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Pioneers of Electronic Music
In 1950, the Columbia University Music Department requisitioned a tape recorder to use in teaching and for recording concerts. In 1951, the first tape recorder arrived, an Ampex 400, and Vladimir Ussachevsky, then a junior faculty member, was assigned a job that no one else wanted: the care of the tape recorder. This job was to have important consequences for Ussachevsky and the medium he developed. Electronic music was born. Over the next ten years, Ussachevsky and his collaborators established…
Columbia- Princeton Electronic Music Center 1961- 1973
Works by Bülent Arel, Charles Dodge, Ingram Marshall, Ilhan Mimaroglu, Daria Semegen, Alice Shields. The Columbia-Princeton Electronic Music Center was the first electronic music center to be established in the United States. From 1959 to the late 1970s, it was one of the premiere sound facilities in the world. The vast majority of pieces composed at the Center - approximately three hundred - were composed during this period. Some have become classics of music history. This selection, draw…
Extreme Positions
Philip Corner was an active member of Fluxus, a founder of the Tone Roads Chamber Ensemble, the resident musician and composer for the Judson Dance Theatre, and co-founder of Gamelan Son of Lion. The musical opportunities that these ensembles and their performances offered Corner ensured that he was both prolific and had or developed a deep understanding of the important artistic influences of that time. Corner uses a variety of scoring methods. He is truly the equal of John Cage in forcing us t…
Words Fail Me
The majestic beauty and savage turbulence that one often beholds while witnessing an awesome act of nature is also evident in Lois V Vierk's vigorous and delicate music. In her meticulously wrought works, she enfolds the rapture of opulent expression in the elegance of formal rigor, a combination that derives much of its power and grace from a sensitive integration of Western experimental practices with the traditional classical music of Japan. "I've always felt equally drawn to the West and to…
Assassin Reverie
** 2021 Stock ** Arte Quartett: Beat Hofstetter, soprano saxophone; Sascha Armbruster, alto saxophone; Andrea Formenti, tenor saxophone; Beat Kappeler, baritone saxophone Terry Riley, vocals, piano and harpsichord (Uncle Jard) A free spirit, maverick par excellence, creator of a personal compositional style that has spawned entire generations of epigones, Terry Riley (b 1935) embodies the best aspects of the American pioneer spirit, the positive and uncorrupted image of America (and California i…
Snoweight
Recorded during two days of extreme weather, Eleh's Snoweight conveys the mesmerizing force of a winter storm with sonic realism and romanticism. These two new compositions evoke both warm security and wild, blanketing intensity in ways that are both emotionally arresting and time stopping.
A Retrospective (1977-2009)
The music on this disc was written over a period of more than thirty years. Over the course of those years, so much has changed in technology, in music, in life in general. But throughout the work represented here one can recognize the remarkable, entirely original voice of Charles Dodge (b. 1942). He is truly a composer who writes music that does not sound like anybody else's. He has never been part of any “ism” or movement; he is his own category. And although his stylistic approach and his…
Harmonic Twins
ELEH's Harmonic Twins is a slow moving monophony tuned to the overtone vocalizations generated by a particularly beautiful sound sculpture made by Harry Bertoia. These two pieces are inspired by early music, choral masses, motets, the cathedral reverberations of sacred geometry and deep bass. Harmonic Twins was originally debuted by ELEH at Unsound, Krakow in 2017.Harmonic Twins was pressed in an audiophile edition of 500 copies and is packaged in a heavy duty sleeve printed with metallic inks. …
Radiant Intervals I
Important Records present the first part of a re-release of Eleh's influential Radiant Intervals, originally released in 2010. Radiant Intervals is a meticulously nuanced and restrained exploration of the rhythmic and harmonic relationships inherent in pure analog frequencies, using a blend of intuitive and mathematically based tunings. Dense patterns of sound slowly unravel and are woven together again in new ways while harmonics hover and shift overhead. Radiant Intervals is a purely anal…
Film Music
Ussachevsky was one of the most significant pioneers in the compositon of electronic music, and one of its most potent forces. He produced the first works of “tape music,” a uniquely American synthesis of the French musique-concrète and the German pure electronic schools. He co-founded the Columbia-Princeton Electronic Music Center in 1959 and directed its course for the next twenty years as the leading electronic music studio in the United States. This release couples two of his most powerful a…
Vladimir Ussachevsky: Electronic and Acoustic Works 1957- 1972
This composer portrait features six of his pioneering works in the medium as well as two of his choral works, an aspect of his output that was just as important to him. The final two works on this CD make extensive use of the human voice. The first of these, Three Scenes from The Creation, is based on texts from Ovid’s Metamorphosis and the Akkadian creation epic Enuma Elish, telling the story of the primordial gods and their struggle to create order out of chaos. The recorded choral tracks were…
Molecular Affinity
Thollem McDonas : “This is the third trio album Nels and I have made together, each time with a different 3rd partner. The previous two were The Gowanus Session with William Parker and Radical Empathy with Michael Wimberly. Though each session has been unique in itself (different prescribed approaches, the environment and of course the uniqueness that each individual brings), there are definitely overarching themes pollinating each album. As the instigator of each of these sessions, I’ve always …
Music and Poetry of the Kesh
Small repress available, in process of stocking. Includes a facsimile of the original lyric sheet, liner notes, a letterpresses bookmark and an instant download.Buchla synth supremo Todd Barton’s hyperstitious soundtrack to Always Coming Home, an ‘80s American sci-fi novel by author Ursula K. Le Guin, is yet another ingenious recording dug out for reappraisal by Pete Swanson and Jed Middleman’s Freedom to Spend label - a division of RVNG Intl. Expect alien folk songs in made-up language, set to …
Rational Melodies
I am particularly pleased, because the result is so different from the solo flute recording of Eberhard Blum and the solo clarinet recording of Roger Heaton. It is not just another interpretation, but a case where interpreters have added so much insight to the music that the music itself has grown. When I was composing this music around 1982, I really thought I was simply writing melodies, but now these little pieces, though remaining melodies, have become something much more, something I…
Schlingerland / Dynamische Schwingungen
Cien Fuegos present a reissue of Sven-Åke Johansson's Schlingerland / Dynamische Schwingungen, originally released in 1972. Sven-Åke Johansson (Mariestad, Sweden, 1943) works as a composer, drummer, accordionist, poet, and visual artist. Longtime collaborator of the free improv scene in the German '60s with Kowald, Brötzmann, Schlippenbach. He contributed to numerous exhibitions, publications, and recordings. Sven-Åke Johansson - drums. Recorded 1972 in Stockholm, Schweden. Engineered by Göran F…
Gertrudes
Music for violin and resonator guitar by Robert Ashley, Lainie Fefferman, Paula Matthusen, James Moore, Larry Polansky and Ken Thomson. Longtime friends and collaborators James Moore and Andie Springer began performing as a duo in 2011 while on tour with playwright Richard Maxwell's Neutral Hero. This anthology comprises compositions by their friends and colleagues, all written or adapted for the duo and their unconventional instrumentation of violin and steel-string resonator guitar. Lar…
George Antheil: Piano Concerto No. 2
The Piano Concerto No. 2 is an experiment in classical form. The work contains the same sudden juxtapositions and abrupt contrasts of mood as his futurist music. But the excesses of his recent Ballet mécanique are compensated for by an almost spare, baroque orchestration and motifs that draw on Bach as much as on Stravinsky. In three movements, Antheil employs a more restrained but still exuberant style. The beautifully meditative slow movement is followed by a virtuosic and compelling toccata. …
Earle Brown: Selected Works 1952- 1965
This long-awaited reissue of the CRI recording of Earle Brown’s (1926–2002) music is the best overview of his seminal early works. “It is obviously a great pleasure for me that Cri is re-releasing its 1974 recording of my work, and an even greater pleasure that I am able to add to the repertoire. The performance of Times Five and Novara still seem very fine representations of the works and are performed brilliantly by the Dutch musicians. December 1952 as realized by the late, brilliant pianist …
Electronic music of theatre and public activity
Gordon Mumma (born 1935) has played a pioneering role in the development and evolution of 'live-electronic' music. 'Live-electronics' as a concept and practice appears to have originated in the United States in the late 1950s, outside the few institutional electronic studios and often in the context of innovative theatre activity. From its inception, it frequently involved two processes: (1) live performance with accompanying or interacting sound materials on magnetic tape; and (2) the use of el…
Ten Exercises
This marvelous recording of these elusive works features composer-supervised performances by a hand-picked group of renowned new-music exponents. "Your first encounter with the music of Christian Wolff leaves you with the impression you've just heard (or played, or read) something totally strange, unlike anything else you know. And yet, upon reflection, you realize it is at the same time something completely ordinary and normal, as familiar in its way as any number of repetitive actions …