★Tzadik
Songs For Petra: Petra Haden Sings The Zorn / Harris Songbook
Singer Petra Haden excels in this beautiful and unique program of songs penned by the songwriting team of Zorn and Harris. Friends for many years, they began working together on “The Song Project” in 2012, and eight years later this LP presents the full fruits of their collaboration: thirteen Zorn compositions with original lyrics by Jesse Harris. Including selections from a wide variety of Zorn projects (and one original that has never appeared before), the melodies are catchy, the lyrics heart…
To Sail, To Sail
One of the most profound solo statements to date from a musical master who has been crossing musical borders for over three decades! Concentrating exclusively on the acoustic guitar, Fred Frith stretches himself and the instrument like never before, performing with the eloquence and grace of a master in peak form. With a prodigious technique and elegant sense of maturity he draws upon a lifetime of study and experience to bring together influences as diverse as classical, blues, folk, gypsy and …
Love Me Tender
*In process of stocking. 2022 stock.* One of the first, longest running and most acclaimed improvisational rock ensembles in the world presents a special collection of live recordings culled from the private archives of guitarist extraordinaire Fred Frith. Hand picked for this release, the music comes from their exciting 1999 European tour, and from their most recent onslaughts in 2008. An essential document of one of the most incendiary rock trios in music history.
Songs Of Synastry And Solitude
*2022 stock.* Brooklyn-based string instrumentalist/composer Jessica Pavone is known for her sparse, melodic music inspired by folk music, improvisation and minimalism. Modeled after the legendary Leonard Cohen album Songs of Love and Hate, these eleven marvelous and lyrical songs for string quartet use hauntingly simple beauty to evoke the ghosts of things lost. Performed by the brilliant young members of the Toomai String Quintet, this is lovely and expressive instrumental music from this eloq…
Tenno
*In process of stocking. 2022 stock.* The second in a series of releases by the legendary downtown pioneer Teiji Ito presents his postmodern masterpiece Tenno, blending Japanese, African, Carribean and Western musical instruments with sound effects, voice and electronics to create the most startling long form composition in his catalog. Born in Japan in 1935, Ito moved to New York and worked closely with Maya Deren, Jerome Robbins and Julian Beck creating music for film, dance and theatre for ne…
Back To Life
*In process of stocking. 2022 stock.* Anyone who thinks of multifaceted composer/performer Fred Frith primarily as a guitar player with Henry Cow and for his 1974 album Guitar Solos is way out of touch with what he's been up to in, say, more than 30 years. The 2008 release of Back to Life on Tzadik represents a good opportunity to reconnect with Frith and summarize what he has been doing since the heady days of his scrambling, intense electric guitar improvisations like "Alienated Industrial Sea…
Watermill
*In process of stocking. 2022 stock.* The fifth CD in Tzadik’s initiative to make available the music of Teiji Ito presents his undisputed masterpiece Watermill. Created in 1971 for the controversial ballet by Jerome Robbins and named for the town on Long Island where Robbins had a peaceful country home, Teiji draws upon Chinese, Tibetan, African, Native American and Japanese ceremonies in creating what many consider his most profound compositional achievement. Based on the ideas of cycles—years…
Invisible Design II
*2022 stock.* Invisible Design II showcases Bill Laswell playing a series of "compositions" -- that feel more like improvisations -- completely solo, a decade later follow-up to Invisible Design that appeared in the Tzadik Composer Series in 1999. Laswell plays fretless and eight-string basses, and uses loads of effects to create either sonically atmospheric backdrops or multi-layered bass parts to accompany himself on these ten selections. The results are busier than those found on the first vo…
Ugnayan
*In process of stocking. 2022 stock.* An important discovery of the original 1974 recording of a Maceda masterpiece! Recorded as 20 channels broadcast simultaneously on all of Manila's radio stations to the population gathered in public spaces with hand-held transistor radios, Ugnayan was a massive production supported by the Marcos regime intended to meld values of indigenous Filipino culture with modernist aesthetics. Though politically problematic and largely misunderstood, the effort involvi…
Strangely Familiar
*In process of stocking. 2022 stock.* Jazz legend Karl Berger is best known for his vibes and piano playing and for founding, with Ornette Coleman and Ingrid Sertso, the Creative Music Studio in Woodstock, NY, in 1972. He has also had a full career in the classical realm, earning a doctorate in musicology, serving as professor of composition at Frankfurt Hochschule, and as chair of the music department at the University of Massachusetts, Dartmouth. Strangely Familiar: 17 Miniatures for Piano Sol…
Spirit Transform Me
*In process of stocking. 2022 stock.* Oren Ambarchi is a composer and multi-instrumentalist experimenting in the dark trance-inducing worlds of ambient, industrial and electronic music. His newest collaborative project features the legendary percussionist/composer and mystic Z’EV in a hypnotic series of pieces exploring the inner meanings of the Hebrew Alef-beit. A remarkable vision from beginning to end, with sounds both fragile and powerfully intense, Oren and Z’EV take the sonic investigation…
Drone And Melody
*In process of stocking. 2022 stock.* This is the second Tzadik release of music by one of the most original and under-appreciated composers of the twentieth century. With his passing in 2004, several of his most passionate musical collaborators have been continuing José Maceda’s legacy and they come together here to present his most ambitious and greatest large scale work—Strata. Beautifully recorded In Manila at the University of the Philippines directed by Maceda’s long-time collaborator Ramô…
Ama
*In process of stocking. 2022 stock.* Born in Seoul and now a resident of Brooklyn, Ha-Yang Kim is a cellist, composer and improviser who has developed a unique language of extended string techniques and electronics. Drawing upon influences as far ranging as Balinese and Karnatic traditions, jazz, rock, western classical music and downtown experimentation, she has created an original music of imagination and passion. Her first CD features a startling solo piece, two pieces for her long running d…
Threadsuns
*In process of stocking. 2022 stock.* Ha-Yang Kim is a cellist and composer of striking originality whose musical influences draw equally from a range of western classical music, American experimentalism, rock, noise, and improvised music, to non-western musical sources from Bali, Korea and South Indian classical music. For her second CD on Tzadik she presents a major new composition for string quartet, performed here by the world renowned JACK quartet. Dedicated to Jewish poet Paul Celan, “Thre…
The Sugar Factory
*In process of stocking. 2022 stock.* Dynamic and astonishing music from two of the world’s greatest musical pioneers, this is another special project from multi-instrumentalist/composer/improviser Fred Frith who has been bravely crossing musical borders since the early 1970’s. These remarkable duo sessions were recorded during the filming of Thomas Riedelsheimer’s exquisite documentary Touch the Sound about Scottish virtuoso percussionist Evelyn Glennie. Combining the unpredictability of an imp…
Lonely Heart
*In process of stocking. 2022 stock.* Together since 1980, Massacre is one of the world’s classic cutting edge rock guitar trios. Opening for Metallica on the stage of the Roskilde Rock festival in front of an audience of 10,000 metal heads, they break out like never before. Here Frith puts down his brushes and chains and whips out some of the greatest flatout guitar fireworks he has ever performed. Three masters of rock improvisation kick out the jams in one of the greatest performances of thei…
Meltdown
*In process of stocking. 2022 stock.* A blistering live performance by one of the greatest instrumental rock trios ever. Fred Frith, Bill Laswell and Charles Hayward have each been responsible for some of the greatest concerts in new music in the last twenty years, and collectively they take rock improvisation to ecstatic new heights. Beautifully recorded by longtime Laswell associate Oz Fritz at Robert Wyatt’s Meltdown Festival in London, 2001, Meltdown is one of the most exciting recordings by…
Clearing
*In process of stocking. 2022 stock.* Fred Frith is one of the world’s greatest originals on the guitar, a composer/performer who has been at the forefront of avant garde music since the early ’70s. Clearing is his first solo guitar recording in over twenty years (since his classic Live In Japan of 1981) and his first solo studio recording since his groundbreaking Guitar Solos of 1974. Of the three existing solo recordings by this quirky musical master, Clearing is undoubtedly the most dynamic, …
Golden Quartet
*In process of stocking. 2022 stock.* A longtime dream project of Wadada Leo Smith, one of creative music’s most original voices, Tzadik is proud to present the first recording by a modern jazz supergroup. The four instrumental giants that comprise the Golden Quartet are veterans of some of the most influential bands in jazz history and here they are at the height of their powers. Five new compositions bring together lyricism, groove and fireworks in this exciting recording destined to become a …
Funny Valentine
*In process of stocking. 2022 stock.* In 1983, Bill Laswell's Celluloid label released a minor masterpiece by a downtown power trio called Massacre; the group consisted of Fred Frith on guitar, Laswell on bass and Fred Maher on drums. The album was called Killing Time, and it was a brilliant combination of quirky but composed avant-gardisms, experimental noise and post-punk funk. That album remains one of the great monuments of the downtown scene, right up there with A Taste of DNA and No New Yo…