Browse by Artist: KIRSCHNER, KENNETH

Artist:	KIRSCHNER, KENNETH
Title:	September 19, 1998 et al.
Label:	12K
Format:	CD
Price:	$13.00
Catalog #:	12K 1024CD

"Kenneth Kirschner's music combines the influence of the 20th century avant-garde (most importantly Morton Feldman) with the techniques and technologies of contemporary electronic music. His methods mix a systematic use of chance procedures with the sort of rigorous editing only possible in the digital environment. An advocate of the freedom of information, Kirschner makes his work freely available online, and releases material on CD under intellectual property licenses that encourage, rather than inhibit, the music's free proliferation and appropriation. 12k is pleased to present September 19, 1998 et al., the first available CD collection of Kirschner's highly varied output. The opening track, 'September 19, 1998,' juxtaposes a spare, Cagean piano line with percussion sounds derived from found household objects, principally kitchenware. 'September 27, 2002' is a dense, polyrhythmic study in the possibilities of software synthesizer sound design. The final piece, 'February 8, 2003,' transforms tiny, unconsciously selected fragments of the composer's mp3 collection into a flowing assemblage designed to evoke the late-period orchestral music of Feldman. (All of Kirschner's pieces are titled for the date on which they were begun.)"

Artist:	KIRSCHNER, KENNETH
Title:	Twenty Ten
Label:	12K
Format:	3CD
Price:	$26.00
Catalog #:	12K 1066CD

"Following 2008's critically acclaimed double-CD Filaments & Voids, Twenty Ten sees Kirschner's use of real-world instruments become even more accomplished while still remaining steeped in conceptual outlines, meticulously married with computerized processes that emphasize the natural instruments' flaws. Like most of Kirschner's work, he starts the listener off easily, introducing the instrument or set of instruments for a particular piece with relative pragmatism. However, things don't remain so simple for very long, as the works' harmonic balance gives way to microtonal relationships and beautifully crafted computerized decay. By the end of his long compositions, you find yourself wondering how you got where you were, having been completely drawn into Kirschner's sound-world and thrown out the other side as if tossed into a churning sea. Disc One starts off with the shortest piece of the set (a mere 23:40), 'January 4, 2011' (all of Kirschner's compositions are titled for the date on which they were started). This piece, created with metallophones and xylophones from a local school, is perhaps the most chaotic, and the most natural, we've ever heard Kirschner's music, as two simultaneous layers of subtly microtuned percussive bells roll and skip, sped up, slowed down and playing off of one another. Natural, because there was no computer trickery, only hours of playing and recording edited down to this 'short' length. As almost the polar opposite, the second track on Disc One (the only disc with more than one piece), 'November 7, 2010', takes piano, strings and celeste into severely microtonal territory - at first perhaps a difficult listen, but at the end of the 42-minute piece it somehow all makes sense. It's a dynamic recording whose high-pitched bowed sounds whisper across low piano notes, leaving the listener sometimes holding their breath, afraid to disturb the delicacy."

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