Burned into the Orange Music of Peter Gilbert Arditti String Quartet; Iridium Quartet, Emmanuele Arciuli, piano; et al. New Focus Records CD/DL This is composer Peter Gilbert’s second recording for New Focus; the first was back in 2008, The Long Arch of Undreamt Things. He is Associate Professor of Music at University of New Mexico, and has a long artistic pedigree filled with prestigious residencies, performances, and awards. There is a visceral character in Gilbert’s music that distinguishes it, and in his recent music it appears that geography plays as much of a role as any of the aforementioned
Read moreJosquin 500 Part Two The Josquin Legacy Gesualdo Six Harmonia Mundi CD In Principio De Labyrintho, Walter Tesolin Baryton CD Josquin Desprez The Renaissance Master – Sacred Music and Chansons Cappella Amsterdam, Daniel Reuss Ensemble Clément Janequin, Ensemble Organum, Marcel Pérès Ensemble Les Eléments, Ensemble Clément Janequin, Dominique Visse Huelgas-Ensemble, Paul Van Nevel La Chapelle Royale, Philippe Herreweghe Theatre of Voices, Paul Hillier Harmonia Mundi 3xCD Josquin and the Franco-Flemish School Ensemble Gille Binchois Kings Singers Early Music Consort of London Hilliard Ensemble Warner Classics 34XCD boxed set Josquin – Baisiez Moy thélème, Jean-Christophe Groffe Aparté CD These releases
Read moreBest EP of 2021 Light Past Blue Alex Somers & Aska Matsumiya Mini LP Sometimes music sneaks up on you. This recording, Light Past Blue, just dropped Friday, indeed out of the blue, braving the hustle bustle and list making of the holiday season to provide 20 minutes of exquisite calm. Alex Somers is a composer and producer who has worked with a heady roster of talents that includes Sigur Rós, Jónsi, Julianna Barwick, Sin Fang, and Gyða Valtýsdóttir. He performed in the duo Jónsi & Alex Somers, who released two albums Riceboy Sleeps (2009) and Lost and
Read moreBest of 2021: Recordings by Philip Blackburn and Chris Campbell Philip Blackburn Justinian Intonations Neuma CD Chris Campbell Orison Innova LP Both Philip Blackburn and Chris Campbell are poly-artists, sitting astride composition and sound art and working with homemade (or, in the case of Blackburn, also Partch made) instruments. In 2021, Blackburn’s Justinian Intonations and Campbell’s Orison topped the currently crowded field of ambient classical, providing long form pieces that encourage contemplative listening. It is frustrating that some quarters have tagged them with a “New Age” label, as their work is more intricate and, frankly, interesting
Read moreSequenza 21 Best of 2021 Craig Taborn Shadowplay ECM Records I first became aware of pianist Craig Taborn in the early aughts, writing about him for (dearly departed) Copper Press and Signal to Noise and contributing reviews of his various outings as leader and sideperson since. In his recent playing, Taborn has displayed increasing expansiveness and interest in diversely complex formal designs. Shadowplay is a 2020 live recording of the pianist at Konzerthaus, Wien. The full hour and a quarter of it is improvised material, some pieces providing a fresh perspective on Taborn’s creativity. The opener, “Bird
Read moreIron Orchid Ning Yu and David Bird New Focus Recordings Composer and electronic musician David Bird’s work Iron Orchid enlists pianist Ning Yu as a collaborator. Bird’s electronics often provide steely sounds that accord both with the title and the inside the piano work that Yu does. In fact, the second word of the title plays a role in the piece as well, indicating the organic nature of its formal design. So does the presence of live electronics against an acoustic piano, albeit one that has effects, microtones, and reverb as part of its palette. Thus in sections like
Read moreBest of 2021 Andrew Cyrille Quartet The News ECM Records David Virelles, piano; Bill Frisell, guitar; Ben Street, bass; Andrew Cyrille, drums and percussion Andrew Cyrille is now an octogenarian, an age at which many musicians have already retired or are slowing down. Cyrille retains a superlative technique and while his latest quartet outing for ECM, The News, emphasizes interplay and texture over power, it is clear that there is much of that yet remaining in the drummer’s arsenal as well. Cyrille is credited with three of the compositions on The News. The title track was originally a
Read moreAnna Thorvaldsdottir Enigma EP Spektral Quartet Clara Lyon, Maeve Feinberg, violin; Doyle Armbrust, viola; Russell Rolen, cello Sono Luminus CD, 2021 Enigma, the first string quartet by Icelandic composer Anna Thorvaldsdottir, arrives after a spate of engaging chamber works that have often featured strings, but never in this most traditional configuration. The piece has essentially two very different experiences to offer to the listener. The one considered here is a well engineered CD recording with detailed antiphony that gives a sense of the spatial dimensions of Enigma’s live incarnation, a multimedia work in a 360 degree full-dome theater space,
Read moreBernhard Lang Piano Music Wolfram Oettl, piano Kairos Music CD Bernhard Lang (b. 1957) writes in a number of different media, from chamber music to theatre works. His solo piano music is reflective of the composer’s omnivorous interest in various musical styles and his adroit sense of scoring, which allows the piano to have an orchestral impact in the two multi-movement works on his latest Kairos CD. In liner notes for the CD, Lang remarks that he is interested in free improvisation and DJ electronica as well as contemporary concert music. One can hear this in the angular
Read moreSivan Silver-Swartz Untitled 6 Wandelweiser CD EWR 1920 Nigel Dean, violin; Patrick Behnke, Tanner Pfeiffer, viola; Tal Katz, Julian Tedaldi, cello Antoine Beuger Jankélévich Sextets Another Timbre CD at168 Apartment House – James Opstad, double bass; Mark Knoop, accordion; Heather Roche, bass clarinet; Mira Benjamin, violin; Joe Qiu, bassoon; Bridget Carey, viola At twenty-eight years of age, Sivan Silver-Swartz is the youngest member of the Wandelweiser collective. A native of Ohio, he received his undergraduate degree at Oberlin College and then relocated to California to get his Master’s at CalArts. He has remained in Los Angeles since getting
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