Following the huge success of Ludovico Einaudi's Underwater in January earlier this year, we're delighted now to present the deluxe edition in a cloth bound box consisting of 2LP's, 1CD, 6 art prints (5 photos by Ludovico, 1 quote print) & 3 never before released tracks.
Erased Tapes rounds off a jubilant year of tenth anniversary celebrations with a very special release, 1+1=X, a set of exclusive music from every artist on the label. Featuring never before heard tracks from Nils Frahm, Kiasmos and A Winged Victory For The Sullen, 1+1=X sees Erased Tapes artists come together to make an album as a collective. Sharing the same space, instruments and each others capabilities during a residency at Vox-Ton studio in Berlin, they recorded 20 songs to mark the label's 10-year history. Previously only available as a limited vinyl box set for Record Store Day, 1+1=X produced by label curator Robert Raths will be now be available as a 3-LP set on August 17th to accompany the 2CD box set and digital download to be released on 29th June 2018.
How to begin? No beginning... never ending reverberation, Antoine Beuger writes in the accompanying notes to Leo Svirsky's River Without Banks. Dedicated to his first piano teacher Irena Orlov, River Without Banks is a mesmerizing, emotional collection of pieces that are simultaneously complex and fluid. The title River Without Banks comes from a chapter of musicologist Genrikh "Henry" Orlov's profound work Tree of Music. In said chapter, Orlov traces the history of sacred music from the Western and Eastern tradition and how the forms (of the chant, raga etc.) sought to eliminate the division between the physical and the spiritual-the bank and the river. Arranged for two pianos with accompaniment from strings, trumpet, and electronics, this is Svirsky's first piece to approach the history of the piano and the possibilities of the recording studio, and his deepest dive yet into exploring the instability of listening and it's transformation of musical semantics and affect. Like Wolfgang Voigt's Gas project, Svirsky overlays romantic musical gestures to create a lush unfamiliarity. No sooner than each track begins the next moment unfurls beneath it, cascading time and blurring perception of past and present. Akin to a multidimensional Rzewski thematic interpretation, Svirsky's music defies genre-classification or classical ideology while it's virtuosity clearly stems from somewhere from within disciplined traditions. Continuously revisiting, revising, and renewing it's emotional core, River Without Banks is less an album of songs than songs of a singular, unlocatable album. Performed by the composer with assistance from Britton Powell, Max Eilbacher, Leila Bordreuil, Tim Byrnes, and recorded by Al Carlson.
Vibrant mezzo-soprano Sasha Cooke and Colburn Orchestra bring you an album to play again and again offering something fresh each time. If You Love For Beauty, showcases Metropolitan Opera and GRAMMY® Award-winning mezzo-soprano Sasha Cooke, and The Colburn Orchestra conducted by Yehuda Gilad. Sasha Cooke pairs seamlessly with the Colburn Orchestra presenting John Adams' Doctor Atomic, Handel, and Mahler. Maestro Yehuda Gilad conducts with his famously engaging, sensitive flair. Metropolitan Opera mezzo soprano Sasha Cooke's debut recording, celebrating Sasha in her early prime, won the coveted Audio Oasis Award and received high praise in Opera News. It is a dream come true that Yarlung were able to bring Sasha and this orchestra together for the concert and recording. These orchestra musicians, all members of the Colburn Conservatory conducted by Music Director Yehuda Gilad, enrich our lives in Los Angeles. Maestro Gilad elicits sensitive and lyrical interpretations of the repertoire. Recorded in Zipper Hall at The Colburn School, February 5-7, 2012.
On April 2, 1979, Japanese musicians and Fluxus practitioners Takehiosa Kosugi and Akio Suzuki recorded New Sense of Hearing at Tokyo's Aeolian Hall. Described by Suzuki as the "culmination" of their sound, New Sense documents their experiments with instruments both traditional and avant-garde.
We Will Live On was made with a Disklavier (an acoustic piano outfitted with solenoids that allowed it to be digitally controlled) and custom made software to sequence it. This made the piano appear to play itself. Technology seemingly embedded with humanity. A1 The Way Through The Forest A2 The Wind A3 We're Not Needed A4 The Dirt A5 To Quiet Voices B1 The Rain B2 Incremental Loss B3 The Ash B4 We Will Disappear B5 The Return
Recorded live at the Concertgebouw Amsterdam, 17-19 and 21 September 2008. Ever since the tenure of it's chief conductor Eduard van Beinum (1945-59), the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra has cherished one of the greatest Bruckner traditions in the world. During his years at the helm of the Concertgebouw Orchestra (2004-2015) the late Mariss Jansons added a another glorious chapter to the orchestra's impressive performance and recording history of Bruckner's works. In Jansons's view, the refinement of Bruckner's music - however grandiose it may be - will always win out over grandiloquence. He continued the orchestra's performance traditions, focusing particularly on the detail of the sound. Under Jansons's baton, Bruckner had a warm, beating heart: his rhythms were not simply played, they were, above all, experienced, as this this recording of the Fourth Symphony demonstrates. This 2008 audiophile recording is released for the first time on 180 gram vinyl.
Vinyl LP pressing. In Perlman's words, Tchaikovsky "wears his heart on his sleeve" and his violin concerto is a work of "unabashed Romanticism". While bringing sensitivity and substance to his interpretation, Perlman never slips into sentimentality, and he leads an exhilarating dance in the finale. This concerto more than any other has accompanied him throughout his career. Indeed, Perlman's often claimed that he could play it virtually in his sleep. It could even be seen as emblematic of his style, given both the prodigiously virtuosic demands it makes on the performer and it's charismatic warmth.
In the spring of 1999, Charles Curtis, Alan Licht, and Dean Roberts brought an unconventional mix of drone, improvisation, and experimental rock on an eleven-stop tour of Europe. The concept was straightforward, yet novel: each night, they would improvise a single piece while sustained sine waves played for the duration of the concert. May 99, culled from three shorter pieces recorded for a radio program at Amsterdam's VPRO near the end of the tour, represents an early high watermark in the collision of minimal and rock sensibilities that started to become prevalent in the late 90s and is an ear-opening listen even for those familiar with the musicians' other projects. May 99 combines resonant sine waves in the style of eminent downtown New York composer La Monte Young's Theater of Eternal Music with scratchings, scrapings, and warblings produced by Licht and Roberts's guitars, Curtis's cello, and a variety of electronics. Just as sine waves hold together these sundry improvisations, a shared tendency toward the minimalistic-Licht's performances with the Blue Humans, collaborations with Loren Connors, and solo guitar records; Roberts in the band Thela and his solo project White Winged Moth; and Curtis performing with Young and his own Trio-brought together three musicians with very different backgrounds, creating fertile ground on which they generated the album's unclassifiable sounds. For the past thirty years, ALAN LICHT, a key figure in the pantheon of experimental guitar players, has been a performer, programmer, and chronicler of New York's art and music scenes. As a guitarist and improviser, Licht has lent his talents to dozens of collaborations with the likes of Jim O'Rourke, Rashied Ali, Jandek, Keiji Haino, and Michael Snow and has performed in such revered bands as Title TK, Text of Light, and Arthur Lee's Love. He releasedCommon Tones, a collection of never-before-published interviews with artists and musicians, with Blank Forms Editions in 2021. CHARLES CURTIS is one of the premiere avant-garde cellists of the modern era. Trained at Juilliard, Curtis was also a pupil both of vocalist Pandit Pran Nath and composer La Monte Young, and he is one of the few musicians to have mastered Young's rigorous practice of just intonation. Curtis has performed and premiered modern classical, minimalist, and chamber music compositions all around the world. Numerous major composers-La Monte Young, Alison Knowles, Alvin Lucier, Eliane Radigue, Christian Wolff, and Tashi Wada among them-have written works specifically for him. Curtis is Distinguished Professor of Music at the University of California, San Diego. Recent releases includePerformances and Recordings 1998-2018 (2020) and Terry Jennings: Piece for Cello and Saxophone (2022), both on Wada's label Saltern. New Zealander DEAN ROBERTS has created celebrated electroacoustic compositions that have brought together currents of avant-folk, rock, and minimalism into a single flowing stream for nearly three decades. A pupil of the Scratch Orchestra's Philip Dadson at the University of Auckland, Roberts emerged from the city's experimental music scene as one of two guitarists in the droning improvisational noise-rock band Thela, whose first two records were released by Thurston Moore's label Ecstatic Peace!. In the years since, Roberts performed and recorded solo under the alias White Winged Moth; founded his own label, Formacentric Disk; joined Tower Recordings while living in New York; and taught sound studies, acoustic ecology and intermedia arts in Auckland and Berlin. His most recent release is Not Fire (Erstwhile Records, 2020).
Building upon the success of the vinyl release of Mahler's Third Symphony under Mariss Jansons (RCO 23004), we proudly present the superb 2006 recording of the Mahler's spectacular First Symphony on 180 grams vinyl. The original 2007 SACD release of this performance has become one of RCO Live's bestselling albums, boasting exquisite playing and audiophile quality recording.
Following the compass of an entrancing debut, Flore Laurentienne's Volume II presents another palette of rich orchestral sound, where changing forces of water inspire metaphorical markers that navigate passages of life and loss. Mathieu David Gagnon resumes his voyage into environment and emotion with Volume II, drawing inspiration from the rivers and rugged wilderness of the composer's native Quebec. In his return as Flore Laurentienne - the namesake of an inventory documenting St. Lawrence Valley flora - Gagnon assembles vivid melodic motifs and delicate modulation with a vast string ensemble to emulate the tides of human experience. Listeners of Volume I will recognise Gagnon's signature approach towards reworking and reframing an emblematic melody or concept across a series of works in Volume II, a process he likens to that of a painter creating multiple sketches of the same view. Continued from the first album, the enigmatic "Fleuve" series is conjured to evoke the multiple personalities of the great St. Lawrence River, and the "Navigation" works ("III" and "IV") wade through dappled progressions and expansive streams of string, the latter of which harbors the gentle meanderings of improvised clarinet. In the world of Flore Laurentienne, complexity emerges from simplicity as the composer roams familiar environments in constant flux. Gagnon extracts beauty through repetition and constraint, utilizing the writing style of counterpoint for which one of his greatest musical inspirations, Johann Sebastian Bach, is renowned. The lilting waves of "Canon" possess the eponymous formation of melodic 'leader and follower' motif, and magnify the softness of the album's eighteen string musicians into a force of full euphoric resonance. In Volume II, Gagnon continues his expansion of classical composition archetypes to meet a new realm of sonic romanticism. Thematic conventions of wandering the pastoral sublime become altered into glimmering refractions, relaying the emotional and kinetic power of natural energies. Volume II forms an estuary where streams of auditory microcosm reach a horizon of dynamic contrast, and reflect the parallel tenors of nature and humankind. Flore Laurentienne's Volume II will be released October 21, 2022 via RVNG Intl. And Costume Records. A portion of the proceeds from the album will again benefit The Saint-Laurent Action Fund, which promotes the conservation of ecosystems and the maintenance of uses of the St. Lawrence River and it's Gulf by supporting projects for the preservation, enhancement and rehabilitation of the river, as well as projects for education and awareness of issues of the St. Lawrence River.
The final album released by the composer-performer Jerry Hunt before his death, Ground: Five Mechanic Convention Streams is a rare and foundational audio document of Hunt's compositional process. The record collects five pieces from the artist's "Ground" series, translating his characteristically variable and spatial scores into "recorded fixtures of activity using mechanic musical instrument arrays," to eerie and mesmerizing results. Originally released by experimental label OODiscs in 1992, it is now available on vinyl for the first time from Blank Forms Editions. It's tracks are dense and unpredictable, a miscellany of arrhythmic bursts, fragments of spoken and whispered words, soft then fevered rattles and shaking, and a rare return to pianoforte for the virtuoso player. On "Talk (slice): double" a nervous, warped dialogue unfolds between Hunt and composer Rod Stasick, their voices alternately measured and monstrous. In "Transform (stream): monopole," breathy whistles build against a shimmering stream of bells, rattles, and shakers in a fantastical cascade of percussion. Hunt revisits the piano in "Lattice (stream): ordinal" and "Bitom (stream): link," oscillating between gentle, almost classical phrases and frantic, seemingly random play. His collaboration with violinist Jane Henry, "Chimanazzi (Olun): core," extends similarly unorthodox playing techniques to the violin, involving the scraping, plucking, and playing of it's strings. The unstable quality of these tracks belies the rigor of Hunt's procedures; each ofGround's five pieces, their "common ground core," is derived from the angelic tables of sixteenth century English philosopher and occultist John Dee, adapted by Hunt as frameworks to layer, adapt, and renew in his compositions. With a complex arrangement of sensors and equipment, which the artist called "interrelated electronic, mechanic, and social sound-sight interactive transactional systems," Hunt realized these derivative systems in the techno-shamanic performances for which he is best known. Ground distills these procedures into fixed songs, producing a vital and critical record of Hunt's singular approach to composition.
Rachminov's Symphonic Dances was one of the first four releases on the LPO Label. As a celebration of the LPO 20 Anniversariy, they are releasing a new recording of the Symphonic Dances, recorded in March of 2023, paired with Rachmaninov's The Bells. Both recordings are performed by the London Philharmonic Orchestra under the baton of our prinicpal conductor, Edward Gardner. The Bells, a choral symphony incorporates Edgar Allan Poe's namesake poem, with a traditional Georgian melody Dies Irae. Motifs of Dies Irae can also be heard in the final movement of the Symphonic Dance; where the Dies Irae theme represents Death.
The sufferings of Jews under the Nazi regime were reflected in their music and musical life. Music offered women and men interned in ghettos and camps a way to express their humanity in inhuman conditions, to escape, revolt and cry for freedom. The act of singing is a human act of artistic performance that creates another world for the singer and the audience, writes Dr. Gila Flam, Director of the Sound Archives at Israel's National Library. "Cry, My Heart, Cry," the second volume of the Fortunoff Video Archive's Songs from Testimonies project, features 13 new songs performed by Zisl Slepovitch Ensemble and Sasha Lurje. These songs were originally sung by survivors Fortunoff Archive testimonies in three languages: Yiddish, Polish and French. The widely diverse compositions presented on the album recreate a multidimensional image of people's lives and the multiple identities they carried. 001. In Dinaverke 002. Dem Rebns Shikse 003. A Dermonung Funem Appellplatz 004. Kidush Hashem 005. A Valts 006. Shray, Hertsale, Shray 007. Une Fleur Au Chapeau 008. Shtubeneltsto 009. Chlopek-Roztropek 010. Hej Tam Na Gorce 011. Siekiera, Motyka 012. W Saskim Ogrodzie 013. Himlen, o Himlen
