La Terre et le Feu
** 2021 Stock ** This disc of French composer Joël-François Durand’s music amplifies his ongoing interest in the classical ‘four elements’: air, earth, fire and water. World class performers include the London Sinfonietta, BBC Symphony Orchestra, conductor Pierre-André Valade, and renowned Swedish organist Hans-Ola Ericcsson. The oboe concerto, La terre et le feu features a hallmark of Durand’s work: rising figures that gradually strain upwards. The work consists of an introduction and four prin…
Out of Chaos
** 2021 Stock ** An American who came of age in the late 1980s, Jason Eckardt’s music captures the essences of the genres that led him first to performance (as a guitarist), and then to composition: heavy metal and art rock, jazz, gagaku and p’ansori, the Second Viennese School, American post-serialism, and the new complexity. It evokes the power of inspired, virtuosic improvisation, the incisiveness of classical ensemble playing, and the raw expressivity of ethnic music. The first complete CD o…
Labyrinthe de Minotaur
** 2021 Stock ** French composer Alain Bancquart (b.1934) is one of the leading composers of microtonal music in Europe. Labyrinthe du Minotaur explores the myth of the Minotaur and the labyrinthe. This large scale piece constantly delves into microtonal and harmonic relationships together with a lyrical polyphony. It is based on texts by his wife, author Marie-Claire Bancquart. The unusual instrumental ensemble incorporates (in addition to the above musicians): pianos in quarter- and sixteenth-…
Shadow of an Idea
** 2021 Stock ** The influence of two American composers – John Cage and Morton Feldman – has been decisive on Walter Zimmermann. With Cage, it was his music from the late forties – works like the String Quartet, the Suite for Toy Piano and the Six Melodies – that caught his attention: works underpinned by precise numerical construction, yet with an engaging directness of expression. Feldman has been an inspiration to Zimmermann’s lyrical impetus, and Cage to his constructivist urges. Yet the t…
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…
Look She Said (Complete Works For Bass)
** 2021 Stock ** “The double-bass – the paradox of its large size and basically quiet sound, and its low registral grounding – has long attracted me. I’ve also been fortunate in knowing outstanding double-bass players.” – Christian Wolff This disc collects all of Wolff’s large body of works for the bass, including a piece for solo electric bass guitar. Two of the works were written specifically for Robert Black, who prepared these pieces with Wolff. The composer attended all of the recordings se…
Dancing With Henry
** 2021 Stock ** Some of the most revered compositions of the twentieth century arose from the collaboration of composers and choreographers. Henry Cowell sought solutions that would treat both art forms with equal respect. Works on this disc-the majority of which are recorded for the first time, many from unpublished manuscripts-were composed for Doris Humphrey, Charles Weidman (Dance of Sport), Bonnie Bird, and Martha Graham (Heroic Dance and Suite for Woodwind Quintet). Atlantis was envisione…
Afatsim
** 2021 Stock ** Born in Israel, composer Chaya Czernowin has lived in Germany, Japan and the U.S. Her teachers included Dieter Schnebel, Joan Tower, Brian Ferneyhough and Roger Reynolds. Czernowin’s sound occupies a unique world. Often many instruments are used to become one “composite” instrument. Time is slowed down, so that the slow flow of sound enables one to perceive the smallest details of a texture or a sound. The resulting music can feel fluid, dense or agitated, at times echoing that …
Surface Tension
** 2021 Stock ** What do you get when Erik Satie meets Anton Webern for a cup of tea in England? These delightful miniatures of Howard Skempton might just be it. With their distinctly English vocabulary, witty turns, and spare yet memorable melodies, Surface Tension offers a survey of Skempton’s music in solo through quintet settings from the 1970s through the 90s. Born in Chester, England in 1947, Skempton moved to London to study with Cornelius Cardew in 1967. There, with Cardew, he co-founded…
The Seventh Seed
** 2021 Stock ** Hilda Paredes is among the foremost younger-generation Mexican composers. Schooled in London where she now lives, Paredes studied with Harrison Birtwistle, Franco Donatoni and Peter Maxwell-Davies. Receiving a commission from the Arts Council of Great Britain for a chamber opera and working together with British poet Karen Whiteson, Paredes composed The Seventh Seed centered around the Persephone legend with allusions to Lewis Carroll’s Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland and Throu…
Octet • Music For A Large Ensemble • Violin Phase
*Includes 24-page booklet with photos and liner notes* Steve Reich's commercial success had ballooned after his prior release on ECM, Music for 18 Musicians, and this collection of three compositions, two new and one from 1967, was the follow-up. Music for a Large Ensemble is very much of a piece with the prior work, using extended melodic lines, a larger palette of sound colors, and key changes every several minutes. It's charming and pleasantly busy in an industrious way but really covers litt…
NuDaf
A 65-minute electroacoustic composition featuring Dafne Vicente-Sandoval, bassoon. NuDaf (2020) is the second longest piece in Phill Niblock's repertoire of recorded audio works. NuDaf is a departure from his previous pieces in that he makes extensive use of multiphonics and constructed the work with fewer tracks than usual, creating uniquely transparent and ephemeral textures. The piece is the result of a collaboration between Niblock and the stellar bassoonist Dafne Vicente-Sandoval. Her music…
Parampara festival 13.3.1992
Black Truffle is pleased to announce Parampara Festival 13.3.1992, a stunning performance by Amelia Cuni captured live in Berlin almost thirty years ago. Milanese by birth and resident in Berlin for many years, Cuni lived in India for over a decade, studying the classical vocal style of dhrupad under masters of the form. Though perhaps known to many listeners primarily through her performances of the vocal music of John Cage and collaborations with Werner Durand and Terry Riley, she is recognise…
I, Castorpollux
Osaka-born and New York-based pianist Erika Dohi is a multi-faceted artist with an eclectic musical background. From highly polished traditional classical to bold improvisation, she is a dynamic performer whose timeless style and unidiomatic technique sets her apart in contemporary NYC avant-garde circles. Dohi’s vast repertory is impressive, but what makes her truly such a barrier-defying artist is what lies ahead. I, Castorpollux, Dohi’s debut solo album, is a profound personal excavation set …
Funeral Cargo
** Edition of 300 copies pressed on clear vinyl. Mastered by Veronica Vasicka ** A weight of history flows through Ann Margaret Hogan’s keys with a stark intimacy, beautifully illuminated by naturally effortless, quietly grand songwriting. It’s a direct continuation of the landscaped themes and atavism of 2020’s ‘Honeysuckle Burials’ and the ‘Reversing Into Tomorrow’ collaboration with Karl O’Connor, vividly capturing the slow passage of time in a way that has quite literally compelled us to sto…
Cosmic Pulses
Karlheinz Stockhausen – “Cosmic Pulses” is the last electronic composition by Karlheinz Stockhausen, and it is number 93 in his catalog of works. It is the 13th "hour" of Stockhausen's originally-planned 24-part cycle Klang ("Sound") which is based on the 24 hours of the day. This electronic work is composed of 24 layers of synthesizer-generated melodic material, with each layer having a different speed and pitch register. The layers enter one by one, starting from the lowest/slowest layer, a…
Elektronische Musik Von Sirius
* 2021 Stock * Packaged in two double CD cases suited in a card slipcase along with a 46 pages booklet that includes texts in german and english. Karlheinz Stockhausen – “Elektronische Musik Von Sirius” Realisation at the Studio for Electronic Music of the West German Radio in Cologne from July 1975 to March 1977 using an EMS Synthi 100 synthesizer.. "In connection with the composition ‘Sternklang’ I closely watched the star constellations in Kürten. From my study as well as from the kitchen my …
Musik Für Posaune Und Euphonium
*2022 Stock.* Karlheinz Stockhausen – “Musik für Posaune und Euphonium (Music for Trombone and Euphonium)” In Freundschaft (Für Posaune) for trombone – Signale Zur Invasion (1992) for trombone, electronic music and sound projectionist – Kinntanz (1983 / 89) for euphonium, percussionist, synthesizer player and sound projectionist "Stockhausen’s birthday gift composition for Suzanne Stephens - In Freundschaft - has been played by a number of soloists over the years, i.e., on different kinds of so…
Synthi-Fou / Dienstags-Abschied
*2022 Stock.* Karlheinz Stockhausen – “Synthi-Fou / Dienstags-Abschied ” "A double –CD like this one falls right into that crystal clarity, giving yet more insight into how his art is achieved, piece by piece, structurally – but as it is with human beings or a flower or an Earth sun rise, the result is much more and something else altogether than the sum of all the parts… and somewhere in that realm lies the real mystery; that elusive, vibrant core of beauty and truth which can’t be accounted fo…
Oktophonie
*2022 Stock.* Karlheinz Stockhausen – “Oktophonie ” Realized at the Studio für Elektronische Musik, WDR, August 23 - November 30, 1990 & Aug. 5-30, 1991. " (...) Stockhausen also points out that the production and spatialization are described in the separate OCTOPHONY score. This score is indeed a very meticulous and detailed one, indispensable for aficionados who will want to enter the inner workings of the OCTOPHONY structure. It is an extreme score in this aspect, in the minute details of its…