Here's an album where the title track is the most wonderful crossover between percussion based contemporary classical and heavy metal (!)
- "Presenting contemporary works that blend multiple genres, from classical and avant-garde to heavy metal and world music, the McCormick Percussion Group, hailed as "a very skilled and important contemporary percussion ensemble" by Audiophile Audition, expands the boundaries and possibilities of the percussion ensemble's repertoire on their latest Ravello Records release BETWEEN ROCK AND A HARD PLACE.
The title track, composed by Ciro Scotto, is a four-movement work that coalesces heavy metal and contemporary classical conventions, highlighting the connections between these two different yet similarly technical worlds of composition. Between Rock and a Hard Place-Unplugged substitutes electric and electronic instruments for classical guitar, contrabass, cello, and piano. Scotto says of his inspiration for this acoustic version, "Exploring the parallel dimension concept in Between Rock and a Hard Place-Unplugged allowed me to recompose the piece following ideas that did not develop in the original, so the new work is a complete rethinking and exploration of the material."
The McCormick Percussion Group also features two works for unspecified instrumentation by John Cage (1912-1992), Composition for Three Voices (1934), arranged for two vibraphones and marimba, and Five (1988), performed by bowed vibraphones. Rivus, by composer Dan Senn, another work for unspecified instruments, is performed on celeste, glockenspiel, and vibraphone for a blending of metallic and wooden timbres."
- "The McCormick Percussion Group was formed to explore and record new and unusual works in the percussion ensemble idiom. They have recorded over two dozen compact discs including many for the Capstone label. In order to assure the composersí musical intentions, most of the McCormick Percussion Group recordings are composer supervised. Percussionist Robert McCormick is a former member of the Harry Partch Ensemble and served as principal percussionist of the Florida Orchestra for twenty seasons. He is currently Professor of Music at the University of South Florida in Tampa and timpanist with Opera Tampa. He also tours and records with the McCormick Duo Flute/Percussion Group. He was the recipient of the Florida Music Educator of the Year Award in 2006, and was the 2007 Grand Prize winner of the Keystone Percussion Composition Competition. The McCormick Percussion Group uses Zildjian Cymbals, Encore Mallets and Grover Pro Percussion Products."
- "Robert McCormick is currently Professor of Music at the University of South Florida and timpanist with Opera Tampa. He is a former member of the Harry Partch Ensemble and served as principle percussionist and assistant timpanist with the Florida Orchestra for twenty seasons. He has authored several articles, solos and two percussion texts: Percussion for Musicians and 32 Duets for Percussion. Robert was the 2006 recipient of the Florida Music Educator of the Year Awards, the 2007 Grand Prize winner of the Keystone Percussion Composition Award, and the 2010 recipient of the Jerome Krivanek Distinguished University Teacher Award." Ravello Records - Soundcloud
I almost never would rec a purchase on iTunes, but in the case of "Human Meets Nature: Seasons Shift Sonata," it is $1.99 in the Apple Store for 2 1/2 house of music. The Seasons Shift Sonata is $11.99 for a single track.
So Percussion Cello: Joan Jeanrenaud - "Nana is the first full-length release of Cenk Ergün’s chamber music. The album focuses on the subtle variations of pitch, duration, timbre, and interpretation among multiple iterations of musical material, juxtaposed in time through constantly shifting sequences. Nana contains two works: Proximity, written for So Percussion, and Cello Peace, written for cellist Joan Jeanrenaud.
Called "psychedelically meditative" by the NewMusicBox, Proximity is a twenty-five minute long percussion quartet. The music is a series of unisons, canons, solos, and chaotic layers of rhythmic patterns played on bells, pipes, cymbals, tam-tams, gyils, crotales, glockenspiels, and vibraphones – at times struck, at times bowed.
Cello Peace is a quartet for a solo cellist: Four unique interpretations of the same temporally indeterminate score are recorded to be played back simultaneously on four audio channels. Over a half-hour in length, the piece slowly moves through extremes of sonic density and instrumental color as replicas of musical fragments race each other in time." Carrier Records
- "Cenk Ergün is a composer and improviser based in New York. His music has been performed by artists such as So Percussion, Alarm Will Sound, Ensemble Laboratorium, and Joan Jeanrenaud. As an improviser, he performs electronics in groups with Alvin Curran, Jason Treuting, and Jeff Snyder.
Venues that have featured Ergün's music include New York's Carnegie Hall, Le Poisson Rouge, The Roulette, The Stone; Amsterdam's Muziekgebouw, Zurich's Tonhalle, and Istanbul's Babylon.
Some events Ergün has participated in are Gaudeamus Music Week, MATA Festival, Bang on a Can Marathon, WNYC's New Sounds Live, Peak Performances at Montclair University, Stanford Lively Arts, and San Francisco Electronic Music Festival.
Records Ergün appears on include The Art Of The Fluke with Alvin Curran and So Percussion's Cage 100 Bootleg Series. His first solo composition record, Nana, was released in May 2014 on Carrier Records.
Ergün's music has been described as "haunting", "ominously throbbing" (NY Times), "psychedelically meditative" (New Music Box), and "conceptual rigor" (The Wire)."
Thanks for the coding lb (already forgot it all again - just kidding)
Cenk Ergün!! Wow - this is a real catch!
For 5$ anybody should enjoy this! Seems like just what I needed this morning after a long night a shooting a video clip with cats flying all over. These bells of proximity are like honey bees flying around my ears in my studio right now. Some birds morning sounds near by are in the mix with this - seems so very right! Making my happy:) I love the "press here to download" thing. And the site as a whole. Yeh - cut the middle man bulshit! Cenk Ergün seems to be a guy of our healing music family. This is very balancing - I would say - it's NEW AGE :)
- "SECOND MOON OF WINTER is a new experimental ensemble from Ireland melting discordant ambiences with luminous soprano. Their first installment, a six track album called One for Sorrow, Two for Joy, will be released on Denovali Records in January 2015.
One for Sorrow, Two for Joy was written and recorded live in a series of four hour sessions in a basement by the sea in County Cork in the south of Ireland; no computers, no playback of samples, no overdubs, no further processing after the event.
It is three people performing live in an intensely personal collaboration. Knowing each other well and yet having never experimented together before, it felt almost like a necessity to combine their far-flung musical minds. Waves of sound created predominantly on guitar and clarinet, provide a backdrop for singing rarely experienced outside an opera house, and yet with a subtle connection to Irish folk song also.
Inspired by the symbolism of photos, prints and memories, the studio floor was strewn with semi-precious melodies, never knowing which was to be picked up next, to be held and then polished like sea glass in a tidal soundscape.
Tethering themselves to each others innate sense of interpretation and improvisation, an idea was never good nor bad, it was instead either in or out, necessary or unnecessary. In making One for Sorrow, Two for Joy SECOND MOON OF WINTER understood that true musical inspiration and output is free from grasping and clinging.
Their fragmented melodies meet, form and fluctuate in a wave of musical metamorphosis. They strive to sit apart and yet within their soundscapes - melting and moving forward with the momentum of a creeping frost under the waning of the second moon.
SECOND MOON OF WINTER is to be silent, to listen and finally to create a picture out of that listening. It is a meshing together of sounds that touch and clash in their different atmospheres yet bathe together in a tense harmonic understanding.
Loving it - the combination of this superb opera singer and the distortions.
Kind of deep like "meditation for lou" (on eMusic).
Glad I bought this one as well.
You should be my therapist Ib on days like this when not doing yoga (since we're shooting a new video to be featured later on next month)
and comes in the right timing just as my boyfriend started to learn opera:)
Released on the French Brocoli label (Pierre-yves Macé, Minizza etc.) 3rd November 2014<div><a href="http://www.emusic.com/album/-/-/15576799/"><img src="http://cf-images.emusic.com/music/images/album/155/767/15576799/600x600.jpg" alt="Musiques concrètes 1970-71 album cover"> </a><font color="#666666"><b><i><br></i></b></font></div><div><font color="#666666"><b><i>"Brocoli is pleased to announce the release of seven early works by Michel Chion, the celebrated musique concrète composer. Composed before he joined the Groupe de Recherches Musicales (GRM) in 1971 his characteristic style and sounds are already present. The abrasive electronics and sanctity in Blanche prefigure 1973’s Requiem ; Sonatine and Train de pianos are based on prepared piano improvisations; Habanera and L’Oiseau en Cage evoke La Ronde, and Le Ciel Tremble is the composer’s first melodrama.
Essential listening for lovers of the composer and genre, and for anyone interested in the history of electronic and experimental music."
- "Michel Chion was born in 1947 in Creil (France). In 1970, after literary and musical studies, he began to work as Pierre Schaeffer's assistant, then became publications director for the INA-GRM, where he was a member from 1971 to 1976.
As a composer, he has focused on musique concrète, an idiom for which he has developed original compositional techniques across many genres: melodramas (e.g. La Tentation de Saint-Antoine, 1982), short studies and religious music (e.g. Requiem, 1973).
As a filmmaker, he has directed a number of prize-winning short films and documentaries (e.g. La Messe de Terre, 1996, a 2 hour video accompanied by musique concrète).
<div><span style="font-weight: normal;"><br></span></div><span style="font-weight: normal;"><div><img src="http://cf-images.emusic.com/music/images/album/155/295/15529552/600x600.jpg" alt="Time Crystals album cover"> <span style="font-weight: normal;"><br></span></div>- </span><span style="font-weight: bold; color: rgb(0, 0, 153);">"Inspired by a 2012 article by Nobel-winning physicist Frank Wilczek about the idea of perpetually moving, multi-dimensional structures, Time Crystals by Brisbanes Clocked Out Duo (Erik Griswold and Vanessa Tomlinson) transmutes the principles of hard science into felt structures of sound.
Were taking the idea of crystal shapes, angles and lattice structures that we can visualize and transferring that to sound design, says Griswold. The duo explores ways to apply the ideas of perpetual motion, pattern and crystalline structures to musical forms, in the process creating music that is minimalist at heart but also rich and beautiful in execution. Recalling everything from Steve Reich to Balinese Gamelan music, Time Crystals is grounded in prepared piano played by Griswold and toy piano plus a variety of percussion played by Tomlinson."
- "Composer-pianist Erik Griswold fuses experimental, jazz and world music traditions to create works of striking originality. Specializing in prepared piano, percussion and toy instruments, he has created a musical universe all his own that is "sincere" (neural.it), "playful" (igloo magazine), "colourful and refreshingly unpretentious" (Paris Transatlantic).
Percussionist Vanessa Tomlinson is active in the fields of solo percussion, contemporary chamber music, improvisation, installation and composition. She has performed at festivals around the world such as Wien Modern, London Jazz Festival, Green Umbrella Series LA, Bang-on-a-Can Marathon NY, The Adelaide Festival of Arts and Shanghai Festival. She is the recipient of 2 Green Room Awards, the 2011 APRA/AMC Award for Excellence by an organization or individual, and has been awarded artist residencies through Asialink (University of Melbourne), Civitella Ranieri (NY/Italy), Banff (Canada) and Bundanon (NSW" Innova Recordings</span>
Our third collection featuring the ondes Martenot and the most experimental, in part because the Spectralist composer Tristan Murail, to whom this CD is dedicated, was himself a student of - and performer on - the ondes and, in these pieces, he explores some of its less conventional byways. These works are united here for the first time, performed by a new generation of musicians more attuned to the raw, less academic approach to sound that Murail himself favoured. Works for solo Onde, two Ondes, Onde and Piano, two Ondes, percussion and electric guitar ." ReR Megacorp
- "This is the third collection of pieces featuring the ondes Martinot, and the most experimental to date, in part because Spectralist composer Tristan Murail was himself a student of the ondes and, in these pieces, he explores some of the instrument's less conventional byways. It is also the first time these pieces have been collected together, performed now by a new generation of musicians more attuned to the raw, less academic approach to sound that Murail himself favoured. Tristan Murail was born in 1947, studied with Olivier Messiaen and then went to Rome where he met Giacinto Scelsi, a maverick modernist nonconformist, who exerted a strong influence on his subsequent work. In addition, Murail's encounters with the music of Pink Floyd, Chicago and Tangerine Dream had had an effect on him not dissimilar to his meeting with Scelsi, radically changing his approach to the use of electronics." Clear Spot https://soundcloud.com/ensemble-volta/les-nuages-de-magellan-tristan</span>
It's an experimental rarity. Soundcloud track is so vivid and enrich with pure energy of creation for the sake of creation.
The kind of treasure I would love to see on eMusic front page some day
- "Bruno Letort is a French composer born in 1963 in Vichy. This guitarist published a series of albums on the border of jazz and rock in the early '80s (with Manu Katche, Noël Akchoté, Didier Malherbe...). His discography from the '90s contains more 'scored' music for orchestra (Pièces pour les pays baltes, 1992 ; Le Continent obscur, commissioned by the Orchestre Philharmonique de Radio France, 1998-99), his 'Fables électroniques' (2001) blends concrete/electronic sounds with a symphony orchestra. In 2004, Bruno Letort recorded a new album called 'E(a)st', the fruit of many trips to East-European countries. That same year, he became 'composer in residence' at the National Orchestra of Belarus.
Bruno Letort's approach has always referred to multidisciplinarity. Witness the number of works he has composed for dance, theater, cinema, video and scenography. Closely related to Benoit Peeters and Francois Schuiten (emblematic figures of the Belgian comic strip), he composed with them L'Affaire Désombres. In 2000 he founded the Radio France label Signature which has recorded artists as diverse as Pierre Henry, Fred Frith, Hector Zazou, Elliott Sharp, Jean-Luc Godard, Luc Ferrari, Christian Fennesz, Mika Vainio, and Christian Zanési." Sub Rosa
- "Ghédalia Tazartès was born in Paris, France in 1947. In 1974, he bought a mic, a tape recorder and a band echo. This is when he began to develop what he called Impromuz, his own musical language. His main instrument is voice. Basically Tazartès creates a bed of loops and/or drones using taped samples and synthesizers and then sings over them in a style that sounds like gypsy folk music. But it is interrupted by sudden cuts to a child speaking (reciting?), sometimes piano or string instruments stating a new theme, or found sounds, only to cut from that back into a different loop and another song.
The release called Diasporas / Tazartès and the CD has such a liner notes: ”Ghédalia Tazartès is a nomad. He wanders through music from chant to rhythm, from one voice to another. He paves the way for the electric and the vocal paths, between the muezzin psalmody and the screaming of a rocker. He traces vague landscapes where the mitre of the white clown, the plumes of the sorcerer, the helmet of a cop and Parisian anhydride collide into polyphonic ceremonies. Don’t become a black, an arab, a Tibetan monk, a jew, a woman or an animal but to feel all this stirring deep inside of you.” More Ghédalia Tazartès @ Emusers - And more.
"Gods Come and Go, Prayers Remain Forever" Yehuda Amichai.
“This heartfelt, intimate, and very moving CD… is made of works that go deeper than what I was expecting, that become more personal. The pieces spring from the same territory as many of his other works, but they become somehow much more introspective, and they go someplace much darker. They are more painful, more mortal.”
- David Lang.
- "The powerful title work (2011, for piano and cello) is inspired by the poem Gods Come and Go, Prayers Remain Forever, by the Israeli poet Yehuda Amichai. A concert performance by Moore and Bathgate was praised in Lucid Culture: “A plaintively elegiac, part minimalist, part neoromantic work, as it expanded from a simple chromatic motif, a sense of longing became anguish and then descended to a brooding, defeated atmosphere, the cello and piano switching roles back and forth from murky hypnotics to bitterly rising phrases, with a particularly haunting solo passage from Bathgate… the duo played as a singleminded voice.”
The smoothly flowing Ishi's Song (2012, for piano) was inspired by Ishi, the last survivor of the Yahi Indians, who were decimated to extinction at the end of the 19th century. Ishi was the last native speaker of the Yahi-Yana language, and the opening melody of the piece was taken from a recording of Ishi singing what he called “The Maidu Doctor's Song.”
The haunting, motoric A Message From the Emperor (2010, for two speaking percussionists) is based on an eponymous Kafka parable, in which a glorious being sends an important message, just for you, which can never be delivered. Bresnick remarks that we have lived on our planet for many years, waiting for a message that finally reveals the reason for our mortality and the sorrow and suffering that is our common fate.
The attractively delicate Josephine The Singer (2011, for violin) is also based on a Kafka story, his last written work “Josephine the Singer or the Mouse People.” Bresnick comments that this short story is a “prescient mediation both on divas and art, but also what might be the future of the Jews as a persecuted minority in Europe.”
The wistful Strange Devotion (2010, for piano) is inspired by an enigmatic etching in Francisco de Goya’s great Disasters of War sequence. The artist gazes with skeptical compassion at a group of Spanish people praying to a donkey that pulls a bier with a corpse. Bresnick feels that the “donkey's mute yet somehow knowing expression seems to reveal both the sincerity and futility of the people's unquestioning faith.”
Lang notes the CD’s works explore the equilibrium “between the living and the dead, the mortal and the immortal, the forgotten and the unforgettable.” He concludes, “The piece that exemplifies this most powerfully is Going Home – Vysoke, My Jerusalem. It was written in the aftermath a journey Bresnick took to the small Russian-Polish town where his mother was born, and where generations of his forebears had lived. He had heard stories about it all his life – the broken house, the ruined synagogue. The stories had told him where to find them. The music tells us how to remember.” Starkland
- Martin Bresnick's compositions, from chamber and symphonic music to film scores and computer music, are performed throughout the world. Bresnick delights in reconciling the seemingly irreconcilable, bringing together repetitive gestures derived from minimalism with a harmonic palette that encompasses both highly chromatic sounds and more open, consonant harmonies and a raw power reminiscent of rock. At times his musical ideas spring from hardscrabble sources, often with a very real political import. But his compositions never descend into agitprop; one gains their meaning by the way the music itself unfolds, and always on its own terms.
Besides having received many prizes and commissions, the first Charles Ives Living Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, The Rome Prize, The Berlin Prize, a Guggenheim Fellowship, and a Koussevitzky Commission, among many others, Martin Bresnick is also recognized as an influential teacher of composition. Students from every part of the globe and of virtually every musical inclination have been inspired by his critical encouragement.
Martin Bresnick's compositions are published by Carl Fischer Music Publishers, New York; Bote & Bock, Berlin; CommonMuse Music Publishers, New Haven; and have been recorded by Cantaloupe Records, New World Records, Albany Records, Bridge Records, Composers Recordings Incorporated, Centaur, Starkland Records and Artifact Music"
- "Four recent compositions by u.s. composers for electric guitars, exploring the novel textural, harmonic, and expressive possibilities that the instrument allows." Emusic
- "I was born in Genova, Italy, one sunny September morning in 1983. me behind a guitar
I first picked up the guitar when I was 8; actually, I really wanted to play the piano, but there was no way one would fit in our old home, so I learned the basics from a family friend, then continued strumming happily on my own . . . . . .</span></div>
Roland Kuit is an independent researcher, lecturer modular synthesis and composition. He contrived numerous cutting edge concepts in synthesis. As an author he writes about modular synthesis, research and sound design. His most comprehensive book is the "Laboratory of Patching; Illustrated Compendium of Modular Synthesis". Roland's music and books are published by Donemus, Publishing House of Dutch Contemporary Classical Music.
Roland Kuit received his first piano and recorder lessons at the age of six. Fascinated by the phenomenon 'sound' he made his first improvisations. The tape recorder at home was not only used to record these sessions but also all kinds of noises. He started playing the flute at the age of eleven. One year later he was accepted at the Royal Conservatory in The Hague. His teachers were Mirjam Nastasi and Marijke Bakker. After playing Baroque music, his interest went via Debussy, Fauré to the modern composers like Escher, van Dijk, Fukushima. Electronic music crossed his path. At that moment Roland made a decisive step in his career by subscribing at the prestigious Institute of Sonology in the Netherlands, one of longest-running research and production hubs on the European electroacoustic music scene. With great enthusiasm Roland studied analogue modular sound design and composition under Jaap Vink and Frits Weiland. Roland attended lectures about MIDIM/VOSIM given by Werner Kaegi and Stan Tempelaars as well as Fortran IV music from Gottfried Michael Koenig (1981-1985) and Paul Berg's lectures PILE. Roland took the opportunity to study and explore interactive composition and acoustics at the IRCAM, Paris. Kaija Saariaho and Philippe Manoury were his teachers (2000)."
Sir BN proudly presents some brand new and hyperdynamic percussion music:
Neil Thornock's release Between the Lines features his music for percussion, especially those struck instruments that ring, and includes his own performance on carrillon in the large ensemble work Lurgy.
Gerard Morris, conductor, Matthew Coley, percussion, Neil Thornock, carillon, Iowa Percussion Group | Stan Dahl, Adam Groh, Dan Krumm, Jacob Thieben, Iowa State University Percussion Ensemble | Andrew Burton, Grant Hyland, Devin Klink, Rebecca Luksan, Alex Ortberg, Ryan Pearson.
Carillonneurs – people who play huge sets of bells from an oversized keyboard mechanism – constantly battle two challenges: The bells don’t stop ringing, and the unwieldy mechanism requires dramatic physical exertions to control, often resulting in a blurry, imprecise sonic landscape. My percussion writing grows out of my experience playing carillon, from the unhindered ringing of the dulcimer, chimes, and vibraphone, to the demanding physical exertions required in the marimba pieces and the imprecise sonic world of Blur. Finally, Lurgy makes maximum demands of the carillon, while augmenting its sonic world with percussion ensemble." Neil Thornock @ New Focus Recordings
- "Neil Thornock began his college-level music studies as an organist and carillonneur at Brigham Young University. He received a Doctorate of Music in composition from the Indiana University Jacobs School of Music in 2006. During academic year 2006-2007, he was a visiting assistant professor of music and assistant to the Provost for accreditation at Southern Virginia University. He joined the BYU faculty in the 2007-2008 academic year. He teaches courses in composition and theory.
In his artistic pursuits, Thornock primarily considers himself a performer/composer. Many of his compositions grow out of performance opportunities on organ, carillon, piano, toy piano, and harpsichord. His interests also include electronic sound media (most recently, Huygens’ Workshop for toy piano and electonics) and growing interest in video. Thornock’s works have been described both as “richly scored, moving, resonant” (Peter Jacobi, Herald Times) and as possessing “cool understatement”. They have received performances in various venues, including NASA, SEAMUS, SCI, Imagine 2, Eccles Organ Concert Series, and San Diego State University. Indiana University ensembles recently premiered O years! and age! farewell for choir and orchestra as part of the opening concert of the Midwest Composers’ Symposium. In 2004, he was awarded a Barlow Commission which resulted in a 35-minute double bass solo, premiered at Indiana University by Nathan Wood. Additionally, his music for carillon has garnered several international awards and has been regularly performed at congresses of the Guild of Carillonneurs of North America since 2001. http://cfac.byu.edu/music/people/?listing=neil-thornock
- "Lachenmann had already formulated a statement that is central to his entire thinking within and about music in his essay Hören ist wehrlos – ohne Hören: Über Möglichkeiten und Schwierigkeiten [Listening is defenceless—if one doesn’t listen: on opportunities and difficulties] (1985): “Music is about listening, which is perception that perceives itself.” Despite all content-related aesthetic paradigms, he insists that music’s content and real-world relevance consist precisely in steering the listeners’ attention toward their own listening. This sounds like a paradox, but it can be explained by the fact that listening to music in a way that is self-referential, aimed toward itself, also reveals the conditions of one’s own perception, interpretation and valuation of music as they relate to the world in which one lives and to society, history, and ideas. - (Rainer Nonnenmann)
- "It is all too easy to dismiss the work of Lachenmann as “musica negativa,” in the manner that term was used by Hans Werner Henze in his attack on the composer. Lachenmann’s music forces the listener to confront and question their ingrained expectations from, and responses to, music in an attempt to extend and further illuminate one’s powers of perception. Schreiben, for orchestra, and Double (Grido II), the string orchestra version of his third string quartet, are perfect examples of Lachenmann’s approach to musical material and his idea of music."
- "Born in Stuttgart. Music studies with Nepomuk David (theory and counterpoint), with Jürgen Uhde (piano). 1957 first attendance at the Darmstadt vacation course: Scherchen, Stockhausen, Pousseur, Maderna, Nono, Adorno. From 1958 studies in Venice with Nono. 1960 return from Venice to Munich. 1963 and 1964 Cologne Courses in New Music. 1965 engaged by IPEM-Studio in Ghent. From 1966 lecturer in composition at the State University of Music and Performing Arts Stuttgart. Since 1970 teaching at the Ludwigsburg Educational University."
I see that Kimiko Ishizaka's Well-Tempered Clavier, Book 1 is released:
This is a follow-up to the Open Goldberg Variations, which I liked and is still NYOP at Bandcamp.
I am slightly confused about this one - the Open Goldberg was kickstarter funded and free to download. The new one is kickstarter funded and says it is "Open" and public domain, but it is 10 Euros to download. I am not clear in what sense it is "Open" - maybe just that people are free to use it without royalties.
ETA, I found a review that says "the recording will eventually be available open-source too"
- "Michel Banabila and Oene van Geel first met during their collaboration for the Cloud Ensemble EP (vinyl, 2013). Excited by the idea of further combining their sound-worlds, they embarked on a new venture to continue their electro-acoustic narrative. Much of the creative process of this album emerged during the recording process itself. On the track ‘Echoes from Hadhramaut’, their mutual friend Bruno Ferro Xavier da Silva joins them, with a multilayered bass texture. Sometimes compositions of Michel are the core of the music and in other occasions Michel created a lot out of improvised viola sounds and melodies of Oene. When Oene added viola melodies and textures, sometimes he was thinking with the mindset of a composer and sometimes he was floating on intuition, looking for what the story had to tell. Michel’s very first steps on his brand new Doepfer A-100 modular system blended well with Oene’s viola and Stroh violin improvisations, and after several sessions together, they transformed their sound sculptures into these 5 new tracks, now presented on CD as : “Music for Viola and Electronics”.
- "Michel Banabila (Amsterdam 1961) is a sound artist, composer, and producer. Banabila's career kicked off with his album VoizNoiz (2000), which received international critical acclaim. He worked in Holland, Poland, South Africa, Russia, Japan, Spain and Belgium. Banabila has produced musical scores for numerous films, documentaries, theatre plays and choreographies. Music + collaborations Banabila is especially keen on mixing disciplines and music styles, using elements and influences from jazz, electronic music, classical and world music. Therefore there is no particular genre to categorize Banabila's music. In addition to acoustic instrumentation, Banabila uses electronics, field recordings, and recordings from radio, television and film. He collaborated with many different types of artists like Anton Goudsmit, Erkan Oğur, Holger Czukay , Joshua Samson, Machinefabriek,Mete Erker, Oene van Geel, Radboud Mens, Scanner, Sandhya Sanjana, Yaşar Saka , and Zenial, among others."
- "Violist /composer Oene van Geel (1973) is a true adventurer in music. Influenced by jazz, Indian music, chamber music and free improvisation, he has applied his virtuoso improvising skills and his compositional talents to a wide range of musical activities. He has toured in Europe, India, Japan, the US and Canada.
As a player he is currently active with Zapp 4, Estafest, The Nordanians, Art of the Eyebrow, the Splendorkestra, duo with Michel Banabila and duo with Kenzo Kusuda. In addition to these groups he is regularly invited as an improvising guest soloist.
He has won the Boy Edgar Award (2013), Sena Performers Toonzettens Award (2012, with Zapp 4), Kersjes Award (2005, with Zapp 4), the Deloitte Jazz Award (2002), Dutch Jazz Competition (2001) and the Jur Naessens Music Award (2000).
Oene composes for his own groups, but also writes for other ensembles / soloists such as The David Kweksilber Big Band, Amstel Quartet, Remy van Kesteren, Amsterdam Sinfonietta, Matangi Quartet, Calefax, Tetzepi bigtet, Ricciotti Ensemble, David Braid and many others.
The combination of different disciplines is a fascinating field to work in for Oene. As a player and / or composer he has been involved in (theatre) productions of Boukje Schweigman, Theun Mosk, Saartje van Camp, Herman van Baar, Marcel Sijm, the Max Tak orchestra, De tafel van Vijf, De Wereldband, Holland Opera and the Sonnevanck theatre.
More and more important in the activities of Oene is Splendor, a musicians collective with its own organisation and concert hall in the centre of Amsterdam."
This is from the tail end of last year but I just found it:
"On CD2 Pärt’s earliest published works, two Sonatinas and a Partita (1958-59), receive lively, crisp interpretations from Van Veen. They are preceded by four dance pieces for children’s theatre (1956-57) which are pleasant but give no clue to the direction Pärt’s mature music would take. CD1 collects the post-1976 piano music, including relatively well-known pieces like Spiegel im Spiegel and Fratres (played as duets, and based on the cello-piano and violin-piano versions respectively) and more obscure works, including Hymn to a Great City, all played with insight and a crystalline tone." (Review)
Aki Takahashi, piano; FLUX Quartet (Tom Chiu, Conrad Harris, violins; Max Mandel, viola; Felix Fan, cello); The DownTown Ensemble (Margaret Lancaster, flute; Daniel Goode, clarinet; Larry Polansky, guitar, mandolin; Joseph Kubera, piano; Chris Nappi, vibraphone)
- "The compositions contained on this disc, like many of Barbara Monk Feldman's (b. 1953) works, have a strong connection to specific locations, and take their inspiration from landscapes the composer has known and experienced - not as literal depictions in sound, but as abstracted impressions of the colors, textures, and atmospheres evoked by these special places.
The Chaco Wilderness (2005) and String Quartet No. 1 (2004) both take their inspiration from the high deserts of northern New Mexico, where she lived from 2000 to 2012. Specifically these compositions reference the area around Chaco Canyon in the northwest part of the state, the site of abandoned ancient Native American settlements perched at the bottom of the rugged cliffs of this harsh but beautiful landscape. In program notes for the quartet, the composer has compared these cliffs to a "gravitational sculpture," addressing the close ties her music has both to nature and the visual arts. Like Georgia O'Keeffe's work, the music takes its inspiration from nature, but from this initial impulse reaches out towards abstraction. As in O'Keeffe where natural subjects are highly stylized, in Monk Feldman's work the melodic figures, while beautiful and expressive, are the starting point for more intensive exploration of instrumental color, texture, and registral shapes and contours.
The score to Soft Horizons (2012), for piano, is inscribed with the location of Gaspésie, Quebec. As with the desert, the paradoxes of scale are palpable in the maritime landscape of this location, where the St. Lawrence River widens out to meet the Atlantic, the river gradually becoming the ocean in one direction, while the varying light - either reflecting off the water's surface, or mixing with the rising fog - creates another illusion, blurring the distinction between the surface of the water and the distant horizon, and between the water, air, and land. Soft Horizons dissolves any fixed point of reference into a misty floating world of sound. It explores the full range of the instrument, and in doing so creates its own audible illusion, gently playing with the inherent limits of human perception. "
- "(b. 1950s, Québec province). Canadian composer of mostly chamber works that have been performed in Asia, Europe and North America.
Ms. Monk Feldman studied composition with Bengt Hambræus at McGill University in Montréal from 1980-83, where she earned her MMus. She then studied with Morton Feldman, to whom she was later married, at the State University of New York at Buffalo from 1984-87 and there earned her PhD, on the Edgard Varèse Fellowship.
Numerous performers have played her works, including the Arditti String Quartet, clarinettist Roger Heaton, pianists Yvar Mikhashoff, Ursula Oppens, Frederic Rzewski, and Aki Takahashi, percussionists Steven Schick, Robyn Schulkowsky and Jan Williams, and cellist Frances-Marie Uitti.
Her music has been premièred at Darmstadt and the festivals Inventionen in Berlin, Nieuwe Muziek in Middelburg, Other Minds in San Francisco, and Toronto New Music and in the Rotonda in Tokyo. BBC, BRT, CBC, HR, and WDR have recorded her works. She served on the faculty at Darmstadt in 1988, 1990 and 1994 and has guest-lectured at the Hochschule der Künste in Berlin and has lectured and taught at universities in Canada and the USA.
Her research in music and the visual arts has led to collaborations with numerous artists, including Stan Brakhage, whose hand-painted film Three Homerics was created specifically for use with her piece Infinite Other.
She founded the Time Shards Music Series at the Georgia O'Keeffe Museum in Santa Fe in 2001 and has since served as its artistic director. Her article Music and the Picture Plane has appeared in the RES Journal of Anthropology and Aesthetics (1997) and Contemporary Music Review (1998)."
- "Feldman’s last work, Piano, Violin, Viola, Cello displays the qualities of the “late style”: complete mastery, utter assurance, and a kind of luminous melancholy. Like Palais de Mari, written a year earlier, it unfolds at a leisurely pace, with similar uses of repetition and recurrence, gentle rocking figures, and a somewhat restricted range. The measured unfolding of the material, without emphasis on dramatic contrast or large fluctuations in the rate of change, enables the listener to focus on the work’s many subtle and beguiling details."
- "We’re pleased to announce Tundra Songs - a new album featuring the music of Canadian composer Derek Charke - which is out now on Centrediscs, the label of the Canadian Music Centre. Tanya Tagaq, the Polaris Prize-winning Inuit throat singer appears on the title track. The album also includes Cercle du Nord III, which incorporates environmental sounds from northern Canada, four of Charke’s series of Inuit Throat Song Games, and storyteller Laakkuluk Williamson Bathory’s telling of the tale of Sedna.
Charke is noted for works that address current environmental issues, including climate change and the impact of oil exploration in the tar sands. Tundra Songs and Cercle du Nord III both feature field recordings he made on trips to Canada’s far North. The quartet has worked extensively with Charke in the past, including the recent commission Dear Creator, help us return to the centre of our hearts, which was inspired by a visit Charke made to the Athabasca Oil Sands in northern Alberta. The work received its premiere at Carnegie Hall in early March.
For Tundra Songs, Charke traveled with his gear to the Nunavut capital of Iqaluit on Baffin Island, proceeding to a two-day trip out on the ice by dog sled. There he recorded sounds of cracking and grinding ice sheets, shrimp, krill, and other marine life (via hydrophone), the shrieks of ravens, and various sounds of daily life in the region’s communities.
Tundra Songs weaves these environmental samples into a propulsive texture that also incorporates vocal sounds from Tanya Tagaq, who has developed the ability to sing call-and-response Inuit throat song games on her own, and from the quartet itself, which employs circular bowing techniques that evoke throat singing. The work’s five movements move through the region’s cycle of seasons, focusing in turn on ice, water sounds, the Greenlandic creation story of Sassuma Arnaa, the howls of dogs, and the airborne sounds of ravens and insects."
Two single releases, the first on Emusic, the second is free on Bandcamp:
- "Christian Wolff premiered this work in 1966 in New York City. The only score was later stolen with his guitar out of his car. Sketches of the piece were found in the Feldman archives in Basel, later Wolff's recording of the piece for WKPFA in Berkeley, California was uncovered. Seth Josel transcribed this recording.
Josel began comparing the recording with the sketches, finding a significant portion of the sketch material corresponded to the performance transcription. This recording is of Seth Josel's “reconstruction,” which attempts to mediate between the transcribed recording and the “Basel” sketch.
Mode Records is releasing this version as a download only for now, as the coupling for the companion works with this release has been delayed."
Comments
The title track, composed by Ciro Scotto, is a four-movement work that coalesces heavy metal and contemporary classical conventions, highlighting the connections between these two different yet similarly technical worlds of composition. Between Rock and a Hard Place-Unplugged substitutes electric and electronic instruments for classical guitar, contrabass, cello, and piano. Scotto says of his inspiration for this acoustic version, "Exploring the parallel dimension concept in Between Rock and a Hard Place-Unplugged allowed me to recompose the piece following ideas that did not develop in the original, so the new work is a complete rethinking and exploration of the material."
The McCormick Percussion Group also features two works for unspecified instrumentation by John Cage (1912-1992), Composition for Three Voices (1934), arranged for two vibraphones and marimba, and Five (1988), performed by bowed vibraphones. Rivus, by composer Dan Senn, another work for unspecified instruments, is performed on celeste, glockenspiel, and vibraphone for a blending of metallic and wooden timbres."
- "The McCormick Percussion Group was formed to explore and record new and unusual works in the percussion ensemble idiom. They have recorded over two dozen compact discs including many for the Capstone label. In order to assure the composersí musical intentions, most of the McCormick Percussion Group recordings are composer supervised. Percussionist Robert McCormick is a former member of the Harry Partch Ensemble and served as principal percussionist of the Florida Orchestra for twenty seasons. He is currently Professor of Music at the University of South Florida in Tampa and timpanist with Opera Tampa. He also tours and records with the McCormick Duo Flute/Percussion Group. He was the recipient of the Florida Music Educator of the Year Award in 2006, and was the 2007 Grand Prize winner of the Keystone Percussion Composition Competition. The McCormick Percussion Group uses Zildjian Cymbals, Encore Mallets and Grover Pro Percussion Products."
- "Robert McCormick is currently Professor of Music at the University of South Florida and timpanist with Opera Tampa. He is a former member of the Harry Partch Ensemble and served as principle percussionist and assistant timpanist with the Florida Orchestra for twenty seasons. He has authored several articles, solos and two percussion texts: Percussion for Musicians and 32 Duets for Percussion. Robert was the 2006 recipient of the Florida Music Educator of the Year Awards, the 2007 Grand Prize winner of the Keystone Percussion Composition Award, and the 2010 recipient of the Jerome Krivanek Distinguished University Teacher Award."
Ravello Records - Soundcloud
http://www.emusic.com/album/albert-howe-lord/human-meets-nature-seasons-shift-sonata/14455306/
Seems like I am alive:)
TROY
Cello: Joan Jeanrenaud
- "Nana is the first full-length release of Cenk Ergün’s chamber music. The album focuses on the subtle variations of pitch, duration, timbre, and interpretation among multiple iterations of musical material, juxtaposed in time through constantly shifting sequences. Nana contains two works: Proximity, written for So Percussion, and Cello Peace, written for cellist Joan Jeanrenaud.
Called "psychedelically meditative" by the NewMusicBox, Proximity is a twenty-five minute long percussion quartet. The music is a series of unisons, canons, solos, and chaotic layers of rhythmic patterns played on bells, pipes, cymbals, tam-tams, gyils, crotales, glockenspiels, and vibraphones – at times struck, at times bowed.
Cello Peace is a quartet for a solo cellist: Four unique interpretations of the same temporally indeterminate score are recorded to be played back simultaneously on four audio channels. Over a half-hour in length, the piece slowly moves through extremes of sonic density and instrumental color as replicas of musical fragments race each other in time."
Carrier Records
- "Cenk Ergün is a composer and improviser based in New York. His music has been performed by artists such as So Percussion, Alarm Will Sound, Ensemble Laboratorium, and Joan Jeanrenaud. As an improviser, he performs electronics in groups with Alvin Curran, Jason Treuting, and Jeff Snyder.
Venues that have featured Ergün's music include New York's Carnegie Hall, Le Poisson Rouge, The Roulette, The Stone; Amsterdam's Muziekgebouw, Zurich's Tonhalle, and Istanbul's Babylon.
Some events Ergün has participated in are Gaudeamus Music Week, MATA Festival, Bang on a Can Marathon, WNYC's New Sounds Live, Peak Performances at Montclair University, Stanford Lively Arts, and San Francisco Electronic Music Festival.
Records Ergün appears on include The Art Of The Fluke with Alvin Curran and So Percussion's Cage 100 Bootleg Series. His first solo composition record, Nana, was released in May 2014 on Carrier Records.
Ergün's music has been described as "haunting", "ominously throbbing" (NY Times), "psychedelically meditative" (New Music Box), and "conceptual rigor" (The Wire)."
SO Percussion
Thanks for the coding lb (already forgot it all again - just kidding)
Cenk Ergün!!
Wow - this is a real catch!
For 5$ anybody should enjoy this!
Seems like just what I needed this morning after a long night a shooting a video clip with cats flying all over.
These bells of proximity are like honey bees flying around my ears in my studio right now.
Some birds morning sounds near by are in the mix with this - seems so very right!
Making my happy:)
I love the "press here to download" thing. And the site as a whole. Yeh - cut the middle man bulshit!
Cenk Ergün seems to be a guy of our healing music family. This is very balancing - I would say - it's NEW AGE :)
Their photo is so 1977!
Denovali Records starts the 2015 season with a mindblowing album (EP ?) with a fantastic nameless soprano operasinger.
I could imagine that it's the kind of music, Germanprof and maybe even Nereffid inevitably would fall in love with.<div style="font-weight: normal;"><a href="http://www.emusic.com/album/second-moon-of-winter/one-for-sorrow-two-for-joy/15498052/"><img src="http://cf-images.emusic.com/music/images/album/154/980/15498052/600x600.jpg" alt="One for Sorrow, Two for Joy album cover"> </a><br></div><div><span style="font-weight: bold;">Second Moon of Winter - One for Sorrow, Two for Joy
- "SECOND MOON OF WINTER is a new experimental ensemble from Ireland melting discordant ambiences with luminous soprano. Their first installment, a six track album called One for Sorrow, Two for Joy, will be released on Denovali Records in January 2015.
One for Sorrow, Two for Joy was written and recorded live in a series of four hour sessions in a basement by the sea in County Cork in the south of Ireland; no computers, no playback of samples, no overdubs, no further processing after the event.
It is three people performing live in an intensely personal collaboration. Knowing each other well and yet having never experimented together before, it felt almost like a necessity to combine their far-flung musical minds. Waves of sound created predominantly on guitar and clarinet, provide a backdrop for singing rarely experienced outside an opera house, and yet with a subtle connection to Irish folk song also.
Inspired by the symbolism of photos, prints and memories, the studio floor was strewn with semi-precious melodies, never knowing which was to be picked up next, to be held and then polished like sea glass in a tidal soundscape.
Tethering themselves to each others innate sense of interpretation and improvisation, an idea was never good nor bad, it was instead either in or out, necessary or unnecessary. In making One for Sorrow, Two for Joy SECOND MOON OF WINTER understood that true musical inspiration and output is free from grasping and clinging.
Their fragmented melodies meet, form and fluctuate in a wave of musical metamorphosis. They strive to sit apart and yet within their soundscapes - melting and moving forward with the momentum of a creeping frost under the waning of the second moon.
SECOND MOON OF WINTER is to be silent, to listen and finally to create a picture out of that listening. It is a meshing together of sounds that touch and clash in their different atmospheres yet bathe together in a tense harmonic understanding.
One for Sorrow, Two for Joy is a truly fascinating and deeply persuasive listen for enthusiasts of avant-garde, ambient, dark free jazz and contemporary classical music."
Denovali Records- Soundcloud - Soundcloud 2 </span></div><div><a href="https://www.facebook.com/secondmoonofwinter"><img src="http://img2-ak.lst.fm/i/u/avatar170s/2089df0eed0a4b7bcb96e95217e9dc25.jpg"> </a><span style="font-weight: bold;"><br></span></div>
Kind of deep like "meditation for lou" (on eMusic).
Glad I bought this one as well.
You should be my therapist Ib on days like this when not doing yoga
and comes in the right timing just as my boyfriend started to learn opera:)
It also reminded me some works of a best friend living the us - Matti Kovler the composer:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ymztah3j5jA
Essential listening for lovers of the composer and genre, and for anyone interested in the history of electronic and experimental music."
- "Michel Chion was born in 1947 in Creil (France). In 1970, after literary and musical studies, he began to work as Pierre Schaeffer's assistant, then became publications director for the INA-GRM, where he was a member from 1971 to 1976.
As a composer, he has focused on musique concrète, an idiom for which he has developed original compositional techniques across many genres: melodramas (e.g. La Tentation de Saint-Antoine, 1982), short studies and religious music (e.g. Requiem, 1973).
As a filmmaker, he has directed a number of prize-winning short films and documentaries (e.g. La Messe de Terre, 1996, a 2 hour video accompanied by musique concrète).
As a theorist, he has published more than 25 books which have been translated into more than 10 languages, and has contributed to numerous dictionaries and encyclopaedias. In addition, he has developed a new discipline, the systematic study of audio-visual relationships which he teaches at a number of centres and film schools. He has also followed on from Pierre Schaeffer's work and vision in defining the effects which are particular to the fixation of sound."[</i>
http://www.brocoli.org/release/michel-chion-musiques-concretes-1970-71 - <url>http://michelchion.com/<color=#666666></color=#666666></url><color=#666666></color=#666666></b></font><color=#666666></color=#666666></div>
Were taking the idea of crystal shapes, angles and lattice structures that we can visualize and transferring that to sound design, says Griswold. The duo explores ways to apply the ideas of perpetual motion, pattern and crystalline structures to musical forms, in the process creating music that is minimalist at heart but also rich and beautiful in execution. Recalling everything from Steve Reich to Balinese Gamelan music, Time Crystals is grounded in prepared piano played by Griswold and toy piano plus a variety of percussion played by Tomlinson."
- "Composer-pianist Erik Griswold fuses experimental, jazz and world music traditions to create works of striking originality. Specializing in prepared piano, percussion and toy instruments, he has created a musical universe all his own that is "sincere" (neural.it), "playful" (igloo magazine), "colourful and refreshingly unpretentious" (Paris Transatlantic).
Percussionist Vanessa Tomlinson is active in the fields of solo percussion, contemporary chamber music, improvisation, installation and composition. She has performed at festivals around the world such as Wien Modern, London Jazz Festival, Green Umbrella Series LA, Bang-on-a-Can Marathon NY, The Adelaide Festival of Arts and Shanghai Festival. She is the recipient of 2 Green Room Awards, the 2011 APRA/AMC Award for Excellence by an organization or individual, and has been awarded artist residencies through Asialink (University of Melbourne), Civitella Ranieri (NY/Italy), Banff (Canada) and Bundanon (NSW"
Innova Recordings</span>
</span><span style="font-weight: bold; color: rgb(102, 0, 204);">Composed By Tristan Murail
Electric Guitar Victor Paimblanc
Engineer [Assisted By] Camille Lezer*
Engineer, Mixed By, Mastered By Laurent Codoul
Graphics Tim Schwartz
Ondes Martenot , Liner Notes Augustin Viard
Ondes Martenot, Translated By Nadia Ratsimandresy
Percussion Lucie Antunes
Piano Antoine Alérini (tracks: 2, 4 to 6)
Our third collection featuring the ondes Martenot and the most experimental, in part because the Spectralist composer Tristan Murail, to whom this CD is dedicated, was himself a student of - and performer on - the ondes and, in these pieces, he explores some of its less conventional byways. These works are united here for the first time, performed by a new generation of musicians more attuned to the raw, less academic approach to sound that Murail himself favoured. Works for solo Onde, two Ondes, Onde and Piano, two Ondes, percussion and electric guitar ."
ReR Megacorp
- "This is the third collection of pieces featuring the ondes Martinot, and the most experimental to date, in part because Spectralist composer Tristan Murail was himself a student of the ondes and, in these pieces, he explores some of the instrument's less conventional byways. It is also the first time these pieces have been collected together, performed now by a new generation of musicians more attuned to the raw, less academic approach to sound that Murail himself favoured. Tristan Murail was born in 1947, studied with Olivier Messiaen and then went to Rome where he met Giacinto Scelsi, a maverick modernist nonconformist, who exerted a strong influence on his subsequent work. In addition, Murail's encounters with the music of Pink Floyd, Chicago and Tangerine Dream had had an effect on him not dissimilar to his meeting with Scelsi, radically changing his approach to the use of electronics."
Clear Spot
https://soundcloud.com/ensemble-volta/les-nuages-de-magellan-tristan</span>
Think I heard them before sometime.
It's an experimental rarity. Soundcloud track is so vivid and enrich with pure energy of creation for the sake of creation.
The kind of treasure I would love to see on eMusic front page some day
- "Bruno Letort is a French composer born in 1963 in Vichy. This guitarist published a series of albums on the border of jazz and rock in the early '80s (with Manu Katche, Noël Akchoté, Didier Malherbe...). His discography from the '90s contains more 'scored' music for orchestra (Pièces pour les pays baltes, 1992 ; Le Continent obscur, commissioned by the Orchestre Philharmonique de Radio France, 1998-99), his 'Fables électroniques' (2001) blends concrete/electronic sounds with a symphony orchestra. In 2004, Bruno Letort recorded a new album called 'E(a)st', the fruit of many trips to East-European countries. That same year, he became 'composer in residence' at the National Orchestra of Belarus.
Bruno Letort's approach has always referred to multidisciplinarity. Witness the number of works he has composed for dance, theater, cinema, video and scenography. Closely related to Benoit Peeters and Francois Schuiten (emblematic figures of the Belgian comic strip), he composed with them L'Affaire Désombres. In 2000 he founded the Radio France label Signature which has recorded artists as diverse as Pierre Henry, Fred Frith, Hector Zazou, Elliott Sharp, Jean-Luc Godard, Luc Ferrari, Christian Fennesz, Mika Vainio, and Christian Zanési."
Sub Rosa
- "Ghédalia Tazartès was born in Paris, France in 1947. In 1974, he bought a mic, a tape recorder and a band echo. This is when he began to develop what he called Impromuz, his own musical language. His main instrument is voice. Basically Tazartès creates a bed of loops and/or drones using taped samples and synthesizers and then sings over them in a style that sounds like gypsy folk music. But it is interrupted by sudden cuts to a child speaking (reciting?), sometimes piano or string instruments stating a new theme, or found sounds, only to cut from that back into a different loop and another song.
The release called Diasporas / Tazartès and the CD has such a liner notes: ”Ghédalia Tazartès is a nomad. He wanders through music from chant to rhythm, from one voice to another. He paves the way for the electric and the vocal paths, between the muezzin psalmody and the screaming of a rocker. He traces vague landscapes where the mitre of the white clown, the plumes of the sorcerer, the helmet of a cop and Parisian anhydride collide into polyphonic ceremonies. Don’t become a black, an arab, a Tibetan monk, a jew, a woman or an animal but to feel all this stirring deep inside of you.”
More Ghédalia Tazartès @ Emusers - And more.
Yehuda Amichai.
The smoothly flowing Ishi's Song (2012, for piano) was inspired by Ishi, the last survivor of the Yahi Indians, who were decimated to extinction at the end of the 19th century. Ishi was the last native speaker of the Yahi-Yana language, and the opening melody of the piece was taken from a recording of Ishi singing what he called “The Maidu Doctor's Song.”
The haunting, motoric A Message From the Emperor (2010, for two speaking percussionists) is based on an eponymous Kafka parable, in which a glorious being sends an important message, just for you, which can never be delivered. Bresnick remarks that we have lived on our planet for many years, waiting for a message that finally reveals the reason for our mortality and the sorrow and suffering that is our common fate.
The attractively delicate Josephine The Singer (2011, for violin) is also based on a Kafka story, his last written work “Josephine the Singer or the Mouse People.” Bresnick comments that this short story is a “prescient mediation both on divas and art, but also what might be the future of the Jews as a persecuted minority in Europe.”
The wistful Strange Devotion (2010, for piano) is inspired by an enigmatic etching in Francisco de Goya’s great Disasters of War sequence. The artist gazes with skeptical compassion at a group of Spanish people praying to a donkey that pulls a bier with a corpse. Bresnick feels that the “donkey's mute yet somehow knowing expression seems to reveal both the sincerity and futility of the people's unquestioning faith.”
Lang notes the CD’s works explore the equilibrium “between the living and the dead, the mortal and the immortal, the forgotten and the unforgettable.” He concludes, “The piece that exemplifies this most powerfully is Going Home – Vysoke, My Jerusalem. It was written in the aftermath a journey Bresnick took to the small Russian-Polish town where his mother was born, and where generations of his forebears had lived. He had heard stories about it all his life – the broken house, the ruined synagogue. The stories had told him where to find them. The music tells us how to remember.”
Starkland
- "Four recent compositions by u.s. composers for electric guitars, exploring the novel textural, harmonic, and expressive possibilities that the instrument allows."
Emusic
- "I was born in Genova, Italy, one sunny September morning in 1983. me behind a guitar
I first picked up the guitar when I was 8; actually, I really wanted to play the piano, but there was no way one would fit in our old home, so I learned the basics from a family friend, then continued strumming happily on my own . . . . . .</span></div>
Exerpts @ Soundcloud
Roland Kuit is an independent researcher, lecturer modular synthesis and composition.
He contrived numerous cutting edge concepts in synthesis.
As an author he writes about modular synthesis, research and sound design. His most comprehensive book is the "Laboratory of Patching; Illustrated Compendium of Modular Synthesis".
Roland's music and books are published by Donemus,
Publishing House of Dutch Contemporary Classical Music.
Roland Kuit received his first piano and recorder lessons at the age of six. Fascinated by the phenomenon 'sound' he made his first improvisations. The tape recorder at home was not only used to record these sessions but also all kinds of noises. He started playing the flute at the age of eleven. One year later he was accepted at the Royal Conservatory in The Hague. His teachers were Mirjam Nastasi and Marijke Bakker. After playing Baroque music, his interest went via Debussy, Fauré to the modern composers like Escher, van Dijk, Fukushima.
Electronic music crossed his path. At that moment Roland made a decisive step in his career by subscribing at the prestigious Institute of Sonology in the Netherlands, one of longest-running research and production hubs on the European electroacoustic music scene. With great enthusiasm Roland studied analogue modular sound design and composition under Jaap Vink and Frits Weiland. Roland attended lectures about MIDIM/VOSIM given by Werner Kaegi and Stan Tempelaars as well as Fortran IV music from Gottfried Michael Koenig (1981-1985) and Paul Berg's lectures PILE. Roland took the opportunity to study and explore interactive composition and acoustics at the IRCAM, Paris. Kaija Saariaho and Philippe Manoury were his teachers (2000)."
Carillonneurs – people who play huge sets of bells from an oversized keyboard mechanism – constantly battle two challenges: The bells don’t stop ringing, and the unwieldy mechanism requires dramatic physical exertions to control, often resulting in a blurry, imprecise sonic landscape. My percussion writing grows out of my experience playing carillon, from the unhindered ringing of the dulcimer, chimes, and vibraphone, to the demanding physical exertions required in the marimba pieces and the imprecise sonic world of Blur. Finally, Lurgy makes maximum demands of the carillon, while augmenting its sonic world with percussion ensemble."
Neil Thornock @ New Focus Recordings
- "Neil Thornock began his college-level music studies as an organist and carillonneur at Brigham Young University. He received a Doctorate of Music in composition from the Indiana University Jacobs School of Music in 2006. During academic year 2006-2007, he was a visiting assistant professor of music and assistant to the Provost for accreditation at Southern Virginia University. He joined the BYU faculty in the 2007-2008 academic year. He teaches courses in composition and theory.
In his artistic pursuits, Thornock primarily considers himself a performer/composer. Many of his compositions grow out of performance opportunities on organ, carillon, piano, toy piano, and harpsichord. His interests also include electronic sound media (most recently, Huygens’ Workshop for toy piano and electonics) and growing interest in video. Thornock’s works have been described both as “richly scored, moving, resonant” (Peter Jacobi, Herald Times) and as possessing “cool understatement”. They have received performances in various venues, including NASA, SEAMUS, SCI, Imagine 2, Eccles Organ Concert Series, and San Diego State University. Indiana University ensembles recently premiered O years! and age! farewell for choir and orchestra as part of the opening concert of the Midwest Composers’ Symposium. In 2004, he was awarded a Barlow Commission which resulted in a 35-minute double bass solo, premiered at Indiana University by Nathan Wood. Additionally, his music for carillon has garnered several international awards and has been regularly performed at congresses of the Guild of Carillonneurs of North America since 2001.
http://cfac.byu.edu/music/people/?listing=neil-thornock
Thanks for posting Ib
TROY
- (Rainer Nonnenmann)
ETA, I found a review that says "the recording will eventually be available open-source too"
Music + collaborations
Banabila is especially keen on mixing disciplines and music styles, using elements and influences from jazz, electronic music, classical and world music. Therefore there is no particular genre to categorize Banabila's music. In addition to acoustic instrumentation, Banabila uses electronics, field recordings, and recordings from radio, television and film. He collaborated with many different types of artists like Anton Goudsmit, Erkan Oğur, Holger Czukay , Joshua Samson, Machinefabriek,Mete Erker, Oene van Geel, Radboud Mens, Scanner, Sandhya Sanjana, Yaşar Saka , and Zenial, among others."
- "Violist /composer Oene van Geel (1973) is a true adventurer in music. Influenced by jazz, Indian music, chamber music and free improvisation, he has applied his virtuoso improvising skills and his compositional talents to a wide range of musical activities. He has toured in Europe, India, Japan, the US and Canada.
As a player he is currently active with Zapp 4, Estafest, The Nordanians, Art of the Eyebrow, the Splendorkestra, duo with Michel Banabila and duo with Kenzo Kusuda.
In addition to these groups he is regularly invited as an improvising guest soloist.
He has won the Boy Edgar Award (2013), Sena Performers Toonzettens Award (2012, with Zapp 4), Kersjes Award (2005, with Zapp 4), the Deloitte Jazz Award (2002), Dutch Jazz Competition (2001) and the Jur Naessens Music Award (2000).
Oene composes for his own groups, but also writes for other ensembles / soloists such as The David Kweksilber Big Band, Amstel Quartet, Remy van Kesteren, Amsterdam Sinfonietta, Matangi Quartet, Calefax, Tetzepi bigtet, Ricciotti Ensemble, David Braid and many others.
The combination of different disciplines is a fascinating field to work in for Oene.
As a player and / or composer he has been involved in (theatre) productions of Boukje Schweigman, Theun Mosk, Saartje van Camp, Herman van Baar, Marcel Sijm, the Max Tak orchestra, De tafel van Vijf, De Wereldband, Holland Opera and the Sonnevanck theatre.
More and more important in the activities of Oene is Splendor, a musicians collective with its own organisation and concert hall in the centre of Amsterdam."
FLUX Quartet (Tom Chiu, Conrad Harris, violins; Max Mandel, viola;
Felix Fan, cello);
The DownTown Ensemble (Margaret Lancaster, flute; Daniel Goode, clarinet;
Larry Polansky, guitar, mandolin; Joseph Kubera, piano;
Chris Nappi, vibraphone)
The Chaco Wilderness (2005) and String Quartet No. 1 (2004) both take their inspiration from the high deserts of northern New Mexico, where she lived from 2000 to 2012. Specifically these compositions reference the area around Chaco Canyon in the northwest part of the state, the site of abandoned ancient Native American settlements perched at the bottom of the rugged cliffs of this harsh but beautiful landscape. In program notes for the quartet, the composer has compared these cliffs to a "gravitational sculpture," addressing the close ties her music has both to nature and the visual arts. Like Georgia O'Keeffe's work, the music takes its inspiration from nature, but from this initial impulse reaches out towards abstraction. As in O'Keeffe where natural subjects are highly stylized, in Monk Feldman's work the melodic figures, while beautiful and expressive, are the starting point for more intensive exploration of instrumental color, texture, and registral shapes and contours.
The score to Soft Horizons (2012), for piano, is inscribed with the location of Gaspésie, Quebec. As with the desert, the paradoxes of scale are palpable in the maritime landscape of this location, where the St. Lawrence River widens out to meet the Atlantic, the river gradually becoming the ocean in one direction, while the varying light - either reflecting off the water's surface, or mixing with the rising fog - creates another illusion, blurring the distinction between the surface of the water and the distant horizon, and between the water, air, and land. Soft Horizons dissolves any fixed point of reference into a misty floating world of sound. It explores the full range of the instrument, and in doing so creates its own audible illusion, gently playing with the inherent limits of human perception. "
New World Records
Barbara Monk Feldman
- "(b. 1950s, Québec province). Canadian composer of mostly chamber works that have been performed in Asia, Europe and North America.
Ms. Monk Feldman studied composition with Bengt Hambræus at McGill University in Montréal from 1980-83, where she earned her MMus. She then studied with Morton Feldman, to whom she was later married, at the State University of New York at Buffalo from 1984-87 and there earned her PhD, on the Edgard Varèse Fellowship.
Numerous performers have played her works, including the Arditti String Quartet, clarinettist Roger Heaton, pianists Yvar Mikhashoff, Ursula Oppens, Frederic Rzewski, and Aki Takahashi, percussionists Steven Schick, Robyn Schulkowsky and Jan Williams, and cellist Frances-Marie Uitti.
Her music has been premièred at Darmstadt and the festivals Inventionen in Berlin, Nieuwe Muziek in Middelburg, Other Minds in San Francisco, and Toronto New Music and in the Rotonda in Tokyo. BBC, BRT, CBC, HR, and WDR have recorded her works. She served on the faculty at Darmstadt in 1988, 1990 and 1994 and has guest-lectured at the Hochschule der Künste in Berlin and has lectured and taught at universities in Canada and the USA.
Her research in music and the visual arts has led to collaborations with numerous artists, including Stan Brakhage, whose hand-painted film Three Homerics was created specifically for use with her piece Infinite Other.
She founded the Time Shards Music Series at the Georgia O'Keeffe Museum in Santa Fe in 2001 and has since served as its artistic director. Her article Music and the Picture Plane has appeared in the RES Journal of Anthropology and Aesthetics (1997) and Contemporary Music Review (1998)."
More Barbara Monk Feldman @ Emusers
For Tundra Songs, Charke traveled with his gear to the Nunavut capital of Iqaluit on Baffin Island, proceeding to a two-day trip out on the ice by dog sled. There he recorded sounds of cracking and grinding ice sheets, shrimp, krill, and other marine life (via hydrophone), the shrieks of ravens, and various sounds of daily life in the region’s communities.
Tundra Songs weaves these environmental samples into a propulsive texture that also incorporates vocal sounds from Tanya Tagaq, who has developed the ability to sing call-and-response Inuit throat song games on her own, and from the quartet itself, which employs circular bowing techniques that evoke throat singing. The work’s five movements move through the region’s cycle of seasons, focusing in turn on ice, water sounds, the Greenlandic creation story of Sassuma Arnaa, the howls of dogs, and the airborne sounds of ravens and insects."
- The Kronos Quartet.
- "Christian Wolff premiered this work in 1966 in New York City. The only score was later stolen with his guitar out of his car. Sketches of the piece were found in the Feldman archives in Basel, later Wolff's recording of the piece for WKPFA in Berkeley, California was uncovered. Seth Josel transcribed this recording.
Josel began comparing the recording with the sketches, finding a significant portion of the sketch material corresponded to the performance transcription. This recording is of Seth Josel's “reconstruction,” which attempts to mediate between the transcribed recording and the “Basel” sketch.
Mode Records is releasing this version as a download only for now, as the coupling for the companion works with this release has been delayed."