Browse by Label: BRIDGE RECORDS

Artist:	KECAK GANDA SARI
Title:	Kecak: A Balinese Music Drama
Label:	BRIDGE RECORDS
Format:	CD
Price:	$15.00
Catalog #:	BRIDGE 9019CD

1990 release. Recorded September 17, 1987 in Bona Kelod, Gianyar, Bali. This is the first recording of a complete "Ramayana Monkey Chant." "Down the lanes to the temple men are streaming, calling to one another out of the darkness, mustering in the temple-court. Already the circles are forming, one within another, five or six circles of crouching bodies, a hundred and fifty men under the flickering light of a great branching wooden torch. All sounds die away, there is silence and a feeling of suspense. Suddenly the motionless bodies grow tense, awaiting a signal. With a series of short cries they lift themselves, then sink with a hissing sound of outgoing breath. They intone a rhythm, menacing, intense, all exactly together; then drop and muffle it, press it down into the dark hole between their crowded heads. They begin to sway; low inarticulate sounds break from them; their bodies gleam in the flickering flame, their eyes half close in dreaming faces. A slow chant rises from a single voice in their midst, a child's high-pitched wailing voice. The swaying grows and grows till suddenly the heaving mass bursts open with a roar, like a crater in eruption scattering fragments. Circle upon circle they fall backwards, the full-blown flower of a volcano. Again they fold together and continue their swaying and their song..." -- Dance And Drama In Bali

Artist:	FELDMAN, MORTON
Title:	For Philip Guston
Label:	BRIDGE RECORDS
Format:	4CD
Price:	$50.00
Catalog #:	BRIDGE 9078CD

1997 release. Performed by the California EAR Unit (flutes, percussion, piano, celeste). "Here is the California EAR Unit's recording of the late Morton Feldman's monumental, four hour long For Philip Guston (1984). Included in this discount priced, four disc set is an enhanced multimedia track, which includes Feldman's remarks as well as a photo montage of the composer. Morton Feldman stands as one of our century's darkest and quietest musical poets. His music seems a muffled yet spiritually inspired reaction to the speed, noise and horror of the events of the 20th century -- much as in the work of the painter, Mark Rothko. For Philip Guston, a composition from Feldman's last years, is music that attempts to suspend time, but without the nervous 'sequenced' energy that dominates so much of today's 'process art.' In For Philip Guston, the gigantism of Feldman's time-scale is offset by the extreme intimacy and seductiveness of the composer's expression. As Bridge Records' annotato Alan Rich puts it: 'This is music of an outward immobility and inward irresistible propulsion, random yet purposeful-its construction, intricate and precise.' Four disc set includes an enhanced CD track, and Feldman in conversation."

Artist:	CAGE, JOHN
Title:	Sonatas And Interludes
Label:	BRIDGE RECORDS
Format:	2CD
Price:	$15.00
Catalog #:	BRIDGE 9081CD

1998 release. Aleck Karis, prepared piano. Free bonus disc: John Cage reads his lecture Composition in Retrospect. "This celebratory special edition features Cage's masterpiece, his visionary Sonatas and Interludes performed by pianist Aleck Karis. A free bonus disc brings us to an intimate California living room, where Cage converses and gives a reading of his poem-cum-manifesto, Composition in Retrospect. Aleck Karis is the pianist of Speculum Musicae, and Professor of Piano at The University of California, San Diego."

Artist:	FELDMAN, MORTON
Title:	Crippled Symmetry
Label:	BRIDGE RECORDS
Format:	2CD
Price:	$15.00
Catalog #:	BRIDGE 9092CD

1999 release. Performed by The California EAR Unit (Dorothy Stone, flutes; Arthur Jarvinen, percussion; Vicky Ray, piano/celeste). "Morton Feldman's music continues to exert its fascination on listeners and record companies alike. After releasing its highly successful recording of the more than three-hour-long For Philip Guston, Bridge once again returns to the California EAR Unit for Crippled Symmetry, at only 87 minutes a mere bagatelle in terms of Feldman's late output. Well, maybe not. Scored for flutes, mallet percussion, and piano/celeste, Crippled Symmetry does exactly what the title says: it toys with not quite exact repetitions of short melodic and rhythmic shapes. As each pattern exhausts itself, a new one takes its place. All of this happens at a slow tempo, at the lowest possible dynamic level. Only the composer's own exquisite sense of sonority and timing determines how the various musical patterns are organized, and how long they persist. What makes Feldman's music so fascinating is its complete honesty: it truly does create a series of sonic shapes moving through space, allowing the listener to literally 'see' with his ears the slowly changing patterns of sound. It's sort of like watching a mobile turn almost imperceptibly in a gentle breeze. And much as it may outrage the faithful, this is great music to fall asleep to -- the perfect cure for insomnia, in fact, not because it's dull, but because it's so hypnotic... Bridge's sonics are exactly as they should be: transferred at a high level so that you can set the volume low, relax, and watch the music." -- Classics Today

Artist:	TAYLOR, CECIL
Title:	Algonquin
Label:	BRIDGE RECORDS
Format:	CD
Price:	$15.00
Catalog #:	BRIDGE 9146CD

Performed by Cecil Taylor (piano) and Mat Maneri (violin). "The visionary piano virtuoso Cecil Taylor was commissioned by the Library of Congress to write a work for violin and piano in 1999. The result was Taylor's Algonquin -- an intensely joyful dialogue between violinist Mat Maneri and Taylor. Taylor's score bridges the gap between jazz and classical music -- between improvisation and notated music. As annotator Bill Shoemaker writes: 'A Taylor score opens a moment of intense creativity, but only for that moment; afterwards, the score is merely part of the record, fodder for the files. What endures in Taylor's music defies notation, conventional or otherwise. It begs the question: Is a score that is little more than an outline, and designed only for a single use, as legitimate as one where all aspects of performance are specified, and has been repeatedly performed over for years, decades and even centuries? Given the exhilarating energy conveyed through this recording, the answer is surely yes.'"

Artist:	ROCKMORE, CLARA
Title:	Clara Rockmore's Lost Theremin Album
Label:	BRIDGE RECORDS
Format:	CD
Price:	$15.00
Catalog #:	BRIDGE 9208CD

"Long regarded as 'The Queen of the Theremin,' Clara Rockmore's virtuosity as the world's leading exponent of the Theremin, was commonly acknowledged during her long and successful career. Intimately involved with Leon Theremin in the development of the instrument, Clara Rockmore's career as a Thereminist had her performing with major orchestras and with her sister, the legendary pianist, Nadia Reisenberg. The Rockmore/Reisenberg duo is heard on this CD in 13 never-before released tracks, recorded in 1975. Also heard here are three tracks with the accompaniment of a cello ensemble, and one with the accompaniment of the much admired Argentine composer/guitarist, Jorge Morel. This recording comes with a booklet which includes numerous historic photographs of the performers, as well as excerpts from an interview conducted by Robert Sherman, in which his mother, Nadia Reisenberg; his aunt, Clara Rockmore; and the electronic pioneer Robert Moog discuss their lives and the background of their involvement with the Theremin and its creator, Leon Theremin."

Artist:	FELDMAN, MORTON
Title:	For Christian Wolff
Label:	BRIDGE RECORDS
Format:	3CD
Price:	$50.00
Catalog #:	BRIDGE 9279CD

2008 release. Performed by the California EAR Unit (Dorothy Stone, flute; Vicki Ray, piano, celesta). "For Christian Wolff is one of Morton Feldman's final compositions, and stands alongside the four-hours-plus For Philip Guston, the 70-minute For John Cage, and the six-hour String Quartet II. Writing about hearing this work, Christian Wolff says that 'I found the experience of listening to it beautiful and interesting -- it moves away partly from our (Morty's, John Cage's and mine) original preoccupation with just sound and sonority into areas of self-awareness about listening, being a listener, as such, because there's so much time to be thinking of this and that as well as just listening.' The California EAR Unit's performances of Feldman's For Philip Guston (BRIDGE 9078CD) and Crippled Symmetry (BRIDGE 9092CD) have received high praise from the international musical press."

Artist:	MESSIAEN, OLIVER
Title:	Visions de l'Amen
Label:	BRIDGE RECORDS
Format:	CD
Price:	$15.00
Catalog #:	BRIDGE 9324CD

"In the spring of 1943, in German-occupied Paris, a select audience of invited guests gathered at the Galerie Charpentier for the first performance of Olivier Messiaen's new work for two pianos, Visions de l'Amen. Although originally one of several pieces on the program, a printed announcement of a change of date explained that 'the significance, the character and the duration of this work have led the Concerts de la Pl�iade to present it in a concert which will be entirely devoted to it.' Performed by Messiaen and Yvonne Loriod, Visions represented the first musical collaboration between the two, and the beginning of a personal and creative partnership that would endure for half a century. This new recording brings together two leading performers of Messiaen's music -- pianists Sarah Rothenberg and Marilyn Nonken."
"...a powerful performance.... For Messiaen, who experienced a type of synesthesia, a particular color could evoke harmonies or sounds. He composed Visions mostly in the key of A, which he associated with blue, the color of the sky and eternity. Ms. Nonken and Ms. Rothenberg (who studied Messiaen's music in Paris with Ms. Loriod) demonstrate a deep understanding of this shimmering, colorful score..." -- New York Times

Artist:	FELDMAN, MORTON
Title:	Piano And String Quartet
Label:	BRIDGE RECORDS
Format:	CD
Price:	$15.00
Catalog #:	BRIDGE 9369CD

"Composed two years before his death, the ultra-impressionistic Piano and String Quartet is one of the most beguiling of Feldman's late works. With its chords based on semitones, this nearly 80-minute, single movement work floats in a typical Feldmanesque haze, yet progresses with a forward moving determination and logic that sets it apart from some of Feldman's more static pieces of this period. This gorgeous performance by Vicki Ray and the Eclipse Quartet has an almost erotically sensual quality. Turn down the lights, get comfortable and prepare to be enveloped in an aural experience of exceptional warmth and depth."

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