FE Home
New Releases
Browse Catalog
Info
Email Us
Order Basket
Search:
Index of Labels
Browse by Label: MUTABLEMUSIC
Artist:
HO AND THE GREEN MONSTER BIG BAND, FRED
Title:
Celestial Green Monster
Label:
MUTABLEMUSIC
Format:
CD
Price:
$13.00
Catalog #:
MUTABLE 001CD
"On the new release
Celestial Green Monster
, Fred Ho and the Green Monster Big Band -- assembled from Ho's favorite musicians with whom he had the pleasure and honor to work with since embarking upon a professional career in music in the 1980s -- perform both original compositions by Ho ('Liberation Genesis'; 'Blues to the Freedom Fighters'; 'The Struggle for a New World Suite') as well as arrangements of two pop culture classics ('Spiderman Theme'; 'In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida'). The quintessential American orchestra is not the symphony, but the big band. Retaining the essential features of swing and African-descended rhythmic vitality and complexity, improvisation (both individual and collective) with sophisticated compositional imagination, elasticity and experimentation with timbre and harmony, expansive and epic themes, the big band makes for as much a 'joyful noise' as the ubiquitous small band. Though the composer/arranger may start with sketches and minimally notated material, the opportunity and challenge for a broader and more extensive palette of orchestral voicing, contrapuntal techniques (both melodically and rhythmically), and magnified excitement, intensity, energy and explosive dynamic range ('from a whisper to a scream') continually make for the big band form an ideal vehicle of serious extended composition." The Green Monster Big Band: Fred Ho, leader/baritone sax; Bobby Zankel, Jim Hobbs, alto sax; Hafez Modirzadeh, Salim Washington, tenor sax; Stanton Davis, Brian Kilpatrick, Amir Elsaffar, trumpet; Taylor Ho Bynum, cornet; Robert Pilkington, Marty Wehner, Richard Harper, trombone; Earl MacIntyre, David Harris, contrabass trombone; Art Hirahara, piano, electronic keyboard; Wes Brown, electric and acoustic bass; Royal Hartigan, drum set. Guest Artists on In A Gadda Da Vida: Abraham Gomez-Delgado and Haleh Abghari (vocals); Mary Halvorson (electric guitar).
Artist:
HO AND THE GREEN MONSTER BIG BAND, FRED
Title:
The Sweet Science Suite
Label:
MUTABLEMUSIC
Format:
CD
Price:
$13.00
Catalog #:
MUTABLE 003CD
Subtitled:
A Scientific Soul Music Honoring Of Muhammad Ali
. "During the war against advanced colo-rectal cancer (from 2006), which included two primary tumors and two recurrences, Fred Ho, hammered by massive chemo and radiation, found inspiration in the fight for his life from watching movies of
The Greatest, Muhammad Ali
. Ali's bold, militant, defiant and spirited resistance to the forces of American racism, combined with his elan, grace and humor (both poetical and personal), his indisputable athletic abilities and genius, and the inspiration to the world's peoples (especially the oppressed) and their embrace of him, served as constant inspiration to Fred Ho. During one of his recovery periods, Ho decided to compose a work for his Green Monster Big Band to honor The Greatest.
The Sweet Science Suite
is a musical evocation of that mojo conjured through Afro Asian scientific soul music, combining the swing of jazz and American and Asian boxing, martial arts and hand-to-hand combat feels and forms, with the elasticity of temperament and pitch intrinsic to the raw, folk musical characteristics of AfroAmerica and much of the Asiatic world. During Ali's match against the juggernaut George Foreman in Zaire during the mid-1970s, Ali's employ of the rope-a-dope was the quintessential methodology of the trickster, intrinsic to many Asian martial arts, such as JuJitSu, of turning the strength of one's opponent against them. This work of five movements spans the musical geography of the Black and Yellow worlds, just as Ali spanned those two worlds in his boxing training and abilities, and in turn inspired and influenced martial forms and techniques, including the footwork of the late great martial arts innovator and iconoclast, Bruce Lee."
Artist:
VILLA-LOBOS, HEITOR
Title:
Guitar Music of Villa-Lobos
Label:
MUTABLEMUSIC
Format:
CD
Price:
$13.00
Catalog #:
MUTABLE 17513
Joseph Bacon, guitarist. "Heitor Villa-Lobos (1887-1959), the greatest of Brazilian composers, was a man of instinct, vigour and passion; the antithesis of the academic composer who writes for the eye and brain, not the ear and heart. His innovations in the techniques of guitar composition are unparalleled. His own considerable ability as a guitarist as well as his fertile imagination led to the invention of many brilliant and telling effects. And the sheer beauty and vigour of the music place these pieces at the forefront of modern guitar music. Three distinct periods of Villa-Lobos' life are represented on this record. The Valsa-Chôro, Schottisch- Chôro and Chôros #1 date from 1912 when he was a young man playing his guitar in the street bands. The Etudes were written in 1929 when Villa-Lobos was in Paris for an extended visit. Here he met Segovia and he wrote a series of twelve etudes for the great guitarist. In character they range from dry 'finger studies' to rhapsodic and savage fantasies."
Artist:
REVOLUTIONARY ENSEMBLE
Title:
The Psyche
Label:
MUTABLEMUSIC
Format:
CD
Price:
$13.50
Catalog #:
MUTABLE 17514
The Revolutionary Ensemble was: Leroy Jenkins (violin), Sirone (bass), Jerome Cooper (drums, piano). "Long awaited reissue of the Revolutionary Ensemble's 1975 album
The Psyche
. This group introduced New York to decided musical advances, many pioneered by Chicago's A.A.C.M. musicians. Ex-Chicagoan Leroy Jenkins, who played violin, of all unheard-of modern jazz instruments, had formed his concept from classical, swing, blues, and modern elements and had been one of the radicals who discovered new concepts of sound, space, and musical relationships in the late 1960s. Jerome Cooper had been a somewhat later Chicago explorer, while Sirone's freedom of motion had grown out of work with the most visionary New Yorkers. If you doubt the expressive capacity of stringed instruments,
The Psyche
should change your mind: Jenkins and Sirone have many ways of bowing and plucking, along with dramatic passages high and low on their instruments. Careful listening and sensitive responses sustain this music; accompaniments to solos grow into intense interplay. The ensemble regularly re-forms into solo, duet, and trio combinations, aided by the players' doubling instruments. Jenkins' mastery of thematic improvisation, including motive recall and motivic transformation, provides an especially valuable unifying element."
Artist:
MITCHELL, ROSCOE
Title:
Solo 3
Label:
MUTABLEMUSIC
Format:
3CD
Price:
$25.00
Catalog #:
MUTABLE 17515
"Sudden music! All alone, unprotected, Roscoe Mitchell confronts Silence: the void, the vast unknown. One and a half of the 38 pieces in this collection are composed. Two more are improvisations that begin with at least some conditions. The other 34 and a half pieces are completely improvised. Mitchell simply picks up a horn or mallets and begins playing. He's armed only with his wide-ranging imagination, his instruments, his virtuosity, and his experience -- for what more does he need? Proof of his self-sufficiency is that each improvisation is a distinctive, flowing work that has its own meaning, its own unique story to tell.
'I started working on one CD,'
he says,
'but I started getting more and more material, and I thought that at this point in my career, one solo CD is not enough. I'd better put out three CDs, because time is going on by.'
Mitchell has been creating a cappella solos for around four decades now. He's one of the Chicagoans who virtually invented the unaccompanied horn solo in free jazz."
Artist:
CRESHEVSKY, NOAH
Title:
Hyperrealism
Label:
MUTABLEMUSIC
Format:
CD
Price:
$13.00
Catalog #:
MUTABLE 17516
"Hyperrealism is an electroacoustic musical language constructed from sounds that are found in our shared environment ('realism'), handled in ways that are somehow exaggerated or excessive ('hyper'). Fundamental to hyperrealism is the expansion of the sound palettes from which music is made. Developments in technology and transformations in social and economic realities have made it possible for composers to incorporate the sounds of the entire world into their music. Essential to the concept of hyperrealism is that its sounds are generally of natural origin, and that they remain sufficiently unprocessed so that their origin is perceived by the listener as being 'natural'. Since the sounds of our environment vary from year to year, generation to generation, and culture to culture, it is impossible to isolate a definitive encyclopedia of 'natural' sounds, but there are a great many sounds that are familiar to nearly all of us. These are the most basic building blocks in the formation of a shared (if temporary) collective sonic reality.
Hyperrealism
celebrates bounty, either by the extravagant treatment of limited sound palettes or by assembling and manipulating substantially extended palettes."
Artist:
ROSENBOOM/J.B. FLOYD/TRICHY SANKARAN, DAVID
Title:
Suitable For Framing
Label:
MUTABLEMUSIC
Format:
CD
Price:
$13.00
Catalog #:
MUTABLE 17517
Reissue of this obscure Canadian album from 1975, originally issued on the A.R.C. Record label, with extended mixes and bonus material from the same period. Performed by David Rosenboom and J. B. Floyd (pianos, one in each channel) & Trichy Sankaran on South Indian percussion (mrdangam and kanjira). "On April 19th, 1975, at Northern Illinois University, three musicians met in a milestone event from which emerged a unique, improvising trio with two pianos and South Indian percussion. Fortunately, it was recorded and excerpts released on a long out of print LP. This CD recaptures the essence of the entire evening of musical discovery with previously unreleased music recovered from digitally reprocessed tapes recently discovered in diverse states of preservation."
Artist:
MARSH AND W.A. MATHIEU, GEORGE
Title:
Game/No Game - 21 Improvisations
Label:
MUTABLEMUSIC
Format:
CD
Price:
$13.00
Catalog #:
MUTABLE 17518
George Marsh, percussion and W. A. Mathieu, piano. "When George and I play together we tend to hear compositionally, that is, we try to weave coherent stories told through musical ideas. Surface texture, which is like the atmosphere of a story, does arise, of course, but strictly musical ideas drive the narrative from the inside. This means remembering (as best we can) what we've been playing. Consequently the pieces are short, typically three or four minutes. In the table of contents on the next panel, we've numbered the pieces, but left them untitled because no matter how hard we try to find names for them, for us they remain simply pieces that sound the way they sound." (W. A. Mathieu). 'Game' History: "Viola Spolin characterized the original theater games she introduced as
'?a timeless moment when all are mutually engaged in experience. You don't know what's going to happen, and that's where the joy is, the everlasting spiral.'
In the 1950s, as theater games emerged in the culture, artists were learning a new definition of the present, which seemed limitless and beckoning. By 1970, free improvisation was in the air, and game playing was well on its way to becoming a standard training method for both actors and musicians internationally. Meanwhile George and I have had four decades of collaboration to develop our work and trust.
Game/No Game
, recorded between 1999 and 2002, represents not so much the games themselves as their end result: the musical mutuality that games engender."
Artist:
BERGMAN/LOL COXHILL/PAUL HESSION, BORAH
Title:
Acts of Love
Label:
MUTABLEMUSIC
Format:
CD
Price:
$13.00
Catalog #:
MUTABLE 17519
Borah Bergman (piano); Lol Coxhill (soprano saxophone); Paul Hession ((percussion). "With a unique, two-handed approach that dispenses with the traditional notion of piano playing as competing or interlocking lines, Borah Bergman deals with sound as mass, great chilly bergs or hot flows of magma that change shape as different layers flow against one another, hardening and melting at different rates. By contrast, Lol Coxhill is a singer, a chanticleer on the dunghill of the city or on the rooftree of your house, a head full of old songs and the harmonic codes to transform them. The simplest difference may be that Coxhill comes from a jazz tradition, never more communicative than when playing changes and subverting a saccharine show-tune, while Bergman, for all his deep understanding of blues, boogie-woogie, swing, bebop, comes from somewhere else, classical, cantorial, exclamatory, De profundis clamavi . . .What unites them, though, even beyond the astonishing lingua franca of improvisation, is the idea of music as a kind of labour. Both seem to inhabit an old European ideal, anti-romantic and the toughest creative path there is, that subordinates the idea of works, perfect icons of expression ready for admiring consumption, to the idea of work, a physical, mental and moral effort that has ritual at one end of its spectrum and entertainment away at the other. These are hugely enjoyable pieces; they also have an element of ritual to them; but at their core is something much more profound and constantly evolving."
Artist:
BUCKNER, THOMAS
Title:
Contexts
Label:
MUTABLEMUSIC
Format:
CD
Price:
$13.00
Catalog #:
MUTABLE 17520
"Three improvisations: alone; with David Darling, cello; with Borah Bergman, piano composition: ILEX with Earl Howard, composer and electronics; Gustavo Aguilar, percussion; Wu Man, pipa. For more than 30 years, baritone Thomas Buckner has dedicated himself to the world of new and improvised music. As a performer, producer, and promoter, Buckner has enabled the creation of an extensive body of new works by some of the world's leading, most exciting and most challenging composers. Currently, Buckner works regularly with composers Robert Ashley, Roscoe Mitchell, Alvin Lucier, Annea Lockwood, Bun-Ching Lam, Jerome Cooper, David Wessel, Tom Hamilton, Leroy Jenkins, Phill Niblock, Wadada Leo Smith, among others. More than 70 composers have written works exclusively for him over the last 20 years. Buckner has been featured on over 40 recordings, including five of his own solo albums as well as recordings by Annea Lockwood, Sorrel Hays, Alvin Lucier, the Deep Listening Band, Jin Hi Kim, Roscoe Mitchell, Muhal Richard Abrams and many others."
Artist:
HOWARD, EARL
Title:
5 Saxophone Solos
Label:
MUTABLEMUSIC
Format:
CD
Price:
$13.00
Catalog #:
MUTABLE 17521
"Earl Howard is a virtuoso saxophonist and has developed an extended repertoire for the instrument including 'Cinco Centavos' for solo saxophone and 'Naked Charm' for saxophone and tape. Howard has been performing his compositions in the United States and Europe for the past thirty years. His recent compositions include music for live electronics, electronic tape music as well as music for electronics and instruments. Earl Howard's method of creating orchestrated sounds with electronics and adding live, improvisational performance creates a unique, densely layered composition."
Artist:
BUCKNER/MEL GRAVES/GEORGE MARSH, THOMAS
Title:
Homage
Label:
MUTABLEMUSIC
Format:
CD
Price:
$13.00
Catalog #:
MUTABLE 17522
"This project is the product of over thirty years of musical collaboration and personal friendships. The three of us met in the San Francisco Bay Area in the early seventies and worked together in many contexts, exploring improvisation and new music. When I moved to New York in 1983, there was a brief hiatus, and then, on hearing a composition of Mel Graves played here, I asked him to write me a piece. This led to my premiering many works of his and making several recordings. Meanwhile, George and Mel have been a great rhythm section all these years. When Mel suggested that he compose 'Blanco' to highlight George's remarkable polyrhythmic and timbral abilities, I loved the idea. Because of the deeply personal nature of the project, we decided to place it in the context of our improvised music. Then, the tsunami occurred and Mel was inspired to write a piece for improvisors commemorating the tragedy. We went back to Mesa Studios to create and record 'Tsunami' and then recorded some improvisations which we called
Homage
. It's an homage to music and what it means in our lives and to the deep friendship it has engendered." -- Thomas Buckner
Artist:
JENKINS' DRIFTWOOD, LEROY
Title:
The Art of Improvisation
Label:
MUTABLEMUSIC
Format:
CD
Price:
$13.00
Catalog #:
MUTABLE 17523
Recorded on October 8, 2004 at a Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians (AACM) concert and features Jenkins (violin), Min Xiao-Fen (pipa), Denman Maroney (piano), and Rich O'Donnell (percussion).
Artist:
MATHIEU, W.A.
Title:
The Indian Parrot
Label:
MUTABLEMUSIC
Format:
CD
Price:
$13.00
Catalog #:
MUTABLE 17524
"Latest release by William Allaudin Mathieu, pianist, composer, teacher, recording artist, and author. 'A Parrot, Three Fish, and a Donkey' is a modern piece with a medieval text, and medieval sensibilities have worked their way into the musical fabric: the small percussion instruments, the instrumental range lying (for the most part) within the range of the human voice, and, most of all, the harmony, which is a kind of modulating modality. Inspired by the universality of Rumi's poems, Mathieu felt especially free in this piece to borrow from many centuries of Eastern and Western harmonic practice."
Artist:
JOSEPH, DAN
Title:
Archaea
Label:
MUTABLEMUSIC
Format:
CD
Price:
$13.00
Catalog #:
MUTABLE 17525
"Mutable Music is pleased to announce the debut release by composer and hammer dulcimer virtuoso Dan Joseph. Entitled Archaea, the recording consists of three recent extended chamber works performed by The Dan Joseph Ensemble: Tom Chiu (violin), Michael Lowenstern (clarinet), Danny Tunick (percussion), Marija Ilic (harpsichord), Loren Dempster (cello) and the composer on hammer dulcimer. Influenced most directly by the first generation minimalists, Joseph's works bring a welcome new voice to the idiom with his unique sense of timbre, intricate rhythms and unexpected formal turns. Equal parts East coast and West coast, Appalachian and Balkan, rock and baroque, his style is characterized by its immediate beauty, positive spirit and exhilarating drive."
Artist:
BOURDELLON/THOMAS BUCKNER, JEROME
Title:
Totem: Improvisations with the Sculpture of Alain Kirili
Label:
MUTABLEMUSIC
Format:
CD
Price:
$13.00
Catalog #:
MUTABLE 17526
"In August of 2005, on a visit to Paris to celebrate the birthday of sculptor Alain Kirili, singer Thomas Buckner and flutist Jérôme Bourdellon gathered with Kirili at his studio to record these duo improvisations in the presence of his group of sculptures entitled 'Totem.' Both musicians are longtime collaborators with Alain Kirili, performing most recently at a concert at the Theatre du Palais Royal in Paris celebrating to opening of an installation of his sculptures in the garden of the Palais Royal. The music is a spontaneous, abstract response to and interaction with the sculpture. Jérôme Bourdellon is a composer and flutist residing in Nancy, France. For more than 30 years, baritone Thomas Buckner has dedicated himself to the world of new and improvised music. As a performer, producer, and promoter, Buckner has enabled the creation of an extensive body of new works by some of the world's leading, most exciting and most challenging composers. Currently, Buckner works regularly with composers Robert Ashley, Roscoe Mitchell, Alvin Lucier, Annea Lockwood, Bun-Ching Lam, Jerome Cooper, David Wessel, Tom Hamilton, Leroy Jenkins, Phill Niblock, Wadada Leo Smith, among others."
Artist:
TIMELESS PULSE
Title:
Quintet
Label:
MUTABLEMUSIC
Format:
CD
Price:
$13.00
Catalog #:
MUTABLE 17527
Timeless Pulse: Thomas Buckner (voice); George Marsh (percussion); Pauline Oliveros (accordion); David Wessel (live-electronics); Jennifer Wilsey (percussion). "Timeless Pulse sometimes recalls the soundscapes of Günter Müller, Butch Morris, David Shea and AMM, and is thus recommended to fans of them and harmonious (yes, that's right, with harmony) free-improv." --Mark Keresman. "Formed in 1993 in a residency at the Deep Listening Institute, the musicians of Timeless Pulse -- whose members come from jazz, classical and electronic -- make music together through listening and responding in the moment. The five compositions on this recording from 2005 are warm, compassionate tapestries of soft, rolling sounds performed by accordion, cymbals, drums, gongs, bells, chimes, sampled sounds and voice."
Artist:
BUCKNER, THOMAS
Title:
New Music For Baritone & Chamber Ensemble
Label:
MUTABLEMUSIC
Format:
CD
Price:
$13.00
Catalog #:
MUTABLE 17528
"For 30 years, Thomas Buckner has carved out a very special niche -- that of a champion of the avant-garde. In concert halls throughout the world, his 'baritone-mastery' has astonished both audiences and critics. He has an extraordinarily flexible voice; his experience and ability ranges from madrigals, lieder, opera, free improvisation, extended techniques, all the way to electronically processed wordless minimalist song. This wonderful new collection of works for baritone and chamber ensemble were all written specifically for Buckner. Annea Lockwood is known for her explorations of the rich world of natural acoustic sounds and environments, in works ranging from sound art and installations, through text-sound and performance art to concert music. Petr Kotik is a performing musician (conductor and flutist) and the founder and director of the S.E.M. Ensemble which expanded in 1992 as The Orchestra of the S.E.M. Ensemble."
Artist:
TYRANNY, 'BLUE' GENE
Title:
The Somewhere Songs/The Invention Of Memory
Label:
MUTABLEMUSIC
Format:
CD
Price:
$13.00
Catalog #:
MUTABLE 17529
"This beautiful new recording by 'Blue' Gene Tyranny includes the mysterious
The Somewhere Songs
cycle (1997-2001) for baritone voice and electronics, and 'The Invention of Memory' (2003-2005). A lyrical discourse for baritone voice, string ensemble, guitar, and piano,
The Somewhere Songs
concerns friendships in or undergoing difficult circumstances. The narrator, in a sense, builds his own circumstantial world as he sings -- the vocal part was composed first by singing spontaneously and the 'transitional systems' (pitch/rhythm, etc., material) were derived from that vocal line to generate other acoustic and electronic parts. The question of the 'true intentions' of the two former friends is of course left to the listener. 'The Invention of Memory' is about the behavior and physiology of the brain. In the course of reading, Tyranny was struck by what seemed to be rough parallels between the way that people have described forms of memory and certain musical procedures. This thought created a strange sensation in him -- something about the true nature of music. 'The Invention of Memory' was written to research this nameless correlation. An initial 'Song,' heard in a piano solo at the outset, provides a basic reference to which the players return, similar to a past event that is recalled in varied ways. The song is then 'scanned' by the players, employing different musical procedures. Some of the musical forms employed are traditional (canonic imitation, passacaglia) while the majority are compositional procedures Tyranny developed for earlier pieces, including melodic transfers within a closed loop (from the transformational lattice score of 'Stars Over San Francisco,' 1972), drone with internal motion (from 'The Interior Distance,' 1959), camouflage (from 'Sleeping Beauty in Camouflage,' 1992), and the song modulated by its own internal voice ('gravity' modulation from 'The Driver's Son,' 1989 - present). 'Blue' Gene Tyranny, composer and pianist of avant garde music, has toured extensively in solo and group concerts throughout the U.S., Europe, Canada, Mexico and Brazil. He also played in teenage rock bands and for a gospel church. He has composed over 50 works for electronic, instrumental and vocal ensembles, over 30 film and video soundtracks, and 50 scores for dance and theatre productions. He has performed on many albums and performed with such diverse performer-composers as Robert Ashley, Peter Gordon, Laurie Andersen, John Cage, Leroy Jenkins, David Behrman, Brenda Hutchinson, Jon Gibson, William Duckworth (The Cathedral Band), Phil Perkins, Ben Manley, Carla Bley, Iggy Pop, Lise Vachon, and many others."
Artist:
BULTMANN, NILS
Title:
Terminally Unique
Label:
MUTABLEMUSIC
Format:
CD
Price:
$13.00
Catalog #:
MUTABLE 17530
"This project was created from a series of improvisations, compositional sketches, and field recordings. With the help of Pro Tools, it has evolved into this present form. Nils Bultmann is a violist, improviser, and composer currently based in the San Francisco Bay area. Rooted in classical technique and tradition, he has developed his own voice within the context of a wide variety of musical styles and art forms. Active as a performer in the United States and Europe, he plays both classical repertoire as well as his own compositions, and is involved in collaborative projects of dance, film, and avant-garde improvised music. He has generated an expansive body of work in the recording studio, including solo and multi-track viola music as well as collaborative and improvised material. He also writes through-composed works for traditional instrumentation including for solo pieces, string quartets, and orchestral music. He has appeared as a soloist with an orchestra premiering his own work. As an improviser, he has worked with Ken Butler, David Wessel, Frank Gratkowski, Myra Melford, Evan Parker, and Roscoe Mitchell. In September 2004, he was a guest at the International Symposium for Improvised music in Munich, Germany to perform two new works by jazz saxophonists Roscoe Mitchell and Evan Parker, as part of the Transatlantic Art Ensemble, which was recorded and released on ECM Records."
Artist:
KIRILI ET LES NYMPHEAS
Title:
Hommage à Monet
Label:
MUTABLEMUSIC
Format:
CD/DVD
Price:
$26.00
Catalog #:
MUTABLE 17531
"Music performed by: Jerome Bourdellon (flutes, bass clarinet); Thomas Buckner (baritone); Dalila Khatir (soprano); Roscoe Mitchell (alto & soprano saxophones). This deluxe package includes a film by Jean-Paul Fargier
Habiter Le Présent (To Live The Present)
, featuring the musicians recorded at the Musée de l'Orangerie. Enclosed as well is a 14-page booklet with color photos of the musicians among Alain Kirili's sculptures and Monet's paintings by Ariane Lopez-Huici, and a 18-page booklet containing an essay by French philosopher Paul Audi in both English and French. Two musicians at the peak of their sensitivity: Roscoe Mitchell and Jérôme Bourdellon. A singer at the height of his finesse: Thomas Buckner. A woman of intelligent and generous beauty: Dalila Khatir, whose singing takes its source from the dance or the dance from the singing, we shall never know. These are the musicians intimately involved with
Hommage à Monet
, the latest in an ongoing series of collaborations between the artist Alain Kirili and improvising musicians, dancers and composers over many years. Other collaborators have included violinists Leroy Jenkins and Billy Bang, saxophonists Joseph Jarman and Steve Lacy, trombonist Roswell Rudd, pianist Cecil Taylor, dancer Maria Mitchell, and composers Alvin Lucier and Somei Satoh. The improvisatory energy that is palpable in Kirili's sculpture and drawing is in part inspired by his deep relationship with improvised music, and this energy in turn inspires the musicians and dancers to make the energy in the sculpture audible and visible.
Hommage à Monet
is also the latest in a series of dialogues with great artists of the past that Kirili has exhibited in major museums over many years. Bourdellon, Buckner, Khatir, and Mitchell participated in this project and had the opportunity to respond musically and kinetically to the dialogue between Alain Kirili's sculpture and one of the greatest icons of modern art, Claude Monet's 'Les Nympheas' (Water Lilies). The performance took place on June 21, 2007 as a part of the great 'Fete de la Musique' that occurs all over France on the longest day of the year. The Musee de l'Orangerie graciously allowed a performance in the presence of the newly-reinstalled Nympheas, and gave the musicians and filmmaker Jean-Paul Fargier access to the museum on the day before the performance for rehearsal and filming of the DVD."
Artist:
REVOLUTIONARY ENSEMBLE
Title:
Beyond The Boundary Of Time
Label:
MUTABLEMUSIC
Format:
CD
Price:
$13.00
Catalog #:
MUTABLE 17532
Leroy Jenkins (violin), Sirone (bass) and Jerome Cooper (drums, balaphone, chiramia, Yamaha PSR 1500). "
Beyond The Boundary Of Time
documents the last live performance of the legendary Revolutionary Ensemble before Leroy Jenkins' death in 2007. This recording was made of a performance on May 25, 2005 in Warsaw, Poland. In the 1970s, the Revolutionary Ensemble introduced New York to decided musical advances, many pioneered by Chicago's A.A.C.M. musicians. Ex-Chicagoan Leroy Jenkins, who played violin, of all unheard-of modern jazz instruments, had formed his concept from classical, swing, blues, and modern elements and had been one of the radicals who discovered new concepts of sound, space, and musical relationships in the late 1960s. Jerome Cooper had been a somewhat later Chicago explorer, while Sirone's freedom of motion had grown out of work with the most visionary New Yorkers. Extensive rehearsal led this cooperative trio to a shared, free sense of dynamics, momentum, and form, and a wholly unique sound: their instrumental recombinations yielded a surprising variety of textures and colors. Most of all, these highly sophisticated personalities played together to create an ensemble music even larger than the sum of its parts. After the long overdue reissue in 2004 of their 1975 recording
The Psyche
on Mutable Music, the Revolutionary Ensemble -- Leroy Jenkins (violin), Sirone (bass), and Jerome Cooper (drums, keyboards) -- reunited for both recording and performances. On this live set, each musician is represented by one of their own compositions - 'Configuration' by Sirone, 'Usami' by Leroy Jenkins, and 'Le-Si-Jer' by Jerome Cooper, as well as two group improvisations. All three of these great musicians are at the top of their form here, and one envies the Warsaw audience that attended what turns out to have been their final performance together. Their remarkable realization of the ensemble ideal was still revelatory and still revolutionary."
Artist:
HAMILTON, TOM
Title:
Local Customs
Label:
MUTABLEMUSIC
Format:
CD
Price:
$13.00
Catalog #:
MUTABLE 17533
"Composer Tom Hamilton¹s stunning new CD,
Local Customs
, explores some obscure notions about music theory and performance practice, leading to sound combinations that are at once unsettling and yet somehow familiar. One discovers that there is very little in
Local Customs
that follows from conventionally intentional music writing. It is perhaps better to regard it as a group of artifacts of little-known origins, modified through new transformations into something further unexplained. The foundation for the piece is an 'electronic harmony generator' that plays an endless sequence of chords exhibiting curious relationships with no purposeful direction. The musical lines for the ensemble - consisting of flute, clarinets, trombone, contrabass, percussion, and electronic harmony - accumulated from coding and decoding various readings, investigations, and experiences during a summer residency in Italy. Tom Hamilton has been composing and performing for over 40 years, and his work with electronic music originated in the late-60s era of analog synthesis. He often explores the interaction of many simultaneous layers of activity, prompting the use of 'present-time listening' on the part of both performer and listener. Hamilton appears on synthesizer in his own ensembles, and has participated in groups led by Peter Zummo, David Soldier, and Michael Schumacher. He has recently performed with Thomas Buckner, Lisle Ellis, Chris Mann, Al Margolis, and Jacqueline Martelle. His CD
London Fix
received an award in the 2004 Prix Ars Electronica. He is a longtime member of composer Robert Ashley's touring opera ensemble, and his work can be found in over 60 CD releases of new and experimental music."
Artist:
BERGMAN & STEFANO PASTOR, BORAH
Title:
Live At Tortona
Label:
MUTABLEMUSIC
Format:
CD
Price:
$13.00
Catalog #:
MUTABLE 17534
"This new CD by pianist Borah Bergman and violinist Stefano Pastor was recorded on July 1st, 2007 at the Jazz Fuori Tema Festival in Tortona, Italy. The five pieces on this recording - three compositions by Bergman and two improvisations by the duo - highlight Bergman's ambi-ideation: his amazing ability to have each hand go its own way. Instead of accompaniment and melody, what one hears are often two completely different melodic lines being played simultaneously. Stefano Pastor's style of playing the violin is strongly based on an imaginative reworking of bop wind instruments' language. A great deal of experimentation led him to re-consider the set-up of his instrument. Pastor has re-strung his violin with extremely rigid electric guitar strings to obtain a heavy sound, allowing his violin and the way he plays it to speak like a wind instrument - with breath and power. The resulting music is sometimes rasping, sometimes lyrical, a not rarely prodigious dialogue between the piano and the violin, with Bergman's hands running about on the keyboard producing cascades of notes, each with an exact, determined precision with its own very limpid specific weight. Pastor plays the game wonderfully, intervening with his violin with its sanded, gravelly, very earthy sound."
Artist:
FLOYD, J.B.
Title:
In Crossing The Busy Street
Label:
MUTABLEMUSIC
Format:
CD
Price:
$13.00
Catalog #:
MUTABLE 17535
"This new recording of music by J.B. Floyd highlights the three main strands of his career: pianist, composer, improvisor. He composed
In Crossing the Busy Street
for baritone Thomas Buckner (a frequent collaborator of his) and piano, using a poem by Daniel Abdal-Hayy Moore. The musical material from this twenty-two minute song cycle then became the basis for further exploration as material for improvisations. Floyd then worked with drummer George Marsh (another long-time collaborator) on what became Improvisations on
In Crossing the Busy Street
. J.B. Floyd's career as pianist, composer, and improviser has included classical recitals and solos with orchestra, new music solos and group collaborations, jazz improvisations, and multi-media presentations."
Artist:
ABRAMS/ROSCOE MITCHELL, MUHAL RICHARD
Title:
Spectrum
Label:
MUTABLEMUSIC
Format:
CD
Price:
$13.00
Catalog #:
MUTABLE 17536
Performed by: Janácek Philharmonic; Petr Kotik, conductor; Thomas Buckner, baritone; Muhal Richard Abrams, piano; Roscoe Mitchell, saxophone. "
Spectrum
features an improvised performance by Muhal Richard Abrams and Roscoe Mitchell entitled 'Romu.' This recording is also the first to feature Abrams's and Mitchell's work with orchestral forces. Mutable Music is very proud to be able to offer these premiere recordings. Abrams's 'Mergertone' was commissioned by the Ostrava Center for New Music and premiered at the opening concert of the Ostrava Days 2007 festival by the Janåcek Philharmonic, Petr Kotik conductor. Mitchell's 'Non-Cognitive Aspects of the City' was commissioned by Mutable Music for baritone Thomas Buckner, Petr Kotik and The Orchestra of the S.E.M. Ensemble and was premiered at the Willow Place Auditorium in February 2003."
Artist:
CROTHERS/MICHAEL BISIO, CONNIE
Title:
Session At 475 Kent
Label:
MUTABLEMUSIC
Format:
CD
Price:
$13.00
Catalog #:
MUTABLE 17537
Connie Crothers, piano; Michael Bisio, bass. "Connie Crothers is known for her wide range of expression, originality and her uncompromising spontaneous improvisation. Michael Bisio invariably astounds audiences with the beauty of his tone and the intensity of his very personal musical language. Together they make an absolutely outstanding duo. The four improvised works on this recording radiate intensity and beauty."
Artist:
COOPER, JEROME
Title:
A Magical Approach
Label:
MUTABLEMUSIC
Format:
CD
Price:
$13.00
Catalog #:
MUTABLE 17538
Jerome Cooper: Drums, balaphone, chiramia, Yamaha PSR 1500. "Drummer/percussionist Jerome Cooper's fruitful musical legacy with the Revolutionary Ensemble and stints with saxophonist/composer Anthony Braxton, pianist Cecil Taylor, and others reads like a who's who in modern jazz. This makes
A Magical Approach
- a new release of Jerome Cooper's multi-dimensional drumming, a very special event. The music on this CD is drawn from two live performances, recorded almost 30 years apart.
Root Assumptions
was recorded in 1978 while the other five tracks are from Cooper's 2007 performance at an A.A.C.M. concert. Cooper's remarkable agility and captivating musical spirit is enacted throughout these endearing works. What is multi-dimensional drumming? Imagine a drummer who plays this flute with one hand, bass drum and high-hat with his feet, and triggers drum loops, chord sequences and bass patterns with his other hand. Whether it is written or improvised, the resulting music is closer to world-funk than avant-garde jazz. Divided into many parts and facets, the drum set and secondary instruments Cooper uses and play are all aspects of the drums. In the future, there will be many changes and developments in the area of the mind -- so what we (humankind) think and hear, is what we shall see and hear. In order to play the drum set you must be able to manipulate four or five things at one time (i.e. bass drum, snare drum, high-hat, ride cymbals and maybe voice). So an instrument's name and structure doesn't stop him from playing them like a drum. You have instruments that are structurally different from the drum, but they have the same characteristic in the approach to the drum (i.e. piano, balaphone and shoes with taps). In order to find the music of the drums, Cooper had to change my assumptions and beliefs about music in relation to the drums, which is sound in the creation of multi-rhythms."
Artist:
PARRAN, JD
Title:
Window Spirits
Label:
MUTABLEMUSIC
Format:
CD
Price:
$13.00
Catalog #:
MUTABLE 17539
JD Parran: double wooden flutes; bass saxophone; clarinet; alto flute and mbira.
"This recorded solo performance,
Window Spirits
, manifests memories, dreams and feelings expressed in my life through music. Here, on this plain called life, we can experience existence on level ground with the ancestors."
-- JD Parran
"J.D. represents the ideal performer of my music. He combines a profound understanding of the composer's intention with an expressive individual voice that is both nuanced and dramatic. "
-- Anthony Davis
"This truly wonderful new release by JD Parran, performing solo, was recorded live at the Kampo Cultural Center. The event was a celebration of Parran's 50 years of music making. For a composer and performer who has played for so long and with so many people this solo CD -- luminous, lyrical, and difficult -- is long-overdue. Playing a variety of instruments, Parran focuses on improvisations of the moment: visions of his solo compositions developed during his years of creative music work. He also takes the opportunity to perform works by Anthony Davis and James Jabbo Ware, composers who have written for Parran and featured his instrumental voice in their music."
Artist:
IF, BWANA
Title:
''Assemble.Age!''
Label:
MUTABLEMUSIC
Format:
CD
Price:
$13.00
Catalog #:
MUTABLE 17540
"Modern classical music meets industrial meets musique concrete. The music of If, Bwana (Al Margolis) represents a vigorous, original and informed continuation of the experimental traditions of American music, responding as it does to the sounds and materials of late 20th and early 21st century American life with a keenly sensitive ear and a marvelous feeling for form, balance, and texture in music. The five works on this recording all utilize and reprocess the performances (both studio and live) of the musicians and vocalists. Their work has been processed, edited, selected and assembled into strange and mutated pieces, which in many cases are quite some way removed from the realms of the familiar."
Artist:
DICK & THOMAS BUCKNER, ROBERT
Title:
Flutes & Voices
Label:
MUTABLEMUSIC
Format:
CD
Price:
$13.00
Catalog #:
MUTABLE 17541
"
Flutes & Voices
is utterly brilliant improvisation, finding two longtime musicians in top form. Thomas Buckner and Robert Dick have somewhat parallel musical histories. For well over three decades, both Buckner and Dick have redefined what is acoustically possible on their instruments. Both have a profound interest in the development of a highly individual sound language and in free improvisation. Their activities have helped shape the downtown scene in New York, and affected the course of new music worldwide. About four years ago, they began to very occasionally meet to start and continue a musical dialog. In June 2009, they recorded together.
Flutes & Voices
, a collection of dynamic improvisations, is the result."
Artist:
KIMURA, MARI
Title:
The World Below G And Beyond
Label:
MUTABLEMUSIC
Format:
CD
Price:
$13.00
Catalog #:
MUTABLE 17542
Subtitled:
Works For Violin Subharmonics And Interactive Computer
. "Mari Kimura is a creative violinist carrying on the tradition of renovation and transformation of her instrument by composing for herself, using the media that is available in her lifetime. This album includes two kinds of works: solo violin works using 'subharmonics,' an extended bowing technique she developed, and works for violin and interactive computer. In April 1994, at a solo recital in New York City, Kimura introduced subharmonics as a musical element to extend the range of the violin by a full octave below the open G string without changing the tuning. Playing subharmonics takes precise control of bow pressure and speed, reliably and repeatedly on demand, which is extremely hard, especially in real time performance situations. Her introduction of subharmonics was widely praised by Edward Rothstein, the chief critic of
The New York Times
who described it as a 'revolutionary technique' for the violin. Kimura took these obscure sounds and developed them further. She created compositions using subharmonics not for the sake of novelty but to use them as a new element for the musical language for the violin. This album contains many of her early works using subharmonics controlling different subharmonic intervals, such as subharmonic octave, third and second. Since the early 1990's, Kimura has also been a violinist/composer specializing in interactive computer music composition and performance. She created many works for the violin using an interactive computer music program MaxMSP. On this album she includes some of her older works for violin and MaxMSP, as well as more recent compositions."
Artist:
LAM, BUN-CHING
Title:
Heidelberg Concerts
Label:
MUTABLEMUSIC
Format:
2CD
Price:
$25.00
Catalog #:
MUTABLE 17543
"Bun-Ching Lam, born in Macao, and Gunnar A. Kaldewey, a book artist born in Germany, have been working together for more than twenty-five years. The artistic outcome of their collaboration was presented in an exhibition of artist books and three evening concerts featuring compositions by Bun-Ching Lam, held in Heidelberg in the fall of 2009. The CDs included here contain the opening concert of October 26th, and the final concert of October 28th, featuring vocal and chamber music written for Asian and European instruments. The compositions featured on Disc 1 attempt to translate poetic or artistic sentiments into sound. It presents the many different cultural traits, from Heine to Hiroshige, from Europe to Asia, from Debussy from lunzhi (running finger techniques on the pipa) to Run, that have merged in the musics of Bun-Ching Lam. These pieces show Lam thinking as a citizen of the world, as one critic, Ken Gallo, put it. Disc 2 presents more chamber music by Lam, under the title of
Seeing Sounds Like Water, Like Ritual: Chamber Music
. Each of the pieces is an expressive painting in sound, allowing the audience a multiplicity of sensual experiences: it is not enough to hear, but one must see and smell, taste, feel and be touched by this music."
Artist:
OSTRAVSKA BANDA
Title:
On Tour
Label:
MUTABLEMUSIC
Format:
2CD
Price:
$22.00
Catalog #:
MUTABLE 17544
"Formed in 2005 by Petr Kotik as the resident chamber orchestra for the biennial Ostrava Days, Ostravska banda consists of young musicians from Europe and the U.S. whose primary interest is the performance of new music. The core instrumentation of 24 players can change according the requirements of each score. Their repertoire includes works by John Cage, Iannis Xenakis, Morton Feldman, Edgard Varese, Luigi Nono, Gyorgy Ligeti, Louis Andriessen, Elliott Carter, Christian Wolff, Petr Kotik, Alvin Lucier, Phill Niblock, Martin Smolka, Miroslav Srnka and Petr Bakla, as well as many young and emerging composers.
On Tour
, their debut 2-CD release includes live recordings of Ostravska banda's October-November 2010 European tour. The compositions presented are: John Cage: 'Concert for Piano and Orchestra'; Petr Kotik: 'In Four Parts (3,6 & 11 for John Cage)'; Somei Satoh: 'The Passion; Bernhard Lang: Monadologie IV'; Luca Francesconi: 'Riti Neurali'; Petr Bakla: 'Serenade'; Paulina Zaubska: 'Dispersion.' Soloists include Hana Kotkova, violin; Thomas Buckner and Gregory Purnhagen, baritones; and Joseph Kubera, piano."
Artist:
JOSEPH, DAN
Title:
Tonalization (For The Afterlife)
Label:
MUTABLEMUSIC
Format:
CD
Price:
$13.00
Catalog #:
MUTABLE 17545
"Mutable Music is pleased to announce the release of the latest collection of chamber works by New York-based composer and hammer dulcimer player Dan Joseph. The central work is the 33-minute multi-movement sextet
Tonalization (for the afterlife)
scored for flute, violin, cello, marimba, harpsichord and hammer dulcimer. The work, composed in 2009, was the composer's first new large-scale piece to follow his 2006 collection Archaea and marked the return of the Dan Joseph Ensemble to New York's concert stages after a two-year hiatus. Along with the accompanying duos Wind Patterns and Music Primer, these three works formed the core of the ensemble's repertoire from 2009 to 2011. While discernibly tethered to minimalist and post-minimalist idioms, the works on this CD draw strongly from the composer's decade in California (1991-2001), where he came into contact with West-coast pioneers Terry Riley, Lou Harrison and Pauline Oliveros and studied Chinese and near Eastern folk music. The works thus combine the rhythmic drive of pulse minimalism with a contemplative, improvisational approach. Ever present, however, is the composer's strong sense of timbre and unabashed ear for pure beauty."
Artist:
FLOYD, J.B.
Title:
Another Time And Place
Label:
MUTABLEMUSIC
Format:
CD
Price:
$13.00
Catalog #:
MUTABLE 17546
Subtitled:
Music For Pianist And Yamaha Disklavier
. "This compilation of JB Floyd's keyboard music with the aid of the Yamaha Disklavier, spanning over 30 years of his career, signifies the great breadth of his creative experience and his surprising individuality in such diverse disciplines of musical style. 'Tribute For my Father' (1991) is a live performance by the composer. 'Solos And Sequences I'(1999) is a composition for pianist and Yamaha Disklavier performed here by Liana Pailodze. 'Variations-1979' was the first composition to capture the kind of music that Floyd has been improvising all his life. 'Waves: The Ebb And Flow' (1981) is related to the sounds of the Atlantic Ocean and its powerful, incessant wave motion. 'Solos And Sequences II, for pianist and Yamaha Disklavier, performed by Liana Pailodze.The unique sounds of the Buchla Synthesizer inspires 'Prince Of Pentacles' (1979) by transforming the piano to enable it to realize many more possibilities of timbre. 'Another Time And Place (1993), for Yamaha Disklavier, virtual instruments, percussion and solo pianist, performed by Doug Floyd and JB Floyd."
Previous Page
Index of Labels
Next Page