★New World Records
September Canons
Todd Reynolds, violin, with electronic processing; Members of the Yale Philharmonia, Julian Pellicano, conductor; The Berkeley Gamelan, Daniel Schmidt, director; Ingram Marshall, gambuh (Balinese flute), Serge synthesizer, live electronic processing
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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 ove…
Loudspeakers
Charles Amirkhanian (b. 1945) can be regarded as a central figure in American music, and on several fronts. As a composer, he's been pervasively innovative in two genres: text-sound pieces, in which he can draw engaging rhythmic processes from wacky …
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 re…
Atmospheres Transparent / Opaque
This recording is an excellent introduction to the distinctive sound world of Catherine Lamb (b. 1982), who studied with James Tenney and Michael Pisaro, in that it documents a recent large-scale piece that epitomizes her compositional aesthetic, Pri…
Folding Music
Max Giteck Duykers (born 1972) stands out for his ongoing dedication to the sound worlds made possible by the Pierrot ensemble. Therefore it is fitting that the first recording devoted exclusively to Duykers's music should feature two of the four "Pi…
Ipsa Dixit
Kate Soper's (b. 1981) Ipsa Dixit (2010 - 16) is an
evening-length work of chamber music theatre for voice, flute, violin,
and percussion that explores music, language, and meaning through
blistering ensemble virtuosity and extended vocal techniqu…
Changes: 64 Studies for 6 Harps
James Tenney, for almost the entirety of his career, was one of the great, unsung giants of the American musical avant-garde - an artist’s artist, whose towering contribution and influence was everywhere - equal to Feldman and Cage, but who, like Nan…
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…
The Birthday Party
On first hearing, the piano music of Peter Garland (b. 1952) creates a feeling of dislocation, then astonishment: It is so very different from the contemporary concert music we are familiar with. The composer's intent, his emotional directness is imm…
Three Pieces in Polytempic Polymicrotonality
The author of these notes has spent his life explaining radical music, and the music on this disc may be the most radical I've ever written about. Peter Thoegersen (b. 1967) is not yet a name known to the music world; not for any lack of connection t…
Endangered Species
Endangered Species states, restates, correlates, instigates, inflates and deflates, elevates, formulates, disintegrates, interrogates, percolates, granulates, germinates, Kiss Me Kates, Tom Waits, Norman Bates and W.B. Yeats, horripilates, adumbrates…
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 to…
We, Like Salangan Swallows...: A Choral Gallery of Morton Feldma
The intense individuality of Morton Feldman's (1926?1987) art and its 'painterly' aspect have tended to push his rich output of works into a zone all of their own, surrounded by a moat of stillness. This recording attempts the reverse process -- to b…
Two Orchestra Pieces
This recording is the first ever devoted to the orchestral music of Christian Wolff (b. 1934) and thus documents a little-known aspect of his wide-ranging work. John, David (1998) introduces in its second part a prominent role for solo percussionist,…
Harmonium
Just Asked whether he would describe his music as “Sound for the sake of sound,” James Tenney (1934–2006) replied, “It’s sound for the sake of perceptual insight—some kind of perceptual revelation.” This release aptly demonstrates Tenney’s deep explo…
Glorious Ravage
Glorious Ravage is a panoramic free jazz song cycle by San Francisco Bay Area bassist and composer Lisa Mezzacappa, that features a large ensemble of stellar California improvisers performing with films created by Bay Area moving image artists Janis …
The Zürich Concert
Just when you think you are grasping the breadth and quality of the music of Julius Eastman (1940 - 1990), a recording such as Julius Eastman: The Zürich Concert shows up, and you have to go back and reassess his work and wonder what will show up nex…
And On The Seventh Day Petals Fell In Petaluma
The history of American avant-garde music is a snarled knot, twisting through the decades, spanning genre, practice, and approach. Most narratives plant its origins within the post-war period, orbiting around John Cage, Morton Feldman, and those arti…
Ariadne's Lament
The music of Mary Jane Leach on this album draws on several sources of inspiration. The first is early music, with its polyphony and modal harmonies. Modal writing, as adapted to twentieth-century thought, focuses on the prolongation of a fixed colle…