"Andy Vores was born in Cardiff, Wales in 1956 and has lived in the United States since 1987. He studied composition at Lancaster University, England with Edward Cowie. After graduating he worked in London as a music copyist and as Lecturer in Composition at The City University. Many of his works received their premieres at this time from performers including Sarah Walker, Irvine Arditti, the London Sinfonietta, The Nash Ensemble, and the BBC Singers, including Humming Harvest Gone Snow Motor which later won first prize in the Kucyna International Composition Competition at Boston University." BMOP
"Arthur Berger (1912-2003) was an influential composer, critic and teacher for more than half a century. His early music was heavily influenced by Stravinsky and neoclassicism, while his later works were both serial and diatonic in nature. Although Berger made notable contributions to the orchestral repertory, he devoted the major share of his compositional activities to chamber and solo piano music. . ." BMOP
<div><a href="http://www.emusic.com/album/-/-/14404076/"><img src="http://cf-images.emusic.com/music/images/album/144/040/14404076/600x600.jpg" alt="Noise plays Burtner album cover"> </a><br></div>- "For over a decade, Alaskan composer Matthew Burtner has worked independently with both the San-Diego-based ensemble NOISE and St. Pauls innova Recordings. Now all three have joined forces to release NOISE Plays Burtner, the first published collection of his chamber music, and an album that bears the fruit of these collaborations: three substantial compositions that each explore a unique approach to noise in Burtners evocative and thoughtful music.
Burtners interest in the whole world of sound originated from his childhood experience growing up in Alaska where the snow, wind and sea create a ceaseless soundscape. This texture finds voice in the landmark ecoacoustic composition Snowprints (2001). In this work, an electronic part created using the sounds of recorded snow sets an environmental noise element in counterpoint with the acoustic instruments. The recorded sounds create a syntax of environmental energy the result of wind, temperature, and time at play on the snow.
Based on Henry Cowell and Leon Theremins Rhythmicon instrument from the 1920s, the Polyrhythmicon is a computer instrument designed by Burtner that lies at the heart of Polyrhythmicana (2002). In the piece (dedicated to Cowell) the acoustic musicians perform to layered click tracks that generate polytemporal sonic geometries. The metaphorical noise here arises from the tiny slippages between the constantly changing tempi, and is accentuated by the instruments, which are wrapped in tinfoil to generate sympathetic buzz and resonance.
(dis)Sensus (2008)takes inspiration from the political philosophy of Jacques Ranciere, creating a multi-movement work in which explosive energy arises from formal contrast. (dis)Sensus explores a variety of conflicting perspectives as tonalities, challenging the sensible by alternately embracing aesthetics of dissent and consensus. In this work the percussionist plays the role of a provocateur, mimicking the soloists alternately on a saxophone mouthpiece, a toy piano, and a bowed saw blade, and inserting bursts of snare drum noise at times to activate change. The percussionist also introduces the political philosophy into the music by writing with pencil on paper a Ranciere quote that is amplified live and fed into the interactive computer where it becomes amplified into a glitch rhythm." Innova Recordings - Soundcloud
- "Matthew Burtner is an Alaskan-born composer, sound artist and technologist specializing in concert chamber music and interactive new media. His work explores ecoacoustics, embodiment, and extended polymetric and noise-based systems. First Prize Winner of the Musica Nova International Electroacoustic Music Competition (Czech Republic), a 2011 IDEA Award Winner, and a recipient of the Howard Brown Foundation Fellowship, Burtners music has also received honors and awards from Bourges (France), Gaudeamus (Netherlands), Darmstadt (Germany) and Luigi Russolo (Italy) international competitions. He is Associate Professor of Composition and Computer Technologies in the Department of Music at the University of Virginia where he Directs the Interactive Media Research Group (IMRG) and Associate Directs the VCCM Computer Music Center. . . ."
- "NOISE, an ensemble of accomplished soloists committed to contemporary chamber music, presents energetic, engaging and intellectually stimulating concerts of the best chamber music written by todays young and innovative composers from around the world. The repertoire of NOISE is focused on three artistic trajectories, their histories, and their intersections:
Complexism, high notation precision, threshold performative challenges, experimental notation and performative techniques. NOISE repertoire includes works by representative composers Brian Ferneyhough, Franklin Cox, Christopher Burns, Juan Campoverde Q., Erik Ulman, Anton Webern, Elliot Carter, Stuart Saunders Smith, and Sidney Boquiren, among many others.
High-intensity grooves demanding of focused concentration, minimalism, postminimalism. NOISE repertoire includes works by representative composers Christopher Adler, Louis Andriessen, Philip Glass, Steve Reich, Frederic Rzewski, Tom Johnson, Bill Ryan, and Evan Ziporyn.
Evocative aural soundscapes. NOISE repertoire includes works by representative composers include John Luther Adams, Matthew Burtner, Sidney Corbett, Morton Feldman, Orland Jacinto Garcia, Kaija Saariaho, and Toru Takemitsu. . . ."
On Ideologic Organ, a sub division of Editions Mego (curated by Stephen O'Malley from Sunn O)))) )
Iancu Dumitrescu - Pierres Sacrées / Hazard and Tectonics Pierre Sacrées 13:31 For prepared piano, metallic plates and objects. Composed in 1989-1991. Realized in Studios Hyperion, Bucharest 1989-1990. Originally released on Edition Modern EDMN 1003 CD (1991)
Hazard and Tectonics 15:58 Computer assisted music. Commission of Glasgow Tectonics Festival 2013. Realized in Studios Hyperion, Bucharest 2009-2013. Originally releassed on Edition Modern EDMN 1029 CD (2013). Dedicated to Ilan Volkov.
Born in Romania in 1944 Iancu Dumitrescu is one of the a leading personalities in contemporary music, whose significance embraces composition, interpretation and philosophy of music. His music and ideas are increasingly influential, centered on the idea of acousmatics and on the phenomenological approach he learned from Sergiu Celibidache, which Dumitrescu applies to the composition itself. Acousmatics represents for Dumitrescu not only ‘the art of disguising a sonic source’ in a concrete approach, but the very metaphor of the sound, infinite, cryptic alchemy applied to the sound material.
Dumitrescu’s activity as a musicologist, composer and performer (conductor) intersects from the very beginning.
In 1978. he receives a Scholarship from Sergiu Celibidache in Germany, therefore Dumitrescu embarks on systematic studies of general and musical phenomenology, and also conducting at the University of Trier and Munich. He adopts the Husserlian phenomenological perspective that has led to important theoretical crystallization and to fertile creative conclusions, placing in question the principles of academic composition.
According to Iancu Dumitrescu, this is the first time phenomenology is utilized as a true method of composition, which throws into query essential concepts, nevertheless hidden at that time: inspiration, vision, creativity, imagination.
Iancu Dumitrescu is considered one of the leaders of the spectral music trend worldwide. In 1976 he founded the Hyperion Ensemble, proposing a new aesthetic in today’s music, hyper-spectral, based on the radiant power of sound, within its microcosmic complexity — which is questioned, analyzed, recomposed from a spectral perspective. Dumitrescu is also founder and artistic director of the International Music Festivals of Computer Assisted Music, Acousmania, Musica Nova, Musica Viva and the International Spectral Music Festival, Spectrum XXI – held annually in three European capitals. His music is performed all over the world, with different ensembles, soloists and orchestras. As a Blodget artist in Residence at the Harvard University he shared his methods and techniques of composition to the students graduates in composition. His output includes more than 300 works, chamber music, electroacoustic, orchestral music, computer music, etc. . . . ." Editions Mego - Soundcloud - Last fm.
Newish, released in february 2013: - "The organ is ideally suited to Cages aesthetic its multitude of stops make it the ultimate prepared instrument. The fact that sound emanates from a number of pipes placed at discrete locations in space nicely accords with Cages idea of the separation of sounds in space. And it represents vast possibilities that could be released as sound through the use of chance operations. For this reason Cages organ music occupies a small but quite important place within his output. . . ." Mode Records
Released by a fairly new label on Emusic, Alba from Finland:
"Known for its quality discs and the winner of numerous awards, Alba is the leading Finnish classical label for repertoire ranging from early music to the latest contemporary works. Featuring in its catalogue are such world-class artists as conductor Susanna M
- "Cycles, my recording of music by Nico Muhly, is to be released on the Bedroom Community label. There are 13 pieces on it - the majority of which were commissioned by me from Nico over the past 7 or so years. The centrepiece of the recording is the Seven O Antiphon Preludes. The 'O' antiphons are Magnificat antiphons for vespers for the last seven days of Advent, the days immediately leading up to Christmas. Each Antiphon is a name of Christ and his attributes in Old Testament scripture. No one knows the exact date and origin of the Antiphons but they were in use in liturgies in Rome as early as the 8th century. Each of Nico Muhly's preludes is a reflective, intense musical reflection on each of the plainsong texts, which are sung in Latin by Simon Wall . . . ." James McVinnie. - Bandcamp
- "James McVinnies Cycles comprises thirteen organ pieces by labelmate and composer Nico Muhly. Performing the pieces in addition to McVinnie are Nadia Sirota, Chris Thompson and Simon Wall.
McVinnie is neither a stranger to Muhlys music nor the labels output, having collaborated closely with its artists throughout the years. What makes McVinnie such an ideal interpreter of Muhlys music is that he and Muhly share not just an understanding of the capabilities of the pipe organ as a musical instrument, but also an equally deep understanding of, and even affection for, its limitations.
McVinnie speaks eloquently on behalf of his instruments potential. The organ is like a grand symphony orchestra controlled by one person manning a series of keyboards and pedals, stops and buttons. On the one hand, an organ can imitate orchestral instrumentsthe ardent string section of an orchestra, a lyrical clarinet, a French horn, timpaniand on the other, it has its own indigenous magisterial voice. Organs are built to speak into specific acoustic spaces. When you play, its as if youre playing the whole building youre in, which often can be electrifying. And the organ as an instrument is tied to centuries of liturgical practice, capable of supporting or imitating a church choir with a solemnity few others could hope to summon. McVinnie is quick to point out, however, that the organ is also the ultimate and original synthesizerand it is nothing if not a mechanical, wind-powered synthesizer, with all of the uncanny falseness that that word implies.
Much of Muhlys work aspires to a kind of pop-art superflatness. The organs mechanical sound, its resistance to subtle dynamics, work perfectly with this tendency in Muhlys musicparticularly filtered through McVinnies subtle registrations, the combinations of stops pulled out to create each timbre. For instance, in Muhlys prelude for their mutual friend, the Rev. James Mustard, McVinnie gives the slow-moving harmonies a breathy warmth, but its through a sparkling, crystalline pane of arpeggios.
The symphonic, the acoustic, the sacred, the synthetic: theres a little of each in every one of these pieces, and sometimes more than a little. Muhlys Twitchy Organs pairs the organ with viola and percussion, but on this recording, the space is as much of an instrument as the pipes are. It sounds warm and grand and alive; it sounds like an ambient work for reverb-soaked synths; it sounds like a prayer. It is, in fact, all of the above." Bedroom Community
- "Nico Muhly has composed a wide scope of work for ensembles, soloists and organizations including
the American Symphony Orchestra, Boston Pops, Carnegie Hall, Chicago Symphony, countertenor
Iestyn Davies, violinist Hilary Hahn, choreographer Benjamin Millepied, New York City Ballet, New
York Philharmonic, Paris Opéra Ballet, soprano Jessica Rivera, and designer/illustrator Maira
Kalman.
Among Muhlys most frequent collaborators are his colleagues at Bedroom Community, an artist-run
label headed by Icelandic musician Valgeir Sigurðsson. Bedroom Community was inaugurated in 2007
with the release of Muhlys first album, Speaks Volumes. In spring 2012, Bedroom Community released
Muhlys three-part Drones & Music, in collaboration with pianist Bruce Brubaker, violinist Pekka
Kuusisto, and violist Nadia Sirota
Born in Vermont in 1981 and raised in Providence, Rhode Island, Muhly graduated from Columbia
University with a degree in English Literature. In 2004, he received a Masters in Music from the Juilliard
School, where he studied under Christopher Rouse and John Corigliano."
Rejecting European modernism in the head modernists own backyard. And imagining the world without a nose. These are the points of departure for Neil Rolnicks new CD, Gardening At Gropius House. And though the topics sound serious, the music is joyful and uplifting, infused with grooves and sticky melodies, with exuberant and virtuosic writing all around. In a recent feature on Rolnick at NewMusicBox.com, Frank Oteri said over 30 years he has helped to create a much changed musical landscape in the United States. Gardening At Gropius House and Anosmia keep pushing those changes. The title piece, a concerto for violin, computer and ensemble, features the irrepressible Todd Reynolds with members of Alarm Will Sound, conducted by Alan Pierson. The second piece, Anosmia, is a monodrama for three singers (Andy Osmia and the 2 Scents), computer and ensemble, featuring baritone Daniel Cilli and the New Music Ensemble of the San Francisco Conservatory, conducted by Nicole Paiement. Give it a sniff." Innova Recordings
Neil Rolnick: - "A pioneer in the use of computers in performance since the late 1970s, Neil Rolnick often includes unexpected and unusual combinations of media in his work. Whether working with electronic sounds, improvisation, or multimedia, his music has been characterized by critics as sophisticated, hummable and engaging, and as having good senses of showmanship and humor. Rolnicks performances included concerts in Shanghai, Hong Kong, Vienna and New York. He completed 50 Fugue and Numb, both part of the extended media performance MONO in 2012. That same year he was awarded the Hoefer Prize from the San Francisco Conservatory of Music. Innova Recordings released The Economic Engine in 2009, which was cited as one of the years outstanding classical CDs in the New York Times. He has also received a New York Foundation for the Arts fellowship, and residencies at the MacDowell Colony and the Ucross Foundation. In January 2011 Innova Recordings released his 16th CD, Extended Family. Rolnick teaches at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in Troy, NY, where he founded the iEAR Studios." Soundcloud and Soundcloud
"Keeril Makan composes without assumed expectations of an instruments sound or a performers capabilities, but by exploring the possible, by discovering the beautiful in the unexpected and following where that beauty leads. Makans relationship to the world of sounds has its connection to the work of Edgard Varèse and John Cage and by a broad American experimental tradition, with touchstones in the work of some of the European modernists.
Afterglow is the outcome of hours spent listening to the harmonic resonance of specific notes and chords, and to the durations of the resonances. The simplicity of the materials beguiles the listener into hearing beyond the immediate gesture to become aware of its afterglow, the sympathetic vibrations of the unplayed strings within the piano.
In Mu for prepared violin, Makan experimented with the placement of paper clips in the strings about an inch and two inches in front of the bridge, in the area normally traversed by the bow, and in the score asks the violinist to explore further the different sounds made possible by adjusting the bow relative to the clips."
Keeril Makan
- - "Described by The New Yorker as an arrestingly gifted young American composer, and by The New York Times as consistently stimulating, The Boston Globe portrays Keeril Makan as a composer whose music deserves to be more widely heard. Recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship and the Luciano Berio Rome Prize from the American Academy in Rome, he has also received awards from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, the Fromm Foundation, Meet the Composer, the Aaron Copland House, the Utah Arts Festival, the Fulbright Program, and ASCAP. His work has been commissioned by the Bang on a Can All-Stars, American Composers Orchestra, Harvard Musical Association, and Carnegie Hall, among others. His CDs, In Sound (Tzadik) and Target (Starkland) include performances by the Kronos Quartet and Either/Or. Persona, his opera, written for Alarm Will Sound and produced by Beth Morrison, is an adaptation of Ingmar Bergmans classic film, with a libretto by Jay Scheib. Schott is publishing his compositions . . . ." Mode Records - More Keeril Makan @ Emusers
International Contemporary Ensemble (ICE) - "ICE is dedicated to reshaping the way music is created and experienced.
With a flexible roster of 33 leading instrumentalists performing in forces ranging from solos to large ensembles, the International Contemporary Ensemble (ICE) functions as performer, presenter, and educator, advancing the music of our time by developing innovative new works and pursuing groundbreaking strategies for audience engagement. In an era of radical change, ICE redefines concert music as it brings together new work and new listeners.
Since its founding in 2001, ICE has premiered over 500 compositions, the bulk of them by emerging composers, in venues ranging from New Yorks Lincoln Center and Chicagos Museum of Contemporary Art to galleries, bars, clubs, and schools around the world. The ensemble has released acclaimed albums on the Bridge, Naxos, Tzadik and New Focus labels, with forthcoming releases on Nonesuch, Kairos and Mode.
With leading support from The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, ICE launched ICElab in early 2011. This new program places teams of ICE musicians in close collaboration with six emerging composers each year to develop works that push the boundaries of musical exploration. ICElab projects will be featured in more than twenty performances each season and documented online through DigitICE, a new online venue.
ICEs commitment to build a diverse, engaged audience for the music of our time has inspired The Listening Room, a new educational initiative targeting public schools whose music programs have been cut in the recent recession. Using team-based composition and graphic notation, ICE musicians lead students in the creation of new musical works, nurturing collaborative creative skills and building an appreciation for musical experimentation."
Flutist Claire Chase playing Steve Reich, Marcos Balter, Alvin Lucier, Philip Glass, Mario Diaz de Léon and Edgard Varèse.
"Density, the new album by flutist, new music activist and MacArthur Fellow Claire Chase takes the seminal flute solo Density 21.5 by Edgard Varèse as an endpoint and works backwards through an exploration of the concept of “density” as a springboard for sonic explorations of texture, layering and performative virtuosity. Booklet texts are by Laura Mullen and photography is by David Michalek. Both the Balter and Diaz de León are written for Chase and are heard here in their world premiere recordings. From Steve Reich's Vermont Counterpoint, for eleven flutes, through to the Varèse, Density posits a lineage in the modern minimalist flute repertoire that is taut and focused, offering a muscular alternative to conventional narratives."
- "Chase, now 35, recorded Density 21.5 on a platinum Powell flute owned by Doriot Anthony Dwyer (a descendent of Susan B. Anthony), the first female flutist to become principal of a major US orchestra. Density is Chase’s third solo album and completes a trilogy of recordings, with Aliento (2009) and Terrestre (2012), dedicated to the documentation of 20th century flute repertory. In performance, Chase plays the disc as a 70-minute continuous solo in collaboration with the art director David Michalek and the sound engineer Levy Lorenzo, using sound, space and her unique perspective on the instrument to explore flute performance in an entirely new way. . . . ." New Focus Recordings - Soundcloud
- "Chase is the founder and Artistic Director of the International Contemporary Ensemble (ICE), which she formed in 2001 with the goal of creating the United States’ first large-scale chamber ensemble dedicated to new and experimental music. ICE has given more than 500 world premiere performances across the world, and has rapidly established itself as one of the leading groups of its generation as well as one of the most innovative artist-driven new nonprofit business models in the field. ICE is a uniquely structured, modular ensemble comprised of thirty dynamic and versatile young performers who are dedicated to advancing the music of our time. Through innovative programming, inter-disciplinary collaborations, and the creation of genre-defying new presentation, production and educational models, ICE brings together new music and new audiences." http://clairechase.net/
Sub Rosa presents a milestone in Musique Concréte:
The complete version, as premiered in 1982, of one of the François Bayle's masterpieces.
- "François Bayle studied with Stockhausen and Messiaen. He joined the ORTF Groupe de Musique Concrète in 1960. He later led the group when it became the Groupe de Recherches Musicales in 1966. Most of his compositions are electronic, and his first important work, 'Espaces inhabitables' (1967) is suggestive of an imaginary world in which nature is distorted in a dream-like fashion. He later utilized natural and synthetic sounds in his compositions, such as the recorded sounds made in a Lebanese cave. He has stated that his purpose as a composer is to enable the listener to feel the motion and vibration of energy in the universe."
François Bayle characterizes his art like this: "...my purpose was always the same: to compose with only 'images-de-sons' (sound images); to show how, through pure listening in an acousmatic situation, these sound images move like butterflies through audible space and project a colored twinkling on the listener. Out of frame, this is a world proved by itself... Les couleurs de la nuit was created for "tapes and computer" Sub Rosa - Soundcloud
Janácek Philharmonic Orchestra, Christian Arming, Petr Kotik, and Zsolt Nagy, conductors; Charles Curtis, cello solo, with members of the San Diego Symphony.
- "For nearly fifty years the work of Alvin Lucier (b. 1931) has marked off a space unlike any other in American music. By now a hero to three generations of experimentalists, Lucier continues to make work at a brisk pace, finding new, surprising and radical approaches to the same artistic concerns. His subject is the human as listener, and his music can be understood as a detailed, exhaustive investigation into the complexities of the act of listening. The results are often uncanny, but the approach is through the familiar and the ordinary; and the production is invariably of rare composerly discipline and exactness of execution.
The three works presented on this album set forth three perspectives on the orchestra, monument of the European concert tradition. In each work we hear unmistakable echoes of the familiar iconography of the orchestra, associations with the past that are the bearers of complex meanings. Yet in a kind of tandem reality, sound itself pushes forward, bringing us back to the present, to our immediate presence as listeners, and to meanings independent of association. The world construed as what is known, as a set of received notions, is gently put in question; another world, the one we live in moment to moment, is briefly illuminated." New World Records
- "ALVIN LUCIER was born in 1931 in Nashua, New Hampshire. He attended Yale and Brandeis and spent two years in Rome on a Fulbright Scholarship. From 1962 to 1970 he taught at Brandeis, where he conducted the Brandeis University Chamber Chorus which devoted much of its time to the performance of new music. Since 1970 he has taught at Wesleyan University.
In 1966, along with Robert Ashley, David Behrman and Gordon Mumma, Lucier founded the Sonic Arts Union, for whose concerts he developed numerous live electronic works, exploring echolocation, brain waves, room acoustics and the visual representation of sound. His recent works include a series of installations and works for solo instruments, chamber ensembles, and orchestra in which rhythmic patterns and related spatial phenomena are created by close tunings.
In 2001 Lucier’s Ovals for chamber orchestra was performed at Donaueschingen by the Hilversum Radio Orchestra and, in 2002, Just Before Dark was premiered in Vienna by the Soloists of the Tehran Symphony Orchestra. He recently completed Ever Present for flute, saxophone and piano and Almost New York, for flutist Carin Levine. He is currently working on a collaboration with sculptor Alain Kirili for baritone voice and French Horn, commissioned by Thomas Buckner." Lovely Music
- "The product of an extremely close working relationship between performers and composer, L'Errance... is a remarkable collection of the complete music for string quartet by acclaimed contemporary Canadian composer Robert Lemay. Through many years of collaboration, this album offers a unique perspective on Lemay's music from the Silver Birch String Quartet and pianist Yoko Hirota. Through works inspired by Dutch film maker Wim Wenders, Saskatchewan visual artist Eli Bornstein, and Quebec film maker Bernard Émond, Lemay creates evocative harmonies and textures brought vividly to life by some of Canada's finest interpreters of contemporary music." - Amazon
Robert Lemay - "Robert Lemay has composed many works and received numerous international awards. Among recent honors include the second prize from the International Competition Prize Luxembourg 2007 and the second prize from the Kazimierz Serocki 10th International Composers’ Competition 2006. Other international prizes include the first prize from the 2004 Harelbeke Muziekstad Wind Ensemble Competition in Belgium. The first prize was given by the city of Harelbeke with 10,000 Euro for his piece, Ramallah for saxophone alto and wind ensemble. In addition, Lemay received three prizes from the CAPAC (presently SOCAN).
His music, which often employs virtuoso performance techniques, is characterized by an imaginative and unconventional use of the concert hall space. Lemay has been performed in Canada, the United States, Asia (Japan and Thailand), Europe (France, Denmark, Spain, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, Czech Republic, Hungary, Slovenia, Luxembourg, Poland and Scotland), South America (Argentina, Brazil and Venezuela), Mexico (XXXII Foro Internacional de Música Nueva Manuel Enríquez), Australia (2010 ISCM World New Music Days) and Belgium (2012 ISCM World New Music Days) . Many of his pieces have been broadcast on Société Radio-Canada, CBC, Bavarian State Radio, European Broadcasting Union (Luxembourg), Polish National Radio and ABC Classic FM (Australia) and also recorded commercially on 13 different CDs in Canada, Europe and USA.
Lemay holds a doctorate degree in composition from the Université de Montréal where he studied under Michel Longtin, and a master’s degree from Université Laval with François Morel. He also studied at the State University of New York at Buffalo, and has worked with David Felder and taken part in seminars with Brian Ferneyhough, Louis Andriessen, and Donald Erb. In France, he worked with François Rossé in Bordeaux and Georges Apergis at the ATEM in Paris.
Presently, Robert Lemay teaches at Laurentian University in Sudbury, Ontario. He is the President and the Co-artistic director of the 5-Penny New Music Concerts in Sudbury." - Canadian Music Centre
- "Like many of his colleagues from the Groupe de recherches musicale, the French electroacoustic-music think tank founded in the 1950s, Luc Ferrari (1929-2005) proved admirably hard to categorize. His Symphonie Déchirée (Torn Symphony), an hourlong opus for 17 instruments and tape premiered in 2000 but only now getting its first recorded release, in a superb performance by the Ars Nova ensemble mixes the found-sound ethos of musique concrète, a wide-ranging palette of styles, and an underlying philosophical curiosity about the nature of sound and listening. Its a bricolage held together by Ferraris confident, unabashed sense of musical drama.
A sort of balance, Ferrari wrote, between revolt and voluptuousness, the symphony shifts between taped montages and instrumental virtuosity, violence and diversion, even seriousness and mischief: Theres a Play of Objects (a stop-and-go creep of glissandi and wah-wah trumpet), a Play of Timbres (a rhythmic grid of pop-cheer that slowly falls apart), a Play of Reflections (a pair of intricate musical mirrors, glinting then submerged, separated by a grand, prerecorded splash). But the games turn fierce, and the sounds hit harder and harder. Ferraris tools sampling, looping, cross-cutting were long ago assimilated into a more benign mass culture, but here they flash uncomfortably, beguilingly sharp." Matthew Guerrieri @ Boston Globe L'Empreinte Digitale - http://www.arsnova-ensemble.com/
- "Pogus is absolutely delighted to offer this new release featuring Australian new music ensemble Decibel performing four works by Alvin Lucier, three of which are previously unrecorded.
Ever Present (2002), the only work offered here that has been recorded before is for flute, saxophone, and piano with slow sweep pure wave oscillator and is considered by many to be Luciers most musical work. Carbon Copies (1989) is for saxophone, piano, flute and playback; the work investigates musicians imitating their environments. Hands (1994) is for organ with four players. The performers use their hands to subtly alter the harmonics produced from the pipes of an organ. Shelter (1967) is for vibration pickups, amplification system and enclosed space and finds Lucier offering the sounds of outside a performance space. All these works as always are amazing examples of Alvin Luciers fertile mind and exploring, experimental sensibility. One of the true originals."
- "Decibel are world leaders in the integration of acoustic instruments and electronics, pioneering electronic score formats, including the Decibel Scoreplayer App, incorporating mobile score formats and networked coordination performance environments. The ensemble has collaborated with composers such as Werner Dafeldecker, Agostino Di Scipio, Alvin Curran, David Toop, Marina Rosenfeld, Lionel Marchetti, Andreas Weixler and Johannes S. Sistermanns and worked with iconic Australian composers Jon Rose, Alan Lamb, Ross Bolleter, Warren Burt, Eric Griswold and Anthony Pateras. Decibel have contributed the Australian premieres of works by Fausto Romitelli, Tristan Murail, Alvin Lucier, Peter Ablinger, Mauricio Kagel and have toured monograph concerts dedicated to Alvin Lucier and John Cage." Pogus Productions
- "North Carolina-bred, New York-based violinist, singer and composer Caroline Shaw thought she was "having a psychotic break" when, at 30, she was awarded the 2013 Pulitzer Prize in music for her Partita for 8 Solo Voices a startling original work that draws on Baroque dance forms, experimental vocal music and the drawings of artist Sol LeWitt. Shaw sees composition as a logical extension of her musicianship and, in fact, prefers to be known as a musician rather than a capital-C Composer. Her versatile music-making is most often on display with the vocal octet Roomful of Teeth and as violinist with the American Contemporary Music Ensemble. But her compositions themselves are dramatic, lush, poetic and innovative. Though emblematic of an increasing percentage of musicians comfortable with various styles and performance practices, her voice is powerfully forward-looking, exciting and entirely her own."
--Alex Ambrose, Q2 Music
- "Roomful of Teeth is a vocal octet dedicated to re-imagining singing in the 21st century. Through study with vocal masters from non-classical from non-classical traditions the world over, Roomful of Teeth continually expands their vocabulary of singing techniques and, through an on-going commissioning project, invites todays brightest composers to create a repertoire without borders. Winners of the 2010 American Prize, two-time TimeOut New York Critics Pick and featured ensemble in the 2011 Merkin Hall Ecstatic Music Festival, the group brings audiences to their feet with vibrant performances of all-new music.
Founded in 2009 by Brad Wells, Roomful of Teeth consists of eight classically trained vocalists. At their annual residency at the Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art (Mass MoCA), the ensemble has studied Tuvan throat singing, belting and pop techniques, yodeling, Inuit throat singing and, in their summer 2012 residency, the group will coach with master singers from Sardinia and Korea. Commissioned composers include Rinde Eckert, Judd Greenstein, Caleb Burhans, Merrill Garbus (of tUnE-yArDs), William Brittelle and Sarah Kirkland Snider. Their first recording will be released on New Amsterdam Records in 2012.
A Roomful of Teeth concert feels less like a classical new music performance and more like an world music rock concert high wire act. Or perhaps just something completely different. A student at a recent college performance raved: It was no doubt one of the best concerts Ive ever been too; I was blown away by the singers and felt like I learned something new with every piece." New Amsterdam Records More Roomful of Teeth @ Emusers
- "Comprised of three balanced examples of his Continuous Music on solo piano, Three Solo Pieces serves as perhaps the best introduction the Ukrainian-Canadian composer Lubomyr Melnyk yet available. Marginal Invitation is a subdued work with a deeply rooted melodic sensibility that is rich in overtones, while Corrosions on the Surface of Life exhibits a dissonant fury of patterned note play. The final, side-length meditation Cloud Passade No. 3 is a chordal work in free-time which functions equally well as furniture music and a meditative exploration of pure light.
Three Solo Pieces is the first set of new Lubomyr Melnyk recordings produced by Unseen Worlds and his first release for the label since the 2007 reissue of his debut album KMH: Piano Music in the Continuous Mode (1979). Following that reissue, efforts were shifted from record projects to introducing Melnyks still-thriving Continuous Music to audiences with a set of memorable and well-received concerts in Seattle and New York in 2009. Since his popular rediscovery through a variety of releases on Unseen Worlds, his own and other labels, as well as being hosted all over the world for concerts, Lubomyr Melnyk has successfully risen from obscurity and emerged as a welcome new entry in the history of contemporary classical music, as well as a vital performer for the 21st Century." Unseen Worlds November 2013 - music
- first there came Franz Lizst ..... then came LUBOMYR -
A brand new album from Operations Manager at Innova Recordings (Release Date: Jan 28, 2014)
- On music: Performers: Steven Copes, Erin Keefe, Andrei Tchekmazov, Jessica Bidner, Ben Ullery, Pitnarry Shin, Ruggero Allifranchini, Nina Fan, Christopher Campbell,Holly Hansen and Aaron Rice.
- "Chris Campbells third album for innova (following 2011s Sound the All Clear and his recent collaboration with Grant Cutler, (Schooldays Over) is Things You Already Know, and its less a recording than a place: a place where musicians come together from disparate traditions and find a music common to us all. It unfolds and expands, illuminating an ambient space with homemade instruments like propane tank drums, bowed psaltery and singing bowls as well as more traditional instruments like guitars, cellos and drums. Its an invitation to explore, to rediscover. Its a house full of luscious piano loops, soaring melodic outbursts from the strings, fuzzy guitars in the distance, sporadic kicking grooves, and skittish scrapings of junk hardware in the basement a little Brian Eno, Jon Hassell, Mike Oldfield, and Olivier Messiaen, and a whole lot of Campbell.
There are two complementary processes at the heart of the work, and both are intimately related to time: accumulation and punctuation the building up of repetitive fragments and the flux as you move to the next room. For Campbell, this means that Things You Already Know is not a clean end-product, sanded and smoothed to remove the evidence of its making. It bears the marks of its construction proudly, because the building is all.
To build this thing this work that answers the question of how the world knits itself into our bones Campbell brought together collaborators, friends. From one world, he drew members of the Saint Paul Chamber and Minnesota Orchestras, and from another, he brought members of groups like Zoo Animal and Aaron and the Sea. Working together at the Hideaway Studio, the musicians found common ground, and then went somewhere uncommon.
Completed with a cover image by photographer Alec Soth that captures and embodies the idea of shifting perspective, Things You Already Know was ready for the world. Now the only question is: Are you ready for its world?"
- Innova Recordings
- "Chris Campbell is a composer, musician and producer. From sit-down concerts to all-night festivals, his music has been performed and heard from New Zealand to Montserrat to the United Kingdom to the United States and been described as oscillating between the comforting and the exotic, with occasional creepy moments by Time Out Chicago. Campbell also runs innova Recordings, the label of the American Composers Forum. For him, making music is a way to both communicate and listen better." http://soundcloud.com/composerchriscampbell
From the Australian Wood & Wire label (the label with Textile Audio)
- and a truely gorgeous one . . .
- "Written for Amanda Levers Masters in Choreography final performance, The Visitor explores the experience of being a sole identity in a world of unknown.
An entity awakes in an otherworldly place. Through interaction with its surroundings, as well as curious introspection, it discovers the strange balance that exists between the singular and the universal.
The Visitor hums with an ominous intensity, and taps the listener on the shoulder with inexplicable pops, bellsound and unidentified sonic shadows. A seemingly steady rhythmic foundation is unsettled by a swarm of cold voices, and sunlit strings build into a molten golden stormfront, which slowly dissipates like ink into water.
The Visitor is left alone with this new space, one that it is now an unending part of."
- Wood & Wire
- "The Vainglories is the solo project of Gillian Lever, and is responsible for producing the soundtrack to her introspective moods. Melancholic melody intertwines with textured strangeness to create lullabies for the nightmare-prone. The Vainglories has played live in UK and Australian venues, and has written music for film and live theatre, including writing and performing the live score for Watsons Jhonsey award winning show Once Were Planets in the 2013 Melbourne International Comedy Festival. In 2013 The Vainglories also wrote the music for Amanda Levers Masters in Choreography VCA final performance, Dasein.
Based in Melbourne, The Vainglories constantly struggles with the grammatical difficulties arising from being a solo artist with a name more suited to a band."
- Free Music Archive
- "Composer Alan Tormeys Theories of Place is a new and provocative full-length digital release of industrial chamber music that integrates classical, electronic, and environmental sounds into a stunning and idiosyncratic musical world. Joining other experimental electronic releases on New Focus (RWeWhoRWe, Edgar Guzmans Difference, and Du Yuns Shark in You), this album is an assertion of noise as the mediating force in a dialog between avant-garde classical music and the mechanical & electro-magnetic infrastructures that undergird contemporary American life. Tormey, whose work has been described by the press as infinite and merciless, is currently the Associate Creative Director of the Eclectic Laboratory Chamber Orchestra in Pittsburgh, having previously taught at Bucknell University and Grinnell College. The music on Theories of Place reflects an updated take on the minimalism of Morton Feldman, Glenn Branca, and Brian Eno as heard through the scratched sonic lenses of people like William Basinski, Psychic TV, Phil Niblock, and James Tenney. While classical in its conception, the albums instrumentation reflects the composers broader artistic concerns. Guitars, synthesizers, and percussion dominate the album, often Grunge-like in their thickness, and frequently performed in unusual and innovative ways. Many of the synthesizers, for example, are played not by keyboardists, but by singers and dancers who are connected to devices (often from video games) that translate their physical gestures into musical sound control. Black Pudding (the albums opening track) recruits a performance battery of Nintendo Wii controllers, PC joysticks, a D.J. mixing console, and an electric guitar. These unconventional performance techniques are balanced with virtuosic performances of fully notated music, both by the composer and guest saxophonist on Downward Dogs, Damani Phillips. The albums artwork, created by Sarah Walker, is complex and immersive, sharing an immediate and natural affinity with the composers musical vision."
- "Alan Tormey is a composer and digital musician whose work encompasses elements of noise, microtonality, and the use of gestural interface technologies to facilitate the live performance of electronic music. Anthony Doerr, author of The Shell Collector and Memory Wall, describes his music as absolutely cool and unnerving. As a guitarist and laptop performer, Alan has shared the stage with some of the avant-gardes most significant improvising performers including Mark Dresser, Pauline Oliveros, and Frances-Marie Uitti. His music has been performed by some of the worlds foremost musicians, including the American Composers Orchestra, the Oslo Laptop Orchestra, Marilyn Nonken, So Percussion, The Black Orchid String Trio, and Eighth Blackbird. He holds a PhD from Princeton University."
- New Focus Recordings - Soundcloud
The California composer Michael Pisaro has not lacked for recordings lately, with three superb CDs to his name in 2013 on Gravity Wave, a label he helps to run. But I keep returning to this as-yet unreleased recording of a November 2013 concert in Columbia, S.C., in which Mr. Pisaros close collaborator Greg Stuart leads a 30-member ensemble in a patient, unpredictable, exceedingly beautiful mingling of simple structures, improvised textures and field recordings.
Pisaro is a prominent composer in the electroacoustic/field-recording/improvisation scene these days. Much of his music is released on his label Gravity Wave (and that site has lots of info about pieces). He also has three excellent collaborations on Erstwhile.
Thanks Kargatron.<div><a href="http://www.emusic.com/album/-/-/14735044/"><img src="http://cf-images.emusic.com/music/images/album/147/350/14735044/600x600.jpg" alt="Electronic Works 1976-1977 album cover"> </a><br></div><div>- "When people associate composer David First with his musical resume, anyone goes straight to his late 70?s avant punk band, The Notekillers and their influential 1980 single The Zipper. Prior to his time in the basements of Philadelphia, he had already played in Cecil Taylors ensemble and after the Notekillers broke up he moved to New York City in the early 80?s, taking root in the downtown NYC avant garde scene. It was there that First honed his craft for experimental composition and ambient drone which still continues to the present day.
Though this narrative made sense, there was a piece missing in the puzzle of Firsts musical background. In 1976, two years after playing with Taylor and the year before starting the Notekillers, he enrolled in a class in electronic music at Princeton in the department headed at the time by legendary electronic composer Milton Babbitt.
During his time at Princeton, First was introduced to the classical electronic music studio there, a lonely outpost of the famed Columbia-Princeton Electronic Music Center which housed one of the very first Buchla 100 series systems acquired by Vladimir Ussachevsky & Otto Luening.
Unfortunately, due to the introduction of digital technology within the music world, this system was left to languish in the studio unattended and nearly forgotten. First fell in love with this equipment and seized the opportunity to compose using the Buchla 100 synthesizer, at first experimenting only with electronic synthesis but later adding in his signature guitar stylings to make these compositions unique to the academic output typical of university music.
Thankfully, these compositions were recorded by First at Princeton on various reel to reel tapes and stored away for over 35 years. It wasnt until the summer of 2012, when David First and Ryan Martin (of Dais Records) decided to revisit and transfer these reels to compile an album presented here as a selection of genuine, uninhibited exploration into modular electronic synthesis."
- Dais Records
The Flexible Orchestra: Jen Baker, Monique Buzzarte, Tim Sessions, Keith Green, William Lang, Daniel Linden, Christopher McIntyre, Johannes Pfannkuch, Sebastian Vera, Deborah Weisz, trombones; Carlos Cordeiro, J.D. Parran, clarinets; Stephanie Griffin, viola; Ken Filiano, contrabass; Marijo Newman, piano; Laura Liben, percussion; Chris Nappi, percussion/marimba; Tara Simoncic, conductor Daniel Goode, clarinet; Douglas Martin, piano Michael Finckel, Pitnarry Shin, Alexandra MacKenzie, cellos; Joseph Kubera, Sarah Cahill, pianos
- "Daniel Goode (b. 1936) is a fan of (in his own words) "minimalist thinking and process thinking," the "long form," and "the trance effect that repetition brings about." Comprising solo, chamber, and orchestral works, these four pieces span his career as a composer. The earliest, the Sonata for Clarinet and Piano (1959-60), reflects his early interests and influences. Using the harmonically enhanced vocabulary of neoclassicism, the Sonata is a fast-slow-fast, three-movement tour-de-force similar in many ways to "the neoclassic sweetness and pizzazz" of Poulenc's three-movement clarinet sonata composed two years later.
Mr. Goode later learned circular breathing and developed his own approach to minimalism and "process music." Goode's Circular Thoughts (1974) for solo clarinet is among the earliest minimalist scores to be published by a major publisher (Theodore Presser Co.). This twenty-minute guided improvisation is also a process piece with specific scales and suggestions about tempo, articulations, timbre, and dynamics. Representing both the ideas of gradual process and resultant patterns commonly associated with the music of Steve Reich, Circular Thoughts highlights the trance-like quality of relentlessly repeating melodic patterns and cyclic ostinatos.
Ländler Land (1999–2000) is subtitled "a waltz for concert performance and dancing for three cellos and two pianos." Goode started Ländler Land while living briefly in Vienna, and it was influenced by a 1993 film called Latcho Drom about the music of the Roma people. Annbling (2006, rev. 2007), was composed for the Flexible Orchestra, a new concept in orchestral sound designed by Mr. Goode in 2004. Annbling is a trombone-dominated contemplation of Mahler's Seventh Symphony, Bach's Brandenburg Concertos, a Sundanese pop song, and the tragedy of post-Hurricane Katrina New Orleans. The piece opens with a re-orchestrated quotation from the beginning of Mahler's Seventh Symphony, and ends with a long, sensuous rendition of a West Javanese popular song, "Tonggeret," which Mr. Goode found on a commercial cassette of dance music while in Java in 1996." New World Records
- "Daniel Goode is an American composer and clarinetist. He studied philosophy, and then music with Henry Cowell, Otto Luening, Pauline Oliveros, and Kenneth Gaburo. Goode’s works show influence from several sources, including bird song, Cape Breton fiddling, drone, Indonesian gamelan music, and minimal music (specifically music as a gradual process). Often two or more of these elements are combined in a single composition.
Goode served as Director of the Electronic Music Studio of Rutgers University from 1971 to 1998 and is co-director of the DownTown Ensemble which he co-founded in New York in 1983. As a clarinetist he is proficient in the technique of circular breathing, which he uses frequently in performances with the group. Since 1976, Goode has been a member of Gamelan Son of Lion, a Javanese-style iron gamelan ensemble dedicated to new music, for which he has composed many works.
He has developed a special keyless clarinet made from a length of plastic pipe that allows him to play in the Indonesian slendro tuning system, which he plays with the group on occasion.
His most recent project is the Flexible Orchestra, a reform of the Western orchestra inspired to some degree by his experience with the gamelan as a musical, social, and cultural phenomenon. His works are published by Frog Peak Music and Theodore Presser." More Daniel Goode @ Emusersbody
Hakon Stene - Etude Begone Badum - "The album Etude Begone Badum presents works by composers Alvin Lucier (US), Marko Ciciliani (GER/CRO) and Michael Pisaro (US), linked together by Norwegian Lars Petter Hagens poetic, electroacoustic intermezzi. The works employ personal, experimental and conceptual approaches to sound production, suggesting the development of a "post-percussive" practice the topic of Håkon Stenes ongoing Artistic Research Project Ceci n'est pas un tambour developing the role of the multidisciplinary performer. This development eschews traditional playing techniques, substituting an open-ended concept wherein any sound producing object may be played in any manner imaginable.
- Ahornfelder - Soundcloud
Hakon Stene - Bone Alphabet
- "One of the most controversial composers on the New Music scene in the last thirty years, Brian Ferneyhough remains faithful to the idea of composition and interpretation as utopian, intellectually Olympian disciplines. His percussion classic Bone Alphabet comprises dense and polyphonic textures on seven non-resonant instruments. Electronic wizard Sir Dupermans remix offers an illuminating stylistic transposition, questioning the status of canonized artworks as untouchable masterpieces."
- Ahornfelder
- "Håkon Stene is a Norwegian percussionist specializing in contemporary music performance. In addition to performing in a variety of contexts throughout Europe, he is currently involved in artistic research and teaching at the Norwegian Academy of Music. . . ."
"'I believe the use of noise to make music will continue and increase until we reach a music produced through the aid of electrical instruments which will make available for musical purposes any and all sounds that can be heard."
John Cage 1937
- "Although John Cage occasionally worked in large, sophisticated studios - for example, when he composed Fontana Mix in 1958 - his approach to electronic and tape music was often uncomplicated, makeshift, and pragmatic, employing simple tabletop devices: tape machines, phonograph cartridges, contact microphones, record players, portable radios, etc.
He developed a soundworld that was utterly new, radical and demanding. It heralded the age of the loudspeaker, mass communication and Marshall McLuhan's 'global village.' The hiss, crackle and hum of electronic circuits,
and the disembodied sounds, snatched by radio from the ether, spoke of the 20th century."
- "Langham Research Centre works within the tradition firmly established by Cage, using resources that would have been available to him. For the realisation of Cartridge Music, moving iron phonograph pickups were sourced and restored. These have a knurled screw designed to hold a steel phonograph needle and, in the piece, other objects are inserted and amplified: pieces of wire, toothpicks, paperclips, etc. The realisation of Fontana Mix includes the individual mono tracks from Cage's original tapes created in 1958. These are played using open-reel tape machines. These practices ensure we work within the limitations that Cage experienced and enable us to get close to the soundworld he inhabited." Sub Rosa
Langham Research Centre is a group devoted to authentic performances of classic electronic music, and the creation of new music from their instrumentarium of vintage analogue devices.
Christina Vantzou - No.2 - "Developed over a four year period, and entirely funded by a part time job working as a SAT university entrance exam mathematics tutor, No2 was composed using synthesizers and a variety of unidentified samples that were manipulated beyond recognition.
Christina Vantzou then collaborated with Minna Choi of the San Francisco based Magik*Magik Orchestra. Vantzou and Choi worked on the notation and arrangements and recorded the compositions with a 15-piece ensemble at Tiny Telephone studios in San Francisco. The chamber layer on No2 follows a similar pattern as her first record with the addition of bassoon, oboe, and an enhanced string section.
Vantzou spent four months premixing the album before Adam Bryanbaum Wiltzie (Stars of the Lid / A Winged Victory for the Sullen) engineered the final mixes, as well as added some of his signature sound texture, at his studio in Brussels, Belgium.
Perhaps a better title for the album would be “Symphony No2†as it was composed as a cohesive whole, much like her first album No.1. Dense layers of strings are augmented by angelic voices, piano, woodwinds, & various synthesizers. Instrumental music, especially that which is scored with strings & horns, is invariably described as “filmicâ€. This is even more likely when the composer is a filmmaker such as Christina Vantzou.
Welcome to the future, which luckily for us is filled by a woman's voice with a beautiful narrative. A recording that is a meeting of personalities is like the contact of chemical substances: if there is any reaction, all are transformed." - Kranky - Soundcloud - Soundcloud 2 (Free tracks)
In the last decade Christina Vantzou has gone from an art student playing around with motion graphics and animations to designing projections for touring musicians, co-founding The Dead Texan with her partner Adam Wiltzie and eventually creating her own solo audiovisual project. The Dead Texan toured extensively in 2005-2006 and in 2007 Christina was commissioned to make animations and play onstage with Sparklehorse. In the meantime commissions for videos also developed into collaborations with Christopher Willits, Fovea Hex, Tokion magazine, Interpol, and Mtv Netherlands.
Christina started playing around more seriously with on her own music in 2007 and in April 2009, she debuted her solo compositions at the infamous Monkeytown in Brooklyn, New York. Currently based in Brussels, Belgium, Christina’s career as an artist is steered by projects that link visual art, music and design. With a background in Fine Art, Christina’s visual style reflects her interest in illustration, graphic design, film & printmaking while her ambient, spacious, and sometimes-angelic compositions create a perfect union with her otherworldly, feminine, and glacially-paced animations." - Lastfm Soundcloud - Bandcamp
- “The saxophone’s place in the music world is not at all what Adolphe Sax had in mind when he invented the instrument over 150 years ago. Ascendant in the world of jazz, relatively marginal in Sax’s intended field of classical music, and surprisingly adaptable to various forms of non-Western music, the saxophone family is a marvelous accident of musical history,” WNYC’s John Schaefer writes in the liner notes for the PRISM Quartet’s new innova Recordings release, The Singing Gobi Desert.
Partnering here with the ensemble Music from China, PRISM presents works by four Chinese-born American composers: Bright Sheng, Lei Liang, Fang Man, and Huang Ruo. The Singing Gobi Desert reveals that saxophones and Chinese instruments have a natural, if unexpected, affinity. From Bright Sheng’s title track to Fang Man’s “Dream of a Hundred Flowers” this music is no simple fusion or mashup, but rather a deep integration of traditions, as reliant on the PRISM Quartet’s extended techniques — flutter-tonguing, multiphonics, breath blasts, and key clicks — as on the composers’ abilities to imagine new sound worlds.
For nearly 30 years, PRISM has stood at the vanguard of new music ensembles, commissioning works across a broad spectrum of styles, and demonstrating the saxophone’s versatility. The Singing Gobi Desert embodies PRISM’s commitment to honoring the past and leading the way to the future through relentlessly creative collaboration." Innova Recordings
- ". . . . Champions of new music, PRISM has commissioned over 150 works, many by internationally celebrated composers, including Pulitzer Prize-winners William Bolcom, Jennifer Higdon, Zhou Long, and Bernard Rands; Guggenheim Fellows William Albright, Martin Bresnick, Chen Yi, Lee Hyla, and Steven Mackey; MacArthur “Genius” Award recipient Bright Sheng; and jazz masters Greg Osby and Tim Ries. In 1997, PRISM initiated its own concert series in Philadelphia and New York City, presenting the newest compositions created for their ensemble by composers from around the world. The series has featured an eclectic range of guest artists, including Ethel, the Talujon Percussion Quartet, Music From China, Miro Dance Theatre, Cantori New York, and top jazz artists, including guitarist Ben Monder, saxophonist Rick Margitza, and drummers Gerald Cleaver, Mark Ferber, and John Riley. PRISM has also joined forces with the New York Consort of Viols, Opera Colorado, and the Chilean rock band Inti-Illimani in touring engagements. . . ."
- "In addition to Third Coast Percussion, the album features instrumental contributions from Eileen Mack (Newspeak, Victoire), Mellissa Hughes (Newspeak, John Zorn), Andrew McKenna Lee (The Knells) and Toby Driver (Kayo Dot, Secret Chiefs 3). David T. Little himself provides snare drum, claps and Ableton Live programming on the record. Andrew McKenna Lee, who has previously worked with Daniel Wohl, William Brittelle and The Knells, mixed Haunt of Last Nightfall."
- "The work of American composer David T. Little does not shy away from difficult topics. Whether its in his operas (a recent commission came from the Metropolitan Operas MET/LCT new works program) or with his Orwell-inspired ensemble Newspeak, Little uses the juxtaposition of blunt force and subtle textures to explore themes of power, truth, corruption, and desperation. Haunt of Last Nightfall is no different.
Of the piece, Little says, I think a lot about ghosts of things that remain behind as the fleeting evidence of what once was. Since reading about El Mozote, I have been unable to get it out of my mind: how this village, innocent by virtually every account, was wiped out. Caught in the crossfire of a stupid ideological battle, its people now ghosts. What we know shapes us, and whether I like it or not, I now know this. New Amsterdam Records - music
- "Hailed by The New Yorker as vibrant and superb, Third Coast Percussion explores and expands the extraordinary sonic possibilities of the percussion repertoire, delivering exciting performances for audiences of all kinds. Since its formation in 2005, Third Coast Percussion has gained national attention with concerts and recordings that meld the energy of rock music with the precision and nuance of classical chamber works.
These hard-grooving musicians (New York Times) have become known for ground-breaking collaborations across a wide range of disciplines, including concerts and residency projects with engineers at the University of Notre Dame, architects at the Frank Lloyd Wright School of Architecture, astronomers at the Adler Planetarium, and more. The ensemble enhances the performances it offers with cutting edge new media, including free iPhone and iPad apps that allow audience members to create their own musical performances and take a deeper look at the music performed by Third Coast Percussion.
Third Coast Percussion is the Ensemble-in-Residence at the University of Notre Dames DeBartolo Performing Arts Center. They have the honor of being the first ensemble at the University of Notre Dame to create a permanent and progressive ensemble residency program at the center. The ensemble performs multiple recitals annually as part of the DeBartolo Performing Arts Centers Presenting Series season. Third Coast Percussion assumed the position of Ensemble-in-Residence at Notre Dame in 2013.
The ensemble champions the awe-inspiring music of John Cage, Steve Reich, George Crumb, Arvo Pärt, Gérard Grisey, Philippe Manoury, Wolfgang Rihm, Louis Andriessen, Toru Takemitsu, and Tan Dun, among others. Third Coast has also commissioned and performed world premieres by many of todays leading composers, including Augusta Read Thomas, Timothy Andres, Glenn Kotche, David T. Little, Marcos Balter, Ted Hearne, and ensemble members Owen Clayton Condon and David Skidmore. . . . ." More David T. Little @ Emusers
Performers:
Mason Bates, Tania Stavreva, Claremont Trio, Grand Valley State University (GVSU) New Music Ensemble, Chanticleer, Musicians from the Chicago Symphony Orchestra
- "Crossing boundaries is nothing new for composer and electronica artist Mason Bates. As comfortable with staff paper as he is DJing (under the name Masonic), Bates has already garnered acclaim for works commissioned by the San Francisco Symphony, the National Symphony Orchestra, the Chicago Symphony (where he serves as composer-in-residence) and others. Here on Stereo Is King -- his first release since his 2009 debut, Digital Loom -- he takes his listeners on a wild ride through chamber music, choral music, and electronica, featuring performances by Tania Stavreva, Claremont Trio, Grand Valley State University (GVSU) New Music Ensemble, Chanticleer and musicians from the Chicago Symphony Orchestra.
From the title tracks combination of electronics and an array of percussion to the angular syncopation of White Lies for Lomax -- an homage to the early, anonymous blues musicians recorded by ethnomusicologist Alan Lomax -- Stereo Is King explores the possibilities of a broad range of sonorities, refusing to exclude any genre by fiat and instead embracing whole the wide world of music. Observer in the Magellanic Cloud, performed by Chanticleer, drifts high above in a place where distant future meets ancient past. Difficult Bamboo begins minimally and grows wildly out of control. Bill Ryan and the GVSU New Music Ensemble deftly navigate Terrycloth Troposhere, an ode to Terry Riley that repurposes motifs from his seminal In C, while String Band is grounded in bluegrass and old-time string band music.
Throughout, Bates voice comes clear from within the diversity of approaches, ensembles and styles. It is his balance as a writer and envisioner of modern music that envelops the past while moving confidently into the future that ties Stereo Is King together into a comprehensive statement by a talented young composer. Innova Recordings
Boston Modern Orchestra Project, Gil Rose, conductor
Sequitur: Erin Lesser, flute; Jacqueline LeClair, oboe; Jo-Ann Sternberg, clarinet; Philip Everall, bass clarinet; Peggy Kampmeier, piano; Matthew Gold, percussion; Andrea Schulz, violin; Miranda Cuckson, violin; Daniel Panner, viola; Gregory Hesselink, cello; Jeremy McCoy, bass; Paul Hostetter, conductor / Krista River, mezzo-soprano; Franziska Huhn, Amanda Romano, harps; Donald Berman, John McDonald, pianos; Scott Wheeler, conductor.
- "Arthur Levering (b. 1953) is a musical mosaicist, creating patterns within patterns whose meanings change with the perspective of the listener. Moments of piquant color and gesture engage us on one level, but over time, and in combination with other such ideas they spin out the broad narrative, the winsome or lacerating or warm or athletic trajectory of phrase and episode. The works on this new collection - for orchestra, string orchestra, large mixed ensemble, small ensemble with voice, and for two pianos - cover a wide expressive and technical range, but the composer's elegant and rigorous use of patterns and their transformations is a consistent source of rich and vibrant energy. Various influences can be felt: rock music, with its ever-present pulse and energy, but also Baroque music, minimalism, and Indonesian gamelan. Particular composers, too, might be cited - Franco Donatoni, Luciano Berio, György Ligeti. Still, Levering's work has its own distinctive sense of wit, its own pacing, and particular tendencies of instrumental color - its own voice." New World Records More Levering @ Emusers
Stefan Wesolowski - Liebestod
Stefan Wesolowski - violin, viola, piano, electronics (all tracks)
Jacek Balka - trombone (1, 2, 3, 5, 6)
Krzysztof Pawlowski - cello (1, 2, 4, 6)
Krzysztof Jakub Szwarc - viola (1, 2, 4, 6)
Lukasz Gruba - tuba (2, 4)
Tomasz Wesolowski - baroque bassoon (3)
Michal Krezlewski - piano (3)
Sandra Geisler - voice (4)
Dex - dog barking (1)
All tracks composed & arranged by Stefan Wesolowski
Background soundscapes by Tom Bednarczyk (3) and Michal Jacaszek
- "The album Liebestod by Polish composer Stefan Wesolowski consists of repetitive compositions written for piano, brass instruments, strings and electronics. The title itself is derived from Wagner's Tristan and Isolde which says a lot about Wesolowski's primary inspirations. Liebestod shows a tremendous amount of respect for classical music but Wesolowski is far from making literal references to it. Wesolowski shows his own unique musical language; rough and radical at some points, yet full of intense nostalgia and beauty. This album includes a contribution from Michael Jacaszek. Realised with the financial support of The Polish Ministry of Culture and National Heritage, Mayor of Gdansk, Marshal of Pomorskie Voivodeship and City Culture Institute. "
- "The album Liebestod from Polish composer Stefan Wesolowski consists of repetitive compositions written for piano, brass instruments, strings and electronics. Featuring a cameo by Michael Jacaszek.
The title itself is derived from Wagner's "Tristan and Isolde" which says a lot about Wesolowski's primary inspirations. Liebestod shows a tremendous amount of respect for classical music but Wesolowski is far from making literal references to it. Wesolowski shows his own unique musical language; rough and radical at some points, yet full of intense nostalgia and beauty.
Recommended if you like: Arvo Part, Steve Reich, William Basinski, Jacaszek
Recorded in Old Town Hall, Academy of Music in Gdansk & on the baltic coast and at home in Sopot, 2011/2012.
Realised with the financial support of The Polish Ministry of Culture and National Heritage, Mayor of Gdansk, Marshal of Pomorskie Voivodeship and City Culture Institute."
- Important Records
Comments
"Andy Vores was born in Cardiff, Wales in 1956 and has lived in the United States since 1987. He studied composition at Lancaster University, England with Edward Cowie. After graduating he worked in London as a music copyist and as Lecturer in Composition at The City University. Many of his works received their premieres at this time from performers including Sarah Walker, Irvine Arditti, the London Sinfonietta, The Nash Ensemble, and the BBC Singers, including Humming Harvest Gone Snow Motor which later won first prize in the Kucyna International Composition Competition at Boston University."
BMOP
"Arthur Berger (1912-2003) was an influential composer, critic and teacher for more than half a century. His early music was heavily influenced by Stravinsky and neoclassicism, while his later works were both serial and diatonic in nature. Although Berger made notable contributions to the orchestral repertory, he devoted the major share of his compositional activities to chamber and solo piano music. . ."
BMOP
Burtners interest in the whole world of sound originated from his childhood experience growing up in Alaska where the snow, wind and sea create a ceaseless soundscape. This texture finds voice in the landmark ecoacoustic composition Snowprints (2001). In this work, an electronic part created using the sounds of recorded snow sets an environmental noise element in counterpoint with the acoustic instruments. The recorded sounds create a syntax of environmental energy the result of wind, temperature, and time at play on the snow.
Based on Henry Cowell and Leon Theremins Rhythmicon instrument from the 1920s, the Polyrhythmicon is a computer instrument designed by Burtner that lies at the heart of Polyrhythmicana (2002). In the piece (dedicated to Cowell) the acoustic musicians perform to layered click tracks that generate polytemporal sonic geometries. The metaphorical noise here arises from the tiny slippages between the constantly changing tempi, and is accentuated by the instruments, which are wrapped in tinfoil to generate sympathetic buzz and resonance.
(dis)Sensus (2008)takes inspiration from the political philosophy of Jacques Ranciere, creating a multi-movement work in which explosive energy arises from formal contrast. (dis)Sensus explores a variety of conflicting perspectives as tonalities, challenging the sensible by alternately embracing aesthetics of dissent and consensus. In this work the percussionist plays the role of a provocateur, mimicking the soloists alternately on a saxophone mouthpiece, a toy piano, and a bowed saw blade, and inserting bursts of snare drum noise at times to activate change. The percussionist also introduces the political philosophy into the music by writing with pencil on paper a Ranciere quote that is amplified live and fed into the interactive computer where it becomes amplified into a glitch rhythm."
Innova Recordings - Soundcloud
- "Matthew Burtner is an Alaskan-born composer, sound artist and technologist specializing in concert chamber music and interactive new media. His work explores ecoacoustics, embodiment, and extended polymetric and noise-based systems. First Prize Winner of the Musica Nova International Electroacoustic Music Competition (Czech Republic), a 2011 IDEA Award Winner, and a recipient of the Howard Brown Foundation Fellowship, Burtners music has also received honors and awards from Bourges (France), Gaudeamus (Netherlands), Darmstadt (Germany) and Luigi Russolo (Italy) international competitions. He is Associate Professor of Composition and Computer Technologies in the Department of Music at the University of Virginia where he Directs the Interactive Media Research Group (IMRG) and Associate Directs the VCCM Computer Music Center. . . ."
- "NOISE, an ensemble of accomplished soloists committed to contemporary chamber music, presents energetic, engaging and intellectually stimulating concerts of the best chamber music written by todays young and innovative composers from around the world. The repertoire of NOISE is focused on three artistic trajectories, their histories, and their intersections:
Complexism, high notation precision, threshold performative challenges, experimental notation and performative techniques. NOISE repertoire includes works by representative composers Brian Ferneyhough, Franklin Cox, Christopher Burns, Juan Campoverde Q., Erik Ulman, Anton Webern, Elliot Carter, Stuart Saunders Smith, and Sidney Boquiren, among many others.
High-intensity grooves demanding of focused concentration, minimalism, postminimalism. NOISE repertoire includes works by representative composers Christopher Adler, Louis Andriessen, Philip Glass, Steve Reich, Frederic Rzewski, Tom Johnson, Bill Ryan, and Evan Ziporyn.
Evocative aural soundscapes. NOISE repertoire includes works by representative composers include John Luther Adams, Matthew Burtner, Sidney Corbett, Morton Feldman, Orland Jacinto Garcia, Kaija Saariaho, and Toru Takemitsu. . . ."
Pierre Sacrées 13:31
For prepared piano, metallic plates and objects.
Composed in 1989-1991.
Realized in Studios Hyperion, Bucharest 1989-1990.
Originally released on Edition Modern EDMN 1003 CD (1991)
Hazard and Tectonics 15:58
Computer assisted music.
Commission of Glasgow Tectonics Festival 2013.
Realized in Studios Hyperion, Bucharest 2009-2013.
Originally releassed on Edition Modern EDMN 1029 CD (2013).
Dedicated to Ilan Volkov.
Born in Romania in 1944 Iancu Dumitrescu is one of the a leading personalities in contemporary music, whose significance embraces composition, interpretation and philosophy of music. His music and ideas are increasingly influential, centered on the idea of acousmatics and on the phenomenological approach he learned from Sergiu Celibidache, which Dumitrescu applies to the composition itself. Acousmatics represents for Dumitrescu not only ‘the art of disguising a sonic source’ in a concrete approach, but the very metaphor of the sound, infinite, cryptic alchemy applied to the sound material.
Dumitrescu’s activity as a musicologist, composer and performer (conductor) intersects from the very beginning.
In 1978. he receives a Scholarship from Sergiu Celibidache in Germany, therefore Dumitrescu embarks on systematic studies of general and musical phenomenology, and also conducting at the University of Trier and Munich. He adopts the Husserlian phenomenological perspective that has led to important theoretical crystallization and to fertile creative conclusions, placing in question the principles of academic composition.
According to Iancu Dumitrescu, this is the first time phenomenology is utilized as a true method of composition, which throws into query essential concepts, nevertheless hidden at that time: inspiration, vision, creativity, imagination.
Iancu Dumitrescu is considered one of the leaders of the spectral music trend worldwide. In 1976 he founded the Hyperion Ensemble, proposing a new aesthetic in today’s music, hyper-spectral, based on the radiant power of sound, within its microcosmic complexity — which is questioned, analyzed, recomposed from a spectral perspective. Dumitrescu is also founder and artistic director of the International Music Festivals of Computer Assisted Music, Acousmania, Musica Nova, Musica Viva and the International Spectral Music Festival, Spectrum XXI – held annually in three European capitals. His music is performed all over the world, with different ensembles, soloists and orchestras. As a Blodget artist in Residence at the Harvard University he shared his methods and techniques of composition to the students graduates in composition. His output includes more than 300 works, chamber music, electroacoustic, orchestral music, computer music, etc. . . . ."
Editions Mego - Soundcloud - Last fm.
- "The organ is ideally suited to Cages aesthetic its multitude of stops make it the ultimate prepared instrument. The fact that sound emanates from a number of pipes placed at discrete locations in space nicely accords with Cages idea of the separation of sounds in space. And it represents vast possibilities that could be released as sound through the use of chance operations. For this reason Cages organ music occupies a small but quite important place within his output. . . ."
Mode Records
- "Cycles, my recording of music by Nico Muhly, is to be released on the Bedroom Community label. There are 13 pieces on it - the majority of which were commissioned by me from Nico over the past 7 or so years. The centrepiece of the recording is the Seven O Antiphon Preludes. The 'O' antiphons are Magnificat antiphons for vespers for the last seven days of Advent, the days immediately leading up to Christmas. Each Antiphon is a name of Christ and his attributes in Old Testament scripture. No one knows the exact date and origin of the Antiphons but they were in use in liturgies in Rome as early as the 8th century. Each of Nico Muhly's preludes is a reflective, intense musical reflection on each of the plainsong texts, which are sung in Latin by Simon Wall . . . ."
James McVinnie. - Bandcamp
- "James McVinnies Cycles comprises thirteen organ pieces by labelmate and composer Nico Muhly. Performing the pieces in addition to McVinnie are Nadia Sirota, Chris Thompson and Simon Wall.
McVinnie is neither a stranger to Muhlys music nor the labels output, having collaborated closely with its artists throughout the years. What makes McVinnie such an ideal interpreter of Muhlys music is that he and Muhly share not just an understanding of the capabilities of the pipe organ as a musical instrument, but also an equally deep understanding of, and even affection for, its limitations.
McVinnie speaks eloquently on behalf of his instruments potential. The organ is like a grand symphony orchestra controlled by one person manning a series of keyboards and pedals, stops and buttons. On the one hand, an organ can imitate orchestral instrumentsthe ardent string section of an orchestra, a lyrical clarinet, a French horn, timpaniand on the other, it has its own indigenous magisterial voice. Organs are built to speak into specific acoustic spaces. When you play, its as if youre playing the whole building youre in, which often can be electrifying. And the organ as an instrument is tied to centuries of liturgical practice, capable of supporting or imitating a church choir with a solemnity few others could hope to summon. McVinnie is quick to point out, however, that the organ is also the ultimate and original synthesizerand it is nothing if not a mechanical, wind-powered synthesizer, with all of the uncanny falseness that that word implies.
Much of Muhlys work aspires to a kind of pop-art superflatness. The organs mechanical sound, its resistance to subtle dynamics, work perfectly with this tendency in Muhlys musicparticularly filtered through McVinnies subtle registrations, the combinations of stops pulled out to create each timbre. For instance, in Muhlys prelude for their mutual friend, the Rev. James Mustard, McVinnie gives the slow-moving harmonies a breathy warmth, but its through a sparkling, crystalline pane of arpeggios.
The symphonic, the acoustic, the sacred, the synthetic: theres a little of each in every one of these pieces, and sometimes more than a little. Muhlys Twitchy Organs pairs the organ with viola and percussion, but on this recording, the space is as much of an instrument as the pipes are. It sounds warm and grand and alive; it sounds like an ambient work for reverb-soaked synths; it sounds like a prayer. It is, in fact, all of the above."
Bedroom Community
- "Nico Muhly has composed a wide scope of work for ensembles, soloists and organizations including
the American Symphony Orchestra, Boston Pops, Carnegie Hall, Chicago Symphony, countertenor
Iestyn Davies, violinist Hilary Hahn, choreographer Benjamin Millepied, New York City Ballet, New
York Philharmonic, Paris Opéra Ballet, soprano Jessica Rivera, and designer/illustrator Maira
Kalman.
Among Muhlys most frequent collaborators are his colleagues at Bedroom Community, an artist-run
label headed by Icelandic musician Valgeir Sigurðsson. Bedroom Community was inaugurated in 2007
with the release of Muhlys first album, Speaks Volumes. In spring 2012, Bedroom Community released
Muhlys three-part Drones & Music, in collaboration with pianist Bruce Brubaker, violinist Pekka
Kuusisto, and violist Nadia Sirota
Born in Vermont in 1981 and raised in Providence, Rhode Island, Muhly graduated from Columbia
University with a degree in English Literature. In 2004, he received a Masters in Music from the Juilliard
School, where he studied under Christopher Rouse and John Corigliano."
Rejecting European modernism in the head modernists own backyard. And imagining the world without a nose. These are the points of departure for Neil Rolnicks new CD, Gardening At Gropius House. And though the topics sound serious, the music is joyful and uplifting, infused with grooves and sticky melodies, with exuberant and virtuosic writing all around. In a recent feature on Rolnick at NewMusicBox.com, Frank Oteri said over 30 years he has helped to create a much changed musical landscape in the United States. Gardening At Gropius House and Anosmia keep pushing those changes. The title piece, a concerto for violin, computer and ensemble, features the irrepressible Todd Reynolds with members of Alarm Will Sound, conducted by Alan Pierson. The second piece, Anosmia, is a monodrama for three singers (Andy Osmia and the 2 Scents), computer and ensemble, featuring baritone Daniel Cilli and the New Music Ensemble of the San Francisco Conservatory, conducted by Nicole Paiement. Give it a sniff."
Innova Recordings
Neil Rolnick:
- "A pioneer in the use of computers in performance since the late 1970s, Neil Rolnick often includes unexpected and unusual combinations of media in his work. Whether working with electronic sounds, improvisation, or multimedia, his music has been characterized by critics as sophisticated, hummable and engaging, and as having good senses of showmanship and humor. Rolnicks performances included concerts in Shanghai, Hong Kong, Vienna and New York. He completed 50 Fugue and Numb, both part of the extended media performance MONO in 2012. That same year he was awarded the Hoefer Prize from the San Francisco Conservatory of Music. Innova Recordings released The Economic Engine in 2009, which was cited as one of the years outstanding classical CDs in the New York Times. He has also received a New York Foundation for the Arts fellowship, and residencies at the MacDowell Colony and the Ucross Foundation. In January 2011 Innova Recordings released his 16th CD, Extended Family. Rolnick teaches at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in Troy, NY, where he founded the iEAR Studios."
Soundcloud and Soundcloud
More Neil Rolnick @ Emusers</div>
"Keeril Makan composes without assumed expectations of an instruments sound or a performers capabilities, but by exploring the possible, by discovering the beautiful in the unexpected and following where that beauty leads. Makans relationship to the world of sounds has its connection to the work of Edgard Varèse and John Cage and by a broad American experimental tradition, with touchstones in the work of some of the European modernists.
Afterglow is the outcome of hours spent listening to the harmonic resonance of specific notes and chords, and to the durations of the resonances. The simplicity of the materials beguiles the listener into hearing beyond the immediate gesture to become aware of its afterglow, the sympathetic vibrations of the unplayed strings within the piano.
In Mu for prepared violin, Makan experimented with the placement of paper clips in the strings about an inch and two inches in front of the bridge, in the area normally traversed by the bow, and in the score asks the violinist to explore further the different sounds made possible by adjusting the bow relative to the clips."
Keeril Makan
- - "Described by The New Yorker as an arrestingly gifted young American composer, and by The New York Times as consistently stimulating, The Boston Globe portrays Keeril Makan as a composer whose music deserves to be more widely heard. Recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship and the Luciano Berio Rome Prize from the American Academy in Rome, he has also received awards from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, the Fromm Foundation, Meet the Composer, the Aaron Copland House, the Utah Arts Festival, the Fulbright Program, and ASCAP. His work has been commissioned by the Bang on a Can All-Stars, American Composers Orchestra, Harvard Musical Association, and Carnegie Hall, among others. His CDs, In Sound (Tzadik) and Target (Starkland) include performances by the Kronos Quartet and Either/Or. Persona, his opera, written for Alarm Will Sound and produced by Beth Morrison, is an adaptation of Ingmar Bergmans classic film, with a libretto by Jay Scheib. Schott is publishing his compositions . . . ."
Mode Records - More Keeril Makan @ Emusers
International Contemporary Ensemble (ICE)
- "ICE is dedicated to reshaping the way music is created and experienced.
With a flexible roster of 33 leading instrumentalists performing in forces ranging from solos to large ensembles, the International Contemporary Ensemble (ICE) functions as performer, presenter, and educator, advancing the music of our time by developing innovative new works and pursuing groundbreaking strategies for audience engagement. In an era of radical change, ICE redefines concert music as it brings together new work and new listeners.
Since its founding in 2001, ICE has premiered over 500 compositions, the bulk of them by emerging composers, in venues ranging from New Yorks Lincoln Center and Chicagos Museum of Contemporary Art to galleries, bars, clubs, and schools around the world. The ensemble has released acclaimed albums on the Bridge, Naxos, Tzadik and New Focus labels, with forthcoming releases on Nonesuch, Kairos and Mode.
With leading support from The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, ICE launched ICElab in early 2011. This new program places teams of ICE musicians in close collaboration with six emerging composers each year to develop works that push the boundaries of musical exploration. ICElab projects will be featured in more than twenty performances each season and documented online through DigitICE, a new online venue.
ICEs commitment to build a diverse, engaged audience for the music of our time has inspired The Listening Room, a new educational initiative targeting public schools whose music programs have been cut in the recent recession. Using team-based composition and graphic notation, ICE musicians lead students in the creation of new musical works, nurturing collaborative creative skills and building an appreciation for musical experimentation."
Flutist Claire Chase playing Steve Reich, Marcos Balter, Alvin Lucier, Philip Glass, Mario Diaz de Léon and Edgard Varèse.
"Density, the new album by flutist, new music activist and MacArthur Fellow Claire Chase takes the seminal flute solo Density 21.5 by Edgard Varèse as an endpoint and works backwards through an exploration of the concept of “density” as a springboard for sonic explorations of texture, layering and performative virtuosity. Booklet texts are by Laura Mullen and photography is by David Michalek. Both the Balter and Diaz de León are written for Chase and are heard here in their world premiere recordings. From Steve Reich's Vermont Counterpoint, for eleven flutes, through to the Varèse, Density posits a lineage in the modern minimalist flute repertoire that is taut and focused, offering a muscular alternative to conventional narratives."
- "Chase, now 35, recorded Density 21.5 on a platinum Powell flute owned by Doriot Anthony Dwyer (a descendent of Susan B. Anthony), the first female flutist to become principal of a major US orchestra. Density is Chase’s third solo album and completes a trilogy of recordings, with Aliento (2009) and Terrestre (2012), dedicated to the documentation of 20th century flute repertory. In performance, Chase plays the disc as a 70-minute continuous solo in collaboration with the art director David Michalek and the sound engineer Levy Lorenzo, using sound, space and her unique perspective on the instrument to explore flute performance in an entirely new way. . . . ."
New Focus Recordings - Soundcloud
- "Chase is the founder and Artistic Director of the International Contemporary Ensemble (ICE), which she formed in 2001 with the goal of creating the United States’ first large-scale chamber ensemble dedicated to new and experimental music. ICE has given more than 500 world premiere performances across the world, and has rapidly established itself as one of the leading groups of its generation as well as one of the most innovative artist-driven new nonprofit business models in the field. ICE is a uniquely structured, modular ensemble comprised of thirty dynamic and versatile young performers who are dedicated to advancing the music of our time. Through innovative programming, inter-disciplinary collaborations, and the creation of genre-defying new presentation, production and educational models, ICE brings together new music and new audiences."
http://clairechase.net/
The complete version, as premiered in 1982, of one of the François Bayle's masterpieces.
- "François Bayle studied with Stockhausen and Messiaen.
He joined the ORTF Groupe de Musique Concrète in 1960.
He later led the group when it became the Groupe de Recherches Musicales in 1966. Most of his compositions are electronic, and his first important work, 'Espaces inhabitables' (1967) is suggestive of an imaginary world in which nature is distorted in a dream-like fashion.
He later utilized natural and synthetic sounds in his compositions, such as the recorded sounds made in a Lebanese cave. He has stated that his purpose as a composer is to enable the listener to feel the motion and vibration of energy in the universe."
François Bayle characterizes his art like this:
"...my purpose was always the same: to compose with only 'images-de-sons' (sound images); to show how, through pure listening in an acousmatic situation, these sound images move like butterflies through audible space and project a colored twinkling on the listener. Out of frame, this is a world proved by itself... Les couleurs de la nuit was created for "tapes and computer"
Sub Rosa - Soundcloud
- "For nearly fifty years the work of Alvin Lucier (b. 1931) has marked off a space unlike any other in American music. By now a hero to three generations of experimentalists, Lucier continues to make work at a brisk pace, finding new, surprising and radical approaches to the same artistic concerns. His subject is the human as listener, and his music can be understood as a detailed, exhaustive investigation into the complexities of the act of listening. The results are often uncanny, but the approach is through the familiar and the ordinary; and the production is invariably of rare composerly discipline and exactness of execution.
The three works presented on this album set forth three perspectives on the orchestra, monument of the European concert tradition. In each work we hear unmistakable echoes of the familiar iconography of the orchestra, associations with the past that are the bearers of complex meanings. Yet in a kind of tandem reality, sound itself pushes forward, bringing us back to the present, to our immediate presence as listeners, and to meanings independent of association. The world construed as what is known, as a set of received notions, is gently put in question; another world, the one we live in moment to moment, is briefly illuminated."
New World Records
- "ALVIN LUCIER was born in 1931 in Nashua, New Hampshire. He attended Yale and Brandeis and spent two years in Rome on a Fulbright Scholarship. From 1962 to 1970 he taught at Brandeis, where he conducted the Brandeis University Chamber Chorus which devoted much of its time to the performance of new music. Since 1970 he has taught at Wesleyan University.
In 1966, along with Robert Ashley, David Behrman and Gordon Mumma, Lucier founded the Sonic Arts Union, for whose concerts he developed numerous live electronic works, exploring echolocation, brain waves, room acoustics and the visual representation of sound. His recent works include a series of installations and works for solo instruments, chamber ensembles, and orchestra in which rhythmic patterns and related spatial phenomena are created by close tunings.
In 2001 Lucier’s Ovals for chamber orchestra was performed at Donaueschingen by the Hilversum Radio Orchestra and, in 2002, Just Before Dark was premiered in Vienna by the Soloists of the Tehran Symphony Orchestra. He recently completed Ever Present for flute, saxophone and piano and Almost New York, for flutist Carin Levine. He is currently working on a collaboration with sculptor Alain Kirili for baritone voice and French Horn, commissioned by Thomas Buckner."
Lovely Music
- "The product of an extremely close working relationship between performers and composer, L'Errance... is a remarkable collection of the complete music for string quartet by acclaimed contemporary Canadian composer Robert Lemay. Through many years of collaboration, this album offers a unique perspective on Lemay's music from the Silver Birch String Quartet and pianist Yoko Hirota. Through works inspired by Dutch film maker Wim Wenders, Saskatchewan visual artist Eli Bornstein, and Quebec film maker Bernard Émond, Lemay creates evocative harmonies and textures brought vividly to life by some of Canada's finest interpreters of contemporary music."
- Amazon
Robert Lemay
- "Robert Lemay has composed many works and received numerous international awards. Among recent honors include the second prize from the International Competition Prize Luxembourg 2007 and the second prize from the Kazimierz Serocki 10th International Composers’ Competition 2006. Other international prizes include the first prize from the 2004 Harelbeke Muziekstad Wind Ensemble Competition in Belgium. The first prize was given by the city of Harelbeke with 10,000 Euro for his piece, Ramallah for saxophone alto and wind ensemble. In addition, Lemay received three prizes from the CAPAC (presently SOCAN).
His music, which often employs virtuoso performance techniques, is characterized by an imaginative and unconventional use of the concert hall space. Lemay has been performed in Canada, the United States, Asia (Japan and Thailand), Europe (France, Denmark, Spain, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, Czech Republic, Hungary, Slovenia, Luxembourg, Poland and Scotland), South America (Argentina, Brazil and Venezuela), Mexico (XXXII Foro Internacional de Música Nueva Manuel Enríquez), Australia (2010 ISCM World New Music Days) and Belgium (2012 ISCM World New Music Days) . Many of his pieces have been broadcast on Société Radio-Canada, CBC, Bavarian State Radio, European Broadcasting Union (Luxembourg), Polish National Radio and ABC Classic FM (Australia) and also recorded commercially on 13 different CDs in Canada, Europe and USA.
Lemay holds a doctorate degree in composition from the Université de Montréal where he studied under Michel Longtin, and a master’s degree from Université Laval with François Morel. He also studied at the State University of New York at Buffalo, and has worked with David Felder and taken part in seminars with Brian Ferneyhough, Louis Andriessen, and Donald Erb. In France, he worked with François Rossé in Bordeaux and Georges Apergis at the ATEM in Paris.
Presently, Robert Lemay teaches at Laurentian University in Sudbury, Ontario. He is the President and the Co-artistic director of the 5-Penny New Music Concerts in Sudbury."
- Canadian Music Centre
Silver Birch String Quartet
- "Like many of his colleagues from the Groupe de recherches musicale, the French electroacoustic-music think tank founded in the 1950s, Luc Ferrari (1929-2005) proved admirably hard to categorize. His Symphonie Déchirée (Torn Symphony), an hourlong opus for 17 instruments and tape premiered in 2000 but only now getting its first recorded release, in a superb performance by the Ars Nova ensemble mixes the found-sound ethos of musique concrète, a wide-ranging palette of styles, and an underlying philosophical curiosity about the nature of sound and listening. Its a bricolage held together by Ferraris confident, unabashed sense of musical drama.
A sort of balance, Ferrari wrote, between revolt and voluptuousness, the symphony shifts between taped montages and instrumental virtuosity, violence and diversion, even seriousness and mischief: Theres a Play of Objects (a stop-and-go creep of glissandi and wah-wah trumpet), a Play of Timbres (a rhythmic grid of pop-cheer that slowly falls apart), a Play of Reflections (a pair of intricate musical mirrors, glinting then submerged, separated by a grand, prerecorded splash). But the games turn fierce, and the sounds hit harder and harder. Ferraris tools sampling, looping, cross-cutting were long ago assimilated into a more benign mass culture, but here they flash uncomfortably, beguilingly sharp."
Matthew Guerrieri @ Boston Globe
L'Empreinte Digitale - http://www.arsnova-ensemble.com/
- "Pogus is absolutely delighted to offer this new release featuring Australian new music ensemble Decibel performing four works by Alvin Lucier, three of which are previously unrecorded.
Ever Present (2002), the only work offered here that has been recorded before is for flute, saxophone, and piano with slow sweep pure wave oscillator and is considered by many to be Luciers most musical work. Carbon Copies (1989) is for saxophone, piano, flute and playback; the work investigates musicians imitating their environments. Hands (1994) is for organ with four players. The performers use their hands to subtly alter the harmonics produced from the pipes of an organ. Shelter (1967) is for vibration pickups, amplification system and enclosed space and finds Lucier offering the sounds of outside a performance space. All these works as always are amazing examples of Alvin Luciers fertile mind and exploring, experimental sensibility. One of the true originals."
- "Decibel are world leaders in the integration of acoustic instruments and electronics, pioneering electronic score formats, including the Decibel Scoreplayer App, incorporating mobile score formats and networked coordination performance environments. The ensemble has collaborated with composers such as Werner Dafeldecker, Agostino Di Scipio, Alvin Curran, David Toop, Marina Rosenfeld, Lionel Marchetti, Andreas Weixler and Johannes S. Sistermanns and worked with iconic Australian composers Jon Rose, Alan Lamb, Ross Bolleter, Warren Burt, Eric Griswold and Anthony Pateras. Decibel have contributed the Australian premieres of works by Fausto Romitelli, Tristan Murail, Alvin Lucier, Peter Ablinger, Mauricio Kagel and have toured monograph concerts dedicated to Alvin Lucier and John Cage."
Pogus Productions
- "North Carolina-bred, New York-based violinist, singer and composer Caroline Shaw thought she was "having a psychotic break" when, at 30, she was awarded the 2013 Pulitzer Prize in music for her Partita for 8 Solo Voices a startling original work that draws on Baroque dance forms, experimental vocal music and the drawings of artist Sol LeWitt. Shaw sees composition as a logical extension of her musicianship and, in fact, prefers to be known as a musician rather than a capital-C Composer. Her versatile music-making is most often on display with the vocal octet Roomful of Teeth and as violinist with the American Contemporary Music Ensemble. But her compositions themselves are dramatic, lush, poetic and innovative. Though emblematic of an increasing percentage of musicians comfortable with various styles and performance practices, her voice is powerfully forward-looking, exciting and entirely her own."
--Alex Ambrose, Q2 Music
- "Roomful of Teeth is a vocal octet dedicated to re-imagining singing in the 21st century. Through study with vocal masters from non-classical from non-classical traditions the world over, Roomful of Teeth continually expands their vocabulary of singing techniques and, through an on-going commissioning project, invites todays brightest composers to create a repertoire without borders. Winners of the 2010 American Prize, two-time TimeOut New York Critics Pick and featured ensemble in the 2011 Merkin Hall Ecstatic Music Festival, the group brings audiences to their feet with vibrant performances of all-new music.
Founded in 2009 by Brad Wells, Roomful of Teeth consists of eight classically trained vocalists. At their annual residency at the Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art (Mass MoCA), the ensemble has studied Tuvan throat singing, belting and pop techniques, yodeling, Inuit throat singing and, in their summer 2012 residency, the group will coach with master singers from Sardinia and Korea. Commissioned composers include Rinde Eckert, Judd Greenstein, Caleb Burhans, Merrill Garbus (of tUnE-yArDs), William Brittelle and Sarah Kirkland Snider. Their first recording will be released on New Amsterdam Records in 2012.
A Roomful of Teeth concert feels less like a classical new music performance and more like an world music rock concert high wire act. Or perhaps just something completely different. A student at a recent college performance raved: It was no doubt one of the best concerts Ive ever been too; I was blown away by the singers and felt like I learned something new with every piece."
New Amsterdam Records
More Roomful of Teeth @ Emusers
- "Comprised of three balanced examples of his Continuous Music on solo piano, Three Solo Pieces serves as perhaps the best introduction the Ukrainian-Canadian composer Lubomyr Melnyk yet available. Marginal Invitation is a subdued work with a deeply rooted melodic sensibility that is rich in overtones, while Corrosions on the Surface of Life exhibits a dissonant fury of patterned note play. The final, side-length meditation Cloud Passade No. 3 is a chordal work in free-time which functions equally well as furniture music and a meditative exploration of pure light.
Three Solo Pieces is the first set of new Lubomyr Melnyk recordings produced by Unseen Worlds and his first release for the label since the 2007 reissue of his debut album KMH: Piano Music in the Continuous Mode (1979). Following that reissue, efforts were shifted from record projects to introducing Melnyks still-thriving Continuous Music to audiences with a set of memorable and well-received concerts in Seattle and New York in 2009. Since his popular rediscovery through a variety of releases on Unseen Worlds, his own and other labels, as well as being hosted all over the world for concerts, Lubomyr Melnyk has successfully risen from obscurity and emerged as a welcome new entry in the history of contemporary classical music, as well as a vital performer for the 21st Century."
Unseen Worlds November 2013 - music
- On music:
Performers: Steven Copes, Erin Keefe, Andrei Tchekmazov, Jessica Bidner, Ben Ullery, Pitnarry Shin, Ruggero Allifranchini, Nina Fan, Christopher Campbell,Holly Hansen and Aaron Rice.
- "Chris Campbells third album for innova (following 2011s Sound the All Clear and his recent collaboration with Grant Cutler, (Schooldays Over) is Things You Already Know, and its less a recording than a place: a place where musicians come together from disparate traditions and find a music common to us all. It unfolds and expands, illuminating an ambient space with homemade instruments like propane tank drums, bowed psaltery and singing bowls as well as more traditional instruments like guitars, cellos and drums. Its an invitation to explore, to rediscover. Its a house full of luscious piano loops, soaring melodic outbursts from the strings, fuzzy guitars in the distance, sporadic kicking grooves, and skittish scrapings of junk hardware in the basement a little Brian Eno, Jon Hassell, Mike Oldfield, and Olivier Messiaen, and a whole lot of Campbell.
There are two complementary processes at the heart of the work, and both are intimately related to time: accumulation and punctuation the building up of repetitive fragments and the flux as you move to the next room. For Campbell, this means that Things You Already Know is not a clean end-product, sanded and smoothed to remove the evidence of its making. It bears the marks of its construction proudly, because the building is all.
To build this thing this work that answers the question of how the world knits itself into our bones Campbell brought together collaborators, friends. From one world, he drew members of the Saint Paul Chamber and Minnesota Orchestras, and from another, he brought members of groups like Zoo Animal and Aaron and the Sea. Working together at the Hideaway Studio, the musicians found common ground, and then went somewhere uncommon.
Completed with a cover image by photographer Alec Soth that captures and embodies the idea of shifting perspective, Things You Already Know was ready for the world. Now the only question is: Are you ready for its world?"
- Innova Recordings
- "Chris Campbell is a composer, musician and producer. From sit-down concerts to all-night festivals, his music has been performed and heard from New Zealand to Montserrat to the United Kingdom to the United States and been described as oscillating between the comforting and the exotic, with occasional creepy moments by Time Out Chicago. Campbell also runs innova Recordings, the label of the American Composers Forum. For him, making music is a way to both communicate and listen better."
http://soundcloud.com/composerchriscampbell
- and a truely gorgeous one . . .
- "Written for Amanda Levers Masters in Choreography final performance, The Visitor explores the experience of being a sole identity in a world of unknown.
An entity awakes in an otherworldly place. Through interaction with its surroundings, as well as curious introspection, it discovers the strange balance that exists between the singular and the universal.
The Visitor hums with an ominous intensity, and taps the listener on the shoulder with inexplicable pops, bellsound and unidentified sonic shadows. A seemingly steady rhythmic foundation is unsettled by a swarm of cold voices, and sunlit strings build into a molten golden stormfront, which slowly dissipates like ink into water.
The Visitor is left alone with this new space, one that it is now an unending part of."
- Wood & Wire
- "The Vainglories is the solo project of Gillian Lever, and is responsible for producing the soundtrack to her introspective moods. Melancholic melody intertwines with textured strangeness to create lullabies for the nightmare-prone. The Vainglories has played live in UK and Australian venues, and has written music for film and live theatre, including writing and performing the live score for Watsons Jhonsey award winning show Once Were Planets in the 2013 Melbourne International Comedy Festival. In 2013 The Vainglories also wrote the music for Amanda Levers Masters in Choreography VCA final performance, Dasein.
Based in Melbourne, The Vainglories constantly struggles with the grammatical difficulties arising from being a solo artist with a name more suited to a band."
- Free Music Archive
- "Composer Alan Tormeys Theories of Place is a new and provocative full-length digital release of industrial chamber music that integrates classical, electronic, and environmental sounds into a stunning and idiosyncratic musical world. Joining other experimental electronic releases on New Focus (RWeWhoRWe, Edgar Guzmans Difference, and Du Yuns Shark in You), this album is an assertion of noise as the mediating force in a dialog between avant-garde classical music and the mechanical & electro-magnetic infrastructures that undergird contemporary American life. Tormey, whose work has been described by the press as infinite and merciless, is currently the Associate Creative Director of the Eclectic Laboratory Chamber Orchestra in Pittsburgh, having previously taught at Bucknell University and Grinnell College. The music on Theories of Place reflects an updated take on the minimalism of Morton Feldman, Glenn Branca, and Brian Eno as heard through the scratched sonic lenses of people like William Basinski, Psychic TV, Phil Niblock, and James Tenney. While classical in its conception, the albums instrumentation reflects the composers broader artistic concerns. Guitars, synthesizers, and percussion dominate the album, often Grunge-like in their thickness, and frequently performed in unusual and innovative ways. Many of the synthesizers, for example, are played not by keyboardists, but by singers and dancers who are connected to devices (often from video games) that translate their physical gestures into musical sound control. Black Pudding (the albums opening track) recruits a performance battery of Nintendo Wii controllers, PC joysticks, a D.J. mixing console, and an electric guitar. These unconventional performance techniques are balanced with virtuosic performances of fully notated music, both by the composer and guest saxophonist on Downward Dogs, Damani Phillips. The albums artwork, created by Sarah Walker, is complex and immersive, sharing an immediate and natural affinity with the composers musical vision."
- "Alan Tormey is a composer and digital musician whose work encompasses elements of noise, microtonality, and the use of gestural interface technologies to facilitate the live performance of electronic music. Anthony Doerr, author of The Shell Collector and Memory Wall, describes his music as absolutely cool and unnerving. As a guitarist and laptop performer, Alan has shared the stage with some of the avant-gardes most significant improvising performers including Mark Dresser, Pauline Oliveros, and Frances-Marie Uitti. His music has been performed by some of the worlds foremost musicians, including the American Composers Orchestra, the Oslo Laptop Orchestra, Marilyn Nonken, So Percussion, The Black Orchid String Trio, and Eighth Blackbird. He holds a PhD from Princeton University."
- New Focus Recordings - Soundcloud
Michael Pisaro: asleep, forest, melody, path (for field recording and live performance, 2013)
My friend Steve Smith writes: See also SCHC Music Students Catch the Ear of New York Times.
Pisaro is a prominent composer in the electroacoustic/field-recording/improvisation scene these days. Much of his music is released on his label Gravity Wave (and that site has lots of info about pieces). He also has three excellent collaborations on Erstwhile.
Though this narrative made sense, there was a piece missing in the puzzle of Firsts musical background. In 1976, two years after playing with Taylor and the year before starting the Notekillers, he enrolled in a class in electronic music at Princeton in the department headed at the time by legendary electronic composer Milton Babbitt.
During his time at Princeton, First was introduced to the classical electronic music studio there, a lonely outpost of the famed Columbia-Princeton Electronic Music Center which housed one of the very first Buchla 100 series systems acquired by Vladimir Ussachevsky & Otto Luening.
Unfortunately, due to the introduction of digital technology within the music world, this system was left to languish in the studio unattended and nearly forgotten. First fell in love with this equipment and seized the opportunity to compose using the Buchla 100 synthesizer, at first experimenting only with electronic synthesis but later adding in his signature guitar stylings to make these compositions unique to the academic output typical of university music.
Thankfully, these compositions were recorded by First at Princeton on various reel to reel tapes and stored away for over 35 years. It wasnt until the summer of 2012, when David First and Ryan Martin (of Dais Records) decided to revisit and transfer these reels to compile an album presented here as a selection of genuine, uninhibited exploration into modular electronic synthesis."
- Dais Records
The Flexible Orchestra:
Jen Baker, Monique Buzzarte, Tim Sessions, Keith Green, William Lang, Daniel Linden, Christopher McIntyre, Johannes Pfannkuch, Sebastian Vera, Deborah Weisz, trombones; Carlos Cordeiro, J.D. Parran, clarinets; Stephanie Griffin, viola; Ken Filiano, contrabass; Marijo Newman, piano; Laura Liben, percussion; Chris Nappi, percussion/marimba; Tara Simoncic, conductor
Daniel Goode, clarinet; Douglas Martin, piano
Michael Finckel, Pitnarry Shin, Alexandra MacKenzie, cellos; Joseph Kubera, Sarah Cahill, pianos
- "Daniel Goode (b. 1936) is a fan of (in his own words) "minimalist thinking and process thinking," the "long form," and "the trance effect that repetition brings about." Comprising solo, chamber, and orchestral works, these four pieces span his career as a composer. The earliest, the Sonata for Clarinet and Piano (1959-60), reflects his early interests and influences. Using the harmonically enhanced vocabulary of neoclassicism, the Sonata is a fast-slow-fast, three-movement tour-de-force similar in many ways to "the neoclassic sweetness and pizzazz" of Poulenc's three-movement clarinet sonata composed two years later.
Mr. Goode later learned circular breathing and developed his own approach to minimalism and "process music." Goode's Circular Thoughts (1974) for solo clarinet is among the earliest minimalist scores to be published by a major publisher (Theodore Presser Co.). This twenty-minute guided improvisation is also a process piece with specific scales and suggestions about tempo, articulations, timbre, and dynamics. Representing both the ideas of gradual process and resultant patterns commonly associated with the music of Steve Reich, Circular Thoughts highlights the trance-like quality of relentlessly repeating melodic patterns and cyclic ostinatos.
Ländler Land (1999–2000) is subtitled "a waltz for concert performance and dancing for three cellos and two pianos." Goode started Ländler Land while living briefly in Vienna, and it was influenced by a 1993 film called Latcho Drom about the music of the Roma people. Annbling (2006, rev. 2007), was composed for the Flexible Orchestra, a new concept in orchestral sound designed by Mr. Goode in 2004. Annbling is a trombone-dominated contemplation of Mahler's Seventh Symphony, Bach's Brandenburg Concertos, a Sundanese pop song, and the tragedy of post-Hurricane Katrina New Orleans. The piece opens with a re-orchestrated quotation from the beginning of Mahler's Seventh Symphony, and ends with a long, sensuous rendition of a West Javanese popular song, "Tonggeret," which Mr. Goode found on a commercial cassette of dance music while in Java in 1996."
New World Records
- "Daniel Goode is an American composer and clarinetist. He studied philosophy, and then music with Henry Cowell, Otto Luening, Pauline Oliveros, and Kenneth Gaburo. Goode’s works show influence from several sources, including bird song, Cape Breton fiddling, drone, Indonesian gamelan music, and minimal music (specifically music as a gradual process). Often two or more of these elements are combined in a single composition.
Goode served as Director of the Electronic Music Studio of Rutgers University from 1971 to 1998 and is co-director of the DownTown Ensemble which he co-founded in New York in 1983. As a clarinetist he is proficient in the technique of circular breathing, which he uses frequently in performances with the group. Since 1976, Goode has been a member of Gamelan Son of Lion, a Javanese-style iron gamelan ensemble dedicated to new music, for which he has composed many works.
He has developed a special keyless clarinet made from a length of plastic pipe that allows him to play in the Indonesian slendro tuning system, which he plays with the group on occasion.
His most recent project is the Flexible Orchestra, a reform of the Western orchestra inspired to some degree by his experience with the gamelan as a musical, social, and cultural phenomenon. His works are published by Frog Peak Music and Theodore Presser."
More Daniel Goode @ Emusersbody
Hakon Stene - Etude Begone Badum
- "The album Etude Begone Badum presents works by composers Alvin Lucier (US), Marko Ciciliani (GER/CRO) and Michael Pisaro (US), linked together by Norwegian Lars Petter Hagens poetic, electroacoustic intermezzi. The works employ personal, experimental and conceptual approaches to sound production, suggesting the development of a "post-percussive" practice the topic of Håkon Stenes ongoing Artistic Research Project Ceci n'est pas un tambour developing the role of the multidisciplinary performer. This development eschews traditional playing techniques, substituting an open-ended concept wherein any sound producing object may be played in any manner imaginable.
- Ahornfelder - Soundcloud
Hakon Stene - Bone Alphabet
- "One of the most controversial composers on the New Music scene in the last thirty years, Brian Ferneyhough remains faithful to the idea of composition and interpretation as utopian, intellectually Olympian disciplines. His percussion classic Bone Alphabet comprises dense and polyphonic textures on seven non-resonant instruments. Electronic wizard Sir Dupermans remix offers an illuminating stylistic transposition, questioning the status of canonized artworks as untouchable masterpieces."
- Ahornfelder
- "Håkon Stene is a Norwegian percussionist specializing in contemporary music performance. In addition to performing in a variety of contexts throughout Europe, he is currently involved in artistic research and teaching at the Norwegian Academy of Music. . . ."
"'I believe the use of noise to make music will continue and increase until we reach a music produced through the aid of electrical instruments which will make available for musical purposes any and all sounds that can be heard."
John Cage 1937
- "Although John Cage occasionally worked in large, sophisticated studios - for example, when he composed Fontana Mix in 1958 - his approach to electronic and tape music was often uncomplicated, makeshift, and pragmatic, employing simple tabletop devices: tape machines, phonograph cartridges, contact microphones, record players, portable radios, etc.
He developed a soundworld that was utterly new, radical and demanding. It heralded the age of the loudspeaker, mass communication and Marshall McLuhan's 'global village.' The hiss, crackle and hum of electronic circuits,
and the disembodied sounds, snatched by radio from the ether, spoke of the 20th century."
- "Langham Research Centre works within the tradition firmly established by Cage, using resources that would have been available to him. For the realisation of Cartridge Music, moving iron phonograph pickups were sourced and restored. These have a knurled screw designed to hold a steel phonograph needle and, in the piece, other objects are inserted and amplified: pieces of wire, toothpicks, paperclips, etc. The realisation of Fontana Mix includes the individual mono tracks from Cage's original tapes created in 1958. These are played using open-reel tape machines. These practices ensure we work within the limitations that Cage experienced and enable us to get close to the soundworld he inhabited."
Sub Rosa
Langham Research Centre is a group devoted to authentic performances of classic electronic music, and the creation of new music from their instrumentarium of vintage analogue devices.
Christina Vantzou - No.2
- "Developed over a four year period, and entirely funded by a part time job working as a SAT university entrance exam mathematics tutor, No2 was composed using synthesizers and a variety of unidentified samples that were manipulated beyond recognition.
Christina Vantzou then collaborated with Minna Choi of the San Francisco based Magik*Magik Orchestra. Vantzou and Choi worked on the notation and arrangements and recorded the compositions with a 15-piece ensemble at Tiny Telephone studios in San Francisco. The chamber layer on No2 follows a similar pattern as her first record with the addition of bassoon, oboe, and an enhanced string section.
Vantzou spent four months premixing the album before Adam Bryanbaum Wiltzie (Stars of the Lid / A Winged Victory for the Sullen) engineered the final mixes, as well as added some of his signature sound texture, at his studio in Brussels, Belgium.
Perhaps a better title for the album would be “Symphony No2†as it was composed as a cohesive whole, much like her first album No.1. Dense layers of strings are augmented by angelic voices, piano, woodwinds, & various synthesizers. Instrumental music, especially that which is scored with strings & horns, is invariably described as “filmicâ€. This is even more likely when the composer is a filmmaker such as Christina Vantzou.
Welcome to the future, which luckily for us is filled by a woman's voice with a beautiful narrative. A recording that is a meeting of personalities is like the contact of chemical substances: if there is any reaction, all are transformed."
- Kranky - Soundcloud - Soundcloud 2 (Free tracks)
In the last decade Christina Vantzou has gone from an art student playing around with motion graphics and animations to designing projections for touring musicians, co-founding The Dead Texan with her partner Adam Wiltzie and eventually creating her own solo audiovisual project. The Dead Texan toured extensively in 2005-2006 and in 2007 Christina was commissioned to make animations and play onstage with Sparklehorse. In the meantime commissions for videos also developed into collaborations with Christopher Willits, Fovea Hex, Tokion magazine, Interpol, and Mtv Netherlands.
Christina started playing around more seriously with on her own music in 2007 and in April 2009, she debuted her solo compositions at the infamous Monkeytown in Brooklyn, New York. Currently based in Brussels, Belgium, Christina’s career as an artist is steered by projects that link visual art, music and design. With a background in Fine Art, Christina’s visual style reflects her interest in illustration, graphic design, film & printmaking while her ambient, spacious, and sometimes-angelic compositions create a perfect union with her otherworldly, feminine, and glacially-paced animations."
- Lastfm
Soundcloud - Bandcamp
- “The saxophone’s place in the music world is not at all what Adolphe Sax had in mind when he invented the instrument over 150 years ago. Ascendant in the world of jazz, relatively marginal in Sax’s intended field of classical music, and surprisingly adaptable to various forms of non-Western music, the saxophone family is a marvelous accident of musical history,” WNYC’s John Schaefer writes in the liner notes for the PRISM Quartet’s new innova Recordings release, The Singing Gobi Desert.
Partnering here with the ensemble Music from China, PRISM presents works by four Chinese-born American composers: Bright Sheng, Lei Liang, Fang Man, and Huang Ruo. The Singing Gobi Desert reveals that saxophones and Chinese instruments have a natural, if unexpected, affinity. From Bright Sheng’s title track to Fang Man’s “Dream of a Hundred Flowers” this music is no simple fusion or mashup, but rather a deep integration of traditions, as reliant on the PRISM Quartet’s extended techniques — flutter-tonguing, multiphonics, breath blasts, and key clicks — as on the composers’ abilities to imagine new sound worlds.
For nearly 30 years, PRISM has stood at the vanguard of new music ensembles, commissioning works across a broad spectrum of styles, and demonstrating the saxophone’s versatility. The Singing Gobi Desert embodies PRISM’s commitment to honoring the past and leading the way to the future through relentlessly creative collaboration."
Innova Recordings
- ". . . . Champions of new music, PRISM has commissioned over 150 works, many by internationally celebrated composers, including Pulitzer Prize-winners William Bolcom, Jennifer Higdon, Zhou Long, and Bernard Rands; Guggenheim Fellows William Albright, Martin Bresnick, Chen Yi, Lee Hyla, and Steven Mackey; MacArthur “Genius” Award recipient Bright Sheng; and jazz masters Greg Osby and Tim Ries. In 1997, PRISM initiated its own concert series in Philadelphia and New York City, presenting the newest compositions created for their ensemble by composers from around the world. The series has featured an eclectic range of guest artists, including Ethel, the Talujon Percussion Quartet, Music From China, Miro Dance Theatre, Cantori New York, and top jazz artists, including guitarist Ben Monder, saxophonist Rick Margitza, and drummers Gerald Cleaver, Mark Ferber, and John Riley. PRISM has also joined forces with the New York Consort of Viols, Opera Colorado, and the Chilean rock band Inti-Illimani in touring engagements. . . ."
- "In addition to Third Coast Percussion, the album features instrumental contributions from Eileen Mack (Newspeak, Victoire), Mellissa Hughes (Newspeak, John Zorn), Andrew McKenna Lee (The Knells) and Toby Driver (Kayo Dot, Secret Chiefs 3). David T. Little himself provides snare drum, claps and Ableton Live programming on the record. Andrew McKenna Lee, who has previously worked with Daniel Wohl, William Brittelle and The Knells, mixed Haunt of Last Nightfall."
- "The work of American composer David T. Little does not shy away from difficult topics. Whether its in his operas (a recent commission came from the Metropolitan Operas MET/LCT new works program) or with his Orwell-inspired ensemble Newspeak, Little uses the juxtaposition of blunt force and subtle textures to explore themes of power, truth, corruption, and desperation. Haunt of Last Nightfall is no different.
Of the piece, Little says, I think a lot about ghosts of things that remain behind as the fleeting evidence of what once was. Since reading about El Mozote, I have been unable to get it out of my mind: how this village, innocent by virtually every account, was wiped out. Caught in the crossfire of a stupid ideological battle, its people now ghosts. What we know shapes us, and whether I like it or not, I now know this.
New Amsterdam Records - music
- "Hailed by The New Yorker as vibrant and superb, Third Coast Percussion explores and expands the extraordinary sonic possibilities of the percussion repertoire, delivering exciting performances for audiences of all kinds. Since its formation in 2005, Third Coast Percussion has gained national attention with concerts and recordings that meld the energy of rock music with the precision and nuance of classical chamber works.
These hard-grooving musicians (New York Times) have become known for ground-breaking collaborations across a wide range of disciplines, including concerts and residency projects with engineers at the University of Notre Dame, architects at the Frank Lloyd Wright School of Architecture, astronomers at the Adler Planetarium, and more. The ensemble enhances the performances it offers with cutting edge new media, including free iPhone and iPad apps that allow audience members to create their own musical performances and take a deeper look at the music performed by Third Coast Percussion.
Third Coast Percussion is the Ensemble-in-Residence at the University of Notre Dames DeBartolo Performing Arts Center. They have the honor of being the first ensemble at the University of Notre Dame to create a permanent and progressive ensemble residency program at the center. The ensemble performs multiple recitals annually as part of the DeBartolo Performing Arts Centers Presenting Series season. Third Coast Percussion assumed the position of Ensemble-in-Residence at Notre Dame in 2013.
The ensemble champions the awe-inspiring music of John Cage, Steve Reich, George Crumb, Arvo Pärt, Gérard Grisey, Philippe Manoury, Wolfgang Rihm, Louis Andriessen, Toru Takemitsu, and Tan Dun, among others. Third Coast has also commissioned and performed world premieres by many of todays leading composers, including Augusta Read Thomas, Timothy Andres, Glenn Kotche, David T. Little, Marcos Balter, Ted Hearne, and ensemble members Owen Clayton Condon and David Skidmore. . . . ."
More David T. Little @ Emusers
Performers:
Mason Bates, Tania Stavreva, Claremont Trio, Grand Valley State University (GVSU) New Music Ensemble, Chanticleer, Musicians from the Chicago Symphony Orchestra
- "Crossing boundaries is nothing new for composer and electronica artist Mason Bates. As comfortable with staff paper as he is DJing (under the name Masonic), Bates has already garnered acclaim for works commissioned by the San Francisco Symphony, the National Symphony Orchestra, the Chicago Symphony (where he serves as composer-in-residence) and others. Here on Stereo Is King -- his first release since his 2009 debut, Digital Loom -- he takes his listeners on a wild ride through chamber music, choral music, and electronica, featuring performances by Tania Stavreva, Claremont Trio, Grand Valley State University (GVSU) New Music Ensemble, Chanticleer and musicians from the Chicago Symphony Orchestra.
From the title tracks combination of electronics and an array of percussion to the angular syncopation of White Lies for Lomax -- an homage to the early, anonymous blues musicians recorded by ethnomusicologist Alan Lomax -- Stereo Is King explores the possibilities of a broad range of sonorities, refusing to exclude any genre by fiat and instead embracing whole the wide world of music. Observer in the Magellanic Cloud, performed by Chanticleer, drifts high above in a place where distant future meets ancient past. Difficult Bamboo begins minimally and grows wildly out of control. Bill Ryan and the GVSU New Music Ensemble deftly navigate Terrycloth Troposhere, an ode to Terry Riley that repurposes motifs from his seminal In C, while String Band is grounded in bluegrass and old-time string band music.
Throughout, Bates voice comes clear from within the diversity of approaches, ensembles and styles. It is his balance as a writer and envisioner of modern music that envelops the past while moving confidently into the future that ties Stereo Is King together into a comprehensive statement by a talented young composer.
Innova Recordings
Soundcloud
Boston Modern Orchestra Project, Gil Rose, conductor
Sequitur: Erin Lesser, flute; Jacqueline LeClair, oboe; Jo-Ann Sternberg, clarinet; Philip Everall, bass clarinet; Peggy Kampmeier, piano; Matthew Gold, percussion; Andrea Schulz, violin; Miranda Cuckson, violin; Daniel Panner, viola; Gregory Hesselink, cello; Jeremy McCoy, bass; Paul Hostetter, conductor / Krista River, mezzo-soprano; Franziska Huhn, Amanda Romano, harps; Donald Berman, John McDonald, pianos; Scott Wheeler, conductor.
- "Arthur Levering (b. 1953) is a musical mosaicist, creating patterns within patterns whose meanings change with the perspective of the listener. Moments of piquant color and gesture engage us on one level, but over time, and in combination with other such ideas they spin out the broad narrative, the winsome or lacerating or warm or athletic trajectory of phrase and episode. The works on this new collection - for orchestra, string orchestra, large mixed ensemble, small ensemble with voice, and for two pianos - cover a wide expressive and technical range, but the composer's elegant and rigorous use of patterns and their transformations is a consistent source of rich and vibrant energy. Various influences can be felt: rock music, with its ever-present pulse and energy, but also Baroque music, minimalism, and Indonesian gamelan. Particular composers, too, might be cited - Franco Donatoni, Luciano Berio, György Ligeti. Still, Levering's work has its own distinctive sense of wit, its own pacing, and particular tendencies of instrumental color - its own voice."
New World Records
More Levering @ Emusers
Stefan Wesolowski - Liebestod
Stefan Wesolowski - violin, viola, piano, electronics (all tracks)
Jacek Balka - trombone (1, 2, 3, 5, 6)
Krzysztof Pawlowski - cello (1, 2, 4, 6)
Krzysztof Jakub Szwarc - viola (1, 2, 4, 6)
Lukasz Gruba - tuba (2, 4)
Tomasz Wesolowski - baroque bassoon (3)
Michal Krezlewski - piano (3)
Sandra Geisler - voice (4)
Dex - dog barking (1)
All tracks composed & arranged by Stefan Wesolowski
Background soundscapes by Tom Bednarczyk (3) and Michal Jacaszek
- "The album Liebestod by Polish composer Stefan Wesolowski consists of repetitive compositions written for piano, brass instruments, strings and electronics. The title itself is derived from Wagner's Tristan and Isolde which says a lot about Wesolowski's primary inspirations. Liebestod shows a tremendous amount of respect for classical music but Wesolowski is far from making literal references to it. Wesolowski shows his own unique musical language; rough and radical at some points, yet full of intense nostalgia and beauty. This album includes a contribution from Michael Jacaszek. Realised with the financial support of The Polish Ministry of Culture and National Heritage, Mayor of Gdansk, Marshal of Pomorskie Voivodeship and City Culture Institute. "
- "The album Liebestod from Polish composer Stefan Wesolowski consists of repetitive compositions written for piano, brass instruments, strings and electronics. Featuring a cameo by Michael Jacaszek.
The title itself is derived from Wagner's "Tristan and Isolde" which says a lot about Wesolowski's primary inspirations. Liebestod shows a tremendous amount of respect for classical music but Wesolowski is far from making literal references to it. Wesolowski shows his own unique musical language; rough and radical at some points, yet full of intense nostalgia and beauty.
Recommended if you like: Arvo Part, Steve Reich, William Basinski, Jacaszek
Recorded in Old Town Hall, Academy of Music in Gdansk & on the baltic coast and at home in Sopot, 2011/2012.
Realised with the financial support of The Polish Ministry of Culture and National Heritage, Mayor of Gdansk, Marshal of Pomorskie Voivodeship and City Culture Institute."
- Important Records
music - http://soundcloud.com/stefanwesolowskimusic