Tignor has released 9 LPs across the Western Vinyl and New Albion labels to critical acclaim within the classical and experimental communities. He has collaborated with numerous artists at the boundaries of popular music including Keith Kenniff (Helios), Jefre Cantu-Ledesma, John Congleton, and post-rock titans This Will Destroy You. While a young artist in NYC, Tignor mixed bands at CBGBs, was an assistant to La Monte Young and Marian Zazeela, and served as the technical director for 9 years for a New Music festival produced by Phillip Glass. Tignor discovered computers through his college electronic music studio (as a creative writing major), subsequently obtained his Masters in computer science from NYU, proceeded through Princeton's PhD program in music composition, and was later recruited for a software engineering position at Google, where he has worked since 2011.

The Art of Surrender marks a return to life, sown from primal impulses and hard-won emotional truths. Unrestrained melodic rapture soars above a relentless kick drum, speaking a need to move, to dance, to love. The music is as ambitious as it's origins are personal. Tignor plays with scale, crafting multi-movement epics alongside one-minute miniatures. The smallest, most fragile violin gestures, where the finger barely touches the string to extract natural harmonics exist side by side with angular, exotic melodies, asymmetric rhythms, and rapid-fire string crossings. On this LP, Tignor digs even more deeply into the violin and it's technicolor reimaginings under his electroacoustic treatments. The album title refers to the creative process of letting go of expectations, submitting to the will of the creative process. Following a collapsed relationship that left Tignor alone half-time with his daughter, this period was also one of surrendering to a dark unknown, rebuilding life's basic meanings from passion and creative will. Likewise, Tignor's unwavering approach to live performance embraces the rewards of taking risks: using his custom setup with meticulously controlled violin processing and drum triggered synths, this LP, like it's predecessors, was created without pre-recorded tracks or live looping, allowing bodily gesture to invite audiences into the process of music making. The first single, Ritual of a Thousand Limbs is a reference to the extended solo electro-acoustic instrument Tignor has created, processing his violin through software using pedals that also perform synths, an instrument played with both feet and hands including a kick drum with custom triggering software. Likewise, the title alludes to the 1000 arms and hands of the Avalokiteshvara, a bodhisattva associated with compassion. The song weaves back and forth between this impulse and it's more somatic, lustful urges, a study in the duality of desire and acceptance. The video for the work is a collaboration with girlfriend Rachelle Somma, who's unique, award-winning approach to dance blends pole-dancing with modern forms to create a spellbinding interpretation completely unique to both mediums. Off-Centered Hearts imagines a pas de deux between lovers yearning, like so many, to make their own asymmetrical ways of being fit as one. The work's spellbinding dance contains some of the album's most breathtaking, quietest confessional moments, planting seeds which eventually bloom into a huge, lyrical release driven by processed violin octaves above profound, kick-drum triggered bass. Forms in a Flame, elides multiple scenes together to create the album's largest scale journey, ambitiously blending heartrending synth and violin elligies alongside hyper-rhythmic, dovetailing counterpoint built from Tignor's interactive "mirrored violin" processing. In contrast, the album's one minute closer, Would that I Could is Tignor at his most concise, leaving listeners with a perfect parting prayer, suggesting we discover which, if any, ideals we might consider worthy of surrender.

Christopher Tignor is a composer, violinist, lecturer, and software engineer. His emotionally charged scores and unique focus on live, performance-based electroacoustic practice has won acclaim within both the classical and experimental communities across 10 LPs on the Western Vinyl and New Albion record labels. He creates the live performance software he uses, shared freely. As a composer he has written and recorded work for ensembles including The Knights, A Far Cry string orchestra, and Brooklyn Rider string quartet, performing alongside them at premiere venues including Carnegie's Zankel Hall. As a collaborator he has worked with Rachel Grimes, Helios, Jefre Cantu-Ledesma, John Congleton, This Will Destroy You and several other artists at the boundaries of popular music. Tignor holds a Ph.D in music composition from Princeton University, an M.S. in computer science from NYU's Courant Institute of Mathematical Sciences, and a B.A. in creative writing from Bard College where he studied fiction and poetry with John Ashbery.

The recordings are bright, clear and well played by clearly committed musicians who have taken to this wonderfully harmonious and melodic music. ...

Herman Berlinski is one of those musical personalities whose Jewish heritage played as vitally important a role in the creation of his music as Messiaen’s Catholicism played in his. Berlinski said that he doubted that there was any music he wrote which did not embody his Jewish existence. This is certainly immediately obvious as soon as you listen to it. His music has the same sense of suffering and the ability to overcome it that is found in some black music. It makes for a powerfully emotional experience. One reviewer said of another of his works on Naxos (Avodat Shabbat) that “There are passages in Berlinski’s work of such aching beauty that if you are not moved to tears you are made of sterner stuff than I am.”

Each of the works on this disc is a good introduction to the breadth of expression that Berlinski brings to his music and makes the listener want to explore further. It is interesting to note that though he was born in Leipzig of Polish parents his musical roots draw on that eastern European Jewish legacy that begins east of Germany’s borders. Anyone who is familiar with klezmer will hear its influence in this music; try track 2 to hear what I mean. This was due to the insistence of his father that though he wanted his children to be “modern German Jews” he also wanted them to be acquainted with their eastern European heritage. He also engaged a tutor to teach them Yiddish. There is no indication in the liner notes, which are extremely comprehensive and well written, that Berlinski ever wrote any music for film. I this found surprising because he would have produced some superb music for that medium. He has that facility for producing powerful sweeping themes that would fit neatly into so many movies.

‘From the World of my Father’ is a suite that Berlinski reconstructed from his recollections of music he had written in Paris just before the war when he was forced to leave. His parents had emigrated from Lodz in Poland to Germany. He had been writing and arranging music in Paris for an émigré Yiddish art theatre known as PIAT. This music is a portrayal of the world of his parents and their parents before them. It aimed to encompass traditions, hopes, fears, joys, persecutions – in short to present in music as a microcosm of the Jewish world of eastern Europe. It achieves these aims wonderfully and is never banal but full of typical Jewish melodies woven into a brilliantly evocative piece.

‘Shofar Service’ is a liturgical work using a shofar, usually made of ram’s horn. This may be the oldest surviving wind instrument to have been in continuous use. It is the only musical instrument of any kind mentioned in the Bible that can be positively identified. It was used for summoning people, warning them of approaching danger, announcing the beginning of a period of celebration, of fasting and many other events. This piece was written to be performed during Rosh Hashana or the Jewish New Year - a time with which the shofar is most associated. It is a powerful work in which the shofar is set against the voice of a baritone who entreats the people to harken to the sound of the shofar and to worship the Lord at the holy mountain. Liturgical though it may be it would be extremely effective performed in the concert hall as part of a programme of Berlinski’s work.

‘The Burning Bush’ was commissioned from Berlinski by the distinguished organist of the Emanu-El temple in New York. Berlinski had been encouraged to learn the organ as late as 1951 by Josef Yasser, synagogue organist and musicologist, who offered to teach him. The organ has always fascinated Berlinski but it had not figured on his course in Leipzig where it was principally associated with the church. Taking the Hebrew words eh’ye asher eh’ye (I am that I am) that God spoke when asked by Moses who he should say had appointed him to carry out his mission, Berlinski constructed a reflective cell from those words. This rhythmic cell pervades the piece. It was first performed in 1956 by Robert Baker - who commissioned it - to great acclaim. It helped establish Berlinski’s reputation in Great Britain, Europe and America as one of the most gifted contemporary composers for the organ.

The final work on the disc is ‘Symphonic Visions for Orchestra’ a semi-programmatic tone-poem inspired by various biblical images, passages and sentiments. Once again it shows the power of expression that Berlinski has. It makes a fitting end to a disc of music that will hopefully gain a new wave of admirers - of whom I am certainly one - for a truly original musical voice. The disc is a great start for those wishing to explore this composer’s music. The recordings are bright, clear and well played by clearly committed musicians who have taken to this wonderfully harmonious and melodic music.

-- Steve Arloff, MusicWeb International

Click here to view all available releases in the Milken Archive Series at ArkivMusic.

The notes to this recording make much of George Rochberg's braveness in the early 1960s in turning his back on strict academic serialism and atonality. Instead he dared to evolve a more nuanced, eclectic, personal style of expression in which tonal and atonal elements rub shoulders in a way that often comes across as sounding simply Romantic, in the best sense of the term. Without diminishing that achievement, in this less doctrinaire time the more important question is simple: How good is the music? We've been unable to answer this question because, aside from his string quartets, very few recordings have given us the chance to judge for ourselves. So this Naxos release is extremely important in that for many record collectors it will represent a first encounter with this seminal figure in 20th century American music--and it's magnificent.


The Fifth Symphony contains elements that many will find familiar: clear references to the finale of Mahler's Ninth and the Largo of Shostakovich's Fifth, aggressively virtuosic brass writing (it was a Chicago Symphony commission), a compelling mixture of dissonance and consonance, and an overtly emotional program apposing music of aggression with passages of sadness and consolation. It's all organized in a single movement whose multiple sections offer a gripping but easy-to-follow pattern of tension and release. To call the work a masterpiece doesn't begin to suggest its immediacy and impact: the symphony simply "goes" with the inevitability of fate itself, and its 28 minutes seem to pass by in a flash. Christopher Lyndon-Gee and the Saarbrücken orchestra give the music all of the intensity and passion that it needs, and they're marvelously well recorded too.


Black Sounds dates from 1965, and as the title suggests it's a darker, more abrasive work than the symphony. Inspired by the death of the composer's friend Edgard Varèse, the music pays respectful homage without ever descending to mere imitation. In particular, the scoring for 12 winds and brass, piano, celesta, and four percussionists clearly brings Varèse to mind, as does the music's violence and boundless energy. Standing at the opposite end of the harmonic spectrum, the gorgeously tonal Transcendental Variations for string orchestra consists of a reworking of the central movement of Rochberg's Third String Quartet, the breakthrough work in his mature style. Like the symphony, both works receive committed and compelling performances from Lyndon-Gee and his German forces.


Naxos has done some yeoman work in its American Classics series, but it's hard not to acclaim this release as one of the most important yet, not just for the excellence of its performances, the fine sonics, or even the marvelous music itself, but also in the human sense of doing some justice at last to a courageous composer whose importance is generally acknowledged but far too seldom confirmed by actual performance of his music. If this disc leads to further interest in Rochberg, then it will have achieved a greater purpose beyond gratifying a limited number of modern music enthusiasts. In the meantime, by all means, buy this and be gratified! [8/2/2003]
--David Hurwitz, ClassicsToday.com

This disc offers you satisfying performances of satisfying music. How can you refuse?

This second instalment in the continuing cycle of Ries's piano concertos from Naxos is a disc for your wish-list.

Ries is more famous today for being Beethoven's pupil and biographer than for his own career in music. In his day he ranked with Hummel and, yes, even with Beethoven himself as one of Europe's greatest composer-pianists. Thanks to the efforts of Naxos and Allan Badley's Artaria Editions, we can now hear for ourselves what it was that so excited nineteenth century audiences.

All three works here show Ries to be a composer of originality, though one with a respect for his musical forebears. It would go too far to call him daring or revolutionary. Nonetheless, despite the backward glances at Mozart, his facility for contrasting grand orchestral statements with piano writing of a free, rhapsodic lyricism bridges the gap between Beethoven on the one hand and Chopin and Schumann on the other.

The Swedish National Air with Variations opens with a proud and darkly coloured orchestral flourish, which is immediately contrasted with a gently glittering statement from the piano. This pattern of contrasts is repeated throughout the 15 minutes of this piece, as Ries plies his skill at conjuring variations, first dazzling, then soulful. He casts the orchestra as chorus rather than as equal partner in dialogue, but he knows how to use its tone colours – listen to the lovely clarinet commentary about five minutes in, for example.

The Piano Concerto in C sharp minor is a delightful work, written largely on the road as Ries toured and then fled Russia in 1812. It is natural to want to draw comparisons with Beethoven's C minor concerto of 12 years earlier, but similarities are few and comparisons unhelpful. Apart from a few blustery tuttis, Ries uses the minor mode to spice harmonies and lend interest rather than to generate Beethovenian drama. The material is predominantly lyrical but virtuosic in the outer movements. The central slow movement lasts for less than five minutes, but is the heart of the concerto. Here Ries'sw gentle lyricism calls for a Chopinesque rubato and lightness of touch. His writing for orchestra, though, is better than Chopin's and full of interesting details and colourings.

The Introduction and Polonaise may have been composed 21 years after the other two pieces in this programme, but it demonstrates a remarkable consistency in Ries's idiom across the years. This piece is full of Mozartean turns of phrase, but with harmonic touches that point to Schumann. Again, there is some charming writing for the clarinets and flutes as they comment on the piano's discourse.

The Austrian pianist Christopher Hinterhuber plays with commitment and is a fine advocate for these works, just as able to command attention with flashes of fire as he is to lead the ear through the most delicate figurations. Grodd and the Gävle Symphony Orchestra support him well enough, though there is a little raggedness in the upper registers of the violins towards the close of the Introduction and Polonaise. The recorded sound is fine and the booklet notes by Allan Badley are interesting, though they hint at but do not explain the reconstruction of the score of the C sharp minor concerto.

All up, this disc offers you satisfying performances of satisfying music. How can you refuse?

Tim Perry, MusicWeb International

Gerald Finzi's choral music never has achieved popularity on the level of works by composers such as Stanford, Vaughan Williams, or Elgar, and in general this is because by comparison it's not as well-organized, the inner structural details aren't as carefully developed, and the balance of text with musical ideas isn't as facile. As a result, many of Finzi's choral pieces sound just a bit labored, a bit more difficult than they need to be, the structural edges a bit rough, the overall concept unpolished. Just listen to any of Finzi's partsongs against, say, Stanford's motet Beata quorum via or Elgar's As torrents in summer, or Finzi's Lo, the full, final sacrifice next to Vaughan Williams' Toward the unknown region, and you'll see what I mean.


Not that Finzi is a careless or inept craftsman. Rather, in his vocal music he is a wonderful miniaturist (just listen to his exquisitely wrought 10 children's songs or to his fine solo songs with piano, for example--not included here) whose more expansive efforts just tend to have an unfinished quality that's often allied to an excessively text-bound style that hinders the flow of such pieces as the Magnificat and the anthem Welcome sweet and sacred feast.


And that's too bad, because Finzi's works are packed with beautiful moments, lovely melodic snippets, and delightful quiet sections followed by thrilling climaxes. All of those things are present among these pieces, which provide an excellent introduction to this composer's choral oeuvre. In spite of its structural faults the Magnificat remains a powerful and interesting piece--and the cathedral anthem Lo, the full, final sacrifice is bound to rouse any congregation or audience with its grand singing and organ accompaniment. The seven partsongs are not particularly memorable, for all their effortful dramatic qualities.


Nevertheless, the singing on this disc is very fine--of course, this is a choir that you can count on to have such repertoire down cold--and it's always impressive to hear trebles sing with such solidity of tone and brilliant, never harsh, high notes, perfectly blended and balanced with the lower voices. While there are times that some choral sections stand out a bit too prominently, the organ is exceptionally well recorded. If you're interested in Finzi's choral music, you won't go wrong here--however, if you want the sound of an adult mixed choir in this same repertoire (with a few additional selections), very beautifully recorded, try the reference disc, with the Finzi Singers on Chandos.
--David Vernier, ClassicsToday.com

Somervell's four songs on poems from William Blake's Songs of Innocence were written in 1889, dedicated to Dolly and Gwen, and simple and child-like in form and appeal, perfectly crafted examples of such work. The song cycle based on Tennyson's monodrama Maud dates from 1898. There are thirteen songs in the whole work that traces the story from the memories of the suicide of the protagonist's father, ruined by unfortunate speculation, making his son's match with Maud, daughter of his father's closest friend, and his betrayer, impossible. Three of these are included here. Maud's family return to the Hall and gradually the young man at the heart of the drama falls in love with her again. In the fifth song of Somervell's cycle, Birds in the high Hall-garden, the lovers meet, before Maud returns to the house, with the flowers she has picked. The verses that tell of the arrival of another to woo her are omitted. The seventh song, Go not, happy day, expresses the love of the couple. The first part of the poem ends with the words that provide the ninth song of Somervell's cycle, Come into the garden, Maud, words perhaps more familiar in the setting by Balfe. The singer calls Maud to the garden, as he hears the sound of music from the Hall, where he has not been invited. As she approaches, he is in ecstasy, but the song does not tell how their meeting is to be interrupted by Maud's brother, his quarrel with her lover, and her brother's death in the dreadful hollow, where the drama had started. In the remaining songs Maud's lover seeks exile abroad and goes out of his mind, while Maud, in his absence, dies. The cycle ends with the singer's resolve to meet his fate in war for his country. The song cycle derived from Robert Browning's James Lee's Wife was published in 1907 with a dedication to Marie Brema, a Liverpool-born singer of German-American parentage who, in 1894, was the first English-born singer to appear at Bayreuth, where she sang Ortrud in Lohengrin and Kundry in Parsifal. James Lee's Wife first appeared, under the title James Lee, in 1864 in Browning's Dramatis Personae and from the original nine poems Somervell takes five. The first version has an orchestral accompaniment, but the songs were later arranged for an accompaniment of piano quintet, and then simply with a piano accompaniment. As in other dramatic monologues by Browning, the woman of the title reveals her story, telling first of changing love, more dramatically in the second song, By the Fireside, as she tells of the rot and rust, run to dust, of a ship seemingly safe in port, as she and her husband had seemed. The same idea continues in the third song, In the Doorway, from which the middle two verses of the original poem are omitted. In the fifth of Browning's poems, On the Cliff, she sings of the parched vegetation on the rock and how from this may come color and life, as with the minds of men. The cycle ends with the seventh of Browning's poems, Among the Rocks, in which she proclaims her message that If you loved only what were worth your love, / Love were clear gain.

"Record companies seem not, as yet, to have done very much to celebrate this year's 400th anniversary of the death of Queen Elizabeth I, so this delightful collection of music by her favorite lutenist deserves a particularly warm welcome....Since lute-players were strongly represented in the court musical establishment, to have earned the queen's special preference was no small distinction. It is clear from this selection of pieces for one or two lutes that Johnson fully merited it...The duets, in which Christopher Wilson is joined by Shirley Rumsey, include such attractive items as the Flat Pavan, with its distinctive melancholy flavour [sic], and sets of virtuoso variations on ground basses or popular songs, whose increasingly elaborate figurations are so perfectly coordinated that it is hard to believe that there are two players involved. Both here and in the solo pieces, however, the emphasis in these crisply elegant performances is not so much on virtuoso display as on creating an atmosphere of refined and courtly intimacy." - Elizabeth Roche, Daily Telegraph, 5/17/03

"With impressively executed divisions, charming music and a lustrous over-all ambience, this recording is a tonic to those who might otherwise think that lute music pre-Dowland is all hey nonny cuteness." - Anna Picard, The Independent, April 27, 2003

Naxos has very intelligently included the spoken superscriptions for each movement of the "Antartica" at the end of the disc, so those who want them (a minority, to be sure) can program them in. Kees Bakels and his Bournemouth forces lead excellent performances of both works, and it's particularly gratifying to be able to report that both the conductor and the recording engineers seems to have taken pains to ensure that the special percussion effects in both symphonies are well caught. Of course, the music itself is splendid. The Sinfonia antartica (a.k.a. the film score to Scott of the Antarctic) takes up where Holst's Planets left off, and fans of that work will love this icy-sounding sequel. The Eighth Symphony, with its fabulous finale employing "all the 'phones and 'spiels known to the composer," deserves to be much more popular than it is. That last movement is a humdinger! So while you're waiting to hear these two masterworks of the composer's old age in a live concert, why not shell out a few bucks and enjoy them at home? --David Hurwitz, ClassicsToday.com