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The Number Pieces 5 - Two2
Laurel Karlik Sheehan gave the Canadian premiere of Two2 with Jack Behrens in 1990. Rob Haskins is a respected John Cage expert and scholar. Together they bring an authority and expertise to this performance of Two2. In most of the Number Pieces, all the performers have some freedom through Cage’s use of time brackets, flexible measures that show a range of possible starting and ending times. The time bracket system of notation used in these works allows a certain amount of flexibility in the p…
Asking
Asking is a large-scale work for piano solo that is a meditation and reflection on all of the meanings of the word “Asking”. Asking was specially composed for Eve Egoyan.
Number Pieces 4
The first recording of John Cage’s large scale composition for 3 recorder players. The Trio Dolce wrote Cage for permission to perform Solo with Obbligato Accompaniment on three alto recorders, one octave higher than the prescribed range. In a letter from March 1987 Cage replied: “Of course you may use the 3 alto recorders. I am glad that you are playing that piece.” They performed it on July 1988 with Cage in attendance. Cage’s enthusiastic reaction to this performance encouraged Trio Dolce t…
Whispers Out Of Time
Roger Reynolds’ (b.1939) music is a bit of a paradox: intimate in detail, while on a broader scale it is epic. It fits well with the music of his friends: Toru Takemitsu and Iannis Xenakis. The three works on this disc were composed over a four-year period (1987-1990). All are first recordings, and the first complete disc of Reynolds’ orchestral music. Symphony[Myths], dedicated to Takemitsu, is for large orchestra: woodwinds in fours, piano, harp and an extended percussion section. It is see…
Works with Guitar
Like his near contemporary Franco Donatoni, Aldo Clementi (b.1925) is an Italian composer who has had a very fruitful association with that most Italian of instruments, the guitar. Both Clementi and Donatoni shared similar paths in their compositional development: the early influences of major early 20th-century composers through the adoption and later rejection of serialism and the Darmstadt courses they both attended, culminating in their very individual mature styles. Clementi's recent pieces…
The Orchestral Works 2
"The first recording of his 32-minute grand cantata 'La Nascita del Verb.' Steeped in chromaticism, with hints of Scriabin and a sea of percussion, 'Nascita' boasts a vast double fugue (one of the most imposing in the history of music) and a forty-seven voice canon in twelve keys. This work, 'truly written in blood,' left Scelsi 'in a deplorable state, afterwards he stopped composing for several years. One of Giacinto Scelsi's infamous pieces are the 'Quattro Pezzi (su una nota sola).' Ear piece…
Ascension to Purgatory
This is Pape's third monographic CD with Mode Records. Whereas his last Mode CD ("Electro-acoustic Chamber Works", released in 1998) presented his ground breaking works of 1993-1996, this new CD presents a selection of his more recent pieces composed from 1998 to 2004. While Pape continues his fascination with composing with chaotic sound in Le Fleuve du Désir IV and Weaveworld Prologue, it is his new approach to composing with packets of granular time that predominates on this CD. In La Na…
The Piano Works 7 - Chess Serenade
A major discovery and first recording of an important Cage piece from 1944. In 1944, John Cage was invited to participate in “The Imagery of Chess” exhibition at the Julien Levy Gallery in New York City. The artists included Calder, Noguchi, Motherwell, Breton, Duchamp, Ernst, Man Ray, Tanning and other leading surrealists.Cage contributed a painting entitled “Chess Pieces”. It was purchased at the show and went into a private collection. For decades it was deemed lost and was (almost) forgotten…
Wolpe in Jerusalem
** 2021 Stock. Deluxe packaging in slipcase, including essays by Austin Clarkson and Yuval Shaked, and historical photos. Liner notes in English, German, French and Hebrew ** In 1931, Stefan Wolpe escaped from the growing Nazi threat, eventually arriving in Vienna to study with Anton Webern. When the Austrian authorities threatened to deport him back to Germany, he left and eventually settled in Jerusalem in 1934 where he began to teach composition and direct the choir at the Palestine Conservat…
Makrokosmos
** 2022 remastered repress ** Pianist Margaret Leng-Tan - considered the leading exponent of “extended” piano techniques - is at her best with this music. George Crumb and Ms. Tan worked closely on the preparation of these works for the recording. Crumb’s Makrokosmos I & II were written to expand the world of color and sonic possibilities which a single piano and pianist could create. In addition to playing the keyboard, the pianist is required to strum and pluck the strings; apply glass tumbler…
Volume 2: Electronics Works
Multi-channel electronic works in Surround Sound. Morton Subotnick was a phenomenon in the late '60s, the first composer to write substantial works for synthesizer that had a wide audience. He has been mentor to generations of composers, and his influence is so pervasive that it would be impossible to trace completely - the electronica movement, for one, reveres him. This release brings together two of his classic analog electronic works which were previously only available on LP.
Transición II. Phonophonie
This disc collects two early, forward looking works by Argentine born Mauricio Kagel, now living in Germany. Both works are constructed in such a way so that no two performances can ever be alike. Transición II was an early exploration of what "live electronics" are now being used to achieve. The score is in individual pages which can be placed in any order by the performers. It works on three levels. LIVE: The pianist performs on the keyboard while a percussionist performs inside the pian…
Another Sunrise
** 2021 Stock ** Peter Garland’s music is uniquely American; a blend of minimalism with influences from South/Central America, Asia and the Native Americans; along with American mavericks John Cage, Harry Partch, Lou Harrison, Henry Cowell, and Edgar Varèse. Born in 1952, he studied with Harold Budd and James Tenney. The works on this record share a special meditative, and at times ecstatic, spirituality. Garland has a long artistic association with the performers on this disc. Essential Music’s…
A Cage of saxophones 1
Between 1983 and 1991 John cage wrote three pieces specifically for saxophones, Four5, Five4 and Hymnkus, which are combined here for the first time on CD. In addition, Cage authorized Ulrich Krieger's arrangement for saxophone of Ryoanji. Krieger also made a saxophone arrangement of Five, one of the few compositions from this period performable on any instruments. This unique disc concentrates on Cage's late works for saxophone. A CAGE OF SAXOPHONES VOL.2 (mode 160), features a combination of…
I Like To Think Of Harriet Tubman
*2022 stock* 'A true Leninist would argue that art in a smoothly running socialist state would become redundant and disappear, though while waiting for such a perfect society to come about, we have an idea of what socialist literature, painting, sculpture and cinema are like. But what does socialist music sound like? Luigi Nono? Eisler? Robert Wyatt? The Ex? Well, all four. and you may add Christian Wolff to the list. Like fellow experimental composers Cornelius Cardew and Frederic Rzewski, Wolf…
Electroacoustic Chamber Works
Composed between 1993-97, this second volume of works by Gerard Pape on Mode continues his richly darkly dramatic style with new compositional turns. Born in Brooklyn, now living in Paris, Pape is the director of the Atelier UPIC – an electronic music studio utilizing the unique UPIC computer developed by Iannis Xenakis – since 1991. While a resident of Ann Arbor, Michigan he ran Sinewave Studios, a state of the art New Music and Electronic Music studio and organized of the annual TWICE Festival…
Hypothetical Moments
Other Minds is excited to present Hypothetical Moments, a DVD of the collaborative works of Carol Law and Charles Amirkhanian, available on video for the first time. Some of the work included within will be familiar to followers of Amirkhanian’s work (Dog of Stravinsky, Mahogany Ballpark), but the vast majority of Hypothetical Moments has been entirely unavailable until now. Both video and audio have been lovingly restored and remastered, opening up a new pathway into the densely layered and ref…
With love
Georgia Denham (b.1997) draws on anecdotal experience to create her music. She studied with Andrew Hamilton at Royal Birmingham Conservatoire and now with Richard Causton at the University of Cambridge for her PhD. She lives with her husband, a theoretical computer scientist, and their many beloved plants. “This collection of chamber music from 2018–2022 wakes scores I thought were long since sleeping, where I first learned to write the delicate sounds I loved. With music written during my studi…
Weathering
Ryan Seward is a musician, composer, and artist living in Colorado Springs, Colorado. His work is situated within and across a number of forms, including composition, improvisation, installation, performance, phonography, photography, sculpture, and videography. Ryan’s work has most recently been performed by TAK ensemble, Filament, and Sam Wells, and his recordings have been released by Editions Glomar, emic rite, Marginal Frequency, and Sawyer Editions. Ryan holds the MA in Music from Wesleyan…