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Search Result for Genre CLASSICAL
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2LP
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TW U-LP
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$35.00
PREORDER
RELEASE DATE: 7/25/2025
The In Between is the debut solo album by harpist, composer, and sound artist Shelley Burgon. Burgon is one of the most accomplished and sought-after performers and collaborators in the world of avant-garde and new music. Her interpretations of works by composers such as Pauline Oliveros, John Cage, Morton Subotnick, and Cornelius Cardew, as well as her collaborations with artists as diverse as Bjork, Anthony Braxton, and Fred Frith have shown her to be an artist with an extraordinary ability to get to the core of the music, surpassing the limitations of technical mastery with a transcendent sense of nuance and feel. Over the years, Burgon's own compositions, including works for groups such as the Merce Cunningham Dance Company and The Ne(x)tworks ensemble featuring Joan LaBarbara, have demonstrated these intangible qualities with even greater clarity and shown her to be an artist with a deeply personal, spiritual vision. The In Between is an immersive, meditative work in which Burgon's subtle arrangement of space and seemingly simple melodic lines draws the listener into a deep awareness of the piece itself as well as the wider, vibrant sound world that we all inhabit. It was composed and performed by Burgon alone on her acoustic concert harp without amplification or effects and recorded live, in one take, as an early summer day gave way to dusk in the mountains overlooking the Ojai Valley in California. The continuous 56-minute piece unfolds as the sounds of songbirds and airplanes fade with the setting sun; the chirps of crickets and frogs slowly emerge; the wood of the auditorium roof crackles as it cools with the evening air. The music is spacious, Burgon plays each note with a focus that is both tense and gentle, often allowing each to fully resonate and float before evaporating into the sounds of the surrounding chaparral and woodlands. At other moments, cascades of notes come into being, flowing with a ringing clarity and dissolving as quickly as they emerge from the mountain air. As motifs and figures repeat and evolve, Burgon's work becomes one of memory and foresight, a Feldman-esque unfurling realized as a sort of field recording in which the listener is both present and in between. Cut at 45RPM and pressed to HQ180gram vinyl at RTI. Presented in heavy tip-on gatefold double vinyl. with spot finishes and two full color printed inner sleeves with notes by the artist.
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2LP
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SR 561LP
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$28.50
PREORDER
RELEASE DATE: 6/6/2025
Double LP version. Founding work of minimalism, Music with Changing Parts is a piece with free instrumentation. The musicians choose which part to play among the eight staves of the score. At each indicated cue, the musicians can change part, which produces an abrupt change of instrumentation. While the music is based on a melodic material limited to a few notes that are repeated in patterns that expand or contract, the changes in orchestration refresh the listening experience by producing sonic contrasts. These techniques at work in Music with Changing Parts, written in 1970, will lead Philip Glass to renew his language and move from the monochromatic works that precede it to more dramatic works such as music in 12 parts and especially the opera Einstein on the Beach. When Philip Glass began rehearsing the piece, he was surprised to hear long notes when everything was written in eighth notes. After making sure that none of the musicians were playing held notes, he realized that the fact that the same notes were played by all the instruments in the ensemble produced, through a psycho-acoustic effect, a harmonic substrate of resonant frequencies. He then decided to add to the score the possibility of playing long notes to reinforce this effect. "For this recording, we chose to record first the eighth notes, then the long notes in re-recording. This utopian version, with each musician playing short and long notes at the same time (!), illustrates the minimalist aesthetic that plays with our perception and allows us to reconcile opposites and cultivate the apparent paradox of a music that moves forward without Moving and changes constantly while remaining the same." --Dedalus Ensemble
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SR 561CD
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$15.50
PREORDER
RELEASE DATE: 6/6/2025
Founding work of minimalism, Music with Changing Parts is a piece with free instrumentation. The musicians choose which part to play among the eight staves of the score. At each indicated cue, the musicians can change part, which produces an abrupt change of instrumentation. While the music is based on a melodic material limited to a few notes that are repeated in patterns that expand or contract, the changes in orchestration refresh the listening experience by producing sonic contrasts. These techniques at work in Music with Changing Parts, written in 1970, will lead Philip Glass to renew his language and move from the monochromatic works that precede it to more dramatic works such as music in 12 parts and especially the opera Einstein on the Beach. When Philip Glass began rehearsing the piece, he was surprised to hear long notes when everything was written in eighth notes. After making sure that none of the musicians were playing held notes, he realized that the fact that the same notes were played by all the instruments in the ensemble produced, through a psycho-acoustic effect, a harmonic substrate of resonant frequencies. He then decided to add to the score the possibility of playing long notes to reinforce this effect. "For this recording, we chose to record first the eighth notes, then the long notes in re-recording. This utopian version, with each musician playing short and long notes at the same time (!), illustrates the minimalist aesthetic that plays with our perception and allows us to reconcile opposites and cultivate the apparent paradox of a music that moves forward without Moving and changes constantly while remaining the same." --Dedalus Ensemble
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LTR 049LP
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$34.00
PREORDER
RELEASE DATE: 5/30/2025
Nils Frahm presents the follow up to Day, the collection of solo piano music he released in 2024. Night, which contains five new tracks, will be released on vinyl as well as via all digital platforms. A CD version, Night & Day (LTR 050CD), including all eleven tracks from both Day and Night, will also be made available. These follow Frahm's latest live album, Paris. Frahm recorded the pieces on Night on the Klavins M450 piano, installed in his studio at the renowned Funkhaus complex in Berlin. It was built by German-Latvian piano maker David Klavins for the first Piano Day in 2015, a celebration that will mark its 10th anniversary. At 4.5 meters tall and weighing over a ton, the model was the largest upright piano in the world at the time. The record is a reminder that, though he's since become celebrated for the complex, intricately arranged approach of his most commercially successful, multi-instrumental albums, Frahm first made his name with similarly meditative piano compositions on albums like 2009's The Bells, 2011's Felt, and 2012's Screws. Night, like Day, confirms that Frahm remains a prolific master of affecting simplicity, tenderness and romance, and as capable as ever of unforgettable, epigrammatic succinctness.
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CD
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LTR 050CD
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$20.00
PREORDER
RELEASE DATE: 5/30/2025
Nils Frahm presents a new CD of solo piano music, Night & Day, to be released by Leiter, the label he runs with his manager, Felix Grimm. Containing all eleven tracks from both Day and a second, Night, it follows Frahm's latest live album, Paris. Night & Day's tracks are a reminder that, though he's since become celebrated for the intricately arranged approach of his most commercially successful, multi-instrumental albums, Frahm first made his name with similarly meditative piano compositions on collections like 2009's The Bells, 2011's Felt, and 2012's Screws. Recorded in Majorca, far away from his studio in the German capital's famed Funkhaus complex, Day provides six tracks, three over the six-minute mark. There are muffled pedal creaks on the cyclical, quietly jazzy 'You Name It' or, during the palliative ripples of 'Butter Notes'' arpeggios, the sound of dogs barking in the streets outside. Night adds another five tracks, opening at a glacial pace with "Wesen," conjuring images of Frahm, lit only by a candle, huddled over his instrument, playing for the sheer companionship that it offers. And the album closes with "Canton," its delicious airiness perhaps the record's equivalent of a glimpse of dawn. It's a perfect conclusion to a typically beguiling collection that, as always, points to a musical character that is immediately, distinctively Frahm's. It also highlights why the German pianist has continued throughout his career to return loyally to the piano as his first love. After all, it's notable that, even during his recent, expansive live performances, which find him leaping between multiple keyboards, synths, and even a glass harmonica, Frahm has always made space for such works.
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METAPHON 023LP
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Composer Corneliu Cezar (1937-1997) was a distinctive personality within the Romanian post 1960 avantgarde: a visionary of music, a thinker and a prophet, a richly gifted artist also active with writing, poetry, painting and astrology. Cezar was an activist rediscovering the natural resonance of sound within a different historical context, and he embraced the recovery of authenticity as a reaction against the artificialized culture of serial doctrines. When, after 1975, the spectral music trend became official in Paris, with much fuss and remarkable support from musicologists, nobody knew that this trend had already been practiced by a small group of Romanian composers led by Corneliu Cezar for ten years. The four electro-acoustic pieces on this album (privately released on CD in Romania in 2000), recorded with little means between 1967 and 1975, display the incredibly strong ideas of a truly visionary artist. Everything Corneliu Cezar has done during his short earthly life bares the shade of authenticity.
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HHLTS 003LP
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Valentina Goncharova's work encapsulates a unique blend of innovation and tradition, providing audiences with an enthralling exploration of the vast possibilities within musical expression. Drawing upon her compositional skills honed during her academic studies, Valentina expertly manipulates the violin, seamlessly integrating it with synthesizers and drum machines. The result is a mesmerizing fusion of organic and electronic elements, characterized by slow, pulsating drone soundscapes.
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LP
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GREYFADE 010LP
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$31.00
PREORDER
RELEASE DATE: 5/9/2025
interius/exterius is a striking new addition to the evolving catalog of Berlin-based composer Catherine Lamb, whose deep explorations of harmony, temporality, and collective resonance have made her a defining voice in contemporary experimental music. Developed through a close collaboration with New York's Ghost Ensemble, this long-form chamber nonet unfolds through finely calibrated tuning, deep listening, and continually shifting sonic intention. The work's title reflects its central organizing principle: tones move in "interior" and "exterior" directions, shifting between inward balance within the ensemble and outward expansion towards new harmonic possibilities. The result is a piece that is simultaneously precise and open, crystalline and fluid -- attuned to the interplay between individual agency and collective form. Scored for flute, oboe, accordion, viola, cello, four- and five-string contrabasses, harp, and hammered dulcimer, the work investigates how collective intentions or focal points allow various and sometimes unusual sonic pathways to emerge in an ensemble context. In an "interior" direction, tones balance inward, reinforcing the equilibrium of the collective, while in an "exterior" direction, tones radiate outward, inviting subtle changes in texture and a broader field of interaction. This interplay of interiority and exteriority extends beyond dynamics or articulation. interius/exterius took shape over a series of intensive workshops between composer and ensemble, supported in part by Chamber Music America's Classical Commissioning Program. The harmonic material of interius/exterius is derived entirely from the harmonic series of a theoretical 10Hz fundamental -- an inaudible frequency whose overtones define a resonant, interlocking lattice of sound. This base-10 tuning system allows every pitch to be understood in relation to its spectral position, creating a shared harmonic language among the performers. Ghost Ensemble's performance reveals the otherworldly sonorities that arise from this structure, as shifting alignments, phasing relationships, and gradual timbral transformations guide the music's unfolding. Lamb's compositional language is deeply shaped by her studies with composer James Tenney and Dhrupad musician Mani Kaul, as well as her ongoing engagement with microtonal performance practice. Her interest in musical perception and psychoacoustics positions interius/exterius as both an inquiry into the nature of harmonic space and a lived experience of collective attunement. Ghost Ensemble -- known themselves for championing the work of Pauline Oliveros -- are perhaps, then, ideal collaborators, bringing both profound sensitivity and intuitive fluency to Lamb's music. With interius/exterius, Lamb and Ghost Ensemble have achieved a collaborative work of rare clarity and conceptual depth -- simultaneously precise and open, crystalline and fluid, exquisitely attuned to the interplay between individual agency and collective form.
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ROKU 037CD
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Totally beautiful and rare piano performance from Loren Connors, joined on guitar by long-time collaborator Alan Licht. Celebrating thirty years of collaboration, Loren Connors and Alan Licht performed for two nights at OTO on May 5 and 6th, 2023. On the second night, with the stage lit in blue, Connors took up a seat on the piano stool whilst Licht picked up the guitar. What followed was the duo's first ever set with Connors on piano -- one of only a few times Connors has played piano live at all -- here captured and issued as The Blue Hour. Its spacious warmth came as a total surprise live, but makes complete sense for a duo whose dedicated expressionism takes inspiration from a vast spectrum of emotion. Both opening with single notes to start, it doesn't take long before a surface rises and begins to shimmer. A run up the keys, the drop of a feedback layer on a sustained and bent note. The two begin to exchange notes in tandem and brief touches of melody and chord hover. After a while, Connors picks up the guitar, stands it in his lap and sweeps a wash of color across Licht's guitar. Sharp, glassy edges begin to form, open strings and barred frets darkening the space. When his two pedals begin to merge, Licht finds a dramatic organ-like feedback and it's hard not to imagine Rothko's Chapel, its varying shades of blue/black ascending and descending in the room. When Connors goes back to the piano for the second side, the pair quickly lock into a refrain and light pours in. What is always remarkable about Licht is that his enormous frame of reference doesn't seem to weigh him down, and instead here he is able to delicately place fractures of a Jackson C Frank song ("Just Like Anything") amongst the vast sea of Connors' blues. Perhaps it's the pleasure of playing two nights in a row together, or the nature of Connor's piano playing combined with Licht's careful listening, but the improvisation on The Blue Hour feels remarkably calm and unafraid. There's nothing to prove and no agenda except the joy of sounding color together. Released in an edition of 400 LPs and 200 CDs. Artwork by Loren Connors. Recorded live at Cafe OTO on Saturday 6th May 2023 by Billy Steiger Mixed by Oli Barrett. Mastered by Sean McCann.
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ROKU 037LP
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LP version. Totally beautiful and rare piano performance from Loren Connors, joined on guitar by long-time collaborator Alan Licht. Celebrating thirty years of collaboration, Loren Connors and Alan Licht performed for two nights at OTO on May 5 and 6th, 2023. On the second night, with the stage lit in blue, Connors took up a seat on the piano stool whilst Licht picked up the guitar. What followed was the duo's first ever set with Connors on piano -- one of only a few times Connors has played piano live at all -- here captured and issued as The Blue Hour. Its spacious warmth came as a total surprise live, but makes complete sense for a duo whose dedicated expressionism takes inspiration from a vast spectrum of emotion. Both opening with single notes to start, it doesn't take long before a surface rises and begins to shimmer. A run up the keys, the drop of a feedback layer on a sustained and bent note. The two begin to exchange notes in tandem and brief touches of melody and chord hover. After a while, Connors picks up the guitar, stands it in his lap and sweeps a wash of color across Licht's guitar. Sharp, glassy edges begin to form, open strings and barred frets darkening the space. When his two pedals begin to merge, Licht finds a dramatic organ-like feedback and it's hard not to imagine Rothko's Chapel, its varying shades of blue/black ascending and descending in the room. When Connors goes back to the piano for the second side, the pair quickly lock into a refrain and light pours in. What is always remarkable about Licht is that his enormous frame of reference doesn't seem to weigh him down, and instead here he is able to delicately place fractures of a Jackson C Frank song ("Just Like Anything") amongst the vast sea of Connors' blues. Perhaps it's the pleasure of playing two nights in a row together, or the nature of Connor's piano playing combined with Licht's careful listening, but the improvisation on The Blue Hour feels remarkably calm and unafraid. There's nothing to prove and no agenda except the joy of sounding color together. Released in an edition of 400 LPs and 200 CDs. Artwork by Loren Connors. Recorded live at Cafe OTO on Saturday 6th May 2023 by Billy Steiger Mixed by Oli Barrett. Mastered by Sean McCann.
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LP
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LTBR 251LP
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The Swedish-Danish composer and pianist Henrik Lindstrand invites listeners to immerse themselves in reflection and contemplation with his upcoming album Space Between. Since his solo debut Leken (2017), Lindstrand has received acclaim for his ability to craft evocative compositions that create space for inner peace and introspection. His poetic soundscapes, infused with a touch of Nordic melancholy, have captivated a growing international audience. Well-known in Denmark as the sonic wizard of the iconic rock band Kashmir and with a parallel career as a film, TV and game composer, Lindstrand has previously released four solo albums. The most recent Klangland released in 2023 gaining a five-star review in GAFFA, Scandinavia's biggest Music publication. The album release was followed by concerts in Denmark, Sweden and Germany with the Danish String Collective Halvcirkel culminating at the Elbphilharmonie in Hamburg. RIYL: Max Richter, Nils Frahm, Einaudi, Hania Rani, Olafur Arnolds.
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LP
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GREYFADE 005LP
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$27.50
PREORDER
RELEASE DATE: 4/18/2025
Originally released in 2022. A beautifully meditative and architectural set of loops for solo piano, Filters is the solo debut of pianist and composer Phillip Golub (b. 1993). Approaching the concept of endless repetition through the lens of his delicate and expressive pianism, Golub's loops unite the austerity of the systems-based with the infinite variety and imagination of live performance. The process of manual repetition resembles for Golub a kind of ritual, rather than merely a technological process. It is the act of participation in an entity unfolding over time that interests him. He explored different durations and performance contexts, sometimes quietly performing a loop or two as guests arrived to a recital hall, other times programming afternoon-length performances in which each loop extended to durations of 45 minutes or more. He even experimented with orchestrating the loops for various mixed chamber ensembles. For the recording of his debut solo album, however, Golub wanted to distill the timeless quality of these pieces into a piano-only, LP-length experience. In summer 2019, while in Los Angeles for work on an opera with Wayne Shorter and Esperanza Spalding, he scheduled time to record on a privately owned and beautifully maintained Steinway D. Golub then edited together his favorite sections of these extended performances to construct the final album versions. Structurally, each loop proceeds by ordering two internal sections into larger patterns. While the harmonic and formal dimensions of Filters are meticulously controlled, some aspects of the compositions are left intentionally open. There is no explicit rhythm specified in the composition, for instance; the approximate timing of each event is indicated with space-time notation. Filters is intentionally designed to work in many contexts. Although the structural integrity and endlessly variegated details of these loops reward focused listening, they never demand it. This is also just beautiful music to get lost in.
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STAUB 172LP
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$26.00
PREORDER
RELEASE DATE: 3/21/2025
A limited edition of 300 copies. This is the first ever stand-alone vinyl release of the Bel Canto Orquestra's legendary concert in Montpellier in 1983. Founded by Pascal Comelade, Pierre Bastien, Cathy Claret, and Laurent Churet, the Bel Canto Orquestra was constituted of toy instruments only. During its lifetime from 1983 to 2015, other members included Victor Nubla, Pip Pyle, Jac Berrocal, and many more. Includes bonus track "Résumé Du Concert Du Bel Canto Orquestra Du 7 Mai 1992," which is a never before released piano summary of the Orquestra's 1992 concert.
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RS 068LP
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Long time friend of the label and Stones Throw alumni Rejoicer joins forces with longtime collaborator, fellow Apifera band member and renowned pianist Nitai Hershkovits to present a new moniker and concept piece Cinema Royal -- a delicate yet audacious album that quietly commands attention. Having previously collaborated on works for Raw Tapes and beyond, this body of work exists more on the modern classical plain with splices of ambient and jazz woven into the musical fabric of the compositions. Led by piano, the album features a dizzying array of orchestral, percussive and traditional string instruments from around the world -- flawlessly combined in a way that might sound contrived, but just fits effortlessly. The fact that it's such an easy listen distracts from its complexity. Synthesizers cozy up to Afro beat indebted drums, East Asian zithers swim amongst classical string arrangements whilst Ethio- jazz keys dance atop restrained but irresistibly funky drum machine patterns. Inspired to create a cinematic energy they saw the essence of Fellini in their album cover choice, striving to create an album that could exist as a film score. The album exudes a sense of ease, a feeling of lightness that speaks to the virtuosic abilities of the players. The sense of fun is infectious and the playful improvisation is energizing. Conceptually inspired by a simple drum loop and single take via the piano the two exist working in a deeply involved flow with collaborations from friends to enhance the initial piano melody.
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ENCH 073LP
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An ingenious musician with a harmonious sense of melody, French pianist and composer Maxence Cyrin releases Passenger, his ninth album, composed and performed entirely on the piano. With influences ranging from Ryuichi Sakamoto and Brian Eno to Philip Glass and composers such as Erik Satie and Frédéric Chopin, this album weaves together ambient, minimalism and neo-classical music. This time around, the artist has sought to convey his emotions and ideas in a more intuitive and spontaneous way, even keeping improvisations such as "Under A Glass Bell" and "Dive" recorded during a residency in Brittany. Maxence Cyrin is one of France's most internationally acclaimed pianists.
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SR 570CD
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Outre-nuit as Outre-noir by Pierre Soulages displays the greatest nuances on subtle variations. Between Clara Levy's two original compositions is Giacinto Scelsi's "Xnoybis" (1964), a piece that makes you feel like you're listening for the first time. It is a journey amongst the reliefs contained within one single pitch. Written in three parts, the piece is an instinctive approach to the sound spectrum (the term "spectral music" was coined a decade later). Next comes a nocturne by Kaija Saariaho, which focuses on the sound material metamorphosis. Erika Vega and Eva Maria Houben, two young female composers, close the program with their own pieces. All pieces performed by Clara Levy. Levy (1991) is a French violinist and improviser living in Brussels whose career is mainly focused on new music performance. She has been developing solo project addressing different topics at the core of contemporary music practice: the blurred lines between interpretation and composition (13 Visions) or the listening experience and dramaturgy of the concert (Outre-Nuit).
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CC 003LP
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Performed by Carlos Cipa. The new recording of The Book of Sounds is an intimate exploration of the piano by pianist Carlos Cipa -- a way of looking into the sound, of listening into the moment when Cipa's fingers press down on the piano keys. The Book of Sounds, composed between 1979 and 1982 by composer and pianist Hans Otte, is a musical pendulum movement of one hour in twelve "pieces," as the composer himself describes them. Chords and melodies repeat themselves, sometimes quickly, sometimes slowly; they follow each other in harmonic cadences and yet never dissolve -- a timeless back and forth. The Book of Sounds is the European-German answer to the concert music of American minimalism. But it is also the essence of many questions about society and the human condition at that time. Inspired by Zen Buddhism, Otte was convinced that a return to simplicity, to the unagitated -- a piano, harmonic cadences, a middle register -- frees the listener to focus on what is really important in art: the human being. Introspection begins with listening. Seldom have simple chords and melodies been so selectively staged. It is a process of endless reduction -- no wild sound dramaturgies, no climaxes, hardly any beginning or end. The interpreting pianist simply prepares a tableaux of perception for the listener. Cipa naturally sets accents; he recorded the 12 pieces on three different pianos -- a Steinway grand piano, a Yamaha piano, and a Yamaha CP-70, an early electric piano -- to help shape the tonal characteristics. Carlos Cipa hits the nerve of the times with this new recording. What music can be as art is still up for debate today. The Book of Sounds is not "art-proof" and in this it is still a provocation today; absolutely unspectacular and practicing relaxation. It is a wonderful invitation to feel, experience, and perhaps even find oneself in the confrontation with the work -- and for a moment not to fuel the discourse. Cipa, who otherwise appears as a composer himself, here carries out Otte's intended gesture of withdrawal in a double sense and steps into the background as creator but also interpreter, in order to bequeath The Book of Sounds to the loudspeakers and headphones at home in one step forward.
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2LP
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MOVATM 075C-LP
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"Yo-Yo Ma Plays Ennio Morricone is a 2004 album of recordings from Morricone's various film scores by brilliant cellist Yo-Yo Ma and Ennio Morricone. The album was recorded with the Roma Sinfonietta Orchestra and Gilda Butta on piano. Morricone functioned as orchestrator, conductor and producer. The album stayed 105 weeks on the Billboard Top Classical Albums. Yo-Yo Ma Plays Ennio Morricone positively diverges from most of the other interpretation albums in its collaborative aspect: the music's original creator, Morricone, had as much to do with this album as did Ma and his creative team. Yo-Yo Ma Plays Ennio Morricone is available as a limited edition of 1500 individually numbered copies on translucent yellow colored."
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GODREC 074LP
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$24.00
PREORDER
RELEASE DATE: 1/31/2025
GOD Records presents its first release from the controversial composer with cult status, Erik Satie. He influenced not only the entire musical language of John Cage but also an entire generation of 20th and 21st century composers, whose influence remains noticeable today. This unique release presents two of his rather obscure and lesser-known, but unique pieces, both composed for visual arts: a movie ("Cinéma") and a ballet ("Uspud"). Renowned Serbian piano player Branka Parlić, famous for her interpretations not only of Satie's works but also of other minimal composers like Philip Glass and Gavin Bryars, shares some of her impressions about the pieces: "'Cinema' is the first example of music scored explicitly for film, frame-by-frame. These facts really interested me, so I started working on it. So far, I have performed 'Cinema' live-to-film Entr'acte many times as part of my concerts. 'Uspud' is a less communicative three-act Christian ballet written for a shadow play back in 1892. This timeless, mystical work drew me in on the first reading, and I was delighted to work on it. Satie offered this piece to the director of the Paris Opera, and after he was rejected, he declared: 'I believe in the appearance of 'Uspud' at the Opera for the winter of 1927, or no later than 1943.' The meaning of the word 'Uspud' is still not fully clarified."
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BLUME 022LP
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Since its founding back in 2014, Blume has carved a unique place in cultural landscape, issuing free-standing works, spanning the historical and contemporary, that represent singular gestures of creativity within the field of experimental sound. Joining their broad efforts in building networks of context and understanding, Blume returns with the first ever vinyl release to attend to James Tenney's legendary Postal Pieces. This marks the first ever appearance of five of the suite's works -- "Maximusic, for Max Neuhaus" (1965), "Having Never Written a Note for Percussion, for John Bergamo" (1971), "FFor Percussion Perhaps, or... [Night], for Harold Budd" (1971), "Cellogram, for Joel Krosnick" (1971), and "Beast, for Buell Neidlinger" (1971) -- on vinyl, drawing upon recordings made in 2003, by the Amsterdam based ensemble, The Barton Workshop, under the direction of James Fulkerson. Among the most important and highly regarded efforts in Tenney's canon of compositions, as well as within the history of 20th Century music, these five pieces represent a crucial bridge between Fluxus-oriented conceptualism, minimalism, and the microtonal complexities that would emerge in their wakes. A student of composition under Carl Ruggles, John Cage, Harry Partch, and Edgard Varèse, as well as acoustics, information theory, and tape music composition under Lejaren Hiller, James Tenney carved a wide path within the contexts of experimental and avant-garde music during the second half of the 20th Century. A suite of eleven compositions, The Postal Pieces, stands among Tenney's well known and celebrated compositions, and illuminates the dualities embraced by the composer, notably his use of sound to develop consciousness in and of others, and his willingness to draw on elements and observations of everyday life; citing his strong dislike of writing letters as being the primary inspiration for their inception. The suite is composed around three themes: Tenney's concept of swell form (utilizing repetition and progressing through a structurally symmetrical arch), intonation, and the desire to produce "meditative perceptual states." A hugely important addition to Blume's ever-expanding efforts in context building and networks of creative practice, James Tenney's Post Pieces is issued in a highly limited vinyl edition of 300 copies, which includes an exact replica of the original postcard graphic scores, and features newly commissioned liner notes by Bradford Bailey.
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CVSD 115CD
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It's a miracle that some records ever get made. Right in the middle of Ceausescu's ultra-repressive dictatorship, composer Iancu Dumitrescu managed to arrange for his first LP, a compilation of radical new music by Dumitrescu and three of his Romanian colleagues, all older than him: Ocavian Nemescu, Stefan Niculescu, and Corneliu Cezar. Dumitrescu was -- and remains -- one of the most iconoclastic figures in contemporary music. Often referred to as a spectralist (though he distances himself from the approach taken by the French spectralists) and self-described as an adherent of "acousmatic" music (though again he situates himself at a remove from the French electroacoustic composers) and highly influenced by deep studies in phenomenology, Dumitrescu's music often focuses intensely on one sonorous object, penetrating it until it is entirely blown open. He formed Ansamblul Hyperion, a chamber group featuring adventurous young musicians, in 1976. Four years later, against all odds, in a radio studio in Bucharest, they recorded this groundbreaking compilation for Electrecord, the state record company. The program starts with one of Dumitrescu's most important works, the breathtaking, string-centric "Movemur et Sumus" (1978), translated from the Latin as "move and exist." Nemescu's "Combinatii In Cercuri" (1965) was composed for the ensemble together with an electronic component that was added to the piece in 1980. Composed in 1979, Niculescu's "Sincronie" features Dumitrescu himself on piano, as well as conducting, as he does on all the works; written for an indeterminate number of performers between two and twelve (here featuring nine) it utilizes fixed elements in the score together with openly improvised elements, expanding from a core vibraphone part to encompass an almost ecstatic meditation on stasis and motion. Cezar's work "Rota" (1976) combines Romanian, Balkan, and other Eastern melodic resonances with electronics (some of them startlingly video-game-like) and preparations on various instruments, lending an ear to the natural sounds of wind, waves, and seagull calls. This historically charged document, released in 1981 in Romania and available for the most part only there, has never been reissued in any form. Gorgeously remastered from the original tapes, it appears here with its original cover design.
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LP
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SV 202LP
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"Roberto Cacciapaglia is an Italian composer and pianist who started out in the fertile Milan avant-garde scene of the 1970s, which included Franco Battiato, Giusto Pio, Lino Capra Vaccina, Francesco Messina, and many others. After studying at the conservatory, he worked at RAI's Studio of Musical Phonology -- an electronic music laboratory similar to NDR/WDR in Germany, GRM/IRCAM in France or BBC Radiophonic Workshop. Originally released in 1979, Sei Note In Logica ('Six Notes In Logic') is Cacciapaglia's second album. While his debut, Sonanze, offers a series of ambient mini-soundtracks, Sei Note presents a singular, sinuous piece. The composition is based on a finite set of musical notes, yet this limitation is the point of departure for a grand tour of possible combinations and enthralling timbres (marimbas, strings, reeds and human voice). Like Steve Reich's Music For 18 Musicians, the joyous experiment of Sei Note is grounded in constant variation. Often doubled by multiple instruments, non-repeating patterns are exquisitely layered, while electro-acoustic signals transform and further refract through visceral effects. Within this conceptual framework, Cacciapaglia does not so much juxtapose rigid dichotomies -- acoustic vs. electronic, melodic vs. dissonant, simple vs. complex -- as fuse them into an expansive whole. What started as an inspired study in minimalism becomes a bold feat of 20th century music. Sei Note In Logica is deeply sincere and, at the same time, quite playful. With one foot firmly planted in the past and the other steeped in technology, Cacciapaglia's influence can be heard in the work of Jim O'Rourke, Fennesz, and Ben Vida."
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LP
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SV 201LP
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"Roberto Cacciapaglia is an Italian composer and pianist who started out in the fertile Milan avant-garde scene of the 1970s, which included Franco Battiato, Giusto Pio, Lino Capra Vaccina, Francesco Messina, and many others. After studying at the conservatory, he worked at RAI's Studio of Musical Phonology -- an electronic music laboratory similar to NDR/WDR in Germany, GRM/IRCAM in France or BBC Radiophonic Workshop. Sonanze ('Sonatas') is Cacciapaglia's debut album, a monumental work that was recorded over a two-year period and released in 1975 via seminal German label Die Kosmischen Kuriere (Ohr). While a 'sonata' is traditionally performed by easily distinguishable instrumentalists (often soloist and accompaniment) and with repeated structural themes, Cacciapaglia flips this hierarchical form on its head -- blending harpsichord, strings, brass and analog synths to create ambient mini-soundtracks. As the composer writes in the original sleeve notes, 'I am aware, unfortunately, that I am a few millennia late in how I would like music to be understood, which today I find diluted in its primary powers, in an era that is destructive of essential values. Precisely for this reason, I want to search for it in depth and not on the surface, perhaps alternating the knob of a synthesizer with a marranzano (mouth harp).' Mixed in quadrophonic surround-sound under the auspices of Rolf-Ulrich Kaiser (celebrated producer of Tangerine Dream and Ash Ra Tempel), Sonanze remains on the fringe of Kosmische realms. Each movement explores hypnotic rhythms, intuitive arrangements, musique concrète techniques and a pure psychedelic awakening."
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2CD
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NW 80843CD
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"The inspiration for Christopher Trapani's (b. 1980) new song cycle is Michael Denning's book Noise Uprising, which chronicles the explosion of vernacular recording that took place in the late 1920s in port cities around the globe. The historical 78 rpm records of this era are the not-so-silent witnesses of the birth of son, jazz, samba, rembetiko, fado, tango, etc. They reveal a kind of B-side of music history, a people's history of music-making driven by the bustling marketplaces of colonial port cities. Noise Uprising (2024) is a polystylistic atlas that unravels a subterranean, cross-cultural network far away from, and with a wider reach than, traditional concert halls. Using Denning's book as a starting point, Christopher Trapani 'fills in the map' by composing a series of pieces for four guitars and two singers, sometimes including live electronics. In studying these 78s as primary source documents, Trapani transcribes and transforms their musical gestures. These recordings are in turn woven into electronic collages, often alongside his own field recordings, made on site in the cities where the source material originated, imagining alternative histories, fictive encounters and cross-pollinations between styles which in reality may never have intersected: gamelan meets tango, fado meets samba. With Noise Uprising Trapani uncovers hidden connections between geographically distant genres, but in doing so he always strives to create work that ultimately represents something more than a travelogue or a book of postcards. The short works he has composed for this cycle call into question notions of cultural appropriation and authenticity, challenge rather than romanticize notions of the exotic, and draw attention to the dangers of 'overtourism' and the unreflective, superficial consumption of place. The guitar, in all its possible variations, forms a common thread. But also the human voice plays a central role in Noise Uprising. This recording features the voices of Swedish-Ethiopian soprano Sofia Jernberg and Puerto Rican soprano Sophia Burgos."
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LP
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HOL 144LP
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Edition of 300 copies. Gold foil printed sleeve. Includes 12-page booklet and two leporello inserts printed on translucent paper. On the centenary of the birth of Luigi Nono, the Maurice Quartet -- Georgia Privitera (violin), Laura Bertolino (violin), Francesco Vernero (viola), and Aline Privitera (cello) -- reinterprets the composition for string quartet by the Venetian composer: Fragmente: Stille, An Diotima, dedicated to LaSalle Quartet on the occasion of the thirtieth Beethovenfest in Bonn, in 1980. The driving force of inspiration must have been Beethoven, understood as a radical innovator of the conventions of his time. This same definition was attributed to Nono after composing this work, so much so that the critics of the time spoke of the "turning point work." An extreme chamber music work, at the same time private and political, which Nono himself summarized as follows: "I have not changed at all. Even tenderness, the private has its collective, political side. Therefore my String Quartet is not the expression of a new retrospective line in me, but rather my current position of experimentation: I want the great, rebellious affirmation with the minimum means." The edition includes a set of evocative photographs of the Giudecca in Venice -- which follow the aesthetics of the fragment -- realized by Sophie-Anne Herin and a precious musicological contribution by Francesca Scigliuzzo. The Maurice Quartet -- active for more than twenty years in the field of experimentation between contemporary music, electronics and multimedia -- joins the numerous homages that the world of music pays to Nono one hundred years after his birth with a recording work of great philological and interpretative relevance, aimed at capturing the most intimate and feverish side of one of the most significant composers of the last century.
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