Ending(s)
While certain recognizable fingerprints are found throughout the body of Daniel Lentz's (b. 1942) work, he has never been content to settle within one particular style or mode of music for long, moving ever forward in an evolutional continuum, an overriding arc that defines his growth as a composer -- beginning with traditional music, diverting into electronic music, moving into performance art pieces for his various touring groups, then sallying into minimalism, followed by work distinguished f…
Palm Sunday
An insatiable listener, learner, and reader, Stuart Saunders Smith (b. 1948) has taken into his mind and spirit myriad styles of musical performance spanning centuries, methods of compositional practice of all sorts, and innumerable close personal relationships with artists of all disciplines. He has absorbed this vast expanse of knowledge, art, and personal experience, and rather than mimicking anything he has encountered along the way, he has manifested a truly personal, honest voice that ring…
The Fish That Became the Sun
Frank Denyer’s The Fish that became the Sun (Songs of the Dispossessed) stands as one of the most ambitious and singular orchestral creations of recent decades. Conceived over several years and premiered over twenty years after completion, this piece distills Denyer’s fascination with sonic diversity and theatrical intensity. The score assembles a phantasmagoria of acoustic colors: alongside chorus and solo violin, one encounters sitar, crumhorns, cimbalom, children’s songs, and a host of constr…
Traces of Eternity: of What Is Yet To Be
**300 copies** "There have been quite a few releases of Antoine Beuger’s music over the past several years and it’s an odd, and very pleasurable thing to consider them en masse. On the one hand, his music is so diaphanous, so air-suffused that you’d think it might be difficult (not to mention unnecessary) to differentiate them mentally. On the other, they’re always very different. There’s that old AMM aphorism: “as alike or unalike as trees” that conveys something of my feelings about Beuger’s w…
Regular Music
Regular Music were early instigators of the UK post-systems movement whose work straddles the spheres of rock, minimalism and post-punk. The band was formed in 1980 by composer / performers Helen Ottaway, Jeremy Peyton Jones and Andrew Poppy who met at Goldsmiths College in SE London where they studied music in the 1970s. Rather than wait for commissions they looked to models such as Steve Reich, Philip Glass, Gavin Bryars and Michael Nyman who formed their own ensembles to play their music.The …
Secrets Of The Blue Bag
**500 copies** British experimental musician, composer, performer and producer Anthony Moore was a founding member of Slap Happy and has worked with Henry Cow, Kevin Ayers, and Pink Floyd among other great names in the British scene. In 1971 he moved to Hamburg, Germany, and worked in the boiling experimental scene of the city. As a result, two LPs were issued on Polydor Germany in 1971 and 1972, right before forming Slap Happy with old school pal Peter Blegvad and Dagmar Krause.Secrets of the B…
Lokale Musik
Despite having an undeniable canon, the minimalist music movement which developed during the 1960s and continues to flourish and evolve today, is defined by a remarkable breadth in ideas and compositional approach. Particularly in Europe, it rapidly took on a diverse number of influences and became very much its own thing. Of the composers who proposed an alternate reality for this territory of sound, there have been few more accomplished than the German composer, Walter Zimmermann.All too often…
Steel, Wood, & Air
**300 copies** Portland composer and pianist Derek Hunter Wilson returns with his second album, entitled Steel, Wood, & Air. Ten lush, expressive pieces featuring piano, bass clarinet, and strings, this collection reflects the efforts of a young musician challenging himself and discovering his voice in the process. Inspired equally by the contemporary neoclassical scene and early recordings on the ECM label, Steel, Wood, & Air stands, timeless and buoyant, on its own.After releasing his debut al…
Moments
**600 copies** In essence, the sound of the piano comes in two parts: its attack and its decay. The striking of a hammer is followed by the resonance of a string or strings. (Much the same might be said about the vibraphone, as it happens.) This dual quality of sound comes to mind when listening to Moments by New York-based composer Michael Vincent Waller. Performed by pianist R. Andrew Lee and vibraphonist William Winant, Moments − his third album, following Trajectories (Recital, 2017) and The…
Windfell
British composer James Weeks (b.1978) presents windfell, an hour long composition for violin and voice written for and performed by Canadian violinist Mira Benjamin. Released by Another Timbre in May 2019, this extended solo work evokes the image of a violin alone on a remote hill, played only by the wind. Benjamin requested Weeks write a long duration piece for her. The challenge of making something for a single player over the span of an hour led Weeks to find ways to enrich the timbral and ha…
Music For Lock Grooves
**250 copies** SN Variations fifth release features two tracks in three parts each composed for lock grooves recorded onto acetate, percussion by Sam Wilson (Riot Ensemble / Actress) and violin performed by Aisha Orazbayeva. The tracks also feature the piano of Mark Knoop and the voice of Josephine Stephenson. A lock groove is one cycle of one groove on a record. This is 1.8 sec cut at 33rpm and 1.33 cut at 45rpm. Adrian Corker used the cutting lathe currently residing in the living room of The …
Barricades
**500 copies** This album contains LA-based composer Michael Pisaro's recent composition Barricades, a 63-minute piece for piano and electronics. Consisting of thirteen studies (piano pieces, some with electronics) and two electronic interludes, the piece is performed by Israel-based pianist Shira Legmann, with Pisaro on electronics. Legmann's clean, supple yet solid piano sounds, employing a wide dynamic range, add a sense of organic life to the composition. Her whispery nuances and mysterious …
Cheminant
**500 copies** This is French composer / pianist Melaine Dalibert's third solo piano album, following his well-received 2018 album Musique pour le lever du jour and 2017 album Ressac. Cheminant contains a diverse array of Dalibert's unique compositions for solo piano, ranging from the up-tempo rhythmic Percolations performed masterfully by Dalibert's right hand, to the slow, prolonged meditative Music in an octave and Cheminant, to the kaleidoscopic Étude II with the repetitive hammered chords, …
Flores
**2021 stock** Flores, like any other work of Maria de Alvear, deals with the ideal of inner freedom. This is not a mere claim, it is manifested in the shape of the piece itself. Written in the author's typical mixture of composition and notated improvisation, the text leaves a certain scope to the seven instrumentalists as to the elaboration of the rhythm and at times also the intonation. The score has almost no directives for the parts of the two singers: what and how the singing is performed …
Solo for voice 58 : 18 microtonal ragas
**2021 stock** The world premiere recording of Solo for Voice 58 by legendary American avant-garde composer John Cage. Italian-German dhrupad singer Amelia Cuni is the ideal interpreter, trained in classical Indian singing but also able to improvise on ragas in a new music context. Cuni developed from Cage’s score of eighteen raga scales a remarkable and unique interpretation that belongs to both the classical Indian and Western experimental traditions. Includes an extensive booklet with essays …
Ways For an Orchestra
Following three beautiful studio albums, Minton and Weston are back with an outstanding program of orchestral arrangements. The music flows with great pathos through renditions of their own most memorable compositions alongside pieces by Eric Dolphy, Luc Ex, Lindsay Cooper, Jacques Brel and others. Music by Phil Minton, Veryan Weston, Eric Dolphy, Arthur Sullivan, Jerry Leiber, Mike Stoller, Lindsay Cooper, Luc Ex, Jacques Brel
Chirality
The new Eyvind Kang album was recorded in Italy with a 25 piece mixed orchestra of traditional strings and winds, with the addition of Moog synthesizer, accordion, percussion, field recordings and voice. It features vocals by Alan Bishop, co-founder of Sun City Girls. Eyvind Kang conductor, chironomy, violaAlan Bishop voice, field recordingsMarco Dalpane accordion, moog synthesizerMG_INC Orchestra:Ferenc Vojnic Hajduk 1st violin; Eliana de Candia 1st violin; Giulia Camardella 1st violin; Eleonor…
Piano Music
Robert Palmer (1915-2010) produced more than ninety symphonic, choral, chamber, and solo works throughout his career, earning a reputation in the mid-twentieth century as one of the country's leading, most daring, and -- at the same time -- appealing modernists. Palmer's unique musical language combined a deeply emotional impulse with complex counterpoint and rhythmic structures, drawing comparisons to Hindemith, Bartók, Lou Harrison, even Brahms. Aaron Copland famously included Palmer on his 19…
Beissel
Beissel is the fruit of a remarkable alliance between Austrian composer Klaus Lang and the Australian ensemble Golden Fur - Samuel Dunscombe (clarinet), Judith Hamann (cello), and James Rushford (keyboards). Conceived for the distinctive resonance of a church setting, the music deploys organ, winds, and strings in a patient unfolding where the boundaries between composition and collective improvisation gently blur. Lang, celebrated for his quietly radical music, draws inspiration from eccentric …
Without
Clara de Asís composed the piece 'Without' for the duo of Erik Carlson (violin) and Greg Stuart (percussion) in 2018. In this 43-minute piece, de Asís gave a precise framework for the position and the duration of each sound section and each silence, as well as a rough outline for the texture and the volume of each sound, the use of tone or noise (or tone-noise), and the materials for the percussion, but a large part of the score was open for the two performers' freedom.In the realization of this…