Back in April 2014 at Carnegie's Zankel Hall, Augustin Hadelich's performance of David Lang's 'mystery sonatas' was praised by the New York Times as a riveting display of “magisterial poise and serene control.” That same magic penetrates this starkly beautiful recording of the work, played by Hadelich on the exquisite 1723 “ex-Kiesewetter” Stradivari, on loan to him by its current owners since 2011. Lang based his 'mystery sonatas' on the famous pieces by Heinrich Ignaz Franz von Biber, but with a modern twist. “I decided to make my own virtuosic pieces about my most intimate, most spiritual thoughts,” he explains, “[but] mine are not about Jesus, and the violin is not retuned between movements. I did keep one of Biber's distinctions. He divides Jesus's life into three phases—the joyous, the sorrowful, and the glorious. The central pieces of my mystery sonatas are called 'joy,' 'sorrow,' and 'glory,' but these are all quiet, internal, reflective states of being.”

Based on a one-page story by Ambrose Bierce, "the difficulty of crossing a field" is a joint collaboration in musical theater between composer David Lang and playwright Mac Wellman that recounts, in the words of a recent New York Times performance review, "a strange disappearance and what the neighbors have to say about it." Mixing arias with spoken text and emotional melodies with tense drama, the story takes place in 1854 near Selma, Alabama, where a planter named Williamson has vanished without a trace while crossing a field. The original production was staged in March 2002 at the Theater Artaud in San Francisco; this recording of "the difficulty of crossing a field" was tracked and produced by Lawson White, in partnership with Beth Morrison Projects, and features the Harlem String Quartet and an A-list of New York City's established and emerging talent in opera and theater, including Beverly O'Regan Thiele, Laquita Mitchell and Jay O. Sanders.

As one of the most socially conscious young composers in contemporary classical music, Ted Hearne has drawn on a multitude of influences to create Sound from the Bench. Written for the supple, ethereal voices of Philadelphia's world-renowned chamber choir The Crossing, the four works presented here tap into themes as varied as racial divides ("Privilege"), government secrets ("Ripple"), love and its dark permutations ("Consent"), and corporate personhood in the eyes of the US Supreme Court ("Sound from the Bench"). The title piece also features the edgy electric guitars of Dither's Taylor Levine and James Moore, as well as the rhythmic flourishes of percussionist Ron Wiltrout. Taken as a whole, this is some of Hearne's most wide-ranging and adventurous work—a siren call that resonates with unusual passion in these politically charged times.

Classical Music

If there now exists a Second New York School to follow on from the first formed by Cage and his colleagues in the 1950s, then its members would surely comprise Michael Gordon, David Lang and Julia Wolfe. This triumvirate has gone further than any in creating a heady polystylisiic mix combining elements of high and low, minimal and maximal, strict and improvised, global and local. Traces of both the polymetric language of totalism and the free-form eclecticism of Zorn may be heard in this music, allied with a post-Stravinskian style of rhythmic muscularity and high-velocity dissonance characteristic of maverick Dutch composer Louis Andriessen.

All of which leads on neatly to Gordon's latest release, a portrait opera of sorts, drawn using texts taken from proto-expressionist painter Vincent van Gogh's letters to his brother Theo. Gordon's predilection for suspending sustained vocal lines above pulsing, often visceral loops and patterns is certainly reminiscent of the Dutch minimalist, while his emphasis on developing two- or three-part textures from single lines evokes Frederic Rzewski.

But the most striking feature of this dark, desolate and often disturbing work is its manifold use of repetition as a means of evoking the kind of madness which so plagued van Gogh's life Like the Dutch artist's fragile mental condition, Gordon's music often appears to be on the edge of chaos but never quite looses control. Indeed, compared with earlier works (such as the wonderfully insane Sunshine ofyour Love) Gordon treats this harrowing subject with more than a modicum of restraint. One is often reminded in the music of van Gogh's arresting description, set towards the end of the work, of "a vague figure fighting like the devil in the midst of the heat".

-- Gramophone [6/2008]

Michael Gordon, co-founder of Bang on a Can and also featured on Nonesuch (Light Is Calling, Weather) and Cantaloupe (Decasia), wrote the 52 minute 'Trance' for Icebreaker in 1995. Called 'a minimalist classic' by The New York Times, 'Trance' is a kaleidoscope of pan-pipe melodies and provocative rhythms, and features Icrebreaker's aggressively virtuosic sound.

Combining two of Michael Gordon’s most daring large-scale orchestral works, Dystopia documents the composer’s dream of not only stretching the capabilities of the modern symphony, but in his words, of “exploring the gray areas between harmony and dissonance.”On its own, the music of Dystopia paints a picture of one city’s future — in this case, the city of Los Angeles — that is frenzied, chaotic, dazzling, electric, and ultimately...loud.Gordon had discovered similar sensibilities in composing ‘Rewriting Beethoven’s Seventh Symphony’.Using one element from each of the original movements as a starting point, Gordon crafts a post-modern take on the master’s classical forms that managed both to mesmerize and scandalize the audience at Beethovenfest Bonn, who commissioned the work for its 2006 premiere.Taken together, both works re-imagine the 21st c. symphony as equally reverent of the past (if not also a bit irreverent), while envisioning, as an L.A. Times review of the Dystopia premiere put it, “a drunken fugue of the future.”

Dutch composer Louis Andriessen turned minimalism upside down in the 1970's with his radical musical responses to American experimentalists Reich, Riley and Glass. He challenged these composers' trance-like states with a European sense of edginess and angularity, and the results are exciting and overpoweringly aggressive. Hoketus - the lankmark of European minimalism - takes its name from the medieval art of hocketing, splitting a single melody between two groups of instruments separated in space. Earth-shattering and tribal in its elemental power, Andriessen describes this piece as a 'Gigantic Dancing Human Machine'. Its recording is an international collaboration of the Bang on a Can All-Stars, members of London's Icebreaker ensemble, and musicians from Andriessen's own group. Workers Union and Hout both generate high-voltage energy out of wild unison melodies and rhythms. the Bang on a Can All-Stars have worked closely with Andriessen over the past 10 years, bringing to these works their intense dedication and extreme musicality, and performing them all over the world.

This is Burhans' debut as a lead composer and recording artist, though he has long been recognized as a vital presence on the NYC new music scene. The New York Times lauded him as "animated and versatile," a "sweet-voiced countertenor," and a "new music virtuoso." He's also a regular member of several groundbreaking groups and ensembles that have helped redefine modern classical music-among them ACME, Alarm Will Sound, Beyondo, Bleknlok, Escort, it's not you it's me, Newspeak, Ensemble Signal and the Wordless Music Orchestra.

Includes work(s) by various composers. Ensemble: Ethel.

“[Lisa Moore is] the best kind of contemporary classical musician, one so fearsomely game that she inspires composers to offer her their most wildly unplayable ideas. She can play them all.”— Pitchfork Pianist

Lisa Moore completes her 3-EP series with Stainless Staining, featuring compositions by Irish composer Donnacha Dennehy. Commissioned by Lisa Moore with funds provided by the Arts Council of Ireland, the title track, Stainless Staining was written for piano and soundtrack. Donnacha Dennehy is the founder of Dublin’s renowned new music group, Crash Ensemble. He was recently appointed a Global Scholar at Princeton University and received rave reviews for his 2011 recording Grá Agus Bás.

REVIEWS:

Stainless Staining…seizes the ear…Dennehey creates sonorities at once glistening and hypnotic.

In Reservoir…[e]very moment is suffused with delicate or dramatic propulsion, reflecting the urgency of the aquatic imagery. Lisa Moore…plays both works with mesmerising command of Dennehy’s simmering soundscapes and finely graded dynamic palette.

-- Gramophone (Donald Rosenberg)

The title track is scored for piano and pre-recorded samples of piano played conventionally and inside the instrument, and its premise is the rhythmically pulsing, gradual accumulation of overtones based on a single pitch. Ultimately over 100 overtones are in play, creating densely chromatic, micro-tonal textures. Its steady beat and harmonic stasis make it reminiscent of some strains of American minimalism of the last third of the 20th century, but that doesn’t detract from its energetic immediacy. The second track, Reservoir, is scored for solo piano, and was inspired by a video by Bill Viola of a man being slowly submerged in water. It’s a lovely, evocative Impressionist/post-minimalist piece that’s suggestive of aqueous landscapes. Moore is a persuasive, poetic interpreter of Dennehy’s appealing music, and this attractive CD should be of strong interest to fans of new music, especially new music for piano.

-- Allmusic.com

One of the most compelling elements of Stainless Staining is the fantastic pairing of pianist Lisa Moore and composer Donnacha Dennehy. Moore[’s]…performance on this CD is breathtaking. Her energy, virtuosity, and exquisite musicality is perfectly suited to the Dennehy’s music. Both pieces are extremely effective and beautifully played. You cannot ask for more.

-- I Care If You Listen

Co-composed by Lao Luo and Bong On A Can founders Michael Gordon, David Lang, and Julia Wolfe, Cloud River Mountain is an edgy cross-cultural collaboration between the Bang On A Can All-Stars and the extraordinary Chinese vocalist Gong Linna, whose dynamic voice covers a vast canvas of sonic colors. With an adventurous range that embraces Chinese folk, pop, and avant-garde art music (and has drawn comparisons to Bjork), Linna sings in both Mandarin and English over groove-driven melodies, punk-ish backbeats and lush soundscapes. Cloud River Mountain stirs ancient Chinese storytelling together with Western songwriting into a raucous musical mix, combining the mystical stories fo the past with the churning, clanging and sounds of the future.

The unparalleled Czech violinist/singer/composer Iva Bittova has teamed up with the dynamic Bang on a Can All-Stars for an unforgettable recording.

Her first major US release since her eponymous debut on Nonesuch in 1998, Elida (the name is a brand of soap from the composer's childhood) finds Bittova using the All-Stars as her orchestra. Sweeping piano lines meet full string ensemble settings, while clarinet improvisations meet electric guitar noise. The music is at the same time sophisticated and direct, edgy and nostalgic, mixing Eastern European classical music and folk traditions with angular string writing and heart-breaking Czech vocal melodies.

The Bang on a Can All-Stars have recorded their first studio album in five years; the first to include the All-Stars' current line-up: Ashley Bathgate, cello; Robert Black, bass; Vicky Chow, piano; David Cossin, percussion; Mark Stewart, electric guitar; and Evan Ziporyn, clarinets.

With Big Beautiful Dark and Scary, the Bang on a Can All-Stars show off their blazing speed, polyrhythmic virtuosity and all-world versatility in a return to the core Bang on a Can sound - an uncategorizable supermix of classical and electric instruments that is part classical ensemble, part rock band, and part jazz sextet. The album is the first in a decade that features the All-Stars exclusively, rather than as part of a collaborative project. Each of the pieces on the double-CD calls upon a different kind of virtuosity, demonstrating the range of musical abilities and experiences arguably unique to this ensemble. Recorded in New York City, all of the music on Big Beautiful Dark and Scary (including the arrangements of the works by Conlon Nancarrow) were written for and premiered by the Bang on a Can All-Stars.

Too funky for the academy, the Bang on a Can All-Stars emerged from the scruffy unvirons of downtown New York playing a new kind of music, with a new kind of energy, for a new kind of audience. This is the music that made them famous - their breakthrough CDs for Sony Classical, newly packaged, remastered onto one 74-minute disc. Music from Bang on a Can co-founders Michael Gordon, David Lang, and Julia Wolfe, Bang on a Can All-Stars member and acclaimed composer-clarinettist Evan Ziporyn, and innovators Nick Didkovsky, Annie Gosfield, and Lois V Vierk. With this music, Bang on a Can cracked open a powerful new world. Hear why.