Browse by Artist: REYNOLDS, ROGER

Artist:	REYNOLDS, ROGER
Title:	Last Things, I Think, To Think About
Label:	ELECTRONIC MUSIC FOUNDATION
Format:	CD
Price:	$13.00
Catalog #:	EMF 044CD

"Roger Reynolds' song cycle based on text by John Ashbery. It is sung by Philip Larson, baritone, accompanied by Aleck Karis, piano, and it is also recited by John Ashbery. And there is an elegant, sparing use of electronics which emphasizes the intimacy and subtlety of the entire work. Indeed, the presence of the singing voice, the speaking voice, and the electronics gives this disc a multiple dimension that is striking and thoughtful. It is a fine representation of Ashbery's poetry, reflecting its rhythms, contrasts, and depth, and more, it is perhaps a pointer towards a new approach in reconciling the meaning of music with the meaning of words."

Artist:	REYNOLDS, ROGER
Title:	Voicespace I, III & IV
Label:	LOVELY MUSIC
Format:	CD
Price:	$13.00
Catalog #:	LCD 1801

Originally released in1992. "Philip Larson & Carol Plantamura, voices; The Extended Vocal Techniques Ensemble; Roger Reynolds, recording. Voices, language and space interested Roger Reynolds since The Emperor of Ice Cream was written for the ONCE Festivals in Ann Arbor in the 1960s. In the 1970s, at the Center for Music Experiment in La Jolla, he heard the daily rehearsals of the Extended Vocal Techniques Ensemble and, in the evenings, read his daughter to sleep, trying to capture an individual and consistent vocal behavior for each character in the story. A demanding critic, she stimulated Reynolds' reflections on vocal identity. Electronics offered rather precise control over auditory space (a particular sound's size, location, distance, the character of the host space in which it was heard). Choosing spare but evocative texts (Borges, Melville, Stevens, Coleridge) Reynolds conjures up unfamiliar yet appropriate vocal behaviors with which to present them. The five works in the series thus far share a concern with the potential of auditory imaging: this is a subject still only tentatively broached. They attempt to create a personal theater through the mind's ear. Yet they are distinct. Three of them are presented on this CD: 'The Palace (Voicespace IV)', 'Eclipse (Voicespace III)', 'Still (Voicespace I).'"

Artist:	REYNOLDS, ROGER
Title:	Whispers Out of Time (Works for Orchestra)
Label:	MODE
Format:	CD
Price:	$15.00
Catalog #:	MODE 183CD

"Roger Reynolds' (b.1939) music is a bit of a paradox: intimate in detail, while on a broader scale it is epic. It fits well with the music of his friends: Toru Takemitsu and Iannis Xenakis. The three works on this disc were composed over a four-year period (1987-1990). All first recordings, and the first complete disc of Reynolds' orchestral music. 'Symphony[Myths],' dedicated to Takemitsu, is for large orchestra: woodwinds in fours, piano, harp and an extended percussion section. It is seemingly 'about' pairs of almost mythic rocks in Japan and Greece -- translated across the span of a work that gradually subverts their hardness and immobility in the very slow and sometimes subtle manner that water erodes soil. 'Whispers Out of Time' draws its inspiration from John Ashbery's extended poem, 'Self-Portrait in a Convex Mirror.' It is scored for a string orchestra consisting of violin, viola, cello and contrabass soloists placed in front of an orchestra consisting of 8 violins, 6 violas, 5 cellos and 4 contrabasses. 'Symphony[Vertigo],' dedicated to the composer's friend and colleague, Charles Wuorinen, is a shifting kaleidoscopic array of sounds. Scored for full orchestra with woodwinds in threes, piano, harp and three percussionists, the orchestra is significantly supplemented by the use of quadraphonic computer processed sounds."

Artist:	REYNOLDS, ROGER
Title:	Epigram And Evolution: Complete Piano Works
Label:	MODE
Format:	2CD
Price:	$25.00
Catalog #:	MODE 212CD

"These piano pieces were written at every turning point in Roger Reynolds' creative life, marking his evolution. The music is driven by relentless attacks toward catharsis, but also bittersweet chords, and trembling, rolling, wandering or sweeping masses of sound. We feel as though we are being pushed around by forces beyond human imagination. This sense of being carried away by an uninterrupted undercurrent may be the image of the world we live in. The featured pianists are the legendary Yuji Takahashi (who also contributed a rare new recording for the set), and contemporary music specialists Eric Huebner and Marilyn Nonken. This specially priced 2-CD set combines new recordings with reissues of classic analog performances. 'Epigram and Evolution,' Reynolds' earliest piano work was premiered at the ONCE Festival in Ann Arbor by Robert Ashley. Reynolds moved to Europe in 1963, and 'Fantasy for Pianist' marks the change of intellectual climate. Premiered at the Warsaw Autumn Festival by John Tilbury, it begins with a chordal whirlwind over explosive blasts, leading to asynchronous tapping, resonance, and whirls. Experimental ways of playing are applied on the piano strings: plucking with a pick, wound string rasps, and harmonics produced by touching nodes on the struck strings. 'Traces' uses six loudspeakers surrounding the audience with amplified instruments and ring-modulated resonances. The piano part is 'traced' by a flute and cello involving timbre manipulation, with electronic shadows over them. 'Less Than Two' was written for pianists Gilbert Kalish and James Freeman, and percussionists Ray DesRoches and Richard Fitz, as a companion piece for George Crumb's 'Makrokosmos III (Music for a Summer Evening).' It was premiered, along with the Crumb piece, at The Library of Congress in 1979. Reynolds' architectural complexity culminates in 'Variation': a single movement following a preliminary graphic scheme, it allows room for playful and expressive flexibility left to the performer. It was premiered by Aleck Karis. 'imagE/piano' and 'imAge/piano' are a part of recent project of writing pairs of short, complementary pieces for different instruments. The E in 'imagE' stands for 'evocative' and A in 'imAge' for 'articulate,' involving a composing technique based on montage and editing. Liner notes by Yuji Takahashi."

Artist:	REYNOLDS, ROGER
Title:	All Known All White
Label:	POGUS
Format:	CD
Price:	$13.00
Catalog #:	POGUS 21025

"Pogus is delighted to be reissuing these 3 long out of print works. From the liner notes: ...the serpent-snapping eye (1978) was composed for trumpet, percussion, piano and 4-channel tape. The work is twenty minutes long, divided into three roughly equal sections. In the first, the primary aim of the performers is to match, submit to and intensify the taped sounds. The second, in which the synthesized sounds are sparse, introduces a felling of independence as the performers respond, reflecting on models provided by the tape. In the final section, the live performers complement and elaborate upon -- they attempt to augment -- the synthesized sound. Ping and Traces, were composed to complement one another. Ping represents a continuing interest in theater and intermedia running through Reynolds' compositions since The Emperor of Ice Cream (1961-62). In live performance the three strands of events occur simultaneously but are not synchronized. As a recorded performance, Ping is a self-sustained composition of instrumental improvisation over taped and electronic music. Traces was written for the composer-pianist Yuji Takahashi. Scored for solo piano, with flute, cello, ring modulator, signal generator, and 6 independent channels of taped sound, this work is concerned not only with events but their residues (traces)."

Artist:	REYNOLDS, ROGER
Title:	Process and Passion
Label:	POGUS
Format:	2CD
Price:	$13.00
Catalog #:	POGUS 21032

"A special 2 CDs for the price of 1 deal -- with CD 1 (stereo) music encoded for CD 2 (binaural - headphone only listening), the listener gets their own personal surround sound-for-the-head version -- the same music -- but different. This is a recording that explores the 'extra'-ordinary potential of the CD not only as a carrier of traditionally recorded instrumental sound (CD 1), but also offering a different view through binaural encoding of the same materials spatialized (CD 2). First you are presented with two solo compositions -- Kokoro and Focus a beam, emptied of thinking, outward... -- and the duo Process and Passion, in an acoustic recording, albeit with each instrument deliberately confined to one side of the stereo field. Then all three pieces are presented with extravagant sound processing, using spatialization concepts and binaural encoding, revealing unsuspected depths and energies within the sound of each of the pieces' ideas and unfolding."

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