Browse by Label: NEW WORLD RECORDS

Artist:	TAYLOR UNIT, CECIL
Title:
Label:	NEW WORLD RECORDS
Format:	CD
Price:	$15.00
Catalog #:	NW 80201CD

Two classic sessions from 1978 from this peak version of Cecil Taylor's Unit: Jimmy Lyons (alto sax), Raphé Malik (trumpet), Ramsey Ameen (violin), Sirone (bass), and Ronald Shannon Jackson (drums). "This record presents further evidence of his genius and awesome ability to work within the group context, in which he furthers his exploration of the piano 'as catalyst feeding material to soloists in all registers.' This music at times gets very intense. It will take you down forgotten little streams in your mind and swell them with rivers of sound as Taylor pours notes on your ears." -- Spencer Richards.

Artist:	TAYLOR, CECIL
Title:	3 Phasis
Label:	NEW WORLD RECORDS
Format:	CD
Price:	$15.00
Catalog #:	NW 80303CD

Second album from the same sessions as above, recorded 1978."3 Phasis is a masterwork, a testament to the perfectionism and unpredictability that go hand in hand in Taylor's music...The more you listen, the more you hear. For me, there is sometimes the impression of an inspired wizard and his five disciples conversing at midnight, chewing over ideas, rephrasing them, listening; at other times I'm attracted to the cathartic, exquisitely controlled violence. Cecil Taylor has brought to music a synthesis we've long waited for. 3 Phasis is one its landmarks." -- Gary Giddins

Artist:	USSACHEVSKY, VLADIMIR
Title:	Film Music
Label:	NEW WORLD RECORDS
Format:	CD
Price:	$15.00
Catalog #:	NW 80389CD

1990 CD release of these scores from the 1960s. "One of the founders, with Babbitt, Luening and Sessions, of the Columbia-Princeton Electronic Music Centre in 1959, Ussachevsky has maintained a flexible attitude toward sound sources, and employs recordings of live sounds, analog studio, and computer generated material. In this he always differed from the originally quite restrictive approaches of the German pure electronic and French musique concréte schools. Though prepared for films, a medium that usually imposes considerable restrictions on a composer, both these scores were innovative and have considerable power. The 'Suite from No Exit' (1962) comes from the film of Sartre's Huis Clos directed by Orson Welles, while 'Line of Apogee' (1967) is the soundtrack of Lloyd Williams' film of the same name. Its great musical interest notwithstanding, the former is the usual kind of film score in that it is a background for spoken dialogue, whereas in 'Line of Apogee' there are few spoken words and Ussachevsky's music comments more directly on Williams' extraordinary flow of strange, sometimes dreamlike visual images. In both pieces this composer's favorite musical form, that of variations on several alternating themes, is in use, and the themes do not have traditional timbral or pitch characteristics. Consider for example his use of the human voice in 'No Exit', going from the electronically modified screams of the opening scene to the voices of distant children, etc., and on to the end, where the sound of men laughing is abruptly silenced by rifle fire." -? Max Harrison, The Wire

Artist:	BABBITT, MILTON
Title:	Philomel
Label:	NEW WORLD RECORDS
Format:	CD
Price:	$15.00
Catalog #:	NW 80466CD

1995 CD that collects various early Babbitt compositions using electronics and/or tape, including his classic electroacoustic piece from 1964, 'Philomel' (which is excerpted on the the Ellipsis Arts Ohm: Early Gurus of Electronic Music 1948-1980 3CD box). Featured works are: "Philomel" (for soprano, recorded soprano, and synthesized sound), "Phonemena" (1969, for soprano and piano), "Phonemena (1975, for soprano and tape), "Post-Partitions" (1966, for piano) and "Reflections For Piano and Synthesized Tape" (1975).

Artist:	VA
Title:	Columbia-Princeton Electronic Music Center
Label:	NEW WORLD RECORDS
Format:	CD
Price:	$15.00
Catalog #:	NW 80521CD

"Cut-rate selection of vault reels (dated from 1961 to 1973) from the first electronic music center to be established in the US. Compositions by Ilhan Mimaroglu (distant tone-wash dedicated to Varèse), Bülent Arel (prime-era low-bit microtonal-blap, as primal as it gets), Ingram Marshall (a pure sound-discovery opus; molten lava rising to render downtown Decatur an impasse...), Alice Shields (voice and tape etudes of high-deviant sonics and junkyard source-mass), Charles Dodge (a somewhat melodic tone-study), and Daria Semegen (a heterodyning stereo-heavy monster). As vital as any of the INA/GRM/STEIM/SECAM/Darmstadt/Mills output, only surprisingly more obscure, and, by far, more damaged. Really." --Hrvatski

Artist:	TUDOR/JOHN CAGE, DAVID
Title:	Rainforest II
Label:	NEW WORLD RECORDS
Format:	2CD
Price:	$30.00
Catalog #:	NW 80540CD

David Tudor: (live electronics); John Cage: (voice, pre-recorded tape). "This historic release of a simultaneous performance by David Tudor and John Cage of 'Rainforest II' and 'Mureau', recorded live by Radio Bremen on May 5, 1972, preserves the only surviving performance of the second of Tudor's Rainforest series. In addition, it documents one of the precious few recorded collaborations between these two visionaries. In 1970 Cage composed the piece called 'Mureau', in which phrases from Thoreau's journals (in particular, passages which touch on the subject of music) are used as the springboard for an elaborate collage. The resultant fabric combines elements of sense and nonsense, as it veers between contextual meaning and a sort of abstract, linguistic vocalise. In Cage's public readings of 'Mureau', he explored a number of performance variables?differences in tempo, vocal timbre, pitch, register, and dynamics. A similar range will be apparent, in fact, when listening to this recorded performance. This simultaneous performance of 'Mureau' and 'Rainforest II' took place in a large concert hall before an audience, rather than privately in a recording studio. Whereas in other performance realizations (such as their legendary Indeterminacy collaboration) the two men had been placed in separate isolation booths, here the two shared the same performance space, so that each could hear and see the other person's activity. In fact, Cage and Tudor sat quite close to one another at the center of the stage, Cage performing 'Mureau' as a four-channel realization -- one live channel against three pre-recorded tracks, all of them his own voice?and Tudor actively engaged in real-time processing of Cage's vocal material, using it to generate electronic loudspeaker-filter events. Essential listening for anyone interested in the work of either composer."

Artist:	LA BARBARA, JOAN
Title:	ShamanSong
Label:	NEW WORLD RECORDS
Format:	CD
Price:	$15.00
Catalog #:	NW 80545CD

"Composer/performer Joan La Barbara has been an influential figure in experimental music since the early 1970s. She has devoted her career to the exploration of the human voice as a multi-faced instrument. ShamanSong features three premieres of vintage La Barbara 'sound paintings' of pensive beauty and spiritual resonance. ShamanSong is a concert suite comprised of selected excerpts from a film score. 'Plaintive descending chords of soft hammers striking an ancient Balinese gamelan instrument, tar and dumbek, shakuhachi, music box tines, rainstick and African rattles all are blended with sighs and whispers, lamentation and ululations, calls, cries, lullabies and vocal winds to weave a strange mystery...'Rothko' is a series of sound paintings designed to reflect the mood, texture and emotion of Mark Rothko's final paintings for this very special chapel -- dark, intense, but with an inner light and moving figures that are sometimes heard, sometimes hidden.'"

Artist:	SCHOTT, JOHN
Title:	Shuffle Play: Elegies for the Recording Angel
Label:	NEW WORLD RECORDS
Format:	CD
Price:	$15.00
Catalog #:	NW 80548CD

"Shuffle Play is designed to be played in the 'random' or 'shuffle' mode of a CD player, reconfiguring the story it tells with each listening. However, because not all players have this feature, consideration was also given to the normal sequencing of tracks. It comprises 28 meditations on the history of recordings, including several tracks that use cylinder recordings from the earliest decade of recorded sound (1888-1900)- many of them previously unpublished- direct from the Edison archives in New Jersey. The idea was to develop the material from as many angles as possible: free improvisation, musique concrete, post-war composition, AACM-derived strategies, and pop music, to name a few." Features: Steve Adams, Beth Custer, Ben Goldberg, Dan Plonsey, Trevor Dunn, Gino Robair, Myles Boisen, etc.

Artist:	FELDMAN/STEFAN WOLPE, MORTON
Title:	Choral Music of Morton Feldman and Stefan Wolpe
Label:	NEW WORLD RECORDS
Format:	CD
Price:	$15.00
Catalog #:	NW 80550CD

Performed by the Choir of St. Ignatius of Antioch, New York City/Harold Chaney, conductor. Benjamin Ramirez, Thomas Kolor: (percussion); Stephen Foreman: (tuba). "Stefan Wolpe (1902-1972), one of the great teachers in twentieth century music, is also now recognized as one of its most significant composers. His 'Two Chinese Epitaphs', composed in Jerusalem in 1937, illustrates the composer's deep allegiance to socialist issues. He wrote the work swiftly and in anger, just after learning that the Basque town of Guernica had been bombed by the Fascists the previous week. He chose to set two poems by Louise Peter that decry, in a few short phrases of stark imagery, the atrocities committed against oppressed workers. The 'Four Pieces for Mixed Chorus' (1955) were composed for a contest sponsored by the government of Israel. It is a setting of four Hebrew texts -- three from the Bible and one from Israeli poet Gershon Shofman. All the texts express hope for the new nation of Israel. Morton Feldman (1926-1987) studied with Wolpe for several years and was deeply influenced by his modernist aesthetic, particularly his interest in the visual arts. 'For Stefan Wolpe' (1986), for chorus and two vibraphones, is Feldman's tribute to his venerated teacher. It alternates between vocal and instrumental passages. The two never intermingle, even though Feldman lets the vibraphones ring into the voices. As is characteristic of his late music, the piece combines the quiet, atonal, austere textures of his earlier music (of which Christian Wolff in Cambridge [1963] and Chorus and Instruments II [1967] are stellar examples) with several new elements -- greater duration, minimalist repetition, and bigger gestures. All five works are making their first appearance on CD. An indispensable addition to the discographies of both composers."

Artist:	WHAT WE LIVE
Title:	Quintet For A Day
Label:	NEW WORLD RECORDS
Format:	CD
Price:	$15.00
Catalog #:	NW 80553CD

What We Live: Lawrence Ochs (tenor and sopranino saxophones), Dave Douglas, (trumpet), Wadada Leo Smith (trumpet), Lisle Ellis (bass), Donald Robinson (drums). "What a treat to hear five superb musicians, all of them splendid composers in their own right, creating spontaneous music of such formal richness and quiet splendor! The music unfolds with a measured sense of drama and inevitability that attests to the musical heights possible when such enormous compositional and virtuosic talents converge. Definitely not for the faint of heart, Quintet for a Day is challenging and contentious, yet richly rewarding on many levels."

Artist:	MAXFIELD/HAROLD BUDD, RICHARD
Title:	The Oak of the Golden Dreams
Label:	NEW WORLD RECORDS
Format:	CD
Price:	$15.00
Catalog #:	NW 80555CD

Important reissue of two historic minimalist albums, originally released on LP via the Advance label and out of print for decades now. Mastered from original tapes according to the composers original specifications. Packaged with informative liner notes by Kyle Gann, including an overview discography for seminal works within the field of minimalism. "This timely CD reissue combines two LPs from the Advance label -- Richard Maxfield's Electronic Music and Harold Budd's The Oak Of The Golden Dreams -- both containing seminal works which are key to a better understanding of the complex origins of minimalism. A mostly forgotten figure, Richard Maxfield (1927-1969) exerted a powerful influence over a broad range of composers through his classes at The New School. The works here predate the minimalist movement while forecasting a wide range of developments in the future of electronic work. The prophetic 'Pastoral Symphony' (1960) is composed of continuously generated electronic tones; while 'Bacchanale' (1963) is a musique concrète collage juxtaposing jazz with Korean folk music, spoken word, and various instrumental contributions, including Terry Jennings on saxophone. 'Piano Concert for David Tudor' (1961) draws its multifarious noises from a single source -- antedating in that respect Stockhausen's 'Mikrophonie I' for amplified tam-tam (1964). Tudor plays live alongside a three-channel montage constructed from sounds made on the inside of the piano with chains, spinning a gyroscope on the strings, showering the strings with tiddlywink discs, and other unusual operations. 'Amazing Grace' (1960) mixes tape loops from two sources which are played back at various speeds, causing the fragments to overlap in complex ways, predating both Riley's and Reich's tape-loop pieces. If the Maxfield pieces represent the state of new music in the months before minimalism was born, Harold Budd's (b. 1936) works from 1970 reflect minimalism's initial impact. 'The Oak Of The Golden Dreams' was made on the Buchla Box which Budd uses here as an electric organ capable of the kind of fast modal improv, over an unchanging E-flat drone, that Terry Riley and La Monte Young had been doing on saxophone and piano. 'Coeur D'Orr' features a soprano sax improv against an electronic background on organ comprised of two tracks, one of which is another 1970 Budd work, the famous 'Candy Apple Revision'."

Artist:	RILEY, TERRY & ARTE QUARTETT
Title:	Assassin Reverie
Label:	NEW WORLD RECORDS
Format:	CD
Price:	$15.00
Catalog #:	NW 80558CD

"A free spirit, maverick par excellence, creator of a personal compositional style that has spawned entire generations of epigones, Terry Riley (b. 1935) embodies the best aspects of the American pioneer spirit, the positive and uncorrupted image of America (and California in particular) that still holds abroad: an America free from the weight of European tradition, a privileged space where a fusion of Western and Eastern cultural trends can be produced. It is interesting to note that the most significant musical influences on Riley's style -- blues, jazz and Indian classical music -- share relevant common features: modal structures and improvisatory practices intended as careful treatment of a set of more or less strict, codified rules. By emphasizing common ground, Riley reconciles different cultures within the same inventive fusing process. 'Uncle Jard' (1998) (saxophone quartet, piano, harpsichord, and voice) is a particularly compelling example of this. In this piece, Indian classical music and blues/jazz elements co-exist in a stylistically coherent whole: ragtime and raga have never been so closely intertwined. The piece is divided into three parts. While in the first and second parts the texture of the saxophone ensemble is enriched by the voice and keyboard, in the third part the voice is not featured. 'Assassin Reverie' (2001), for saxophone quartet and tape, is a piece in a single movement, but structured in three different sections differentiated by sound material and stage direction. It is one of the more disturbing pieces written by Riley; the second section features an extremely aggressive audio track -- gunshots and helicopter sounds are heard throughout it. Written right after 'In C, Tread on the Trail' (1965) (this version for 12 saxophones is by the ARTE Quartett) is in fact based on similar construction principles. The music in both pieces is a ludus, a game in which Riley re-injects into western music a new-found vitality. Through a free exploration of the score, musical performance recovers here its true essence as a playful collective ritual."

Artist:	ZIPORYN, EVAN
Title:	Gamelan Galak Tika
Label:	NEW WORLD RECORDS
Format:	CD
Price:	$15.00
Catalog #:	NW 80565CD

"Both works on this disc are extended pieces for full Balinese gamelan with various Western instruments. 'Tire Fire' is written for gamelan and electric guitars, while 'Amok' is scored for gamelan and digital sampler. In both pieces, Ziporyn explores the interpretation and blurring of boundaries which result from the interaction between Western technology and a Balinese gamelan. Artists: Gamelan Galak Tika, Robert Black (double bass), Eric Beyers, Mark Stewart (electric guitars), Yukiko Ueno (keyboard), Blake Newman (electric bass)."

Artist:	POLANSKY, LARRY
Title:	Lonesome Road (The Crawford Variations)
Label:	NEW WORLD RECORDS
Format:	CD
Price:	$15.00
Catalog #:	NW 80566CD

"Larry Polansky (b. 1954), though known primarily for his work in the field of computer music, has produced a major addition to the keyboard literature, this massive theme-and-variations on Ruth Crawford Seeger's arrangement of the folk song 'Lonesome Road'. Inspired by his deep engagement with her music, 'Lonesome Road' (1988-89) is a prime example of Polansky's penchant for building large architectonic structures through complex transformational processes. The work is in three sections of seventeen variations each. This is the world-premiere recording of this mammoth piece, a wonderful amalgam of Ivesian pianism, gamelan patterns, jazz-tinged harmonies, and folk song. Its size and grandeur hark back to a pianistic outsider tradition of sui generis works and it is the most important American keyboard work since Frederic Rzewski's 'The People United Will Never Be Defeated'."

Artist:	VA
Title:	Music From The ONCE Festival 1961-1966
Label:	NEW WORLD RECORDS
Format:	5CD
Price:	$75.00
Catalog #:	NW 80567CD

Long awaited historic first issue of recordings from this early 60s avant-garde festival. Elgantly packaged in 5 slimline CDs within a sturdy box, with a 138 page book of notes and photos. Over the top presentation. "Music From The ONCE Festival 1961-1966: Robert Ashley, George Cacioppo, Gordon Mumma, Roger Reynolds, Donald Scavarda, David Behrman, George Crevoshay, Philip Krumm, Pauline Oliveros, Robert Sheff, Bruce Wise.

       Ann Arbor, Michigan, seems an unlikely site for the establishment of a major avant-garde festival that would shake the new-music community. Tucked away in America's heartland, the city is equally removed from the Eastern metropolises whose artists pride themselves on sensing the pulse of the times, and from the nonconformist West Coast. Yet during the 1960s Ann Arbor played host to one of the most extraordinary adventures in American music history: the annual ONCE Festival and its nexus of related activities.

       The primary aim of ONCE's founders -- Robert Ashley, Gordon Mumma, George Cacioppo, Roger Reynolds, and Donald Scavarda -- was to create a forum for the presentation of cutting-edge music. To this end they were phenomenally successful. Performers and composers -- whether little-known or renowned -- embraced the endeavor, demanding almost nothing in return. Perhaps most important, however, ONCE acted as a creative stimulus for its organizers. Scavarda describes the adventure as an explosion of pent-up energy: 'Suddenly we could write anything we wanted and have it heard.' And they did. The ONCE composers -- and many guest artists -- wrote a host of new works, some experimental, others more traditional.

       What united the ONCE composers was their exploration of sound, whether through the medium of extended techniques on traditional instruments, electronic (or electronically modified) timbres, or the intersection of musical sounds with those of the environment. A major slice of ONCE's rich musical legacy -- 35 works constituting six hours of music -- is presented here, almost all for the first time. These pieces are as diverse in style as they are compelling in expression. This landmark set, the most comprehensive document ever released of this legendary event, is an opportunity for anyone interested in contemporary music to hear history in the making. Included in the set is a 140-page booklet with a lengthy scholarly essay by musicologist and biographer Leta Miller and numerous rare photos of ONCE personages and performances."

Artist:	TENNEY, JAMES
Title:	Selected Works 1961-1969
Label:	NEW WORLD RECORDS
Format:	CD
Price:	$15.00
Catalog #:	NW 80570CD

"The work of James Tenney (b. 1934) as a composer, theorist, performer, and teacher, is of singular importance in American music of the past four decades. He is by nature a quiet, almost publicity-shy musician, but his musical and theoretical works are steadily becoming widely known, despite the fact that few have been published and only a relatively small number, to this date, are readily available on recordings. This recording is a reissue of the 1992 Frog Peak/Artifact CD, the first recorded collection of James Tenney' s music of the 1 960s. Many of the pieces on this CD were realized at Bell Telephone Laboratories from 1961 to 1969, where Tenney used Max Mathews's digital synthesis program, which eventually became Music IV. This software became the model for many of the common computer music environments of the last forty years, and was the first system of its kind available to composers. Tenney's pieces from 1961-64 constitute the first significant and developed body of computer-composed and synthesized music by en American composer. Tenney was a very young composer when he wrote these pieces. He was working with a new medium, a technology that was still being developed, and a new aesthetic. It is perhaps easy to overlook the importance of the latter in the light of the tremendous technical and historical importance of these pieces -- but it is characteristic of Tenney that he was not content just to explore the sonic and technical capabilities of a new technology. To this day, his work from this period remains an important example for composers who work with new technologies: the new world of 'computer music' needed a radically new definition of music itself. The 32-page booklet includes greatly expanded liner notes by composer and former Tenney pupil Larry Polanaky."

Artist:	RASKIN QUARTET, JON
Title:	The Bass & The Bird Pond
Label:	NEW WORLD RECORDS
Format:	CD
Price:	$15.00
Catalog #:	NW 80574CD

"The Bass & The Bird Pond exalts the individual and collective talents of three of the most distinguished composers/improvisers currently enriching and extending the jazz vocabulary -- ROVA stalwart Jon Raskin, the inimitable Tim Berne, and bassist extraodinaire Michael Formanek. Aided and abetted by the nuanced and sensitively colored percussion work of Elliot Kavee, they plumb the depths in the way only musicians of this calibre, operating at this level of intuitive understanding, can. Impeccable compositional instincts facilitate the interweaving of individual epiphanies within intricate structures to create four rich, emotionally resonant works."

Artist:	MARSHALL, INGRAM
Title:	Ikon and Other Early Works
Label:	NEW WORLD RECORDS
Format:	CD
Price:	$15.00
Catalog #:	NW 80577CD

"This CD comprises the text-sound works (1974-1980) on which Ingram Marshall concentrated throughout the 70s and falls into two parts: the works from the Fragility Cycles period ('Cries Upon the Mountains', 'SUNG', 'Sibelius in His Radio Corner', and 'IKON') and the earlier works ('Cortez', 'Weather Report', and 'The Emperor's Birthday'). "'Cortez', 'Weather Report', and 'The Emperor's Birthday' form a kind of trilogy representing my work with "text-sound" in the early seventies. The techniques used to generate musical fabrics and structures out of spoken text are similar in all three works, but the source materials are all quite different. I used tape loops to create repetitive patterns from words or phrases; musical structures were developed out of the resulting fabric. It is not the original utterance or sound bit that is the building block, but the whole cloth created from it."-- Marshall. 'SUNG' and 'IKON' are both based on poems by Swedish poet Gunnar Ekelöf. The first piece, referring to the Sung Dynasty, is scored initially as a solo/duo recitative by painter Jan Håfström and dancer Margareta Åsberg, after which the tape processes multiply their voices into a ghostly chorus as Marshall's spectral bass appears with the English translation, to be in turn transformed into its own small chorus. 'IKON', Marshall's setting of Ekelöf's Ayiasma, is a mystical meditation on an ancient ikon seen in a Greek church. The air of apocalyptic finality in the text is enhanced by the electronics, with the pervasive soundscape being that of an entropic cosmic machine. Marshall again intones the English translation; the incantatory recitation of the Swedish original is by Ekelöf himself. "'Rop på fjellet (Cries Upon the Mountains)' again uses materials 'collected' in Scandinavia, most significantly an ancient recording of locklåtar and rop from Swedish mountain herdinner (shepherdesses) traditionally used to call goats and cattle from great distances, although clearly also cultivated for their own intrinsic, shrill beauty. The live element is my own voice, a high keening processed through a tape delay system." -- Marshall.' Sibelius in His Radio Corner' was inspired by a photograph of the Finnish composer during his 'forty years of silence,' sitting in an armchair and listening to his own work being performed on the radio. "In his old age Sibelius enjoyed pulling in distant broadcasts of his music off the short-wave. I imagined that with all the static and signal drift, some of these listening experiences might have been proleptically like a modern-day electronically processed kurzwellen piece." Marshall's brooding, mysterious sonic landscapes are essential listening for anyone interested in Minimalism and the musique concrète tradition in electronic music."

Artist:	PALESTINE, CHARLEMAGNE
Title:	Schlingen-Blängen
Label:	NEW WORLD RECORDS
Format:	CD
Price:	$15.00
Catalog #:	NW 80578CD

"Schlingen Blängen is an invaluable addition to the slender but precious discography of Charlemagne Palestine, one of the legendary figures of the amazingly fertile New York and West Coast experimental music/art scene of the sixties and seventies. He is considered to be a seminal figure of early minimalism -- as important as his better-documented contemporaries. His performances on the giant bells at St. Thomas Church and his evening-length Bösendorfer shows are still spoken of with awe by those who were present. Palestine left the music scene in the mid-seventies to focus on his visual art; he eventually moved to Europe where he still resides. Schlingen Blängen -- a 70 minute long perambulation through the organ's sonic landscape -- was recorded in 1988 (ten years after its initial performance) in a small Dutch church near the North Sea. It is difficult to describe because so little happens in it, yet at the same time an immensity of activity is going on and there is so much of it that it boggles the mind. We experience sounds set into motion by the initial choosing of a chord and its timbres (the setting of the registers or stops); the melodic changes that occur are subtle and few. In short, it is a relentless and uncompromising exploration of the physicality of sound as well as its spiritual dimensions. Palestine's music left its mark on a number of slightly younger composer-performers, among them Rhys Chatham and Glenn Branca. Absolutely essential for a comprehensive understanding of the roots of minimalism and its offshoots."

Artist:	GABURO, KENNETH
Title:	Five Works for Voices, Instruments, and Electronics
Label:	NEW WORLD RECORDS
Format:	CD
Price:	$15.00
Catalog #:	NW 80585CD

"Kenneth Gaburo (1926-1993) composed works for instruments, voices, electronics, multi-media, theater, and a variety of other resources. Foremost among his many interests was a concern with the voice and with language -- how we shape language and how we are shaped by it -- and with making works that existed somewhere between the boundaries of music and language. Of the works on this CD, three are intensely concerned with what Gaburo termed 'Compositional Linguistics' (Antiphony III, Antiphony IV, and Mouth-Piece), while concerns with balance and perceptual edges seem to be his foremost concern in the other two [String Quartet in One Movement and The Flow of (u)]. In Antiphony IV (1967), for three instruments and two-channel tape, the two channels are literally separate-vocal sounds (each phoneme, in order, of the source poem) on the left channel, and electronic sounds on the right channel, with the instruments in the middle. In Mouth-Piece (1970) the trumpeter attempts to present six contrapuntal lines simultaneously and to maintain a sense of coherent timbral identity with each. For Antiphony III (1962), for sixteen voices and electronics, a poem by Virginia Hommel again provides the basis. Here, however, it is articulated contrapuntally, one word at a time, by both the chorus and the tape. The Flow of (u) (1974) consists of one note sung by three singers for twenty-three minutes."

Artist:	BERNE, TIM
Title:	The Sevens
Label:	NEW WORLD RECORDS
Format:	CD
Price:	$15.00
Catalog #:	NW 80586CD

"ARTE Quartett: Tim Berne (alto saxophone); Marc Ducret (acoustic guitar); David Torn (electric guitars, loops, sonic redistribution). The Sevens is Tim Berne's most explicitly 'compositional' statement in some time. The album's core, a pair of through-composed movements performed by the ARTE saxophone quartet, could serve as an apotheosis of chamber writing in the Tim Berne vein. 'Repulsion' features four melodies (or is it one melody in four voices?), variously in dialogue or in chorus. Moving through a range of tonal colors, the piece reflects both Berne's fondness for friction and his less-celebrated sensitivity. In fact, certain sections sound almost wistful, as Berne cloaks his dissonances in subtle shadows."

Artist:	COLEMAN, ANTHONY
Title:	Lapidation
Label:	NEW WORLD RECORDS
Format:	CD
Price:	$15.00
Catalog #:	NW 80593CD

"The music of Anthony Coleman (b. 1955) draws from so many varied, disparate, and even contradictory sources, yet still emerges with a distinctly singular and consistent voice. Listening to any of the five works on this CD -- 'Lapidation' (2002), 'East Orange' (2007), 'I Diet On Cod' (2007), 'Mise En Abîme' (1997), 'The King Of Kabay' (1988) -- is to enter into a particular world, highly specific in material but nearly hallucinatory in formal development. The music starts, becomes linear, suspends, goes vertical, goes backward, goes forward, produces vague memories, and ends. This recording is a compelling portrait of one of the most original, literate, and versatile musicians working today. As one might imagine would be the case with a composer who has spent many years working in many improvising bands as both a leader and side person, there is a strong element of collaboration in Coleman's music. Several musicians on this recording (most notably Doug Wieselman, Marty Ehrlich, Jim Pugliese, and Joseph Kubera) have worked with him for several decades and the individual "sounds" of each of these outstanding musicians have contributed to his palette and voice. This is, in many ways, very similar to the way Ellington (a primary influence) worked with and was shaped by members of his band. In looking at the scores of Coleman's music (all of which are clearly and fully notated) one can hear the transformation on the recording of the written music into the living sound. The effect of the individual musicians who play his music is palpable and an essential part of each of these compositions."

Artist:	ADAMS, JOHN LUTHER
Title:	In The White Silence
Label:	NEW WORLD RECORDS
Format:	CD
Price:	$15.00
Catalog #:	NW 80600CD

"Since 1978, Alaska has been John Luther Adams' (b. 1953) home and a major inspirational source for most of his compositions. Almost all of his compositions evoke natural phenomena, in particular the wintry Northern landscapes, light, and colors as well as elements of indigenous Alaskan cultures. Adams's music thus shares aesthetic features with nature-inspired works of such composers as Debussy, Ives, Sibelius, and Hovhaness. Due to the use of certain 'minimalist' strategies Adams's music is often classified as 'minimalist' or 'post-minimalist.' He avoids expressive musical rhetoric, prefers reduced and elementally simple musical material, and frequently uses sustained tones and static textures. Adams's compositions embrace just intonation, consonance, and modal harmony, and they often feature a meditative quality and extended length reminiscent of Feldmanesque dimensions. In the White Silence slowly unfolds over the course of about seventy-five minutes. The work's extended length and non-dramatic structure suggest the idea of music as an 'immeasurable space' and reflect the desire to transcend the conventional boundaries of musical composition. In the White Silence, a large-scale work of structural refinement, balance and arresting beauty, gently envelops the listener and thus becomes a 'musical presence equivalent to that of a vast tundra landscape'."

Artist:	CHASALOW, ERIC
Title:	Left To His Own Devices
Label:	NEW WORLD RECORDS
Format:	CD
Price:	$15.00
Catalog #:	NW 80601CD

"The seven electro-acoustic works on this disc illustrate the salient virtues that have distinguished Eric Chasalow's work in the genre over the past twenty years -- an unerring sense of drama and a rhythmic verve that makes for compelling listening. Two in particular, 'Left to His Own Devices' and 'Suspicious Motives', pay homage to his Columbia-Princeton mentors; the former is built from vocal samples of Milton Babbitt and the sound of the RCA synthesizer while the latter incorporates two motives from Davidovsky's music--primarily the opening to 'Synchronisms #6'. That the composer is equally at home outside the studio is amply borne out by the two purely acoustic chamber pieces, 'In the Works', and 'Yes, I Really Did,' clearly cut from the same aesthetic cloth as the tape pieces. As Chasalow has said, 'In spite of my long history with electronic music, the technology is not my focus.' This is clearly evident from the works on this disc, crafted in a musical language as subtle and complex as it is tactile and expressive."

Artist:	LUCIER, ALVIN
Title:	Vespers And Other Early Works
Label:	NEW WORLD RECORDS
Format:	CD
Price:	$15.00
Catalog #:	NW 80604CD

"Alvin Lucier (b. 1931) is best known for his pioneering work in the mid-sixties in the exploration of sonic environments, particularly sounds that we would never perceive under ordinary circumstances. Vespers and Other Early Works restores to the catalog several of his key works from that time. In 'Vespers' (1969) performers with Sondols (sonar-dolphin), hand-held pulse wave oscillators, explore the acoustic characteristics of given indoor or outdoor spaces by monitoring the echoes of the pulse waves off the walls, floors and ceilings, as well as any objects or obstacles in range of the sound waves. Over time, the listener receives an acoustic signature of the room. In 'Chambers' (1968), battery-operated radios, tape recorders, and electronically powered toys of various kinds are hidden in paper bags, shoes, kettles, and small suitcases and other small resonant environments. As performers carry these small 'rooms' into larger ones, such as concert halls, football stadiums and underground cisterns, the sounds, already altered by the acoustics of the small environments, are altered a second time by the acoustics of the larger ones. This version was recorded in 2002. 'North American Time Capsule' (1967), for voices and vocoder, is described metaphorically by Lucier as a message to listeners who don't know about us. '(Middletown) Memory Space' (1970) is a reenactment of the composition called '(Hartford) Memory Space', for any number of instrumental players with recordings of environmental sounds. 'Elegy for Albert Anastasia' (1961-1963) is described as composed 'for electromagnetic tape using very low sounds most of which are below human audibility.' Liner notes by Robert Ashley."

Artist:	MARONEY, DENMAN
Title:	Fluxations
Label:	NEW WORLD RECORDS
Format:	CD
Price:	$15.00
Catalog #:	NW 80607CD

Ned Rothenberg (bass clarinet, alto saxophone); Dave Ballou (trumpet); Denman Maroney (hyperpiano); Mark Dresser (contrabass); Kevin Norton (drums, vibraphone). "Denman Maroney (b.1949) is known for his unique 'hyperpiano' style, which involves playing the keys with one hand and the strings with the other using copper bars, brass bowls and other objects. Maroney is a rare example of a composer/improviser who has made 'pulse fields' an ongoing platform for both his writing and improvising. An approach to time used by such American experimentalist icons as Charles Ives and Conlon Nancarrow, pulse fields are rhythmic relationships expressed as ratios such as 3:4:5. Though they are polyrhythmic, they should not be considered to be synonymous with polyrhythms. A pulse field can present a rhythmic ambiguity that is beguiling to the listener, but is vexing to the performer, which partially explains why pulse fields have remained more a tool for through-composition than for works that privilege improvisation. Fluxations is the first instance in which Maroney has utilized them in an album-length work, which gives some idea of the difficulty the use of pulse fields presents if the material is realized by musicians with less than impeccable ensemble and improvisational skills. For this daunting proposition, Maroney turned to some of his closest associates, Dresser being foremost among them, given their fifteen-year association in various co-op settings. While the resumes of Rothenberg, Kevin Norton and Dave Ballou are not as entwined with Maroney's, they nevertheless exemplify the rigor Fluxations requires. Within this intricate compositional framework, Maroney and his cohorts create a challenging, enormously engaging work of wonderful rhythmic variety and delicate shadings that blends composition and virtuosic improvisation in fresh, unpredictable ways."

Artist:	ANDERSON, BETH
Title:	Swales and Angels
Label:	NEW WORLD RECORDS
Format:	CD
Price:	$15.00
Catalog #:	NW 80610CD

"Beth Anderson (b. 1950) writes chamber music of great beauty, generally simple tonality, and luminous textures. She's adopted a deceptively unmilitant motto -- 'To make something beautiful is revolutionary' -- and describes herself oxymoronically on her web page as a 'neo-romantic, avant-garde composer', words that wouldn't fit together for any other composer. Her chamber music betrays its twentieth-century roots in its pervasive use of collage. Her preferred form, and one she invented herself, is the swale: a term for a meadow or marsh in which a lot of plants grow together, and by extension a musical piece in which diverse musical ideas and even styles grow side by side. In Anderson's swales, then -- five of which are on this recording -- different themes, styles, moods pop up and succeed each other with cheery disregard for linear development-though, as in any field, the same plants recur amongst each other, giving the disparate collections a family unity. Thus she has evolved a music that seems texturally and tonally conventional measure-by-measure, but whose succession of styles -- modal, nineteenth-century, Bartókian, bluegrass -- chart out radical postmodern territory indeed. Yet, unlike the collage techniques of Cage, Stockhausen, and John Zorn, Anderson is never abrupt or mechanical, but smooths her swale elements together in an intuitively convincing stream of consciousness."

Artist:	TENNEY, JAMES
Title:	Postal Pieces
Label:	NEW WORLD RECORDS
Format:	2CD
Price:	$30.00
Catalog #:	NW 80612CD

"James Tenney (b. 1934) is one of the most important American composers and theorists of the past fifty years. For a very long time, his work was known mainly to other musicians and its tremendous influence was belied by its obscurity. In the past twenty years, however, as his music and writings have been more and more published, recorded, performed, and studied, his place in the context of American contemporary music has become far better understood. He has pioneered musical fields as diverse as computer music, tuning theory, and integrating ideas from acoustics and music cognition into his work. Tenney has also been important as a teacher, performer, and scholar of other radical American composers. This CD contains recordings of the complete set of his Postal Pieces, written primarily during a very brief tenure at California Institute of the Arts in the early 1970s. These works, although frequently performed over the years, have not been recorded (with a few exceptions). This recording is a natural and important companion to the recent New World reissue of Tenney's computer and electronic music from the 1960s. Both collections represent complete, highly individualistic and essential bodies of work by a major American artist."

Artist:	IVES, CHARLES
Title:	The Unknown Ives, Volume 2
Label:	NEW WORLD RECORDS
Format:	CD
Price:	$15.00
Catalog #:	NW 80618CD

Premiere recordings of unpublished works and new critical editions. Donald Berman, piano; (with Stephen Drury, piano 2). "The works on The Unknown Ives, Volume 2 include some of his best and most searching experiments: fragments, personal explorations, cerebral excursions, and works of unabashed amusement. What emerges from their juxtaposition is a sense of canon. The spectrum of pieces, from adolescence to maturity, simple to complex, illustrates the boundaries of the complete oeuvre. From fragment to complete work, gestures meld, and motivic detours begin to describe a broad musical profile of Ives the complete musician. This recording completes the catalogue of Ives's short, though substantial, piano compositions presented on The Unknown Ives. Honing the unpublished manuscripts has brought to light some 40 piano works, two hours of music, apart from the two major piano sonatas of Ives. Hearing them illumines a more complete picture of Ives the composer. Meeting that music on its own terms is a fitting tribute to the composer who desired to make music that had a life of its own roaring volition. This recording includes published pieces that I have re-evaluated and revised. Many were initially edited by my teacher John Kirkpatrick (1905-1991), the American pianist, editor, and ardent champion of Ives. His meticulous efforts to identify, index, and catalogue loose manuscript sheets after Ives's death unquestionably comprise one of the heroic achievements in twentieth-century American music. Kirkpatrick's fastidious quest to divine playable editions of the music is a fascinating and at times problematic counterpoint to the compositions' rough edges. But essentially, Ives's volcanic nature and ambivalent attitudes likely served to obstruct public hearings of the music during his life; Kirkpatrick's asserting influence brought much of that music to light, including this recording." -- Donald Berman.

Artist:	PARTCH, HARRY
Title:	The Harry Partch Collection, Volume 1
Label:	NEW WORLD RECORDS
Format:	CD
Price:	$15.00
Catalog #:	NW 80621CD

Reissue of CRI 751. "This newly remastered reissue marks a welcome return to the catalog of the first volume of the classic 4-CD collection that was formerly available on the CRI label. The works recorded on this disc span the first six years of what Harry Partch (1901-1974), slightly tongue-in-cheek, called the 'third period' of his creative life. They show him moving away from the obsession with 'the intrinsic music of spoken words' that had characterized his earlier output (the vocal works of 1930-33 and 1941-45) and towards an instrumental idiom, predominantly percussive in nature. This path was to take him through the 'music-dance drama' King Oedipus (1951) -- the culmination of his 'spoken word' manner -- to the 'dance satire' The Bewitched (1954-55), in which his new percussive idiom manifests itself. The three works on this disc show Partch before, during, and after this period of transition. In their quiet, forlorn way, the Eleven Intrusions are among the most compelling and beautiful of Partch's works. The individual pieces were composed at various times between August 1949 and December 1950, and only later gathered together as a cycle. Nonetheless they form a unified whole, with a nucleus of eight songs framed by two instrumental preludes and an essentially instrumental postlude. Although foreshadowed by the dance sequences of King Oedipus, the Plectra and Percussion Dances (1952) are the first of Partch's major works to be wholly instrumental in conception. The final work on this disc is Ulysses at the Edge, written at Partch's studio at Gate 5 in July 1955. Ulysses, which Partch describes as a 'minor adventure in rhythm,' is unique among his mature compositions in that, in its original form, it did not call for any of his own instruments."

Artist:	PARTCH, HARRY
Title:	The Harry Partch Collection, Volume 2
Label:	NEW WORLD RECORDS
Format:	CD
Price:	$15.00
Catalog #:	NW 80622CD

New version of CRI 752. Features: "And on the Seventh Day Petals Fell in Petaluma," "The Wayward: U.S. Highball; San Francisco; The Letter; Barstow." "Harry Partch's compositions of the 1940s -- and to some extent his work in general -- have remained until recently an unwritten chapter in the history of American music. And yet it was these very pieces -- the collection of four works he would later collectively entitle The Wayward -- that brought him to the attention of the New York musical world. His concert of these pieces for the League of Composers (April 22, 1944) established for him a small but permanent reputation as a musical maverick who had wandered off well-worn tracks and had developed a sort of lateral extension of his art, independently of any of the main circles of American music. The musical starting point of the compositions of The Wayward is the inflections and rhythms of everyday American speech. From the beginnings of his mature output in 1930 Partch had been devoted to what he called 'the intrinsic music of spoken words,' and these four works capture something of the spontaneous musicality of the conversations of the hoboes he befriended during the Depression. In their original form these pieces used only the small collection of instruments Partch had built or customized by 1943: Adapted Viola, Adapted Guitar, Chromelodeon, and Kithara. The versions recorded here are all later reworkings, sometimes with only small changes (as in the case of San Francisco), and sometimes involving a substantial amount of recomposition (as in the case of U.S. Highball). The final work on this disc dates from twenty years later than the compositions of The Wayward, and represents one of the high points of Partch's later instrumental idiom. 'And on the Seventh Day Petals Fell in Petaluma' was composed in Petaluma, California, in March-April 1964, and revised at various times and places until the completion of the final copy of the score in San Diego in October 1966. It marks a radical departure from the theater works he had written at the University of Illinois in the early 1960s, and shows a renewed concentration on technical innovation and on fusing his activities as composer and instrument-builder within the context of a single composition. Newly remastered."

Artist:	PARTCH, HARRY
Title:	The Harry Partch Collection, Volume 3
Label:	NEW WORLD RECORDS
Format:	CD
Price:	$15.00
Catalog #:	NW 80623CD

"The four works on this newly remastered CD are eloquent testimony to Harry Partch's aesthetic of corporeality. The music he composed for The Dreamer That Remains, for Rotate the Body in All Its Planes, for Windsong, and for Water! Water!, was intended as only one component in the total artistic experience. In these works music joins with drama, with film, with dance, even with gymnastics, as integral parts of the composer's vision. The eloquent and affecting The Dreamer That Remains (1972) was Partch's last work. It was commissioned by the patroness Betty Freeman for her film on Partch which was directed by Stephen Pouliot. Rotate the Body in All Its Planes (1961) was a spin-off of the 'Tumble On' sequence in Partch's large-scale theatre piece 'Revelation' in the Courthouse Park. It was premiered at the National Collegiate Gymnasts Championship in 1961. Windsong (1958) was also written for film, the soundtrack to a film by Madeline Tourtelot in which Partch saw the Greek myth of Daphne and Apollo. (A later version of the work was named Daphne of the Dunes). Finally, somewhat akin to a Broadway musical, Water! Water! (1961) is perhaps Partch's most lively and lighthearted work. It pokes fun at many targets, especially the rush of audiences for water at the interval; thus the subtitle: 'An Intermission with Prologues and Epilogues'."

Artist:	PARTCH, HARRY
Title:	The Harry Partch Collection, Volume 4 - The Bewitched
Label:	NEW WORLD RECORDS
Format:	CD
Price:	$15.00
Catalog #:	NW 80624CD

2005 remaster, from original mono master tapes (recorded in 1957). "The Bewitched was Partch's first work solely intended for dance (and mime-dance at that; he was not overly enamored in his lifetime of so-called 'modern dance'). Drawing heavily from his deep affection for the music-theatrical performance traditions of Greek theater, as well as those from Africa, Bali, and Chinese opera, Partch conceived of a contemporary American music ritual-theater where musicians not only play, but also function at times as movers-singers-actors. Such is the case of The Bewitched, where the instruments are the set, in front of (and around) which dancers 'dance,' but where the onstage musicians also move and sing. Partch's masterpiece has been lovingly remastered from the original mono masters and the 24-page booklet includes never-before-published photographs from productions of The Bewitched. This is the definitive document of this very important work." "The Bewitched is in the tradition of world-wide ritual theatre. It is the opposite of specialized. I conceived and wrote it in California in the period 1952-55, following the several performances of my version of Sophocles' Oedipus. In spirit, if not wholly in content, it is a satyr-play. It is a seeking for release --through satire, whimsy, magic, ribaldry -- from the catharsis of tragedy. It is an essay toward a miraculous abeyance of civilized rigidity, in the feeling that the modern spirit might thereby find some ancient and magical sense of rebirth. Each of the 12 scenes is a theatrical unfolding of nakedness, a psychological strip-tease, or -- a diametric reversal, which has the effect of underlining the complementary character, the strange affinity, of seeming opposites." -- Harry Partch.

Artist:	CURRAN, ALVIN
Title:	Maritime Rites
Label:	NEW WORLD RECORDS
Format:	2CD
Price:	$30.00
Catalog #:	NW 80625CD

Featuring the foghorns and other maritime sounds of the U.S. Eastern Seaboard and solo improvisations by John Cage, Joseph Celli, Clark Coolidge, Alvin Curran, Jon Gibson, Malcolm Goldstein, Steve Lacy, George Lewis, Pauline Oliveros, and Leo Smith. "Rich in ambient detail, Maritime Rites presents the foghorn as indigenous American 'found' music par excellence and the source of one of the most enduring minimal musics around us. The series is also a comprehensive aural documentary of our regional and national maritime heritage including such historical sounds as the Nantucket II Lightship, now out of service and doing service as a museum docked in Boston Harbor. The Lightship's horn is the only one of its kind (and the loudest!) on the East coast and was recorded extensively during an exclusive session ten miles off shore with the special cooperation of the ship's crew. As the foghorn gives way to other electronic navigational aids, this work may serve as a historical document of some of the most beautiful and mysterious sounds of the sea. As an expression of sonic geography, Maritime Rites brings together different areas of the Seaboard in a single musical moment. The series was expressly conceived for radio, the only medium that can safely accommodate over sixty foghorns at once and bring an entire coastline, seemingly live, into anyone's home! An essential document for anyone interested in sound art."

Artist:	HWANG, JASON KAO
Title:	The Floating Box - A Story in Chinatown
Label:	NEW WORLD RECORDS
Format:	2CD
Price:	$30.00
Catalog #:	NW 80626CD

"Jason Kao Hwang (b. 1957) is a highly respected improviser who also has a number of compositions and film scores to his credit. The Floating Box is a major contemporary work that gives voice not only to the Asian immigrant experience in America in particular but also to the immigrant experience in general. With the collaboration of librettist Catherine Filloux, The Floating Box is an original story inspired by the oral histories of Chinese-Americans living in Chinatown. The story of Eva/Yee-Wa, a young Chinese-American woman living with her mother, is the story of many diasporic peoples who have sought a better life in new, often harsh surroundings. The poetry of Filloux's libretto fuses perfectly with Hwang's eclectic score, beautifully capturing the complex, intimate relationships among these three characters. The opera employs both Chinese and Western instruments in an ensemble of eight players: piccolo/flute/alto flute; Bb clarinet/bass clarinet; vibraphone; pipa (Chinese lute); accordion; percussion, including Tibetan chimes and singing bowls, whirling air tubes, Chinese tom toms, and a Buddhist fan drum; erhu/gaohu/zhonghu (a family of two-stringed Chinese violins categorized as huqin); and cello. In Hwang's skilled hands, these instruments together forge a rich amalgam of sound -- in the composer's words, 'complex suspensions rather than homogenous solutions.' The precision with which Hwang mines each instrument's sonic possibilities and the imaginative ways with which he draws upon subsets of the full ensemble result in a vibrant musical narrative that propels the drama forward to its conclusion. The kaleidoscopic range of musical styles employed --atonality, blues, Broadway, Chinese opera, chromaticism, impressionism, jazz, pop -- establishes The Floating Box as the work of an artist who is completely comfortable bridging multiple musical worlds."

Artist:	DAVIS, ANTHONY
Title:	Amistad: An Opera In Two Acts
Label:	NEW WORLD RECORDS
Format:	2CD
Price:	$30.00
Catalog #:	NW 80627CD

"'Amistad is an opera that was ten years in the making. Thulani and I first discussed the idea of making an opera on the Amistad Rebellion in 1986, after the premiere of our opera X: The Life and Times of Malcolm X. We were drawn to the drama of the story, a successful uprising of captives on a slave ship, and the implications of the Amistad incident in an understanding of ourselves and the American experience. Through the Amistad, we could revisit the story of the Middle Passage, the contradictions implicit in the ethos of America, and also explore the emergence of the African-American as a cultural entity. Amistad is my most ambitious work to date and gave me the opportunity to expand upon what I learned from my previous operas as well as the chance to explore new musical areas.' -- Anthony Davis. The music of Anthony Davis (b. 1951) embodies an intercultural approach, drawing not only upon traditional and current African-American sources, but upon Javanese gamelan, American minimalism, and the European and American avant-garde. Amistad, Davis' fourth, is an opera in two acts with full orchestra, double chorus, and an integrated jazz ensemble with trap drums that drives its motoric rhythmic flow. In many ways, Amistad revisits aspects of Davis' previous operas, X and Tania, but in a form that exhibits maximum focus and a tightened compositional practice. The musical language is marked by constant motion and kaleidoscopic permutation of the same elements, including a four-note ending cadence that appears constantly, but in ever-shifting guises. This recording is drawn from Lyric Opera of Chicago's 1997 world-premiere performances."

Artist:	LUCIER, ALVIN
Title:	Wind Shadows
Label:	NEW WORLD RECORDS
Format:	2CD
Price:	$30.00
Catalog #:	NW 80628CD

"The music on these CDs takes us into a new realm of music making, one that Alvin Lucier (b. 1931) has defined for us and one that demands that we start to listen anew. His work has been more often described in terms of science than of art as if it were a series of quasi-scientific experiments, but to put the emphasis here is to miss the point, for its purpose is never 'explanatory' (the goal of science) but, like all art, 'revelatory.' This is not to suggest that the composer has some spiritual agenda in the usual sense of this term. On the contrary, it is the physical behavior of sound itself that he so elegantly reveals, each work unveiling an otherwise hidden or ephemeral aspect of aural phenomena and allowing us time to witness its beauty. He achieves this by ruthlessly excluding any trace of self-expression, or indeed anything extraneous to the phenomenon itself. The Barton Workshop has been the only group to really work closely with Lucier in terms of doing 'portraits' of his work (the first in 1995), commissioning new works (40 Rooms, Bar Lazy J, and Q) and performing older/extant pieces. This 2CD set is the fruit of this long collaborative process. In Memoriam Stuart Marshall [bass clarinet and pure wave oscillator] (1993/rev. 2003), 40 Rooms [quintet and digital reverberation system] (1996), In Memoriam Jon Higgins [clarinet and slow sweep pure wave oscillator] (1984), Letters [clarinet, violin, cello, piano] (1992), Q [quintet and pure wave oscillators] (1996), A Tribute to James Tenney [double bass and pure wave oscillators] (1986), Bar Lazy J [clarinet, trombone] (2003), Fideliotrio [viola, cello, piano] (1987), Wind Shadows [trombone and closely tuned oscillators](1994)."

Artist:	BEGLARIAN, EVE
Title:	Tell The Birds
Label:	NEW WORLD RECORDS
Format:	CD
Price:	$15.00
Catalog #:	NW 80630CD

"'One of new music's truly free spirits' and a 'remarkable experimentalist,' Eve Beglarian (b. 1958) is a composer and performer whose music has been described as 'an eclectic and wide-open series of enticements.' Tell The Birds is her latest sampler plate of ideas, a set of pieces both cohesive and pleasingly eclectic. Four of the six pieces here deal with texts, from such disparate writers as William Blake, Polish poet Czeslaw Milosz, and American poets Linda Norton and Stanley Kunitz. Musically, Beglarian charts her progress in finding ways to combine her use of samplers and electronics with breathing, real-time musicians, extant new music ensembles and an orchestral showpiece for good measure. The compositions contained here -- 'The Marriage of Heaven and Hell' (1994), 'Creating the World' (1996), 'Robin Redbreast' (2003), 'Wonder Counselor' (1996), 'Landscaping for Privacy' (1995), 'FlamingO' (1995, revised 2004) -- represent a range of ideas and vintages in the Beglarian oeuvre, from the mid-nineties forward, with some revision of older works and a generally gleaming account of her continuing artistic saga. Beglarian continues to carve out a path in music not quite like any other in contemporary music, not so much breaking rules as ignoring the ones she has no use for, and nurturing ideas or combinations she finds useful and appealing."

Artist:	MUMMA, GORDON
Title:	Electronic Music of Theatre and Public Activity
Label:	NEW WORLD RECORDS
Format:	CD
Price:	$15.00
Catalog #:	NW 80632CD

"Gordon Mumma (b. 1935) has played a pioneering role in the development and evolution of 'live-electronic' music. 'Live-electronics' as a concept and practice appears to have originated in the United States in the late 1950s, outside the few institutional electronic studios and often in the context of innovative theatre activity. From its inception, it frequently involved two processes: (1) live performance with accompanying or interacting sound materials on magnetic tape; and (2) the use of electronic circuitry as sound-modifying and sound-producing instruments. Beginning with his classic 'Megaton for Wm. Burroughs' of 1963, Mumma's live-electronic and cybersonic works of the 1960s and 1970s, especially 'Medium Size Mograph' (1963) and 'Hornpipe' (1967), display his resourceful use of both live-electronic processes. 'Cybersonic Cantilevers' (1973) extends them to include the active participation of audience members, many of them children and teenagers who were quick to grasp the artistic potential of cybersonic technology, while 'Conspiracy 8' (1969-70) is an early example of live interaction between performers and computer. A major addition to the contemporary music discography, this is essential listening for anyone interested in the history of electronic music."

Artist:	GANN, KYLE
Title:	Nude Rolling Down an Escalator: Studies for Disklavier
Label:	NEW WORLD RECORDS
Format:	CD
Price:	$15.00
Catalog #:	NW 80633CD

"Like many composers of subsequent generations, Kyle Gann (born 1955) was captivated by Cowell's theories and Nancarrow's music. His book, The Music of Conlon Nancarrow, is the essential source for any serious study of Nancarrow's work. Knowing so much about Nancarrow's music, it's hardly surprising that it would occur to Gann to consider the question of how he might make the mechanical piano his own. His answer is the music on this recording. The instrument isn't exactly the same. Nancarrow employed the old-fashioned player piano, driven by paper rolls with holes punched in them. Gann uses the more recent Disklavier, which is controlled by a computer via MIDI data. However, like Nancarrow, Gann employs the mechanical piano for both musical and practical reasons. The musical attraction, of course, is the one Cowell observed: the instrument allows the composer to compose with tempo relationships and rhythmic velocities not readily playable by human performers. The practical appeal is that Gann felt that not enough people were playing his music. So in the do-it-yourself spirit of Nancarrow, Lou Harrison, Harry Partch and so many other American composers, he decided to take matters into his own virtual hands. But although Gann's reasons for working with the mechanical piano are similar to Nancarrow's, the musical results are quite different. Gann picks up where Nancarrow left off, developing his own personal methods of working with multiple tempo layers, and weaving elements of popular and classical music into his vivid and distinctive musical tapestries. Gann's music embraces a wide range of influences but sounds like no other. His fascination with complex tempo structures and microtonal tunings places him in the experimentalist tradition from Cowell to La Monte Young. Yet the directness and accessibility of his music reveal his affinity with American populists such as Roy Harris and Virgil Thomson. In this highly personal blend of experimentalism and populism, Gann's closest musical forebears are Partch and Charles Ives. In the spirit of Ives, Gann's music invokes ragtime, jazz, folk music and Native American music on equal footing with classical music and purely abstract sonic speculations."

Artist:	BRANT, HENRY
Title:	Music for Massed Flutes
Label:	NEW WORLD RECORDS
Format:	CD
Price:	$15.00
Catalog #:	NW 80636CD

"The long and illustrious career of American composer Henry Brant (born 1913) can be framed with the music he has written for the flute. The Pulitzer Prize-winning composer's three epic works for multiple flutes do not fit into any standard category of instrumentation or form; rather, they span the creative life of a man who for all of his life has been referred to as a 'maverick,' a 'pioneer,' an 'experimentalist,' and, since the 1950s, the 'world's leading composer of 'spatial' music,' in which the placement of the musicians around the performance space is as important a compositional element as the timbre, time, or pitch. It is with the development of his use of space as an intrinsic part of his musical vocabulary that Brant established himself as a major figure in American music of the twentieth century. Brant wrote 'Angels and Devils' (1931), now recognized as the first flute orchestra or 'flute choir' piece of the twentieth century, in 1931 at the age of 18, after having heard a performance of Stravinksy's Symphony of Psalms and being struck by the unique use of five flutes in the orchestration. This recording of 'Angels and Devils' is a re-mastering of the historic LP released on CRI in 1956. Brant's compositional precociousness in this seminal work is creative and sophisticated. The harmonic language features a generous use of jazz-like polychords with up to eleven notes, one pitch for each instrument, alternating with a playfully light, less dense 'normal' harmonic vocabulary, often borrowing from the popular music language of his musical environment. 'The Mass in Gregorian Chant for Multiple Flutes' [1984] (subtitled Mass for June 16), composed in 1984, is scored for as many flutists as possible with approximately twenty percent of the flutists doubling on piccolo. 'Ghosts and Gargoyles' (2001) is scored for solo flute (also playing piccolo and bass flute) with an octet comprised of piccolos, C-flutes, alto flutes and bass flutes, plus a jazz drummer."

Artist:	JOHNSTON, BEN
Title:	String Quartets Nos. 2, 3, 4 & 9
Label:	NEW WORLD RECORDS
Format:	CD
Price:	$15.00
Catalog #:	NW 80637CD

Performed by Kepler Quartet. "Ben Johnston's (b. 1926) music has reached a wide and diverse audience, both at home and abroad, without compromising its high seriousness or its depth of philosophic purpose. His music shows the confluence of several traditions of music-making that have flourished within the United States. In the 1950s his output was characterized by the neoclassicism of his teacher Darius Milhaud. In the 1960s he explored serial techniques and, at the end of the decade, indeterminacy. From 1960 onward the overriding technical preoccupation of his music has been its use of just intonation, the tuning system of the music of ancient cultures as well as that of many living traditions worldwide. Johnston is a pioneer in the use of microtones and non-tempered tuning, rationalizing and going beyond Harry Partch's achievements in this domain. His ten string quartets are among the most fascinating collections of work ever produced by an American composer. And yet, like similarly imposing peaks in the American musical landscape -- Ives's Universe Symphony, for example, or the Studies for Player Piano of Conlon Nancarrow -- these works have, for decades now, remained more known about than known, more talked about than played. The scores have been analyzed by musicologists and theorists fascinated by their fusion of advanced compositional techniques (serialism with just intonation, for example; microtonality with a kind of neoclassical revisionism), but they have been too little heard. The Kepler Quartet's recordings -- this disc is the first of a series of three, prepared with Johnston's active support and supervision -- offer lively and scrupulously accurate readings that unlock the door to these marvelous pieces. Like Ives and Nancarrow before him, there is the sense that Johnston's time has finally come."