oblique parable about industrialisation, through short episodic bursts
of information. Some smells are dirty, like the rubber of a train in
Paris, and others are classically blended harmonically well-rounded
scents. Occasionally, a clean, neutral, pure sound arrives as a little
flute-scented garden which should have the effect of clearing the chaos
of the surrounding music (and, indeed, smells).
Nadia Sirota and Helgi Hrafn Jónsson join us as two of the essential
voices that bind the narrative together. The multivalent collaboration
yielded many surprising results: a 14-minute score that is funny,
aggressive, shape-shifting, electronic, acoustic, and strange."
An operatic oratorio for four singers, piano trio, percussion and chorus by composer Andrew Staniland and poet Jill Battson
Wayne Strongman, Conductor Neema Bickersteth, soprano; Krisztina Szabó, mezzo soprano; Peter McGillivray, baritone; Marcus Nance, bass-baritone The Elmer Iseler Singers The Gryphon Trio
Annalee Patipatanakoon, violin; Roman Borys, cello; Jamie Parker, piano Ryan Scott and Mark Duggan, percussion
Dark Star Requiem is at once intended to be challenging and joyous,
complex and beautiful. A sequence of 19 poems charting a short history
of HIV AIDS unfolds over the course of 14 musical movements. The poems
vary stylistically from linked haikus, to ghazals, to praise poems and
back to free verse. The musical movements are unified through a haunting
melody and driving rhythm derived from the numbers attributed to HIV-1
and HIV-2 by the International Committee on Taxonomy of Viruses:
00.061.1.06.009. and 00.061.1.06.010. In musical terms these numbers are
interpreted in both melody and rhythm.
Composer Andrew Staniland has firmly established himself as one of
Canada’s most important and innovative musical voices. Described by Alex
Ross in the New Yorker magazine as “alternately beautiful and
terrifying”, his music is regularly heard on CBC Radio 2 and has been
performed and broadcast internationally in over 35 countries. Andrew is
the recipient of the 2009 National Grand Prize in EVOLUTION, presented
by CBC Radio 2/Espace Musique and The Banff Centre, top prizes in the
SOCAN young composers competition, and the 2004 Karen Keiser Prize in
Canadian Music. As a leading composer of his generation, he has been
recognized by election to the Inaugural Cohort of the College of New
Scholars, Artists and Scientists Royal Society of Canada in 2014.
Andrew has been Affiliate Composer to the Toronto Symphony Orchestra
(2006-09) and the National Arts Centre Orchestra (2002–04), and has also
been in residence at the Centre du Creation Musicale Iannis Xenakis
(Paris, 2005). Recent commissioners include the Gryphon Trio, Les
Percussions de Strasbourg, the Toronto Symphony, cellist Frances-Marie
Uitti, and American Opera Projects. Andrew is the lead composer/educator
with the Gryphon Trio’s Listen Up! education initiative, created and
produced in collaboration with the Gryphon Trio and music educator Rob
Kapilow. Andrew also performs himself, both as a guitarist and working
with new media (computers and electronics). Andrew is currently on
faculty at Memorial University in St John’s Newfoundland.
- This album will with no doubt show up on my 2016 list and I will be surprised if it doesn't show up on other lists.
released April 8, 2016
and finally on Emusic and totally awesome !
Colin Stetson: Alto, Tenor, Bass Saxophones; Contrabass Clarinet; Lyricon
Dan Bennett: Tenor, Baritone Saxophones; Clarinet
- Greg Fox: Drums
- Grey Mcmurray: Guitar
- Gyda Valtysdottir: Cello
- Justin Walter: Keyboards, EVI
- Matt Bauder: Tenor, Baritone Saxophones; Clarinet
- Megan Stetson: Voice
- Rebecca Foon: Cello
- Ryan Ferreira: Guitar
- Sarah Neufeld: Violin
- Shahzad Ismaily: Synth
"We all have those moments when we experience a piece of music that
transforms us, and this was one of those moments for me," says Stetson.
"Over the years, I went on to listen to this record countless times,
always determined to absorb every instance of it, to know it throughout
and fully. And this dedication to a thorough knowledge of the piece
eventually gave way to a need to perform it." "The concept was simple,
and true to the original score. I haven't changed existing notation, but
rather have worked with altering instrumentation, utilizing a group
consisting heavily of woodwinds, synthesizers, and electric guitars...
The arrangement draws heavily from the world of black metal, early
electronic music, and from my own body of solo saxophone music. The
result is an intact rendition of Henryk Gorecki's 3rd Symphony, though
one which has been filtered through the lens of my particular musical
aesthetic and experience."
- "This record is a massively collaborative effort, but Stetson has always been collaborating. He brought in Laurie Anderson
and Shara Worden to narrate the events residing over ‘Judges’ and
brought Justin Vernon in for a lush cover of the standard “What Are They
Doing In Heaven Today?”; he’s made avant-garde horn sludge with Mats Gustaffsson and paired with violinist Sarah Neufeld
for a record of rigid but terse musical exercises. And for many years,
he’s been on the other side, a sideman belting it out for the pop songs
of TV On the Radio, Arcade Fire and recently Animal Collective.
‘Sorrow’ isn’t his first collaborative effort, merely the latest, one
where he celebrates not only the musician that gave him “Symphony No. 3”
but all the artists who helped him realise it. It sounds devastating,
but what a loving thing this record is.
With an orchestra large enough to recreate the scope of the third
symphony -- some Constellation mainstays such as Neufeld and Rebecca
Foon appear, along with soprano vocalist Megan Stetson and guitarist
Ryan Ferreira, among others -- Stetson manages to create the honouring
and tactful arrangement of the piece he was looking for, straying into
new territory only on occasion, and otherwise merely clarifying the
grandiosity of Gorecki’s work with electronic instruments and extra
modernised bluster. It opens on booming bass notes provided by Stetson
himself before that crashing cyclical motif parades through the timbres;
the piece eventually finds Megan Stetson’s ascendent voice, pairing it
with flicks of the guitar and suppressive percussive weather -- Stetson
cites a minor black metal influence on this record, and it’s in these
subduing cymbals you’re going to hear it.
The electronics heard passing through “II’, alongside delayed guitar
create new, emptying ground that gorgeously retread the course of
Gorecki’s symphony -- it’s essentially a mood-setting duet between Ryan
Ferrerira and Justin Walter, like a Godspeed
record recorded underneath the composition -- hiding underneath
Stetson’s bass sax, a slew of strings and Megan Stetson’s tethering
vocal. When listening to this record, moments like this feel subliminal,
almost impossible to anticipate underneath the epic, narratively bold
piece Stetson is working with.
Gorecki’s piece was ripe with melodic refrains but also compelled by
noisy, inaccessible discordance, and hearing each and every sound of
Stetson’s rendition works the same way, to the point where I once again
wonder if this piece is about fear or hope. I guess both? There’s a
moment about six minutes into “II” where Steson’s vocal rises up
alongside a lethargic and bright string motif, before a tinny drumbeat
breaks in -- it sounds like a flower rising out of dead ground. Whatever
this piece implies, Stetson keeps it beautiful."
- "Tim Catlin formed the Overtone Ensemble in 2012
in order to perform works using his self-made "Vibrissa" instruments.
Each instrument consists of twelve vertically mounted aluminium rods
that are longitudinally stroked by hand to produce ethereal "singing"
tones. The long sustaining nature of the rods sound and microtonal
tunings allow players a sonic palette of complex textures and harmonic
complexity. Other instruments used include massed hand-bells,
quarter-tone bells, e-bowed acoustic guitars, re-tuned glockenspiels,
wineglasses and long wire instruments.
The ensemble's compositions utilise acoustic phenomena arising from
microtonal tuning such as phasing, combination tones and sympathetic
vibrations, as well the effects of room resonance. All sounds are
acoustic in origin without effects or sound processing. The results are
works of shimmering intensity and pulsating beauty.
The Overtone Ensemble are: Tim Catlin, Atticus Bastow, Philip Brophy and David Brown.
Since forming in 2012 the group have been well received at festivals
such as Slow Music, NOW now, Sound Out, Light in Winter and Liquid
Architecture as well as various galleries and clubs within Australia.
Group members have a long history of involvement in the experimental
music, sound art and improvised music both within Australia and
internationally."
- "Nico Muhly is a virtuoso of keeping in touch, a hub for the vast network
of friends and collaborators around the world that he's constantly
checking in on with with personal or musical questions or scandalously
inappropriate humor. Even when he is the only person awake in a hotel
room in the middle of the night on a strange continent, there is
someone, somewhere, that he can ping—What's going on? What's happening?
How about now?—to satisfy his his need for human connection.
Keep in Touch, especially in its original version, was premised on the
fear of never quite managing to make that connection. Its two
soloists—violist Nadia Sirota and vocalist Anohni, of Antony and the
Johnsons—were recorded separately, so that Anohni was virtually present,
her part constructed from pass after pass of vocal improvisations,
while Nadia's was added later, all in one long, live take.
But in reality, Nico's connection with the musicians on Keep in
Touch—not just Nadia and Anohni, but also electronic musician Valgeir
Sigurðsson, who realized and recorded the 2006 release—was never really
broken. It was one of Nico's earliest collaborations with these singular
musicians, with whom he has returned to the studio many times in the
intervening decade. Nadia especially remains one of Nico's closest
friends, even as their ever-more-hectic working schedules means that
they're more likely to see each other IRL about once a month, rather
than once a week.
The Alarm Will Sound version of Keep in Touch here was created by
another of Nico's close friends, AWS percussionist Chris Thompson, who
has managed to approximate every one of Valgeir's samples and Anohni's
vocalizations, no matter how seemingly inimitable, for live performance.
In a sense, it is of a piece with AWS's transcriptions of Aphex Twin or
of the Beatles' musique concrète "Revolution 9," offering a new
perspective on the compositional craft that went into an electronic
piece by connecting it to the tradition of notated music. Here, a work
for viola and tape becomes a miniature viola concerto for Nadia, Chris
and their Alarm Will Sound bandmates.
When Nico had the opportunity to write a bona fide viola concerto, there
was no question that the piece would be premiered by Nadia, whose input
has influenced Nico's writing throughout their history of intimate
collaboration. And Nadia points out that Nico's compositions, in
particular Keep in Touch, have influenced her playing: Valgeir's
unforgiving recording of those sessions, actually designed to highlight
the flaws in her sound, encouraged her to play more boldly and
transparently—"to show my work," she says, in what has become one of the
defining features of her style.
And so Nico Muhly's Viola Concerto demands that the performer do exactly
that, through an immense range of highly exposed material. The piece
demands a virtuosity of expression, forcing the viola to navigate
extremes of register and the huge leaps between them, or to freight a
naked, sustained note with rapidly changing musical and psychological
dynamics. The piece's emotional climax is arguably not the final
movement's thunderous tutti playing of the full symphony orchestra, but
poignant, soliloquy-like unaccompanied cadenza in which the viola
attempts to recover between those outbursts. It's a moment of terrible
loneliness Nadia likens to a private prayer. And that prayer, as the
orchestra picks up the material from the viola, seems to be answered—but
only briefly, before the piece descends into panic once again.
While the piece may have a tragic ending, as Nadia believes it does,
this concerto's very existence suggests a far less lonesome narrative
for its real-life creators. Listen to the inquisitive slide of her
fingers up the neck of the fiddle throughout the Viola Concerto, and
compare it to similar moments in Keep in Touch: the concerto is full of
these musical signatures, what Nadia would call friendly "in-jokes" if
the extensive documentation of her professional relationship with Nico
hadn't already let the whole world in on them. This recording is a
public exchange of love letters between two friends, a document of two
artists growing up—and maturing—together, to create the most affecting
and profound collaborations of their intertwined musical lives."
Paul Livingstone ~ sitar, fretless guitar & requinto
Pedro Eustache ~ bansuri, flutes & world winds
Partho Sarothy ~ sarod
Peter Jacobson ~ cello
Abhijit Banerjee ~ tabla
Dave Lewis ~ drums
Somnath Roy ~ ghatum & folk percussion
‘Ahimsa, Love is the Weapon of the Brave’ is a new
release featuring the music of Arohi Ensemble weaving the classical
ragas & intricate rhythmic architectures of India with the
counterpoint of chamber music and gamelan in a synthesis of global
musical traditions. A collaboration of leading creative artists from
India, Venezuela & Los Angeles, Arohi include three disciples of the
legendary ‘godfather of world music’ Pandit Ravi Shankar.
Arohi features music of composer/sitarist/activist
Paul Livingstone in a cohesive and compelling blend of and sitar, sarod,
bansuri (bamboo flute), cello, tabla, ghatum (clay pot) and drums with a
sprinkling of vocal chant. Featured on multiple Grammy winning records
these artists bring these classical forms of east & west into s contemporary format of ragajazz chamber music.
Arohi means ‘ascending melody’ and Ahimsa is the
Sanskrit word for ‘nonviolence’. The release is dedicated to the
courageous form of conflict resolution which faces a violent aggressor
with nothing but ‘soul force’. The music journeys from meditative ragas
to dynamic polyrhythms and improvisations expressed in the free spirit
of jazz; move through this music with us in the spirit of ahimsa.
- "The country has fallen into chaos as an undefined war rages on U.S.
soil. Roads are closed except for military use. There is no work.
Progressively, the schools close. Food runs out. The power gets shut
off. Neighbors mysteriously vanish. Those without homes beg for food at
the porches of those who do, but no one has anything to give.
A family of five — two parents, two sons,
and a young daughter, Lisa — do what they can to survive. They eat wild
grass from the yard. The father goes hunting every day, but all the
animals have fled. “They know something we don’t,” he says. One day,
Prince arrives.
Prince, a man in a dog suit, befriends Lisa
and provides her with an escape from the isolated boredom of her life.
Lisa’s mother supports this friendship. Prince is her pet, though Lisa’s
father, Howard, opposes it. Howard confronts Prince. “Stand up,” he
says. “You’re a human being, for God’s sake. Stand up like a man. . .
I’ll give you my own clothes if you’ll . . . stand up like a man and
talk to me. I know you can talk.”Prince barks; Howard chases him away.
Conditions continue to worsen. It’s winter now. Dark early, and cold.
The family hasn’t eaten in weeks, maybe months. “I wish I had a steak,”
says one brother. The other brother adds “I heard in China people eat
dogs.” There is silence in the room."
I guess it's that time of the year where the new releases are pouring in . . .
Alpha Classics continues its collaboration with the Ensemble
Intercontemporain and presents a programme devoted to compositions by
its conductor and artistic director, Matthias Pintscher. Bereshit,
‘in a beginning’ in Hebrew, is a piece on the subject of divine
creation. The architecture of the work refers to the idea of the growth
of the elements out of nothingness to their finished state: the colours,
the harmonies are therefore always redefined by what precedes and
follows them. Songs from Solomon’s garden – still in a highly spiritual dimension – explores amorous passion through the shir ha shirim (Song of Songs).
The poetic density of this text is underlined here, with the only
repeated phrase of the work taking on a quasi-incantatory signification:
‘she-cholat ahava ani’ (for I am sick of love).
- "is the Music Director of the Ensemble Intercontemporain.
Beginning in 2016/17 he also takes up post as Principal Conductor of the
Lucerne Festival Academy. He continues his partnerships with the BBC
Scottish Symphony Orchestra as its Artist-in-Association, and with the
Danish National Symphony Orchestra as Artist-in-Residence. Equally
accomplished as conductor and composer, Pintscher has created
significant works for the world’s leading orchestras and regularly
conducts throughout Europe, the U.S., and Australia.
Highlights of
the 15/16 season include conducting debuts with the Berlin
Philharmonic, Toronto Symphony, Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra, and
Prague Philharmonia; a U.S. tour with the Ensemble Intercontemporain;
and the premiere of his new cello concerto by the Danish National
Symphony and Alisa Weilerstein. Last season, Pintscher made debuts with
the Los Angeles Philharmonic, National Symphony Orchestra, and the
Symphonieorchester des Bayerischen Rundfunks.
A successful and
prolific composer, Pintscher's music is championed by some of today's
finest performing artists, orchestras, and conductors. His works have
been performed by such orchestras as the Chicago Symphony, Cleveland
Orchestra, New York Philharmonic, Philadelphia Orchestra, Berlin
Philharmonic, London Symphony Orchestra, and the Orchestre de Paris. His
works are published exclusively by Bärenreiter, and recordings of his
compositions can be found on Kairos, EMI, Teldec, Wergo, and Winter
& Winter.
Pintscher also works regularly with leading
contemporary music ensembles such as the Scharoun Ensemble, Klangforum
Wien, Ensemble Modern, and Avanti (Helsinki). He has curated the music
segment of the Impuls Romantik Festival in Frankfurt since 2011, and in
September 2014 joined the composition faculty at the Juilliard School."
"There are certain types of music that affirm and triumph. Others suggest
a distance, a gentle journey towards far-off lands. Jérôme Combier is
of this race of vagabonds. His music plunges the listener into a deep,
rarefied atmosphere, dense with multiple, ghostly apparitions that set
the imagination free. Here and there, a line of shadows interferes
between the real voices, as if coming out of nowhere. Straight away,
Combier’s music does away with the references of pitches, the
distinction between sounds, breaths and friction, gone into more deeply
with the electronics and closely connected to rainfalls of sand, murmurs
of the wind… The electronics have this function, eroding the sonority
borne by the instruments, diluting harmonies and scales in gentle
saturations, sounds loaded with grain. The works brought together in
this album, performed by the nec plus ultra of the music of our time,
immerse us in a diaphanous glow."
- "studied composition, style, analysis, and orchestration with Hacène Larbi, and then later, in 1997, at the Paris Conservatory with Emmanuel Nunes and Michaël Lévinas. In addition, his university studies lead to a master's degree on Anton Webern with mentor Antoine Bonnet ("Le principe de variation chez Anton Webern"). In 1995 he was a finalist in the Griegselskalpet competition in Oslo. In 1997, he founded the Cairn Ensemble, and is now the artistic director. Jérôme Combier received the "Vocation" Prize (awarded by the Bleustein-Blanchet Foundation) and the Pierre Cardin prize. In September 1998, he participated in the composition session at the Fondation Royaumont, and as part of a cultural exchange, was in residence in Japan for two months. In 2001-2002, he was chosen to participate in the composition and musical computing cursus at Ircam. For two years, between 2002 and 2004, he developed composition and conducting programs in Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan with support from the Paris Conservatory for the conservatories in Tashkent and Almaty, and then the following year was in residence at the Villa Medicis. There he met Raphaël Thierry who made the visual installations for the cycle Vies Silencieuses written for the Cairn Ensemble. The cycle was recorded in 2007 by the Aeon label. In the Sabine villages, in Rome, he and painter Xavier Noiret-Thomé were part of the exposition "20 eventi" directed by Guiseppe Penone. In 2002, he wrote Pays de vent, Les Hebrides for the National Orchestra of France, which was heralded by Unesco and recorded by Motus editions. Jérôme Combier was quest composer at the Why Note festival in Dijon, Tage für Neue Musik in Zurich, the festival of Aix-en-Provence, the Adelburgh Festival, and the Witten Festival. His compositions for Ensemble Recherche and Ensemble Intercontemporain were part of the Autumn Festival in Paris. In collaboration with Pierre Nouvel, he created the installation Noir Gris for the Beckett exposition organised by the Centre Georges Pompidou."
The CD’s largest piece is Davis’s 19-minute On the Nature of Thingness (2011). Written for soprano and ten instrumentalists, the work received a glowing review of its premiere in the New York Times: “Tony Arnold offered dramatic, multihued interpretations of the four texts… of this colorful song cycle.”
Davis wrote Ghostlight for ICE pianist Jacob Greenberg,
who premiered it at Lincoln Center’s Mostly Mozart festival in 2013.
The piano is “prepared” by placing objects on or between the strings of
certain notes to create microtonal beatings and gong-like sounds. Seen and Heard International commented Ghostlight is “a fine new solo piano journey” producing “tingling sonorities from the instrument’s strings.”
Another Davis piece is On speaking a hundred names (2010) for bassoon and electronics, written for and premiered by ICE performer Rebekah Heller. The New York Times
commented the premiere was “played with flair by Rebekah Heller. She
deftly illuminated its eclectic moods and myriad timbres —
which ranged from breathy, guttural noises to rhapsodic melodies in a
high register.”
Chen’s four works on the CD employ imaginative, unusual instrumentation. For Hush
(2011), dedicated to her daughter, Zoe, Chen aimed for a childlike
energy in preparing a piano by applying parts of a broken music box,
such as the wheel, screws, and bolts, to the strings, to produce sounds
that resemble a toy piano. Additional sounds come from a music box,
metallic bowls, and a miniature toy piano.
Premiered at the Mostly Mozart Festival in 2012, Chimers (2011) was inspired by the magic chimes used in The Magic Flute
that protect Papageno and Tamino. Chen adapted this sound world to her
toy piano, along with toy piano rods standing upright on the toy
piano. These rods are played with tuning forks both as mallets as well
as their more “conventional” approach, resonating against the body of
the piano.
Chen created Mobius (2013) with her
longtime partner Rob Dietz for customized music boxes. In real-time, a
performer punches holes into a strip of paper, that is hand-cranked
through a music box, each hole allowing a music box tine to sound. The
strip is taped together in a Mobius fashion so that a second music box
plays the notes upside-down. These acoustic sounds are also digitally
processed, resulting in a rich collage of music box timbres.
Chen’s Beneath A Trace of Vapor (2011) was written for flutist Eric Lamb, who is accompanied by recorded sounds of his improvisations, inhales, and exhales.
- "is a pianist, toy pianist, and composer, described as “a dazzling
performer who wrings novel sounds from the humble toy piano,” (New York Times). Recognized by the Chicago Reader
as “one of the world leading proponents of the toy piano,” she is the
founder of UnCaged Toy Piano, dedicated to expanding the repertoire for
toy piano. Chen’s compositions have been described as “spellbinding” (New York Times) and “mesmerizing” (Chicago Reader). She is one of the composers for the one-woman play, The Other Mozart,
about Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart’s forgotten sister Nannerl, performed
and written by Sylvia Milo. In 2015, Chen finished a work, commissioned
by the Singapore International Festival of the Arts, for the
avant-garde pianist/toy pianist Margaret Leng Tan. Chen will compose a
new work, for the JACK Quartet and toy piano, set to premiere at the
Look & Listen Festival in May 2016. She is a founding member of the
International Contemporary Ensemble, and has previously released four
albums on Concert Artists Guild, cerumenspoon, New Focus Recordings, and
fyo records."
- “writes music that deals deftly and poetically with timbre and sonority” (New York Times). Lincoln Center inaugurated the Tully Scope Festival with the premiere of his landmark work Bells
and has presented other premieres at the Mostly Mozart Festival. He has
been commissioned by ICE, American Opera Projects, Calder Quartet,
Yarn/Wire, Steven Schick, Donaueschinger Musiktage, and the Ojai
Festival (with sound sculptor Trimpin). Davis’s music has been
performed at New York’s Carnegie Hall, Park Avenue Armory, Miller
Theatre, (Le) Poisson Rouge, and Roulette; in a portrait concert at
Spoleto USA; and internationally at Darmstadt, Helsinki Musica Nova,
Aspekte Salzburg, and Acht Brücken Köln. He has received awards from
Meet The Composer, Fromm Foundation, Copland Fund, Jerome Foundation,
MATA, and the American Music Center. With Phyllis Chen, Davis scored
Sylvia Milo’s acclaimed monodrama The Other Mozart. As a
percussionist, he is a member of ICE and has appeared as a concerto
soloist with the Seattle Symphony, Tokyo Symphony, and Nagoya Symphony."
- A Live version of the last track and totally gorgeous !
- "Five re-workings of choral works by Britten, Burton, Bennet, Elgar and
Hensel, commissioned by the National Portrait Gallery in London for the
launch of their Choral Audio Guide on 14 October 2016. The works were
installed in five separate locations within the gallery itself but I
felt it might be of interest to others to be able to hear these works as
they were intended to."
"Composer David Smooke (Peabody Conservatory of Music faculty member) is a sonic tour guide, taking the listener on a journey that explores, in his own words, “alien topographies” and “unreal landscapes.”
- "Called “an impressive, eclectic composer” (Time Out New York) and possessing “some of the most uninhibited brain cells around” (Washington Post), composer David Smooke (Peabody Conservatory of Music faculty member) is a sonic tour guide, leading his listeners on a polystylistic and expressive journey. Smooke employs a wide range of compositional techniques to paint his individually unreal soundworld, including microtonality, a deft timbral and orchestrational brush stroke, and extended performance techniques. This release features his works across the instrumental spectrum, from the title track which is a toy piano concerto with wind ensemble to the eerie piano solo, Transgenic Fields, to the multi-track composition of layered bassoons, 21 Miles to Coolville. Smooke is the toy piano soloist with the Peabody Wind Ensemble in Nutshell Studies of Unexplained Death, a piece with a fascinating inspiration. The medical examiner’s office for the state of Maryland in Baltimore houses several doll-like structures that are used for forensic investigations. Smooke evokes the intersection between the childlike and the macabre by integrating the toy piano into twisted microtonal harmonies in the wind ensemble, and some wonderful cameo appearances of a microtonally tuned banjo. The instrumental colors in the work are striking and reminiscent of Messiaen, and the soundworld Smooke has created is simultaneously riveting and unsettling. Transgenic Fields, dusk is as introverted as Nutshell is chaotic, as steady left hand chords with uneven right hand figuration suggest microscopic changes that have macro-implications. A Baby Bigger Grows Than Up Was, based on a text by Michael Kimball, is written for the unconventional loadbang quartet (baritone voice, trombone, trumpet, and bass clarinet). Fragmented texts are repeated to the point where they lose semantic meaning and become pure sonic events, not unlike how children mindlessly repeat words as sounds in the process of learning them. Some Details of Hell engages with the other end of life, setting a text by Lucie Brock-Broido about a death bed scene in a hospital. down.stream and 21 Miles to Coolville are both innovative additions to two growing corners of the repertoire, works for instrument plus loop pedal, and works for multi-tracked layered of one instrument (a la Reich’s counterpoint series). down.stream mines a surprising new vocabulary of sound from the toy piano and reaches a cathartic climax, and 21 Miles finishes the recording off with an optimistic portrayal of a road trip in the Appalachian foothills."
- "My music is about exploding boundaries in the continuing search for transcendence. These metamorphoses manifest themselves through the physical instrumentation, the musical development of material and the dramatic through-line of the compositions. Disjointed stases of sound coalesce unexpectedly into regions of clarity defined by funk-style grooves or long sinuous melodies; traditional instruments joyfully explore noise-based sonorities. I am fascinated by the sonic images that surround us in our daily life and reflect these quotidian experiences by musically evoking the sense of natural yet impossible landscapes replete with refracted and distorted birdcalls, oddly-voiced machines, and pulsing yet unpredictable rhythms similar to tidal wave patterns or crowd flows. The underlying gestural language of my music recalls the experimental post-punk goth and progressive rock music of my youth—which inspired my original interest in art music. Both of these obsessions impelled me towards the microtonality that often provides the basis for my harmonic universe. Each piece considers the drama of performance and narration, reflecting my years working in theater as a director, producer and stagehand, while my deep love for the visual arts has led me to collaborate on multi-media installation works and performance art."
- "Eyck composed these six Fantasias specifically
for the 12” vinyl LP format, a practice reminiscent of early-60s
Nonesuch releases. All performances were recorded in full takes with no
editing. American Contemporary Music Ensemble (ACME) tracked Eyck’s
scores first, and then Eyck overdubbed her deft, fluid, single-take
improvisations—thus the fitting title Fantasias. The result is an organic virtuosity that leads the listener through a wide range of sonic environments across the six pieces.
Eyck’s striking theremin performances on Fantasias showcase
her dead-aim intonation, her command of microtonality, her fluid
melodicism, and—perhaps most importantly—her utter lack of
self-consciousness as an improvisor. This latter quality is no accident,
as Eyck has practiced improvisation for years, and has even studied
techniques typically aimed at athletes for entering flow-states and
shutting down critical inner dialogue.
Eyck’s compositions range
from slow-evolving arpeggiations reminiscent of Reich and Glass (see
“Oakuunar Lynntuja” and “Dappa Solarjos”), to alternative bowing and
fingering techniques that achieve an ethereal ambience (see “Leyhomi”),
to athletic explorations reminiscent of Bartók’s String Quartets (see
“Dappa Solarjos”). The titles were devised by Eyck and
producer/label-head Allen Farmelo by scanning multiple Scandinavian
languages for pleasing lingual combinations (a technique inspired by
Canadian-Icelandic ecological poet Angela Rawlings). Conceptually, Eyck
has located all of this music within her vivid childhood memories of the
woods of northern Germany where she grew up. However, Eyck remains
pointedly cognizant that this setting—and the young girl’s imagination
that once enlivened it—act as metaphors for the context and mental state
one needs to sustain creative presence. In a sense, the Fantasias stand as a metaphor for the very thing that made them possible. . . ."
- "At the age of 7 Carolina got her first theremin lessons by Lydia
Kavina. After her debut in the Berlin Philharmonic in 2002 she has been
invited to various concerts and festivals in the whole world. It was not
long before she was known as one the best theremin soloists worldwide.
As a soloist and chamber musician she has given concerts worldwide and collaborated with Heinz Holliger, Robert Kolinsky, Gerhard Oppitz, the conductors Andrey Boreyko, Michael Sanderling, Gürer Aykal and John Storgårds,
the Berlin Radio Symphony Orchestra, the HR-Symphony Orchestra, the
Dresden Philharmonic, the Bern Symphony Orchestra, the Essen
Philharmonic Orchestra, the Lapland Chamber Orchestra, the Heidelberg Symphonic Orchestra, the Mozarteum Orchestra Salzburg and ACME, the American Contemporary Music Ensemble. . . . ."
Musicians:
Mads Brauer (electronics, Efterklang)
Rasmus Stolberg (bass, Efterklang)
Bjarke Mogensen (accordion)
Jenny Lüning (bratsch)
Josefine Weber (bratsch)
Marie Louise Lind (cello)
Josefine Opsahl (cello)
Ying-Hsueh Chen (percussion)
Sara Nigard Rosendal (percussion)
Michael Min Knudsen (harmonium, celeste)
- "In the summer of 2015 ‘Leaves – The Colour of Falling’ was performed
at 16 sold out nights in the 1000 m2 nuclear basement of the former
Copenhagen Municipal Hospital. The opera was commissioned by
Copenhagen Opera Festival who produced it in collaboration with the
local theatre Sort/Hvid. The scenography was made by Marie Rosendahl
Chemnitz and it was staged by Christian Lollike. The result was 16
horrifying, fascinating and mysterious evenings received by an
enthusiastic audience and with great reviews to follow. The set-up in
the basement can never be remade, but the opera will be granted new life
with this release and the coming concerts with Efterklang & The
Happy Hopeless Orchestra.
The lyrics for ‘Leaves – The Colour of Falling’ are written by the
poet Ursula Andkjær Olsen and transformed into a musical piece by
Efterklang and Karsten Fundal. Together they have experimented
with musical tradition from both the rhythmical and classical world.
This release shows you a way into the exciting world of opera as well as
challenging the genre and the discography of Efterklang and Fundal.
The 10 tracks of the release span around 1 hour, and do not follow
the traditional linear configuration of an opera. Karsten Fundal
explains his thoughts on Leaves:
“We wanted to break down the conventions of the opera as a genre.
The result is a song cycle about a cult located beneath the ground
while the earth might be experiencing its downfall above ground. It’s
about loss – loss of identity, loss of love and loss of life itself. We
wanted to create an opera for the mood you’re put in when you on a
beautiful autumn day see how a brown leaf falls from a tree in the
garden – the beautiful swaying fall signifying that everything will
perish.”
‘Leaves – The Colour of Falling’ features appearances from the
legendary danish opera star Lisbeth Balslev, the countertenor Morten
Grove Frandsen (one of Denmark’s most promising opera talents), Nicolai
Elsberg (known for his formidable bass), and Katinka Fogh Vindelev (who
has been touring with Efterklang for many years).
‘Leaves – The Colour of Falling’ was recorded by Francesco Donadello
and Michael Bojesen was the conductor during the recordings.
- "News from Afar presents five compositions (2010-2015) by David Evan
Jones (b. 1946) all of which integrate computer processed news
broadcasts with instruments performing live. These pieces transform
reports of the difficult news of our day and bring them into the
contemplative frame of the concert hall.
Each piece refers to a
recent news event with local and international significance: the seminal
2013 Gezi Park demonstrations in Istanbul, the massive 2011 Tsedek
Chevrati (“social justice”) demonstrations in Israel, the 2010 attack by
North Korea on South Korea’s Yeonpyeong Island, the ongoing protests
over the construction of a naval base on South Korea’s Jeju Island...
Each broadcast is in the language of the country in which the event
occurred. In performance (and in the videos listed just above)
translations are projected as supertitles.
The news broadcasts
were selected for their content and with close attention to voice
qualities, speech rhythms, and intonation contours of the speakers. The
broadcast voices were slowed (time-stretched) and gently stabilized into
intelligible pitches in a way that generally preserved the original
intonation contours. The stretched speech rhythms were edited somewhat
so as to correspond occasionally to points of rhythmic emphasis.
As
with most text-setting, the news broadcasts and the music imply
interacting narratives. What makes the current project unique is the
unification of these two elements by means of the detailed integration
of speech rhythms and pitch intonations from “found audio” with the
melodic/harmonic/rhythmic structures of the music."
David Evan
Jones is a composer with publications in chamber opera, chamber music,
computer music, and contemporary music theory. Some of his theoretical
and compositional work focuses on structural relationships between
phonetics and music.
Jones has worked extensively in computer music, composing in residence at the Elektronmusikstudion (EMS) in Stockholm, at L'Institut de Recherche et de Coordination Acoustique/Musique (IRCAM)
in Paris, and at Bregman Electronic Music Studio at Dartmouth College
(USA) where he co-founded, with Jon Appleton, the Dartmouth graduate
program in Electro-Acoustic Music.
Jones' compositions have been
recognized by grants from the National Endowment for the Arts, the
California Arts Council, and the New Hampshire Arts Council. He has
been honored by a first prize award in the Premio Ancona International Composition Competition (Italy), first prize in the national competition sponsored by the American New Music Consortium, and first prize in the MACRO International Composition Competition (USA). He has received Honorable Mentions in the Prix Ars Electronica, Austria, and in the Bourges (France) Electro-Acoustic Music Competition.
His articles have appeared in Perspectives of New Music and Computer Music Journal. His compositions are published by Dorn Publications, American Composers Editions, and on compact disks from Wergo Records, Centaur Records, Contemporary Recording Studios, Musical Heritage Society, and Composers Recordings Inc.
His first chamber opera, Bardos,
received its professional premiere at Hoam Hall in Seoul, Korea in
2004. He has recently published a CD of "Neo-Balkan Jazz and Concert
Music" on Centaur Records and is at work on a second CD of recent chamber music.
Jones is Professor of Music at the University of California Santa Cruz."
Violinist
Yuki Numata Resnick has had J.S. Bach on the brain for as long as she
can remember. An active performer with Talea Ensemble and the American
Contemporary Music Ensemble (ACME), Numata Resnick steps out of the
chamber music setting on her debut solo album For Ko. to explore her
obsession with Bach through the context of new original works written
for her by composers Caleb Burhans, Andrew Greenwald, Clara Iannotta,
and Matt Marks.
Like Shakespeare to theater, Bach is so central to the
Western art music canon that he is impossible to avoid, yet almost as
difficult to make one’s own. Thus, the idea for this album is simple:
create a dialogue between old and new by commissioning a series of works
that would sit alongside — and indeed within — one of Bach’s great
contributions, the Partita No. 1 in B minor.
Using the Partita as a point of departure, each composer
creates unique sound worlds that take the listener on an unexpected
journey from a post-minimalist, foggy memory of Bach to a children’s
story about a monkey named Trunket. The resulting album does more than
just recite Bach -- it finds and grounds the great composer in a
personal space that’s at once intimate and welcoming.
Jon Gibson, winds, keyboards, autoharp, ambient recording, soprano
saxophones; Joseph Kubera, keyboards; David Van Tieghem, percussion
In Relative Calm, I am very much involved with texture and
collage, and it is mainly intuitive. I don't want to be compulsive about
the concepts that may inspire a piece. An idea may look wonderful on
paper, and may feature an exciting and innovative formula, but the music
must sound. Some composers care only about the idea … but I care only about the actual sound of the music.
- Jon Gibson
Jon Gibson (b. 1940) is a New York City–based composer, multi-wind instrumentalist and visual artist who has been a part of the new-music scene for over four decades. During this time his creative output has included music for solo instruments, various ensembles, dance, music theater, film, and opera.
In addition to the artists mentioned in the liner notes, Gibson has also performed and collaborated with a host of other musicians, choreographers, and artists, including Harold Budd, Peter D’Agostino, David Behrman, JoAnne Akalaitis, Miriam Seidel, Steve Reich, Terry Riley, La Monte Young, Thomas Buckner, Petr Kotik, and Christian Wolff. He has been a member of the Philip Glass Ensemble since its beginnings. Gibson is also involved in an ongoing collaboration with the Nina Winthrop and Dancers Dance Company, composing and performing the music for more than seven dance productions over a period of twenty years.
Gibson’s opera, Violet Fire, composed in collaboration with librettist Miriam Seidel, is about the inventor Nikola Tesla. It received its world premiere at the National Theater of Belgrade, and was presented at BAM’s Next Wave Festival in October 2006. Gibson has received grants from the New York State Council for the Arts, The National Endowment for the Arts, the Rockefeller Foundation, the New York Foundation for the Arts, the Mary Flagler Cary Charitable Trust, and Meet the Composer.
His music can be heard on the New World, Superior Viaduct, Tzadik, Orange Mountain Music, New Tone, Point Music, and Lovely Music labels and he appears on recordings by Philip Glass, Steve Reich, Alvin Curran, Arthur Russell, and Robert Ashley, among others.
Brilliant stuff from a member of the Norwegian trio Hemmelig Tempo, - out on Ugh Records
- "2016
has proved to be quite an active year for Hemmelig Tempo. Following
their performances with Carte Blanche and the release of Are You Part of Some Kind of Cult?, we see the release of Professor Waffel's solo album Assemblages on Ugh Records. Assemblages
developed from Professor Waffel's idiosyncratic compositional technique
which we see hints of in his work with Hemmelig Tempo, but coming into
full life here. The work is constructed around tiny sampled fragments of
classical modernist and ethnic music, field recordings and foley.
These fragments are re-assembled in an audio editing program like a
complex puzzle and subsequently combined with improvised performances on
a range of instruments and objects ranging from flutes, brass,
contrabass and percussion to analogue synthesizers, ethnic instruments
such as Shakuhachi, Mezzoued and Anklung, several instruments
constructed by Professor Waffel, and various objects such as
typewriters, creeky doors and bow and arrow. Field recordings of chain
saws, pinball machines, bees, etc. are incorporated harmonically and
rhythmically into the compositions to create musical assemblages in
which virtually everything is possible.
The work may share some
similarities with Berio’s Sinfonia (which was also referred to as an
assemblage by Berio), but the compositional technique owes far more to
Stravinsky’s Russian period and the emphasis on musical collage and
juxtapositions, as well as the "combines" of the late neo-dadaist artist
Robert Rauschenberg."
- "By liberating the possibilities of sound
from the inherent constraints and limitations of the symphony orchestra, Professor Waffel creates a Vareseian world of dramatic juxtapositions of
timbre, an elaborate tapestry with violently rugged seams. Furthermore,
genres are mixed at will: musique concrete, symphonic music, text-sound
poetry, electronic experiments and jazz assembled together. ' As
always, Professor Waffel's tongue-in-cheek attitude is never far away,
as in the brief duel between a bee-hive and a snare drum roll ending Assemblage No. 7, or the Sonata for Door and Vacuum Cleaner which was given to Karl Heinz Stockhausen during his visit to Norway in 2005, and subsequently developed into Assemblage No. 6. And of course one is lead to wonder whether the musically transcribed news report of the murder of John F. Kennedy in Assemblage No.1
is some kind of satirical commentary on the current state of affairs in
the US. However, the work was in fact composed in 2004-2005, predating
both the recent elections and Professor Waffel's work with Hemmelig
Tempo.
On a
philosophical level, Assemblages draws slightly on the work of the
social anthropologist Roy Wagner and his semiotic theories on creativity. Briefly put, the comparison or juxtaposition of two ideas,
or in this case, musical fragments, inevitably creates some sort of
semiotic debris, resulting in innovation in the way that fusion derived
from jazz and rock, or in the way the Comte de Lautréamont’s,
description of a chance meeting on an operating table between an
umbrella and a sewing-machine inspired surrealism. Here, in a post
modern tradition, musical genres are freely juxtaposed and interpolated.
Atonal passages are released by gravity towards certain keys,
pointillism may frame free improvisations, and jazz grooves may appear
out of nowhere spiced with exotic instruments from unknown cultures."
Comments
Ludus Basiliensis
Microtonalidades
Ludus Allavarium
Viso di Primavera
- Radioartnet - Bandcamp
Andrés Lewin-Richter Ossiander (born 1937) is a Spanish composer of electronic music.
Kuba Kapsa is a Polish pianist and composer being the leader of the avant-jazz combo Contemporary Noise Sextet (2006-2014). Beyond that he is a renowned composer for film and theater plays. His latest venture is the first of a sophisticated series of projects of modern classical music bearing the common title "Vantdraught".
- Denovali Records
Wholeheartedly recommended to Emusers such as @Nereffid , @RonanM and @vivaldi55
THE EDGE OF FOREVER
Libretto by Elizabeth Cline
wild Up ensemble, Christopher Rountree conducting.
- Cedille
https://soundcloud.com/eighthblackbird
Jherek Bischoff - Cistern
- The Leaf Label - Emusic
Mika Pohjonen, tenor
Helsinki Music Centre Choir
Helsinki Philharmonic Orchestra
John Storgårds, conductor
- Boosey & Hawkes - Linernotes at:
- I might add an E.R biography at some point . . .
It means to me that I must be doing something of value.
- Some time ago I posted a flagcounter saying that there has been visits from 24 different countries, but just 1500 views. It hasn't moved for a very long time, though . .
But whatever the stats are, here's fantastic news from Morton Subotnick and his wife Joan Labarbara:
- Innova Recordings
- In the late 1980s, composer David First acquired a Casio CZ-1000 to create microtonal drones with the assistance of a Tascam Portastudio. An overdubbed demo piece called Four Casios—a wry, quasi-parodic homage to Steve Reich’s Four Organs credited to the technically non-existent World Casio Quartet—led to performance requests and the consequent formation of a real World Casio Quartet
David First, Esther Sandrof and Brian Charles on Casio CZ-1000 and Kevin Sparke on Casio CS-101
- Pogus Productions - YoutubeMore David First at Emusers
Innova Recordings
- New Focus Recordings
Produced by Valgeir Sigurðsson
Orchestrated & Conducted by Nico Muhly
- Emusic
Wayne Strongman, Conductor
Neema Bickersteth, soprano; Krisztina Szabó, mezzo soprano; Peter McGillivray, baritone; Marcus Nance, bass-baritone
The Elmer Iseler Singers
The Gryphon Trio
Annalee Patipatanakoon, violin; Roman Borys, cello; Jamie Parker, piano
Ryan Scott and Mark Duggan, percussion
- Canadian Music Centre (Centrediscs)
- This album will with no doubt show up on my 2016 list and I will be surprised if it doesn't show up on other lists.
- Norman Records - A Closer Listen
- Important Records
Alarm Will Sound
Innova Recordings - https://soundcloud.com/paul-livingstone
- Vision Into Art
More David T. Little at Emusers here and here.
- Starkland
More Phyllis Chen at Emusers
- A Live version of the last track and totally gorgeous !
Scanner - Choral ReWorks
- New Focus Recordings - Emusic
- Butterscotch Records - Second Inversion Review
EFTERKLANG & THE HAPPY HOPELESS ORCHESTRA
Leaves: The Colour of Falling
Vocalists:
Lisbeth Balslev (soprano)
Morten Grove Frandsen (countertenor)
Katinka Fogh Vindelev (soprano)
Nicolai Elsberg (bass)
Casper Clausen (Efterklang)
Musicians:
- Tambourhinoceros.Mads Brauer (electronics, Efterklang)
Rasmus Stolberg (bass, Efterklang)
Bjarke Mogensen (accordion)
Jenny Lüning (bratsch)
Josefine Weber (bratsch)
Marie Louise Lind (cello)
Josefine Opsahl (cello)
Ying-Hsueh Chen (percussion)
Sara Nigard Rosendal (percussion)
Michael Min Knudsen (harmonium, celeste)
The Happy Hopeless Orchestra
- American Composers Alliance
- Innova Recordings.
Yuki Numata Resnick
Jon Gibson, winds, keyboards, autoharp, ambient recording, soprano saxophones; Joseph Kubera, keyboards; David Van Tieghem, percussion
- New World Records
- out on Ugh Records