Fremde Zeit Addendum 5 · Solo V Für Klavier
Jakob Ullman's 5th solo work for piano is atypical for a piano performance, using electronic playback and requiring three assistants sustaining a soundscape to realize a concept of "gravity".
Viola Torros
4 compositions from violist/composers Catherine Lamb & Johnny Chang, the 1st focusing on the mysterious compositions of Vedic-era composer Viola Torros, exploring monady, melody and harmony; the second, one composition each from Chang performed with the Suidobashi Chamber Ensemble, and from Lamb using the secondary rainbow synthesizer she developed with Bryan Eubanks..The summer I arrived in Berlin, I began meeting with Johnny around music-related things and he started mentioning a composer he w…
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…
120 Pieces of Sound
Jürg Frey’s unique compositional approach places him at the cutting edge of contemporary classical music while simultaneously maintaining a touch of impressionistic/romantic aesthetics in its roots. Since the late 90's, Frey started to work with 'lists' as a basis of his compositions, sometimes words, sometimes chords, from which he developed and organized the musical materials. In recent years, Frey's focus on 'lists' has extended more toward the connections of items with each other, forming me…
Blurred Music
**Co-produced by David Sylvian and Yuko Zama, artwork by David Sylvian** The Berlin-based Bulgarian violinist Biliana Voutchkova and German clarinetist Michael Thieke have worked together intensely within both compositional and improvisational duo and group projects in Berlin since 2011. #In their current project “Blurred Music”, the duo works with musical structures that create a blur; improvised parts alternate with fields of pre-structured material in which digital recordings of the duo are d…
Works with Guitar
Like his near contemporary Franco Donatoni, Aldo Clementi (b.1925) is an Italian composer who has had a very fruitful association with that most Italian of instruments, the guitar. Both Clementi and Donatoni shared similar paths in their compositional development: the early influences of major early 20th-century composers through the adoption and later rejection of serialism and the Darmstadt courses they both attended, culminating in their very individual mature styles. Clementi's recent pieces…
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 exploratory fascination with the nature and potentialities of aural perception. His attraction to these topics was simultaneously intellectual and sensuous, and its musical products at once invite both sustained reflection and the most immediate of corpor…
Muntzers Stern, Solo II
Jakob Ullmann has made the orchestral work "steine, feuer, sterne" (stones, fire, stars) based on a modular structure, such that individual sections can be played outside of a complete performance, solo or in predetermined combinations; this album presents one section for solo bassoon titled "Muntzers stern" performed by Dafne Vicente-Sandoval.From the liner notes by Hans-Peter Schulz; Translation by Peter Gebert: Solo II is part of a group of works with the title Buch der Stille 1 ('Book of Sil…
Complete Early Percussion Works
Stockhausen’s early percussion music is among the most visionary of the percussion repertoire. This unique collection features some works which are almost impossible to find elsewhere. Zyklus was not only a novel composition in terms of its treatment of time and structure, it was also the first percussion solo ever performed. Kontakte, a masterpiece for piano and percussion with 4-channel tape, challenges to performers to play together and to make the maximum number of “contacts” with the tape. …
Complete Music For Violin & Piano
Here, collected for the first time, are all of Morton Feldman's compositions for violin and piano. It is also a kind of walk through his compositional development, from the Webernesque early Piece for Violin and Piano (1950); through the experiments with graphic notation in Projection 4 (1951); followed by an excursion into the jungle-like density of David Tudor's energy in Extensions 1 (1951); to the cryptic notational riddles of Vertical Thoughts 2 (1963); from the dry carpet-dusting Spring …
Klang Der Wandlungen
From the liner notes by Jakob Ullmann (translated by Peter Gebert and Molly McDolan): "It was during a break in the inaugural meeting of the East German section of the IGNM (International Society for Contemporary Music) in March of 1990 when Reinhard Oehlschlägel, the long-standing music editor of Deutschlandfunk in Cologne, suggested taking advantage of the fact that John Cage was to attend the summer courses in Darmstadt as a special guest by inviting John Cage to East Berlin. . . . Making Gia…
L'âme Est Sans Retenue I
Swiss composer Jürg Frey's six hour long electronic tape piece L'àme Est Sans Retenue I was recorded and assembled in 1997/98 and is now being released for the first time. It is the longest piece Frey has ever composed in his over 40 year career.In this piece, Frey utilized the sounds of field recordings he made in Berlin in 1997 as the source materials, alternately inserted between long stretches of silence. Frey was particularly focusing around that time on how the dynamic relation between sou…
Explosion Of A Memory (A Literary Canvas For Orchestra)
An extended iterative, cycling, dissipating cloud of fragments, constantly shifting focus, which throws up detail, evolves, returns, settles and re-dissolves; it's a four-dimensional explosion in which stretches of baroque, folk themes and Byzantine liturgy exist contemporaneously alongside modern and (arguably) post-modern materials and techniques, all shaken loose out of the same experiential block, much as strata emerge as tectonic plates fold one time over another. Long, beautiful, to…
Gaps, Absences
A beautifully recorded and produced cycle of pieces that combine complexity and precision with rich and unfamiliar timbres. The ensemble pieces amplify and enrich a core piano with various combinations of harmonium, double bass, violin, percussion, Hungarian zither, citara bassa, bowed cymbals, alto clarinet, melodica, sampler and field recordings, all sparsely but powerfully deployed. This is a deep and powerful music with both crystalline clarity and cinematic low frequency power. And no fat o…
Sale Quanto Basta
Paolo Angeli’s latest is an extraordinary collection of pieces that explore the full range of his highly modified, extended and prepared Sardinian guitar; and although it’s just him and electricity, it seldom sounds like fewer than 3 people. Great compositions, each like a short novel, beautifully recorded. Paolo’s unique music defies genre or category - at once accessible, experimental, tuneful, tactile, ambient, with a folk root and a rock inflection and a contemporary outlook. And his instrum…
For Clarinet (And Piano)
Three beautiful works for Jurg Frey's clarinet by the Amsterdam-based Wandelweiser composer Dante Boon, with the composer accompanying Jurg on piano on two of the pieces. Amsterdam-based composer and pianist Dante Boon (1973) has been composing since he was 11 years old, playing new music since he was thirteen. He joined a well-known Dutch rock band when he was 24. After its break-up, he worked extensively over the years with composers such as Tom Johnson, Jürg Frey, Antoine Beuger and Sam…
Two Circles
Alvin Lucier’s (b.1931) work has been more often described in terms of science than of art and his scores often contain experimental procedures. Lucier perfectly represents the fusion of a scientist with an artist. His pieces arise from an inspection of a pure physical phenomenon. The performers on Mode’s fourth disc of Lucier’s music are the Italian experimental music ensemble Alter Ego — two of the works were written for or dedicated to them — and Alvin Lucier himself. This new recordi…
Piano Sonatas & String Quartets 1
Limited edition of 500 numbered copies. The LP was mastered from the 96khz/24-bit files. Lacquers were cut by vinyl veteran Scott Hull at Masterdisk in New York. The LP is pressed by RTI in California, one of the most highly regarded pressing plants in the USA. All of this to insure the best sounding, highest quality LP. After all, why make an LP if it doesn’t sound great and have something special to offer ?
It is packaged with a 4-page insert of liner notes by the late Bob Gilmore and a score …
Relative Calm
Jon Gibson (b. 1940) is one of the less frequently mentioned pioneering composers of minimal music and is probably best known as a founding member of the Philip Glass Ensemble. Gibson also holds the unique distinction of having performed with Steve Reich, Terry Riley, and La Monte Young (as a member of the Theatre of Eternal Music), in addition to Glass, the four composers widely regarded as the founding fathers of minimal music. Gibson also has a track record of composing for modern and …
The ECM Recording
Marking the occasion of Steve Reich’s 80th birthday (hup, big man!), The ECM Recordings compiles three CDs of the venerable minimalist composer’s major works, which were consecutively released in 1978, 1980 and 1982, and continue to influence and inspire myriad forms of modern music. Named “our greatest living composer” (The New York Times), “America’s greatest living composer” (The Village Voice), and “…the most original musical thinker of our time” (The New Yorker), Reich’s ardent, incisive wo…