With three upcoming albums, Ekkozone Records celebrates the work of the trailblazing American composer Roger Reynolds and his collaboration with Danish musician and producer, Mathias Reumert.

The first album in the series, Wind Concertos, features the World Premiere recording of Reynolds’s oboe concerto, JOURNEY, combined with his landmark electroacoustic flute concerto, Transfigured Wind III.

The composer describes JOURNEY as a work that “does not give up its secrets easily”. Written for the pre-eminent modern oboist Jacqueline Leclair, who is featured as soloist on the recording, JOURNEY is a work of immense subtlety, in which the solo part weaves in and out of the polyphonic orchestral texture. The unusual harmonies of the ensemble writing are based on Leclair's trademarks oboe multiphonics, which are captured with stunning richness in this state-of-the-art recording.

Reumert conducts one of Scandinavia's finest ensembles, the Esbjerg Ensemble, whose flutist Kerstin Thiele interprets the extraordinary solo part in Transfigured Wind III. Widely considered a masterwork of the late 20th century, this large-scale concerto represents a pinnacle in Reynolds’ exploration of the potential of electroacoustic composition.

In a wide-ranging interview included in the booklet, the composer calls the new recording of Transfigured Wind III "revelatory" and discusses the collaborative process on JOURNEY: "In the best collaborations, each participant adds dimensionality and enriches the proposed content. In this case, it developed that I too had achieved something beyond what I had expected. Ultimately, Jackie, Mathias, and the ensemble brought the piece to life in a way that I had not imagined was possible".

The Promises of Darkness marks the next chapter in the visionary collaboration between Pulitzer Prize-winning composer Roger Reynolds and conductor/producer Mathias Reumert. Released by Ekkozone, this landmark album showcases world premiere recordings of four major works, tracing four decades of Reynolds's trailblazing contributions to contemporary music. The title work, The Promises of Darkness (1975), pays homage to Reynolds's mentor Roberto Gerhardt. Scored for an ensemble of 11 players, this piece masterfully conjures vivid colors and an almost cinematic sense of dread, revealing Reynolds as a composer unafraid to probe the edges of musical and emotional experience. From 1985 comes Mistral, for strings, brass, and amplified harpsichord. Although inspired by an encounter with the forceful Mediterranean wind, the piece is "neither illustrative nor programmatic," according to the composer. Mistral has previously been released in a lo-fi live recording, but the highly refined score - with it's crystalline articulate harpsichord - is finally brought to life in this new version, which Reynolds himself has hailed as "a triumph." A relentless exploration of the interplay between two harmonic strata, Dionysus (1990) involves "a blend of metaphor and pragmatics" and is captured in a breathtakingly precise performance, with expressive solos from flutist Helene Navasse and trumpeter Laszlo Molnar. Closing the album is the electroacoustic Positings (2013), where the Mathias Reumert Group is joined by computer musician and Reynolds collaborator Paul Hembree. Seamlessly blending live performance with electronic textures, Positings embodies Reynolds's innovative spirit, pushing the boundaries of sound and structure. This release follows the critically acclaimed Wind Concertos, the first in the Reynolds/Reumert series, which earned Album of the Year (The Five Best) from the Danish Broadcasting Corporation in 2024. With The Promises of Darkness, Ekkozone solidifies it's reputation as a home for groundbreaking contemporary music, curated with Reumert's exacting vision.

Ekkozone Records is thrilled to release WISDOM's Sources/'O'o, a ground-breaking new album from Pulitzer Prize-winning US composer Roger Reynolds, which continues his visionary collaboration with producer Mathias Reumert, and features all premiere recordings. The album shows Reynolds' experimental fervor remains undimmed. Each work discovers in sound, and in the case of WISDOM's Sources, in imagery as well - a way of thinking through the conditions of being alive in the 21st century. Together, they testify to the depth of Reynolds's friendships and the range of his imagination, with both works growing out of collaborations with performers long entwined with Reynolds's creative life. Cast for flute and strings, 'O'o was written for and is performed by the eminent Canadian flutist Robert Aitken, a friend and collaborator with Reynolds since the 1960s. The work also features the award-winning and distinguished Canadian violinists Yolanda Bruno and Mark Lee, violist Rory McLeod, and cellist Leana Rutt. Similarly, WISDOM's Sources, a duo for violin and viola, was composed for the legendary violinist Irvine Arditti and illustrious violist Ralf Ehlers during a visit to San Diego in the summer of 2024. In Reynolds's words, a creative project "burns fuel of some sort." That fuel may be emotional, philosophical, experiential, even technical. Each, rooted in the exploration of timbre, 'O'o and WISDOM's Sources represent two distinct stories - one involving the haunting tale of an extinct Hawaiian bird, the other the search for wisdom across cultures - and each burns it's way toward revelation. In 'O'o, the novel sonic chemistry of juxtaposing the harmonic capacity of multiple strings with the melodic character of the flute provides a sonic environment within which outlines of calling and responding gradually emerge; evolving into the identities of the players as well as the last male and female pair of the now-vanished songbirds. In WISDOM's Sources, "one of the most adventuresome pieces I've ever attempted," the spark of collaboration becomes the fire itself - an exploration of 'wisdom' conceived through Reynolds' creative bond with Irvine Arditti during the COVID pandemic. The close alignment of friendship, musical sensibility, and shared ways of thinking is echoed in the sonorous match of the viola and violin. From the outset, Reynolds envisioned WISDOM's Sources as a multimedial creation, and his longtime associate, filmmaker, and video artist Kyle Johnson created an independent visual composition that unfolds in parallel to the music. The work represents a new mode of multidimensional creation that Reynolds is determined to pursue. Imagination unspent and curiosity as keen as ever, Roger Reynolds continues to write music that explores how sound can reflect, question, and transform experience.

EGUNGUN: EARTH-SHATTERING PERCUSSION

Ekkozone Records proudly presents the Valencia-based SoXXI Percussion Group and their decade-spanning collaboration with Louis Franz Aguirre (b. 1968), one of the foremost Latin American composers of today.

EGUNGUN features premiere recordings of Aguirre’s ground-breaking percussion sextets, a singular body of work which conjures up the composer’s mystical-religious universe. Elements from traditional Afro-Cuban percussion music, Indian classical music and Iannis Xenakis’s percussion writing are some of the sources that Aguirre draws upon, yet his musical language is wholly original.

Visceral and highly dramatic, the five compositions on EGUNGUN encompass every conceivable dynamic nuance, from evocative gongs and incantations of ancient Yoruba texts to terrifying textures, screams, and a profusion of drums and unconventional metallic percussion sounds, including the unheard-of and stunningly captured sound of electric hammer drills drilling into car rims!

EGUNGUN is the follow-up to Ekkozone’s latest release, ORULA, which was picked as one of the best albums of 2023 by the leading Danish music magazine Seismograf.