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Search Result for Genre CLASSICAL
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GLR 006LP
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$30.50
PREORDER
RELEASE DATE: 12/17/2021
The story of six soulmate musicians meeting at the intersection of classical composition, pop, electronic and minimal music begins in 2016 with their celebrated performance at the Cologne Philharmonie. After follow-up performances at the Bundeskunsthalle Bonn as well as the Hamburg Elbphilharmonie, Gregor Schwellenbach, Daniel Brandt, John Kameel Farah, Paul Frick, Erol Sarp and Kai Schuhmacher made a guest appearance at the invitation of Radio Berlin Brandenburg in the iconic Haus des Rundfunks in Berlin's Westend on February 2, 2019. Live im Haus des Rundfunks documents the first half of this evening, in which the individual composer-pianists introduced themselves to the audience in solos, duos and trios. This carefully choreographed set served as an electrifying prelude to the grand finale, the 20-minute collective mantra of Steve Reich's 1973 composition Six Pianos, a studio recording of which has already been released on the 2016 record Steve Reich and Terry Riley's Six Pianos / Keyboard Study #1 (FILM 002CD/LP).
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NW 80834CD
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$15.00
PREORDER
RELEASE DATE: 12/17/2021
"Jerome Kitzke (b. 1955) has described himself as being as much a storyteller as a composer, and that description makes sense. Throughout his music there is a strong dramatic, narrative, theatrical component. Performers shout, sing, move and dance, often as though possessed by the music. An obvious ancestor here is Harry Partch, and though Kitzke's music does not use just intonation, it projects that 'corporeal' quality that this predecessor valued as essential. The pieces on this disc make for intersecting pairings. There are two works for a pianist who vocalizes and produces sound beyond the keyboard (Bringing Roses With Her Words [2009] and There Is a Field [2008]). There are two works that are portraits of individuals. There are two ensemble pieces that are idiosyncratically theatrical (For Pte Tokahewin Ska [2015] and The Redness of Blood [1994?95]). Listening to them in sequence, they begin to feel like a multi-movement work about life that culminates in The Redness of Blood, the longest and most substantial piece of the program. On a first hearing, for some more accustomed to the complexities of modernist practice, Kitzke's music may sound somewhat simple. Conversely, those more used to the open spaces of minimalism, or the grand gestures of neoromanticism, may find the music too mutable as it morphs, quicksilver-like, through an invigorating stream of consciousness. The fact that this music does not fall easily into any '-ism' is a tribute to its individuality, and its strength. Ultimately, the music has the quality of a crazy kaleidoscope, tumbling from one moment to another, the sonic palette constantly refreshed."
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SR 525CD
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Sarah Defrise dedicates her first new music album to the American mezzo-soprano Cathy Berberian. The disc features exclusively a capella pieces which were written for Cathy by some of the most prominent composers of her time. Berio's Sequenza III, Cage's Aria and Cathy's own Stripsody have become new music "hits", but For Cathy also presents lesser-known repertoire such as Henri Pousseur's Phonème pour Cathy, Bussoti's fragment from Passion selon Sade and Entretien, a piece for electronic tape composed by Sarah Defrise as a tribute to Berberian. Sarah took an active part in the editing process of the disk in order to create a coherent sound object, displaying the endless possibilities of the human voice. Includes 24-page booklet.
Cathy Berberian (July 4, 1925 - March 6, 1983): American mezzo-soprano and composer based in Italy. She worked closely with many contemporary avant-garde music composers, including Luciano Berio, Bruno Maderna, John Cage, Henri Pousseur, Sylvano Bussotti, Darius Milhaud, Roman Haubenstock-Ramati, and Igor Stravinsky. As a recital curator, she presented several vocal genres in a classical context, including arrangements of songs by The Beatles as well as folk songs from several countries and cultures. As a composer, she wrote Stripsody (1966), in which she exploits her vocal technique using comic book sounds (onomatopoeia), and Morsicat(h)y (1969), a composition for the keyboard (with the right hand only) based on Morse Code.
Sarah Defrise: Belgian soprano Sarah Defrise has quickly established herself as one of the most fascinating young vocal artists enjoying close working relationships with a wide range of contemporary composers. A polymorphic artist, she is at ease in Lied, opera as well as contemporary performances including solo stand-up shows. She featured as a soloist on stages such as the Berlin Staatsoper, the Grand Théâtre de Genève, MÜPA in Budapest, NOF in Fribourg, the Opéra royal de Wallonie in Liège and la Monnaie / De Munt in Brussels. Composers Peter Eötvös and Jean-Luc Fafchamps have conceived roles specifically for her.
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TUM 1004CD
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"The Chicago Symphonies is a magnificent four-CD boxed set by Wadada Leo Smith's Great Lakes Quartet. Each disc includes one of the four symphonies composed by Wadada Leo Smith for this quartet. The first three symphonies, 'Gold Symphony,' 'Diamond Symphony' and 'Pearl Symphony,' are performed by Wadada Leo Smith with saxophonist/flutist Henry Threadill, bassist John Lindberg and drummer Jack DeJohnette whereas the fourth, 'Sapphire Symphony - The Presidents and Their Visions of America,' features Smith with saxophonist Jonathon Haffner, Lindberg and DeJohnette. The idea of a symphony composed for a quartet was first presented by Don Cherry on his classic recording Symphony For Improvisers in 1966 but Wadada Leo Smith has brought this idea to the present day and broadened it to include social and political into the creative space. The Chicago Symphonies celebrate the Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians and the historical development of creative music in Chicago starting with Louis Armstrong and through Sun Ra onto the AACM as well as, in the case of 'Sapphire Symphony,' Abraham Lincoln and Baraka Hussein Obama."
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LCD 5004CD
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Robert Ashley's eL/Aficionado is a group of scenes from the life of an "agent". The scenes are a kind of "debriefing" to a jury of Interrogators, in which the Interrogators (chorus) challenge the Agent (soloist) in various forms of musical dialogue. The mood of the opera owes much to our fascination with espionage and with the character of those people who lead double lives. The opera was performed many times between 1987 and 1993, and Lovely Music released a recording of the opera in 1994 (LCD 1004CD). This new studio recording features the cast of the 2021 production (October 21-23 at Roulette, Brooklyn), with mezzo soprano, Kayleigh Butcher, taking over the role formerly inhabited by baritone Thomas Buckner. Recorded at Robert Ashley's studio in July 2021. Orchestration by Robert Ashley and Tom Hamilton. Recorded and mixed by Tom Hamilton. Produced by Tom Hamilton and Mimi Johnson. Personnel/Credits: Music and Libretto by Robert Ashley; Kayleigh Butcher - The Agent; Brian McCorkle - Interrogator No. 1; Bonnie Lander - Interrogator No. 2; Paul Pinto - Interrogator No. 3.
"As labyrinthine as a Robbe-Grillet novel, as pithy as a Pinter play, eL/Aficionado comprises a series of debriefing sessions between a secret agent and his three interrogators. For 70 minutes the work sustains an atmosphere of uneasy calm brilliantly: misty, microtonal electronics provide a sometimes barely audible backdrop to the vocal parts. But don't confuse this with ambient; Ashley's music requires your full attention to appreciate the subtle timbres of his unique sound world... This is another riveting work by one of the world's leading composers of experimental opera." --Chris Blackford, The Wire (1995)
"Enigmatic, cryptic, wonderfully mysterious, eL/ Aficionado has a story line and narrative structure, as do Ashley's previous operas. Though the characters hail from a parallel universe, familiar and alien. The music is austere, simple, even minimalistic, yet utterly compelling. The New York Times was dead-on in proclaiming Ashley 'opera's James Joyce.'" --Dean Suzuki, Wired, 1995
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NW 80830CD
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"Starting with his music of the 1960s and early 1970s, with works such as For 1, 2 or 3 People (1964), the Prose Collection (1968-71), and Changing the System (1974), Christian Wolff (b. 1934) quietly re-invented chamber music. He created music in which the activities of the performers -- timing, cueing, assembling and selecting materials -- were foregrounded. Although to some extent these activities were always a part of classical music, Wolff opened them up for creative decision-making by the musicians themselves. Charles Ives began to develop a different conception with (among other works) his String Quartet No. 2 (1913). It portrays four individuals who come together to have a discussion that turns into an argument (presumably over politics) and then its transcendental resolution in the mountains. With Ives and then others from the American Experimental Tradition (including John Cage), chamber music starts to become a place where differences are unleashed. Given his exploration of the ontology of people making music together, the string quartet, laden as it is with the tradition of unity, might not at first seem to be an obvious fit to Wolff's sensibilities. But his quartet music stems as much from Ives and Cage as from the European art music tradition. The four characters of Ives become four people playing music. In one piece he simply calls them '2 violinists, violist and cellist.' Sometimes they are asked to coordinate like a traditional quartet. But at other times (often in the same piece), they are pushed to the point of dissolution. Here we find a music that allows for the spontaneous expression of four musicians who are bound together by something more than the rule of the bar line. These are all world-premiere recordings."
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R 089CD
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Dans le Sable is the first new album in over 40 years by composer, pianist, and digital audio pioneer Loren Rush (b. 1935). Active in the Bay Area new music scene since the late 1950s alongside composers such as Robert Erickson and Pauline Oliveros, he also co-founded the Stanford University's Center for Computer Research in Music and Acoustics in 1975. His music has been performed by the Boston Symphony, the New York Philharmonic, and the San Francisco Symphony Orchestra amongst others.
The title piece "Dans le Sable" (1967-68, 70) covers the first side of the record, of which Charles Shere in the Oakland Tribune (1972) writes: "A surreal opera scene. A narrator dwells on the significance of passing time. A soprano sings Barbarina's cabaletta from Figaro, which describes her distraught search in the sand for a lost pin. The chamber orchestra -- mostly solo instruments -- plays soft, half-forgotten tunes reminiscent of the Parisian music hall. If Marcel Duchamp wanted to put painting once more at the service of the mind, so did Rush seem to want to make a composition that speaks directly to that thing behind the mind -- the point where it connects with the soul. And he succeeded. But only because the work is so brilliantly constructed, so careful in its structure and the timing of its phrases, so well balanced in the disposition of its parts that it quite overcomes the audience."
The second piece on the album "Song and Dance" begins with the watery held tones of "Song". Melancholy phrases are deconstructed and stretched in different retellings, invoking a harmonic fog. We are then thrust into "Dance", one of the first orchestral pieces to employ computer-generated digital synthesis. A hypnotic and percussive march is propelled into a storm of early computer-processed cannonades. Recital now illuminate the overlooked composer Loren Rush, whose meticulous attention to detail has perhaps kept his toiled-upon works in the shadows these past decades. CD version includes eight-page insert; edition of 250.
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R 089LP
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LP version. Includes double-sided insert; edition of 500. Dans le Sable is the first new album in over 40 years by composer, pianist, and digital audio pioneer Loren Rush (b. 1935). Active in the Bay Area new music scene since the late 1950s alongside composers such as Robert Erickson and Pauline Oliveros, he also co-founded the Stanford University's Center for Computer Research in Music and Acoustics in 1975. His music has been performed by the Boston Symphony, the New York Philharmonic, and the San Francisco Symphony Orchestra amongst others.
The title piece "Dans le Sable" (1967-68, 70) covers the first side of the record, of which Charles Shere in the Oakland Tribune (1972) writes: "A surreal opera scene. A narrator dwells on the significance of passing time. A soprano sings Barbarina's cabaletta from Figaro, which describes her distraught search in the sand for a lost pin. The chamber orchestra -- mostly solo instruments -- plays soft, half-forgotten tunes reminiscent of the Parisian music hall. If Marcel Duchamp wanted to put painting once more at the service of the mind, so did Rush seem to want to make a composition that speaks directly to that thing behind the mind -- the point where it connects with the soul. And he succeeded. But only because the work is so brilliantly constructed, so careful in its structure and the timing of its phrases, so well balanced in the disposition of its parts that it quite overcomes the audience."
The second piece on the album "Song and Dance" begins with the watery held tones of "Song". Melancholy phrases are deconstructed and stretched in different retellings, invoking a harmonic fog. We are then thrust into "Dance", one of the first orchestral pieces to employ computer-generated digital synthesis. A hypnotic and percussive march is propelled into a storm of early computer-processed cannonades. Recital now illuminate the overlooked composer Loren Rush, whose meticulous attention to detail has perhaps kept his toiled-upon works in the shadows these past decades.
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KAI 18004CD
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"Born in Rome in 1983, Clara Iannotta is particularly interested in music as an existential, physical experience - music should be seen as well as heard. This is one of the reasons why she sometimes prefers to talk about the choreography of the sound rather than about orchestration. Clara Iannotta's compositions do not tell a story, but rather develop a physiognomy. They nurture sensory spaces in which the ear, figuratively speaking, can wander and contemplate. Spaces that open up beneath a surface like the deep sea beneath the surface of the ocean. Spaces that contain something hidden that indirectly, as a reflex, reaches to the outside world."
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DTRA 037LP
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Dirter launch a new subsidiary imprint, dedicated to releasing historical musical documents, DTR Archive Recordings. The first release is Igor Stravinsky conducting his masterpiece The Rite of Spring (Le Sacre du Printemps). Yes, it can be done -- wiping off the dust and polishing the sound for a new shine, whilst maintaining the integrity of the original recording. Painstaking steps were made to track the best possible audio down and get as close to the original as possible. Forget the dreadful, over-compressed CDs that we are all used to. Close your eyes and listen to this and you could be back, almost 100 years ago...
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3LP BOX
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MOVCL 056LP
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"Akhnaten is the third in the composer Philip Glass' trilogy of operas about men who changed the world in which they lived through the power of their ideas. Akhnaten's subject is religion. Its title was derived from the Egyptian pharaoh Akhnaten, who was the first monotheist in recorded story. His substitution of a one-god religion for the multi-god worship when he came to power ultimately resulted in his exclusion from lists of rulers compiled by later pharaohs, and his legacy became all but lost to history until the late 19th century. The opera describes the rise, reign, and fall of Akhnaten in a series of tableaus. 180 gram vinyl. Deluxe lift-off box set. Includes 16-page libretto booklet. The third in Glass' thematically related Portrait trilogy, along with Einstein On The Beach and Satyagraha."
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NEOS 12017CD
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Why should one still compose a piano concerto in 2020? Hasn't this leading genre of absolute music exhausted itself for decades? Gunnar Geisse's Piano Concerto, which is premiered on the present CD, definitely adds a new facet to the genre, not certain whether it continues or breaks the genre. Although the piano can be heard as a solo instrument, accompanied by a variety of orchestral instruments, only one instrument was actually played on this recording, which in turn is not a piano but an electric guitar. Geisse developed the "laptop guitar", an extension of his main instrument (the electric guitar) to include the computer, which enables him to continue playing analogue on a digital level. He uses the software-supported real-time conversion of audio to MIDI data to control virtual instruments and samplers. Geisse titled this album Triptych. The last "panel" in this triptych, rhythm changes, follows the two movements of the piano concerto. The work does not focus on a soloist-orchestral arrangement but on the laptop guitar itself. Instead of an imaginary orchestra, Geisse uses a series of sampled materials. Allusions to romanticism are replaced by insights into Charlie Parker's "Anthropology".
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NEOS 12028CD
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David Philip Hefti composed his second music theater work based on motives by Hans Christian Andersen: The Snow Queen. The plot centers upon the children Gerda and Kay, whose friendship is put to a severe test when Kay falls under the spell of the Snow Queen. Hefti's high-contrast music creates sometimes shimmering cold, sometimes cozy warmth; the icy Snow Queen -- outstandingly cast with Mojca Erdmann -- sounds "clear and transparent like frozen crystals" (Neue Zürcher Zeitung). The musical story for soprano, two speakers (Delia Mayer and Max Simonischek) and orchestra is aimed equally at children, young people and adults. The recording of the world premiere with the Tonhalle-Orchester Zürich under the direction of the composer is released on this CD. The 80-page booklet contains the German libretto as well as the English and French translations.
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NEOS 12015CD
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Ernst Helmuth Flammer's oratorio "Der Turmbau zu Babel" (The Tower of Babel) was commissioned for the 25th anniversary of the "Hanover New Music Days" in 1983. The world premiere took place under the direction of Klaus Bernbacher with excellent interpreters such as Catherine Gayer (soprano), Günter Binge (baritone), Theophil Maier (speaker), the Chor des Norddeutschen Rundfunks and the Nordwestdeutsche Philharmonie in the broadcasting hall of the NDR Hanover on January 29, 1983. Ernst Helmuth Flammer: "The oratorio is dedicated to all those who were forced to give up their lives in the struggle for freedom, justice and a dignified coexistence; all undaunted who accepted great personal sacrifices in following an unswerving moral path." "Der Turmbau zu Babel" is dedicated to Klaus Bernbacher. For three orchestral groups, three choirs, two solo voices (soprano and baritone), speaker, quadrophonic playback and live electronics, on texts by Friedrich Schiller, Arthur Schopenhauer, Friedrich Nietzsche, Richard Wagner, Niccolò Machiavelli, and Kurt Tucholsky.
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NEOS 12022CD
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With "Sangue Inverso - Inverso Sangue", the Portuguese composer Jaime Reis has created his own little cosmos: two times seven movements that can be performed separately, one after the other or at the same time. Despite very different tempos, moments of synchronization and coordination arise. The main idea behind this structure is the relationship between the individual and the collective, more precisely: the role of the individual regardless of his integration into the collective. The Ensemble Fractales presents nine different variations of the Sangue cycle -- both as individually as well as simultaneously played movements. Jaime Reis has dealt intensively with scientific topics. This is how the piano work "Lysozyme Synthesis" (Ana Telles, piano) became inspired by the process of protein synthesis, "Fluxus, Vortex - Schubkraft" (here in the acoustic version with the Aleph Gitarrenquartett) from the physical phenomenon of fluid mechanics.
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NEOS 12029CD
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The way Jim Franklin combines the traditional Japanese bamboo flute shakuhachi with modern live electronics is unique. In addition to the latest studio technology, synthesizers and various instruments are used, such as the theremin -- one of the oldest electronic instruments of all. The works themselves are semi-composed, structured improvisations: a pre-composed form in which the "signposts" and turning points are clearly defined, but the exact "route" through the piece is created anew with each performance. Despite all the complexity, Franklin recorded them alone, mostly in continuous takes. Songs from the Lake is, as the title suggests, inspired by water. Franklin is fascinated by images in nature where the overall form is more or less static, but the details are constantly changing. The Buddhist view of water as an image of the spirit is also important to him. Jim Franklin first studied composition and musicology in Australia, Germany and Holland. In 1986 he discovered the shakuhachi and learned the instrument from Dr. Riley Lee, Furuya Teruo, and Yokoyama Katsuya. In 1996 he received the title of Shihan (Master) from Yokoyama-sensei. From 2006 to 2009 he was founding chairman of the European Shakuhachi Society. In 2018 he was a main organizer of the World Shakuhachi Festival in London.
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NEOS 12013CD
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The Donaueschinger Musiktage have been regularly documented by NEOS for many years. The 2019 edition begins with Mark Andre's sensitively heard sound spaces in "rwḥ 1 for ensemble and electronics". The Ensemble intercontemporain is represented with Johannes Boris Borowski's "Allein". A notable event at the Donaueschinger Musiktage 2019 was Eva Reiter's "Wächter" for double bass flutes and tube orchestra, played by the SWR Symphonieorchester without any classical musical instruments. From the full-length cycle "Poética del espacio" by Alberto Posadas, the final part Ojo del diablo made it into the selection, interpreted in an outstanding way by the Klangforum Wien.
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NEOS 22002CD
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Debussy's "Trois Nocturnes", Wagner's "Tristan Prelude" and Brahms' "Piano Quintet", remixed and in a new guise. This is the metamorphosis of three instrumental masterpieces for the 176 keys of two concert grand pianos; a transformed aural perspective, which brings out compositional structures all the more clearly. In two-piano versions, these pieces are effectively reworked. With Brahms' "Sonata Op. 34b", this was undertaken in 1864 by the composer himself, adapting a string quintet he then withdrew, reinventing it as a piano quintet a year later. With Wagner and Debussy, it was Max Reger and Maurice Ravel who took on the task, surely in part as a mark of their esteem for these works and their authors. Cleverly devised programs are the trademark which distinguishes Andreas Grau and Götz Schumacher as one of the most internationally renowned piano duos. No other duo runs the gamut from Bach to music of the present day with such aplomb. Their profound and intimate ensemble playing manifests two musical kindred spirits, unleashing a broad spectrum of expressive potential which perfects the art of piano four hands.
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NEOS 12006CD
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Georg Friedrich Haas is regarded as today's foremost proponent of microtonal composition. But it is precisely these three works -- Ein Schattenspiel, the String Quartets Nos. 4 and 7 -- that show that Haas is actually less immersed in his musical material. Instead, he concentrates on the communicative aspects of music and composition, so as to greatly unsettle and even shock the listener's perception. Of course, microtonality and composition that makes use of the overtone series and overtone chords presents a challenge to the listener accustomed to a more conventional, traditional harmony. But Haas's composition focusses more on the physical experience of this kind of music. It would not be completely inaccurate to speak of a musical aesthetic that seeks to bombard the senses into submission, where the pulsing beats inherent in the overtones and microtonality amalgamate to a roar and thunder roll of noise. The connection between the three works on this CD is the use of live electronics. It creates something like an "acoustic shadow", in which the music is played again with a time delay -- accelerated slightly in Ein Schattenspiel and thus a quarter tone higher than the original that was just heard. Together with the SWR Experimentalstudio, Sophie-Mayuko Vetter (piano), and the Arditti Quartet pre-sent exemplary world premiere recordings.
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NEOS 12027CD
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With the complete recording of the accordion works by Magnus Lindberg, Janne Valkeajoki presents an extraordinary debut album. The young Finnish accordionist has won several international competitions and has made guest appearances at numerous festivals. On this CD, solo and chamber music works can be found; while "Jeux d'anches" (for accordion solo) and the duo "Metal Work" for accordion and percussion are original works, Valkeajoki made versions of "Dos Coyotes" (with cello) and the piano work "Jubilees" especially for his instrument. He worked closely with Lindberg, who emphasizes that the accordion versions are not just arrangements, but stand-alone works. Magnus Lindberg has a special relationship with the accordion: as a child he took his first musical steps with it. Today he is one of the most played composers internationally.
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NEOS 12104CD
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The program on this CD focuses on two essential aspects of Pierre Boulez's oeuvre: his love of theater and his consistent search for ways of spatializing sounds through electronics. In "Dialogue de l'ombre double" from 1985 it is still a pre-produced tape -- recorded by the interpreter himself -- which, together with the live sounds, symbolizes the clarinetist's "double shadow". In "Anthèmes 2", written around ten years later, the acoustic labyrinth in which the soloist finds herself is generated entirely by means of live electronics. The basic idea for this was already laid out in "Anthèmes 1" for solo violin, created in 1991 as a mandatory work for the Yehudi Menuhin competition. Pierre Boulez has worked with the SWR Experimental Studio since it was founded in the early 1970s. In this recording the instrumental parts were excellently cast with Carolin and Jörg Widmann.
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NEOS 12026CD
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When the composer Younghi Pagh-Paan came to Germany in the mid-1970s, she was at first deeply insecure about the gaping contradictions between Western culture and her Korean homeland. She drew a special creative force from it -- influences from both worlds are combined in her music to this day. The works that the Ensemble KNM Berlin and the soprano Angela Postweiler recorded here were created between 1977 and 2020 and thus offer a comprehensive view of Pagh-Paan's work. Among them, the three first recordings deserve special attention: ma-am (Mein Herz) for female solo and Mein Herz I for soprano and viola, as well as the string quartet Horizont auf hoher See. The production was created as part of the award of the Berlin Art Prize 2020 by the Akademie der Künste Berlin. Younghi Pagh-Paan was born in 1945 in Cheongju, in what is now South Korea. She came to Germany on a DAAD scholarship in 1974 to continue her studies with Klaus Huber at the Freiburg University of Music. With her orchestral piece Sori she attracted wide public attention at the Donaueschingen Festival 1980. After visiting professorships at the music universities in Graz and Karlsruhe, she was appointed professor of composition at the Bremen University of the Arts in 1994 -- the first woman in Germany. She received numerous international prices and resides und in Bremen and Panicale (Italy).
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NW 80831CD
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"Tom Johnson (b. 1939) is a key figure in the contemporary music scene whose voice as a composer is instantly recognizable. A major champion of minimalism in the 1970s as a writer, he remains one of its most important adherents as a composer, although the word 'minimalist' does not cover everything that his music does. The characteristic elements of repetition and sparse material are there, but his extensive use of mathematics and, especially, counting, makes him unique. Johnson relies on more than counting, using algorithms, combinatorics, juggling, and tiling techniques, among other things. Johnson is as radical as Eliane Radigue or Phill Niblock, but he is also interested in sounds that can be enjoyed in the moment, and in this sense, he is a true heir of Feldman, who was one of his teachers. Counting to Seven (2014) is a set of short pieces lasting about 80 minutes, of which eighteen pieces are presented here. Although obviously vocal because they are text-based, some of the pieces include percussion. They can be performed by almost any group of at least seven people and are not written for trained singers or actors. It was around 1980 that Johnson developed a series of twelve solos in twelve languages called Counting Languages, under the inspiration of sound poets such as Charlie Morrow and Jerome Rothenberg in the United States and Henri Chopin, Bob Cobbing, and Bernard Heidsieck in Europe. He then wrote Counting Duets, (also called Counting Music), a set of five counting sequences for two performers speaking in one language. Some years later, after a performance by Vincent Bouchot from the ensemble Dedalus, Johnson 'reworked everything for seven voices. I changed the title to Counting to Seven, added about 30 languages, well-known, little known, living and dead, and put together an 80-minute version, which we began performing in 2014.' Johnson explores the tonalities and rhythms that come from repeating numbers sonorously in different languages. Every piece is different, with 1-7 as the connecting thread, like a set of short stories that forms a novel through a connecting character. The languages Johnson chose include major ones spoken in large swathes of the world -- French, Japanese, Hebrew, German. Some are more national -- Turkish, Hungarian, Gaelic, Georgian. Some are specific to certain places: Muruwari is spoken by Aboriginal people in northern Australia; Tajik is a variety of Persian spoken in Uzbekistan; Maninke is spoken in Guinea, Mali, Liberia, Senegal, Sierra Leone, and Ivory Coast."
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KAI 15063CD
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"Giacinto Scelsi is one of the most original Italian composers of the twentieth century. The symbolic choice of Rome as his home represented Scelsi's own cultural, artistic and spiritual interests. His fascination for Eastern philosophies, Yoga and Zen meditation are combined with a insightful knowledge of Christian, Greek, Egyptian and Mesopotamian mythologies; Scelsi's library and collection of recordings displays his cultural interests, his curiosity and openness to the intricacies of the mind and his lifelong quest for a dialogue between different expressions of human spirituality. Marco Fusi, one of the leading performers of contemporary music, presents his readings of some of Scelsi's intriguing works for violin and for viola solo. For the listener, this is a journey into a futuristic vision from a past era."
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SR 501CD
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"The end sounds like the angels opening up heaven... Should we say euphoria?" This is Julius Eastman himself, speaking about Femenine, a piece that remains as a big and slow breathing, with something informal driving the listener to a near-hypnosis state. J.E. (1940-1990): There was some for John Cage, then came Christian Wolff, and finally Morton Feldman, from this school in New York. Only Julius Eastman remained outside the game, the last figure, the most solitary and enigmatic -- undoubtedly also one of the most powerful. And it is this power that is revealed through these recordings. In the 1970s and 1980s, Eastman was one of the very few African-Americans to gain recognition in the New York avant-garde music scene. He was politically committed, a figure of queer culture and a solar and solitary poet whose melancholy influenced his genius as well as his tragic destiny: suffering from various addictions, declared missing, actually homeless. During winter of 1981-82, he got deported from his apartment by the police, who destroyed most of what he owned - including scores and recordings. He was found dead in 1990, on the streets of Buffalo, after years of vagrancy. Performed by ensemble 0: Variable geometry group created in 2004. It interprets the compositions of its members and pieces by other composers. The group works with many regular and invited collaborators, being able to change, increase or reduce its lineup at will according to each project. Ensemble 0 has now become one of the most significant ensembles of a new sound vision. For this piece, ensemble 0, including this time Melaine Dalibert (piano), Sophie Bernado (bassoon), Cyprien Busolini (viola), Jozef Dumoulin (Fender Rhodes, synthesizer), Céline Flamen (cello) Stéphane Garin (percussion, artistic co-direction), Ellen Giacone (voice), Jean-Brice Godet (bass clarinet), Amélie Grould (vibraphone), Alexandre Herer (electronics), Tomoko Katsura (violin), Julien Pontvianne (saxophones, orchestration, artistic co-direction), and Christian Pruvost (trumpet).
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