John Luther Adams: Lines Made By Walking / JACK Quartet
Cold Blue Music
CD
$18.99Sep 18, 2020
A 2021 GRAMMY Nominee for Best Small Ensemble/Chamber Music Performance!
“Lines Made by Walking” is a uniquely beautiful and magical recording of two string quartets—"Lines Made by Walking” and “untouched”—by influential, critically celebrated composer John Luther Adams, performed by the renowned JACK Quartet. Both works reflect Adams’ passion for nature’s elemental forces. The release of this recording coincides with Farrar, Straus & Giroux’s publication of Adams’ autobiography, “Silences So Deep.” John Luther Adams’ music has won both a Pulitzer Prize and a Grammy Award and has been performed by such prominent ensembles as the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, the Los Angeles Philharmonic, and the Seattle Symphony, and the International Contemporary Ensemble. Cold Blue Music has released seven recordings devoted to his work, including “Everything That Rises” and “The Wind in High Places.” Deemed “superheroes of the new music world” by the Boston Globe and chosen as Musical America’s 2018 Ensemble of the Year, JACK Quartet is “the go-to quartet for contemporary music, tying impeccable musicianship to intellectual ferocity.” (Washington Post) The award-winning JACK tours and performs to critical acclaim throughout the world.
Bhajan is a free-wheeling yet meditative four-section work for electric violin and live electronics, which one critic described as “a pas de deux between violin and electronics,” was written for and features noted new-music violinist Robin Lorentz. Nicholas Chase has headlined festivals in Europe and the US as a composer, performer, and improviser, His interactive, site-specific composition NOVA: Transmission was exhibited as part of the Whitney Biennial in New York and his Ngoma Lungundu opened the New Music+ Festival at the Jana ek Academy, Czech Republic. He was an inaugural Composer Fellow at the 2011 international Other Minds Festival in San Francisco and in 2015 was honored by the International Center for Japanese Culture, Tokyo, Japan.
Christopher Roberts’s five intimate and virtuosic movements/pieces for a trio of double basses are here performed by the composer and two other virtuosos of the instrument, Mark Morton and James Bergman. This music, much of it inspired by the composer’s life in Papua New Guinea (where he ran off to after Juilliard to study music’s “natural prosody”), subtly extends the double bass’s standard playing techniques with such expressive elements as bowing patterns inspired by the sound of hornbills in flight. Famed bass virtuoso Bertram Turetzky called Trios “A magnificent piece! There’s nothing like it. Roberts has a truly original voice.” And composer Michael J. Schumacher declared that “Roberts has arrived at a new American music by traversing the heart of Papua New Guinea...and the result is something unique.” Writing in The Wire magazine, Julian Cowley called this recording of Trios “An elegantly reverberant, harmonically rich and gracefully delineated composition for resonant strings.” Writing in Seattle’s The Stranger, Christopher DeLaurenti proclaimed this CD “A remarkable disc.... Recommended.” And noted music critic and author Greg Sandow wrote, “Trios for Deep Voices is thoughtful music, beautifully worked out, and very absorbing to listen to. It’s wonderfully individual, both in its sound and its construction. Clear some space in your life, both literally and figuratively, and give it a listen.”
“Three” collects three shimmering new works by composer-performer-instrument builder Chas Smith, a musician who has created his own musical world--complete with its own unique instruments--a world of expansive musical tapestries and carefully sculpted textures. This beautifully ringing music, which displays his dualistic fascination with the scientific and the sensual, is both invitingly intimate and darkly brooding as explores the unique timbres of Smith’s sculptural metallophones and his steel guitars. “With Smith’s music, the sounds are as compelling as his concepts and instruments.” (The Wire) “Smith’s pieces are music of experiment and discovery: a way of enabling the physical world to ‘speak’ by investigating…its sonic properties.” (Int’l Record Review) As a performer, Smith has been heard playing both steel guitar and his unique metallophones on feature film scores by Thomas Newman, Christopher Young, Charlie Clouser, Mark Mothersbaugh, Jeff Danna, and John Williams and on recordings by composer Harold Budd.
For thirty years, composer Peter Garland’s music has been marked by a radical consonance and a simplification of formal structure. These two spirited and enticing quartets, entitled In Praise of Poor Scholars and Crazy Cloud, draw on his well-traveled ear and great sense of personal vision. Both works move with a unique sense of grace and a sincerity of expression that is purely Garlandesque and receive sensitive performances by the celebrated British ensemble Apartment House, led by new-music cellist Anton Lukoszevieze. “[Garland] is an avatar of an experimental American tradition...a composer of mesmerizing music; and in many ways, the musical conscience of my generation…. Garland’s work always brings increasing cognitive involvement; it is much more intricate than it sounds at first.” [Kyle Gann, Chamber Music magazine] “Elegantly balancing sensuous melodicism and spacious austerity of form, Peter Garland’s string quartets are alluring and inviting, their carefully-wrought complexity often hidden within a luminous transparency.” [Dusted magazine] “While it is not stark or simplistic, the music has been pared down to only the most efficient gestures, and Garland’s affinity for Harrison and John Cage is at least as prominent in these two quartets as his work with Budd and Tenney. Garland’s music has also been described as “post-minimalist” because it shares several characteristics with minimalism, but not minimalism’s usual forms or processes…. Apartment House…I can’t imagine any group presenting this repertoire more sympathetically or with greater technical prowess. There’s not a lot of vibrato here. I don’t know if that is by Garland’s request or by the musicians’ choice, but I don’t miss it. It complements the music’s central paradox: how can the ordinary sound so strange? The up-close engineering lends every stroke of the bow both character and color.” [International Record Review] “There is much to admire in these remarkable works.” [American Record Guide]
This collection of intimate, eerily beautiful music by Dutch composer Fahres weaves naturally occurring acoustic phenomena with the playing of celebrated performers. The title piece features the breathy sounds emitted by the rock tube formations on El Hierro (westernmost of the Canary Islands) and performances by Aboriginal musician Mark Atkins and Los Angeles-based composer/trumpeter Jon Hassell, The two other works on the CD are Sevan, recorded near Lake Sevan (Armenia), featuring Armenian singer Parik Nazarian, and Coimbra 4, Mundi Theatre, a soundscape of a city-wide festival in Coimbra, Portugal. “I was transfixed by the haunting sounds and the poetic pacing of Fahres’ music on this CD. Rather than the sound floating through the room, it was as if I was floating in the sound.” [Morton Subotnick] “An exceptionally well-composed album, comprising very well-thought out concepts that have been delivered in an utmost ingenious and abstract way.” [Unknown Public (where it was a “favorite releases of the week” pick)] “Fahres is skillful in creating drama and blending the recorded materials into intriguing, musically satisfying soundscapes. The Tubes…is an especially impressive achievement.” [All-Music Guide] “This is the kind of recording that lets you get wondrously lost in someone else’s sound world.” [Sequenza21] “A beautiful and interesting approach to soundscape composition.” [Musicworks magazine]
Lentz: Point Conception, Nightbreaker / Bryan Pezzone, Arlene Dunlap
Cold Blue Music
CD
$9.49$18.99Save 50%Nov 01, 2008
LENTZ Point Conception.1 NightBreaker2 • Arlene Dunap (pn);1 Bryn Pezzone (pn)2 • COLD BLUE 28 (46:22)
Daniel Lentz was particularly active and visible in the 1970s and 1980s, as one of the leading California composers of a Minimalist stamp. If Ingram Marshall was the moody, soulful voice of the Bay Area, with its fogs and mists, Lentz (b. 1942) was the L.A. freeway on overdrive: bright, edgy, poppy sounds and rhythms hammered about by mostly electronic keyboards. The music, with its sudden (and often) changes of harmony, felt like a sort of cubistic Minimalism. And its sound was unforgettable.
Of course the music lives on. I’m only using the past tense because Lentz seems to have dropped out of the scene (I’ll emphasize “seems” because it’s so easy to be contradicted by life). On the Web, the last mentioned piece comes from about 10 years ago, and there’s a cryptic reference to his current work of building kinetic sound-sculptures. I’d certainly be eager to experience whatever he’s whipping up now.
This disc contains one masterwork, Point Conception (1979). It’s a piece for nine pianos, but I doubt it’s really meant ever to be done live. Instead, this version is a multitracking of one player. What makes the piece quite ingenious is that each part plays nothing but octaves, often focused on one pitch. But when combined together, like the dots of a pointillist painting, the result can be dazzling. Aside from the technical trick, this is powerful stuff. The music clocks in at about 37 minutes, and it never lets up. There’s a sense that at each plateau, which could be an ending, the piece picks itself up, takes a breath, and then leaps to a greater height. Its energy and interest never flag.
Nightbreaker is from 1990. It’s a quarter the length of Point Conception, and it starts off as much more languid and jazzy. It picks up the pace, though, to reach a certain frenzy by the end. I would call it a sketch for the larger work, except that it’s a decade later—so perhaps we can call it a fragment from the workbench instead. In any case, it’s appealing; but it pales somewhat in comparison to its big brother.
Point Conception was released by Cold Blue on an LP about two decades ago, and its return in the remastered version is most welcome. Nightbreaker is a premiere recording. Both pieces help to round out our sense of a somewhat mysterious voice in the American progressive music tradition, who I frankly hope still has an act or two left in him.
Ever wonder what two centuries colliding sounds like? “Separation Songs” is a haunting album-length work for two string quartets. It juxtaposes and weaves together an array of 18th-century composer William Billings’s hymn tunes, altering them via real-time-generated variations as the piece unfolds. Both quartet parts are performed via overdubbing by the noted new-music-championing Eclipse Quartet. “The Eclipse [Quartet] is LA’s answer to 20th-century and present-day music.” (“HuffPost”). Composer Matt Sargent’s music has been described by critics as “a powerfully organic experience” (“Sequenza21”) that “uses bare resources to establish a bounded and essential space” (“The Wire”)
Composer Christopher Roberts’s four serene yet deeply emotive pieces for solo qin (a Chinese zither-like instrument) are quiet, sparce, slightly eerie, almost Feldmanesque. Performed by the composer, who learned the qin while living and teaching for many years in Taiwan. This is a 30-minute CD EP/single. “So Confucius walks into a bar, just in time for Bill Evans’s last set, and after closing time pulls out his qin for a few solos … That’s the vibe that Christopher Roberts captures in these intimate nocturnal musings where crystalline harmonics dance among gutsy bass slides while elegant harmonies whisper their most private thoughts. A truly haunting recording.” [John Schneider, Host of KPFK’s Global Village] “The most Chinese of instruments, the qin has roots in the ancient literati tradition…. Having studied its classical tradition in Taiwan, the quixotic Roberts (also a double bassist) also brings his own traditions of jazz, blues, and solo improvisation to the table. While starting somewhere near its traditional core, Roberts bends his instrument in new directions entirely, turning it westwards even as he faces east.” [Gramophone magazine] “‘Exotic’ is a relative term. Gorecki's music is exotic compared to Lloyd Webber’s, Ligeti’s music is exotic compared to Gorecki’s, and Christopher Roberts’ music is exotic compared to nearly any music you are likely to think of.… Last Cicada Singing integrates Eastern and Western music so well, finding their common ground in calm reflection of natural sounds and processes. Sit back, relax, contemplate.” [Malcolm Tattersall, Music & Vision] “You-are-there-grade realism. The recording is Christopher Roberts’ hauntingly beautiful and stunningly well-recorded Last Cicada Singing [Absolute Sound magazine] “Mesmerizing sounds...quiet, sparse, serene music.” [Michael Barone, Minnesota Public Radio]
Michael Byron’s music, which has appeared on four previous Cold Blue CDs, tends to be harmonically rich, rhythmically detailed, and virtuosic. It is often praised for its ability to create uniquely dense constructions out of relatively limited means: “Byron creates maximalist effect out of minimalist means.” (ClassicalNet) “One is reminded…of the mobiles of Alexander Calder, which are both fixed and moving. And, like Calder’s work, Byron’s music is immediately comprehensible and beautiful, while it remains experimental.” (San Francisco Bay Guardian) “Byron’s music, like Ligeti’s, is instantly recognizable, perceptually challenging, beautifully proportioned and deeply satisfying.” (Paris Transatlantic) In the Village of Hope is a restless (and in some ways relentless) virtuosic harp solo performed stunningly by Tasha Smith Godínez. This ever-changing, ever-churning, ever-developing music is unlike anything else in the solo harp repertoire. A 23-minute CD EP/single. Musicologist/critic/author Eric Smigel wrote of this CD, “In the Village of Hope simultaneously lulls and rouses the listener with elegantly cascading counterpoint and lush harmonies animated by complex rhythms. Its kaleidoscopic variations evoke ethereal wind chimes, rendering both the calm and the storm in a single gesture.” Sequenza 21 called it “gorgeous music…a single 23-minute track that unfolds with such delicacy and grace that an hour of it would not seem too much.” Fanfare magazine wrote, “Originally categorized as a minimalist, [Byron] has composed music over most of his career that more accurately might be described as maximalist, because it is in a state of constant and often rapid flux…. In the Village of Hope sounds like the kind of music a harp might play on itself, for itself, and by itself…. One associates the harp with angelic matters, and while In the Village of Hope doesn't confound that association, this is a heaven that is far from being regular and predictable, and where one is ruled not by immutable Bible truths but by the constant fluctuations of the natural world. This is very pretty listening, and, as such, recommendable.” And Julien Cowley wrote in The Wire, “Harp notes trickling and tumbling like eddies in a stream…. Byron has compared In The Village of Hope to the play of wind chimes, an image that not only suggests the range of timbres elicited by harpist Tasha Smith Godinez, but also fits the character of a piece that seems to occupy its own space while some animating spirit runs through it.”
Arctic Dreams is critically celebrated composer John Luther Adams's uniquely beautiful and magical seven-movement work for a quartet of voices and a quartet of strings, with layers of digital delay that create 32-part canonic textures. It is dedicated to the composers friend the late writer Barry Lopez, and titled after one of Lopez's greatest books. The work, like most of Adamss works, reflects the composers passion for natures elemental forces. Adams writes about the piece: As in several of my later string quartets, all the string sounds are produced by natural harmonics and open strings. The sung text is composed of the names of Arctic places, plants, birds, weather, and the seasons, in the languages of the Iñupiat and Gwichin peoples of Alaska. John Luther Adams's music has won both a Pulitzer Prize and a Grammy Award and has been performed by such prominent ensembles as the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, the Los Angeles Philharmonic, and the Seattle Symphony, JACK Quartet, and the International Contemporary Ensemble. Cold Blue Music has released eight recordings devoted to his work, including Lines Made by Walking, Everything That Rises, and The Wind in High Places. The performers: Synergy Vocals is a critically acclaimed vocal ensemble that has recorded music by Steve Reich, Louis Andriessen, David Lang, Luciano Berio, John Adams, Arvo Pärt, and many others and performed with the Boston, Chicago, and San Francisco Symphonies and the Los Angeles and New York Philharmonics. Their performances and recordings have been deemed amazing (New York Times); beautiful, haunting (Gramophone); and dazzling (The Observer). With Synergy is a quartet of notable string players: violinist Robin Lorentz, violist Ron Lawrence, cellist Michael Finckel, and bassist Robert Black.
Garland: Three Dawns and Bush Radio Calling / Squibbs
Cold Blue Music
CD
$18.99May 28, 2021
Two exuberant, beautiful solo piano pieces: the three-movement Three Dawns, based on poems by Jean-Joseph Rabéarivelo, and the nine-movement Bush Radio Calling, written for the music-theater work Just Them Walking, by New Zealand's avant-garde theater company Red Mole. Both works are elegantly and spiritedly performed by Ron Squibbs. Peter Garland is a composer, world traveler, musicologist, and writer whose musicoften cited as an example of radical consonanceis always informed by his well-traveled ear and strong sense of personal vision. He studied music composition with Harold Budd and James Tenney and maintained long friendships with Lou Harrison, Conlon Nancarrow, Paul Bowles, and Dane Rudhyar. Cold Blue Music has released seven recordings of his work, including Moon Viewing Music, String Quartets, and After the Wars. Pianist Ron Squibbs is a music theory professor (UConn) and a specialist in the music of Iannis Xenakis. His previous recordings include albums of solo piano music by Dane Rudhyar and Joji Yuasa.
Peter Garland is a composer, world traveler, musicologist, writer whose music is always informed by his well-traveled ear and strong sense of personal vision. (His music has appeared on five previous Cold Blue CDs.) After the Wars, a resonant, sometimes clangorous four-movement piano solo performed by new-music champion Sarah Cahill, displays a unique sense of grace and a sincerity of expression. Garland writes about the piece: “Each of the transparent and self-contained movements takes as inspiration a Chinese poem or Japanese haiku.... I explore the quality of resonance in the piano: not just the notes played on the keyboard, but the sense of echo and fade produced by a very deliberate use of pedaling, and the sustaining and release of piano keys after notes and chords are sounded. It creates a sense of timbral color and acoustic perspective (proximity and distance).... Each movement is like a single image, simply stated with relatively little temporal or thematic development—very much like the poems they are based on.” After the Wars is a 20-minute CD EP/single. MusicWeb Int’l wrote of it, “There is an interesting use of space and time in this work. On the surface, it’s quite simple, but the sounds develop over the span of the four movements as you slowly grow accustomed to the underlying structure…and after listening to this disc several times, I wanted to hear more.” Julien Cowley wrote in The Wire, “Pianistic shell bursts interspersed with wounded reflection …. Garland’s After The Wars… alternates ruggedness and delicacy, oppressive weight fringed with luminosity in a powerful evocation of desolation and scarred hope.” And Gapplegate Classical-Modern Review wrote, “Garland weaves a web of expressive, muted magic and we readily fall under its spell. Very recommended.”
Swirling music with wildly branching roots that touch everything from Debussy and Delius to bop to techno. Sometimes lush and enveloping, sometimes brittle and percussive; sometimes suspended and motionless, sometimes agitated. This 16-minute CD EP features clarinetist Marty Walker with string quartet and electronic keyboards. “When it comes to attempts at musical seduction, Daniel Lentz’s music is way out front.” [Kyle Gann, Village Voice] “With its slow, interlocking suspensions and white-note harmonies, Tigres brings to mind Sibelius, of all things—particularly the twilight pages of the Sixth and Seventh symphonies—with the exception of a contrasting section about six minutes in where the rhythmic intensity gets cranked up and the piece breaks into a manic Michael Nymanesque jitterbug…. But the jitterbug ends just a quickly as it began, ceding to a much more lyrical style that gives a prominent, concerto-like roll to the clarinet. If Lentz talked about some of his earlier cascading echo pieces as ‘spiralling forms of becoming,’ Tigres traces—with its expressive grand pauses—a more improvisational line of fragmentation…. By intriguing his listeners at the same time he wreathes them in smiles, Lentz always comes up with something listenable and worthwhile. That’s certainly true of this new release.” [Gramophone magazine]
Horizon is sublimely beautiful, evocative music written for and recorded by the celebrated Australian Chamber Orchestra. Adams writes:?"There are two horizons. The visible horizon. And the true horizon.... As we scan the horizon we measure not only space, but also time. How long might it take us to traverse that distance, from where we are to as far as we can see? And what lies beyond that edge of the known?." Composer John Luther Adams' music has won a Pulitzer Prize and a Grammy Award (and a number or Grammy nominations) and has been performed by such prominent ensembles as the New York Philharmonic, the Chicago Symphony, the Los Angeles Philharmonic, the Seattle Symphony, and the JACK?Quartet. "John Luther Adams... one of the most original musical thinkers of the new century." (Alex Ross, The New Yorker) "His music becomes more than a metaphor for natural forces: it is an elemental experience in it's own right." (Tom Service, The Guardian) "His music perfectly echoes the landscape he loves: impersonal, relentless, larger than human scale, yet gorgeous." (Kyle Gann, Chamber Music Magazine) The Australian Chamber Orchestra (ACO) is a unique, highly lauded string orchestra led by Richard Tognetti. It tours the world, performing works from all periods of Western classical music, and has recordings on ABC Classics, BIS, Hyperion, Chandos, Sony, and other labels.. "ACO... invigorating and highly cultivated-a breath of fresh cultural air" (Gramophone) "This terrific string ensemble... seems to shine at anything it undertakes." (San Francisco Chronicle) "ACO... The finest chamber orchestra on Earth (The Telegraph, UK) "An orchestra that, by any standards, is one of the wonders of the musical world today." (The Guardian)
Plain Songs - "Love Comes Quietly" (after Robert Creeley)
Cold Blue Music
CD
$16.99Aug 01, 2025
Plain Songs: 'Love Comes Quietly' (after Robert Creeley) is composer Peter Garland's haunting seven-movement work for pipe organ, performed by acclaimed organist Carson Cooman on the Fisk organ at Harvard Memorial Church. Garland writes about "Plain Songs": "I wanted to write a piece for organ that would be intimate and mostly quiet, emphasizing the nature of the organ as a wind instrument capable of long, sustained tones. I wanted the musical textures to be open and transparent, rather than dense and massive. I also had in mind smaller historical organs and their music. The reference to the poet Robert Creeley is relevant to the above-mentioned goals. I greatly admire the simplicity and clarity of his poetic language; it's lucidity and how it rarely strays from the directness of popular, vernacular speech. I wanted to emulate those qualities in my music to the extent it was possible: to transfer the music of his poetry into the language of my music." Peter Garland is a composer, world traveler, musicologist, and writer whose music is informed by his well-traveled ear and strong sense of personal vision. He studied with Harold Budd and James Tenney and maintained long friendships with Lou Harrison, Conlon Nancarrow, Paul Bowles, and Dane Rudhyar. As a musicologist, he has focused on Native American, Mexican, and Southwestern American musics and 20th-century experimental composers of the Americas, championing the work of Revueltas, Partch, and Nancarrow long before their music became fashionable and regularly programmed. Since the early 1970s, Garland's music has been marked by a return to a "radical consonance" and simplification of formal structure influenced by Cage, Harrison, early minimalism, and a great variety of world musics. His unique and highly engaging pieces have been played around the world by such noted performers as pianists Aki Takahashi, Herbert Henck, and Sarah Cahill; percussionist William Winant; accordionist Guy Klucevsek; and the Kronos Quartet and released on the Cold Blue, Tzadik, New Albion, Mode, Avant, Toshiba-EMI/Angel, New World, and other labels. "Garland's music seems to be about the sheer expressive power of sound itself.... I feel he is one of our true originals." (Robert Carl, Fanfare magazine) "Garland is... a composer of mesmerizing music." (Kyle Gann, Chamber Music magazine) "A marvelous artist." (Harold Budd) Carson Cooman is an acclaimed concert organist who specializes in the performance of contemporary music-and more than 300 compositions by over 100 composers have been written for him by such composers as Kyle Gann, Jennifer Higdon, Jo Kondo, Robert Moran, Howard Skempton, and Linda Catlin Smith. His organ performances can be heard on a numerous of recordings. And as a composer, Cooman has written hundreds of works that have been performed around the world. He is currently Research Associate in Music and Composer in Residence at Harvard's Memorial Church. "Carson Cooman is one of the most versatile and active musicians of our time. Pianist, organist, composer, and improviser, he is excellent in every field." (Music and Vision) "Cooman's success as a composer for the organ is due in large part to his innate understanding of the instrument as a performer." (American Record Guide) "Carson Cooman is a nimble, nuanced, and eloquent advocate." (Choir & Organ)
"Waves and Particles" is Pulitzer- and Grammy-winning composer John Luther Adams’s beautifully shimmery, virtuosic string quartet, performed by the incredible, illustrious JACK Quartet. Adams’s music has been performed by such prominent ensembles as the New York Philharmonic, the Chicago Symphony, the Los Angeles Philharmonic, the Seattle Symphony, and the International Contemporary Ensemble. JACK Quartet has been deemed “superheroes of the new music world” (Boston Globe) and “the go-to quartet for contemporary music, tying impeccable musicianship to intellectual ferocity” (The Washington Post).
Beaufort Scales is Grammy-nominee and Pulitzer finalist composer Christopher Cerrone’s lush, dramatic, alluring music for women’s voices and electronics, performed by the acclaimed Lorelei Ensemble. Its text is drawn from the Beaufort Wind Force Scale (an early-19th-century wind speed measure), as well as writings by Herman Melville, F. Scott Fitzgerald, and Anne Carson. Cerrone’s music has been commissioned and performed by the Los Angeles Philharmonic, LA Opera, Pittsburgh Opera, the Louisville Symphony, Third Coast Percussion, violinist Jennifer Koh, pianist Shai Wosner, and many other noted ensembles and individuals. The Lorelei Ensemble, praised for its “full-bodied and radiant sound” (The New York Times) and “stunning precision of harmony, intonation … spectacular virtuosity” (Gramophone), has recorded the music of numerous living composers, as well as historical works by William Billings, Guillaume Du Fay, Alfred Schnittke, Toru Takemitsu, and many others.
“Darkness and Scattered Light” presents celebrated Pulitzer- and Grammy-winning composer John Luther Adams’s mesmerizing; elegant; virtuosic music for double bass—two solos and a work for five basses—written for and all performed by bassist extraordinaire Robert Black. “This is one of the most beautiful albums I have heard in years.... It would be hard to imagine a better match of composer and performer than John Luther Adams and Robert Black.”(David Lang; Pulitzer-winning composer); John Luther Adams’s music has been performed by such prominent ensembles as the New York Philharmonic; the Chicago Symphony; the Los Angeles Philharmonic; the Seattle Symphony; the and the JACK?Quartet. Cold Blue Music has released ten recordings of his work; including Houses of the Wind; Arctic Dreams; Lines Made by Walking; Everything That Rises; and The Wind in High Places. “John Luther Adams ... one of the most original musical thinkers of the new century.” (Alex Ross; The New Yorker) “His music . . . is an elemental experience.” (The Guardian). Robert Black tours the world collaborating with composers; musicians; and other artists. A founding member of the Bang on a Can All-Stars; his recent collaborations have been with Philip Glass; Eve Beglarian; and Joan Tower. “No one on the planet can make the double bass sing; dance; sound like a drum; spin like a top; like Robert Black. Robert has single-handedly reinvented the technique and repertoire of the Double Bass; bringing it bursting into the 21st century.” (Michael Gordon)
Garland: The Basketweave Elegies - Vibraphone Music / Winant
Cold Blue Music
CD
$18.99Feb 10, 2023
Peter Garland’s “The Basketweave Elegies” is an enchanting nine-movement work for solo vibraphone, performed by celebrated percussionist William Winant. Garland writes: “I want to write music that is well-made, sturdy, useful, and beautiful—like a basket.” Peter Garland is a composer, world traveler, musicologist, and writer whose music — often cited as an example of “radical consonance” — is always informed by his well-traveled ear and strong sense of personal vision. He studied music composition with Harold Budd and James Tenney and maintained long friendships with Lou Harrison, Conlon Nancarrow, Paul Bowles, and Dane Rudhyar. Cold Blue Music has released seven recordings of his work, including “Three Dawns,” “Moon Viewing Music,” “String Quartets,” and “After the Wars.”
“Garland’s music seems to be about the sheer expressive power of sound itself … ” (Fanfare) “Garland is an avatar of an experimental American tradition … a composer of mesmerizing music.”(Kyle Gann, Chamber Music magazine) “Garland is … a marvelous artist. I admire his work a lot” (Harold Budd). Performer William Winant, a Grammy-nominated percussionist who has performed with some of the most innovative and creative musicians of our time, including John Cage, Iannis Xenakis, Keith Jarrett, Anthony Braxton, James Tenney, Cecil Taylor, George Lewis, Steve Reich and Musicians, Yo-Yo Ma, Frederic Rzewski, Ursula Oppens, Joan LaBarbara, Sonic Youth, and Kronos Quartet. He has appeared on a number of releases on the Cold Blue Music label.
