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…
Yeo-Neun
** Small repress, absolutely astounding! ** Anyone encountering the efforts of the cellist, Okkyung Lee, faces an unavoidable truth. She’s an unreckonable force. Few players in the contemporary landscape relinquish themselves so completely to the practice of free improvisation, adapt with such ease without sacrificing the distinctions of self, or exist in the moment so completely, not to mention her awe inspiring technical skill. Her latest LP, Yeo-Neun, issued by Shelter Press, stands as tower…
Verdant
As a composer, David Dunn is probably best known for his interdisciplinary work that crosses the boundaries between art and science. This has included the fields of acoustic ecology, bioacoustics, interspecies communication and scientific sonification while creating a body of innovative sound work that has contributed to projects as diverse as sensory enhancement of healthcare environments and intervention strategies for forest and agricultural pests. He has invented microphones to record such p…
Kenneth Gaburo Conducts New Music Choral Ensemble 1
It was 1967, the summer of love, and the young radicals were huddled together experimenting, sweating in a tiny airless room. Gibberish, scat, sighs, whispers, as well as more refined musical tones, were coming from their vocal cords. For this was not Haight-Ashbury but Urbana, Illinois, and the New Music Choral Ensemble (NMCE) was merely exploring the boundaries of music.
Instigated by Kenneth Gaburo, pioneer of electronic tape music and compositional linguistics at the University of Illinois, …
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…
Double Dupe Down
*In process of stocking. 2022 stock.* Zeena Parkins is a keyboardist, harpist and composer who has worked closely with Fred Frith, Bjork, Ikue Mori and many others. Her brilliant work for dance has earned her three Bessie Awards, and her own bands have toured the world for over twenty years to great acclaim. This special compilation brings together her best compositions written for film and features some of the greatest musicians in the downtown scene. An endlessly creative collection of work by…
Earle Brown Contemporary Sound Series Vol. 2
3-CD Set. Recorded between 1960 and 1973, the original eighteen LPs that comprise Earle Brown's legendary Contemporary Sound Series have been highly sought after in the secondary market since 1978 when they were discontinued. These rare and historically important recordings of international avant-garde music have been carefully digitized and remastered by the Earle Brown Music Foundation. Volume two includes music by Nono (Polifonica-Monodia-Ritmica), Bruno Maderna (Serenata No. 2), Luciano Ber…