Tullochgorum: Haydn - Scottish Songs / Art, The Poker Club Band
BIS
SACD
$10.99$21.99Save 50%Jan 03, 2020
Between 1791 and 1804, Joseph Haydn arranged some 400 traditional songs for publishers in Scotland and England. Almost all of the songs were Scottish and the most common setting was for voice and piano trio. There have been numerous recordings and performances of the arrangements by these forces, but on this disc The Poker Club Band offer their listeners something quite different. Taking its name from one of the Edinburgh clubs at the heart of the Scottish Enlightenment, the ensemble consists of four early music specialists and a traditional singer. They have retained Haydn’s violin and cello, but the keyboard part has been adapted for harp and guitar following indications that the harp was commonly used for contemporary performances of Scottish traditional repertoire. The Gaelic singer James Graham, with his idiomatic Scottish timbre, and the period instruments – of which Masako Art’s single-action pedal harp from 1809 is known to have been in Scotland around the time – brings us that much closer to what a performance in an Edinburgh salon might have sounded like around 1800. The songs themselves range from the cautionary tale of a girl who married for love and now is doomed to a life of hard and dirty work on her husband’s farm (The Mucking of Geordie’s Byer) to love songs such as Oran Gaoil, with a text by Robert Burns. Providing variety, some instrumental 18th century arrangements of Haydn originals are included while the album ends with the well-known atmospheric Lament by the Scottish fiddler Niel Gow.
Živkovic: Citadel of Love / Repo, Burstedt, Norbotten Neo
BIS
SACD
$10.99$21.99Save 50%Jul 07, 2023
Serbian-Swedish Djuro Živkovic has quickly established himself as one of Europe’s leading young composers. His musical style is strongly marked by Byzantine Orthodox music – spiritual, mystical and characterized by fantastic narration, virtuosic instrumentation and a stylistic, highly profiled sound. Živkovic’s music presents a profound and abstract space to reflect on the subject matter of mystery, ecstasy and transcendence. Citadel of Love is a highly personal ensemble work which manages to create a mystical aural experience. The narrative voice of the piano together with the other six instruments, subtly adding voices as well as percussion instruments, carries the listener from beginning to end through an inner drama of intensity and fullness of soundscapes.
I Shall Contemplate… II is an intimate chamber piece for viola and small ensemble, stylistically similar to a sacred cantata, in which improvisatory techniques contribute to the free and unencumbered compositional process. Here, Živkovic’s use of ancient scales creates an archaic, echoing space. The text, spoken by the soloist, comes from old Byzantine mystical books. Finally, Night Music is a fascinating crossover work in which piano works by Alexander Scriabin are mixed with newly composed musical layers, thus adding to the Russian composer an absurd fantasy, estranged passion and exotic illusions.
Myrtle & Rose: Songs by Clara & Robert Schumann / Stegall, Zivian
Avie Records
CD
$9.99$19.99Save 50%Jul 05, 2019
Myrtle and Rose- the title taken from the Heinrich Heine poem which Robert Schumann set as the final song of his Liederkreis, Op. 24- features two of Robert Schumann’s most beloved song cycles (the other being Liederkreis, Op. 39) along with several rarely-recorded songs by his wife Clara. The album beautifully captures the artistic partnership of tenor Kyle Stegall and fortepianist Eric Zivian, who first collaborated at the Valley of the Moon Music Festival in Sonoma, California. Stegall’s “lovely tone and ardent expression” (The New York Times) and Eric Zivian’s original 1841 Rausch fortepiano from Vienna- built exactly when the songs were written- combine in these inspired and illuminating interpretations. “a gentle tone that melted the hearts of all” (OperaWire) “the last word in low key virtuosity” (San Francisco Classical Voice)
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REVIEW:
This little recording has a great deal worth recommending. The gentle singing of tenor Kyle Stegall and the circumspect but active accompaniment by Eric Zivian are strong points. The program is elegant. The real star of the show, however, is not Stegall or Zivian, but Zivian's period piano, an 1841 instrument by the Viennese builder Franz Rausch. Many historical performances featuring pianos from this period use French or English models, and the name of Rausch is not much known. However, it fits this music admirably, producing a subtle, silvery tone that brings out the poetry without retreating into the background. Continuing credit to the Avie label for uncovering distinctive little-known performers.
Valerie Coleman is regarded by many as an iconic artist who continues to pave her own unique path as a composer, GRAMMY®-nominated flutist, and entrepreneur. Highlighted as one of the “Top 35 Women Composers” by The Washington Post, she was named Performance Today’s 2020 Classical Woman of the Year, an honor bestowed to an individual who has made a significant contribution to classical music as a performer, composer, or educator.
Coleman’s work as a performer is just as impressive with an extensive discography and appearances throughout North America and Europe, in settings ranging from chamber to orchestral, as well as small group jazz.
Coleman is a founder and former flutist of Imani Winds. The acclaimed ensemble is featured in a dedicated exhibit at the Smithsonian National Museum of African American History and Culture in Washington, D.C. Along with composer-harpist Hannah Lash, and composer-violist Nokuthula Ngwenyama, she co-founded and currently performs as flutist of the performer-composer trio Umama Womama.
Epicycle II - Music for Cellist/Vocalist / Gyða Valtysdottir
Sono Luminus
CD
$9.49$18.99Save 50%Sep 11, 2020
Icelandic cellist, singer, and composer Gyða Valtysdóttir, a founder of the band múm and 2019 winner of the prestigious Nordic Council Music Prize, releases Epicycle II. Gyða Valtýsdóttir came to prominence with electronic experimentalists múm, the lauded Icelandic group leading the charge in the country’s fertile underground scene in the early 00s, rightfully gaining international recognition. She left the band to pursue her studies as a cellist; gaining a twofold Master’s degree from Musik Akademie, Basel, both as a classical player and a free-improvisational one. Since then she has journeyed with a colorful palette of collaborators, including The Kronos Quartet, Josephine Foster, Damien Rice, Colin Stetson, Jónsi (of Sigur Ros fame), Skúli Sverrisson, Ólöf Arnalds, Ben Frost, Aaron & Bryce Dessner (from The National) and visual-artist Ragnar Kjartansson. To name but a few.
REVIEWS:
Some of the musicians, like her fellow art-pop renegades Ólöf Arnalds and Jónsi, emphasize her crystalline, eldritch voice. Others, including Anna Thorvaldsdottir and Daníel Bjarnason, deploy her cello in yearning lines and voluptuous waves. Altogether, the album offers otherworldly transport.
-- The New Yorker
Epicycle II is a wonderful experience and a tantalizing look into the future of experimental music collaboration.
-- San Francisco Classical Voice
Epicycle II is her crowning achievement to date.
-- A Closer Listen
From atmospheric micro-polyphony to heart-rending moments of electronic intimacy, the music is interesting and powerfully drawn.
-- Music City Review
A deeply cinematic score at times, this album is often transporting with great lift, giving the listener long opportunities to soar, bird-like, over the Icelandic landscape and beyond, for the most part leaving us safely and gently deposited on the earthly shore.
For this new album, Philippe Sly and the Chimera Project revisit Schubert's ultimate masterpiece, Winterreise, and offer a captivating version of the story of a wanderer who embarks on a journey through a winter landscape. From Schubert's score, only the vocal part remains intact and bass-baritone Philippe Sly's reading of it is touching and impressive. The piano part is replaced by the Chimera Project, an ensemble that comprises of trombone, violin, accordion, clarinet and a hurdy-gurdy. This delightful instrumentation brings this great work into musical territories that are both familiar and foreign. The result is an exceptional album. French-Canadian bass-baritone Philippe Sly is already gaining international notoriety for his "beautiful, blooming tone and magnetic stage presence" (San Francisco Chronicle). Mr. Sly is the first prize winner of the prestigious Concours Musical International de Montréal and a grand prize winner Metropolitan Opera National Council Auditions singing the varied repertoire of Mozart, Bach, Handel, Stravinsky and Wagner. Recently, he was awarded Concert of the Year in Romantic, Post-Romantic and Impressionist Music at the 16th annual ceremony of the Prix Opus in Québec.
Hellstenius: Public Behaviour / Stavanger Symphony Orchestra
BIS
SACD
$10.99$21.99Save 50%Feb 16, 2024
Ever since he was a child, Norwegian composer Henrik Hellstenius has sought to explore music more freely than by simply mastering the classics. His language, which draws its inspiration from the modes of expression of his time, takes shape in the course of his work through sound, movement, rhythm and silence, as well as in his encounters with musicians and their instruments.
Here, much of what is expressed is part of an intense inner monologue: a litany of doubt, affirmation and frustration being whispered, said, sung and shouted. Everything about these two works, from their titles to their modes of expression, suggests that they are directed outwards towards society in general and towards individuals in particular.
Public Behaviour is about how we act together in an age of extreme individualism. The work presents musical situations in which the soloist, vocal ensemble and orchestra depict encounters and conflicts around the theme of the individual versus the collective space. Together is a meditation on the relationship between ‘me and the other’. The question is how we relate to the people we meet, work with and live with. The versatile vocal ensemble Nordic Voices performs both works and is joined by some of the best musicians on the Norwegian contemporary scene.
Evelyn Converse (Connie's mother): Is it sweet little ditties or is it modernistic? Connie Converse: It's got everything in it. I'm the one in the smoky gray button-down, gently disentombing a viola from it's case in the gauzy, late morning light illuminating this inviting Northcenter studio. In the freelance Classical (and Classical-adjacent) world, projects and their attendant rehearsals encompass the vibes and caliber spectrum, but managing the contents of one's tear ducts is not generally a required qualification. Maybe you can try to get word to the violist, currently encamping himself and his stand beneath a towering harp. That unwitting sap-the one who at this moment only knows that the pieces he's playing were originally penned by someone with an enticingly alliterative moniker-has no idea that this music is about to occupy a good deal of the rent-free space available in his head and heart long after the live broadcast, the 'gig,' wraps. It is, I'm afraid, a decidedly common reaction to an oeuvre of unquestionably uncommon music for those that encounter it some seventy-plus years since it was meticulously penned. Whether this is your first orbit or you already count yourself amongst the members of the How Sad, How Lovely devout-Connie's modest and also astonishing kitchen table recordings, most recently reissued by her fellow Michiganders Third Man Records-the sounds currently spinning through your synapses here offer an entirely unique perspective of an artist who not only scooped Dylan on coaxing folk music from the universal to the personal by a literal decade, but indeed ventured into a territory of art song he will never quite access. Her Only Light is a more dimensional, more expansive view of Connie Converse, a composer-performer-pacifist-scholar-activist who, like the story of her enigmatic departure, deserves a telling beyond an easy headline. Some orientation is necessary, though. Elizabeth Eaton Converse was valedictorian of her high school, a scholarship recipient at Mount Holyoke College, a songwriting hopeful in Harlem, and the Co-Editor of the Journal of Conflict Resolution (Center for Research on Conflict Resolution) at the University of Michigan. Was she, as is editorialized about so many of my favorite creators, maybe a little too smart to be happy? A more accurate assessment arrives by way of her nephew Tim Converse, who generously shared with me, 'I think that she saw so clearly the way things should be that she was constantly disappointed by how things actually were.' This was certainly the case regarding her years in New York, having absconded early from Mount Holyoke to pursue her songwriting and singing aspirations. Consider that the 1950's Greenwich Village folk revival-in full swing as she composed-for all it's posturing about political revolution and working-class authenticity, was structurally about as progressive as a debutante ball. Add to that the fact the (then) recording industry's almost unshakable insistence on genre conformity and, in the case of female performers, sexual magnetism, and it doesn't take much to understand how a path-carving artist more engrossed in her compositional brilliance than her appearance failed to break through to the monoculture. Though history is of course littered with unrecognized genius, this was actually not precisely the case for Converse. She was featured on CBS's The Morning Show hosted by no less than Walter Cronkite, and was championed by animator Gene Dietch who, in addition to her own efforts, we have to thank for the recordings found on How Sad, How Lovely. At this inflection point, when she seemed poised to, well, make it, Connie Converse pivoted her writing toward a far less marketable but perhaps more adventurous corner of musicmaking: 'art song.' If Connie's 'Guitar Songs' (singer-songwriter, folk-oriented) were slow to gain traction, what hopes could her 'Piano Songs' (art song, harmonically enterprising) possibly have in such an inhospitable industry? Jesus. We're halfway through these liner notes and I haven't even introduced you to the two remarkable interpreters of said songs-the thoughtful Converse evangelists behind Her Only Light: arranger Ronnie Kuller and vocalist Emmy Bean. Almost immediately in that aforementioned rehearsal, which I should clarify was in service of a live performance on WFMT after this album was mixed and mastered, I was scheming how I might stay in proximity to Ronnie's dextrous, insightful writing and Emmy's lustrous, utterly persuasive phrasing in the years to come. Like so many generative collaborations, theirs originated in an abiding desire for connection and a fascination with the sublime. It was also a creative lifeboat in the not-so-distant era of prolonged home confinement. Sparked by Bean's sharing the 2015 Anna and Elizabeth cover of 'Father Neptune'-the harmonizing of which would provide inspiration for the arrangement here-with Kuller (who had already taken Converse's music up on stage while in residence at beloved Chicago venue The Hideout) the latter describes her decision-making process with unguarded enthusiasm: 'I want a harp. I want two clarinets at the same time. I want a string section! I want Emmy Bean to sing to me!' Ronnie goes on to share what I consider an essential reason why Her Only Light is so riveting and unmissable: 'When Emmy is singing, I believe every word.' Given that Connie is often credited with originating the singer-songwriter genre, one in which vulnerability evaporates any dramatic or emotional partition between singer and lyric, Converse's songs can only truly thrive when delivered with such tender veracity. As the duo explored Converse's art songs, transcribed by Kuller from the hand-written original scores, the desire for immersion in and dispersion of these songs only deepened. Emmy describes her 'forever memory' like this: 'Once we got started on the art songs we began with 'Song for Old Wars,' and I remember singing it for the first time in a big cavernous room on an old piano. This was a few weeks after Russia invaded Ukraine in 2022. Hearing the final cadence of that song echo in the room-the "horns"-was incredible. It gave me something to honor in all the chaos of new/old wars; I felt like Connie was with us, grieving the losses.' The other partition in need of a wrecking ball-one of primary importance to both singer and arranger-was that of folk song vs. Art song. Not only is this boundary a fanciful one perpetrated by hierarchically-minded (i.e. misled or confused) listeners and record industry execs originating from preconceptions about formal education, 'rigor,' and, to get right down to it, vibratoin the context of Connie Converse it results from the reality that her art songs, the 'Piano Songs,' never made it on tape during her own and Dietch's kitchen recording sessions. They were written later, and composed for voices other than her own, sometimes soprano, sometimes baritone. Emmy found herself slipping into Connie's world without friction, but decisions on how to stylistically inhabit the 'Guitar' and 'Piano' songs only revealed itself once the project was at full tilt: 'I was surprised to find how Connie's songs invite another singer into them. Some songs belong so intimately to their writer's voice (especially folk singers or singer-songwriters) that it feels wrong to sing them or hear them sung by others. When I took on this project, I was afraid that I wouldn't be able to find the access point, that I wouldn't be able to inhabit them, that I would find myself mimicking her or struggling to find myself in them. But the craft that Connie put into her art songs-the 'Cassandra Cycle,' 'anyone lived in a pretty how town,' etc-is also there in the songs she wrote on guitar. They are no less solid, no less fully realized than the ones she wrote on piano. They completely stand on their own, and they welcome any singer with the imagination and humility to hear them and be with them. The reward of singing them is to be inside of Connie's mind for a moment, to feel such great joy and such deep empathy, and to be able to smile at things that are so, so sad. I was also struggling to figure out how Connie's guitar songs and piano songs would exist together on the same record, in the same voice (mine). It wasn't until we got into the studio that Ronnie and I figured out that I could be the same singer throughout; there was no need to over-stylize the art songs or under-sing the folk songs. Together we were able to find an approach that honored the depth of her writing in both contexts, and that kind of broke the spell of genre over the whole thing.' As you traverse these Guitar Songs- 'Talkin Like You (Two Tall Mountains)' 'I Have Considered the Lillies' 'Father Neptune' 'One by One' and these Piano Songs- 'Vanity of the Vanities' 'The Rainmaker' 'Incommunicado' 'anyone lived in a pretty how town' (text by e.e. cummings) 'The Age of Noon' The Cassandra Cycle (excerpted) 'Cassandra's Entrance' 'Song for Old Wars' 'She Thinks of Heaven' 'She Devises a Lullaby' -relish as I do, if you will, Ronnie Kuller's orchestrational witticisms and delights, as with her leitmotif approach to 'Talkin Like You (Two Tall Mountains),' here and elsewhere gracious without unnecessary reverence or over-caution. Be carried off by Emmy Bean's sumptuous and entrancing delivery of 'Father Neptune,' but don't miss the cheeky wink in her voice as she alights on the song's more eyebrow-raising lines ('And it's still his creed that he has no need of a wifeexcept on shore'). Perhaps you're familiar with the melancholy pervasive in Converse's tunes, but her humor is equally nimble. And of course, don't disembark before you experience 'One by One,' the song currently making the hapless gigger unprofessionally bleary-eyed in the middle of a rehearsal. Loneliness has found it's most crystalline, most desolate voice in these verses, and to these ears at least, it is a one-of-one. That quote at the top of the page? It arrives by way of a recorded conversation between Connie and her mother concerning an in-processopera! This heroine of songwriting contained multitudes-a conclusion you are funneling toward as you make your way through this enchanting tracklist-and with Her Only Light, we are finally provided Connie Converse in full, resplendent resolution. -Doyle Armbrust
The two books of David S. Lefkowitz's Preludes and Fugues for Piano were performed by a team of four pianists, a cantor, and the composer himself. Lefkowitz asks: "What does it mean to write a fugue in a post-tonal world, in which "major" and "minor" scales have been left behind? 12 of the 13 preludes and fugues in my first book are based on newly-invented scales." Lefkowitz's second book goes even further, using the rich possibilities of a prepared piano, vocal sounds and a finale for two pianos. Lefkowitz's huge musical palate is near-Mahlerian in this challenging and rewarding cycle that spans nearly three hours.
Broad gestures, rich textures and narrative sweep are vivid signatures of Alex Weiser's music. Born and raised in New York City, Weiser composes cosmopolitan music that merges a deeply felt historical perspective with a vibrant, forward-looking creative pulse. An energetic advocate for contemporary classical music and for the work of his peers, Weiser co-founded and directs Kettle Corn New Music, and is Public Programs Manager at the YIVO Institute for Jewish Research. Meditative and devotional in scope, 'and all the days were purple' sets Yiddish and English poems to music in a song cycle that seeks out the divine while reflecting on the longing, beauty, and tumult of life. The album includes texts by Anna Margolin, Edward Hirsch, Rachel Korn, and Abraham Sutzkever, and performances by Eliza Bagg (voice), Lee Dionne (piano), Maya Bennardo (violin), Hannah Levinson (viola), Hannah Collins (cello) and Mike Compitello (percussion). The recording also includes 'Three Epitaphs,' composed in 2016 and featuring excerpts from texts on love and life's transience by Williams Carlos Williams, Seikilos and Emily Dickinson.
Detroit based Akropolis Reed Quintet releases "Ghost Light", a collection of works written for them that are in dialogue with various "ghosts" — histories that are manifest in personal, collective, and even organic contexts. Featuring music by Stacy Garrop, Michael Gilbertson, Niloufar Nourbakhsh, Jeff Scott, and Theo Chandler, Akropolis' precise and dynamic performances are matched by their curatorial creativity and commitment. Celebrating over a decade of music making, the Akropolis Reed Quintet, with their “infallible musicality and huge vitality” (Fanfare), has sparked a revolution in wind chamber music. An untamed band of 5 reed players and entrepreneurs, the members of Akropolis are united by a shared passion: to make new music that connects and reflects real people.
Charlotte Haesen, born in Amsterdam in 1987 and raised in the French-speaking part of Belgium, studied jazz singing at the Amsterdam University of the Arts. On a sunny Saturday afternoon, she sang French chansons at Amsterdam's Noordermarkt, where she was discovered by viola player Odile Torenbeek. Odile and Charlotte decided to put together a chanson programme anchored in a string quartet ensemble. Leading arrangers then 'arrayed' the chansons around Charlotte's own, particular sound. The next step was the founding of Café des Chansons: Charlotte Haesen plus four musicians from the Netherlands Philharmonic Orchestra. They perform gems of the repertoire, including the great French classics by artists such as Barbara, Gainsbourg and Piaf.
This album came to me in a fit of stillness. I had been moving so much and for so long that I forgot that my favorite thing to do is to just sit. Sitting in stillness involves watching, waiting, listening, and observing. It involves becoming aware of the edges of things - in my case, where my body ends and the chair begins, where a bird call starts and a melody has always existed, where a cloud has always been a storm and the storm is me. When I wrote these songs, I was sitting still and looking at the sea. Yes, the actual sea, but also the sea of my childhood and the sea of my recurring dreams. In the process of writing, I've learned that if I look long enough, rooms that I didn't previously have access to emerge, floating in front of me like hard working tugboats, pulling behind them all the postcards that I've written to myself. I've learned that if I listen long enough, a vine will always grow out my head and become a phone cord, connecting me to all the times I've wanted to tell you I love you and have held it back. - Alex Sopp
Lost Sessions from The Netherlands / Blossom Dearie, Metropole Orkest
Fondamenta
CD
$19.99Sep 10, 2021
There were many highlights to her musical career: the concerts she gave in the Netherlands between 1968 and 1989 feature prominently among them. This release is a faithful rendition, thanks especially to the remarkable audio quality. Dearie masterfully performed in all the instrumental formations, from solo shows to the great Metropole Orchestra. She sang repertoires of every kind, from film music – she brought a new dimension to “Raindrops Keep Falling on my Head” – to Joni Mitchell’s “Both Sides Now”, sensitively revisited. Not to forget a masterpiece whose music she composed, “Winchesterin Apple Blossom Time”, with Marilyn Monroe-style boo-be-doops – two superb versions of which can be enjoyed here, as well as her other compositions, those mentioned, and “Bring All Your Love Along”, whose first recording, made in Laren, 1982, is featured here. Blossom, so aptly named, bids the audience adieu, and makes a graceful bow.
Spain and the guitar - an inseparable combination. Serenades of Spain goes beyond cliches, unveiling the rich musical heritage of both the country and the guitar, and takes the listener on a journey through three guitars: baroque, romantic, and classical - both solo and in duo with voice or cello. Featuring works by Spanish composers and those inspired by Spain, this album blends Flemish Renaissance court music, Baroque dances, expressive romanticism, neocasticismo, impressionistic colors, and folklore - a vibrant mosaic of Spain's musical history and the guitar.
Monk: Memory Game / Bleckmann, Geissinger, Sniffin, Bang on a Can All-Stars
Cantaloupe Music
CD
$21.99Mar 27, 2020
Meredith Monk’s MEMORY GAME, as its title implies, is both a look back at a pivotal point in her storied career, and a richly layered portrait of how vocal music, under the guidance of an indefatigable master, can play with our expectations in poignant and compelling ways. Teaming up here with her renowned Vocal Ensemble (featuring Theo Bleckmann, Katie Geissinger and Allison Sniffin) and backed by the Bang on a Can All-Stars, Monk explores all-new arrangements of never-before-recorded selections from her award-winning sci-fi opera The Games, as well as new versions of several pieces originally released on Do You Be (1987) and Impermanence (2008). What emerges from MEMORY GAME is a suite of songs that flows with a remarkable narrative cohesion, stemming in large part from the composer’s willingness to revisit the past with an insatiably curious eye.
Florent Ghys: Ritournelles - Music for Double Bass & Electronics
Cantaloupe Music
CD
$21.99May 20, 2022
In his third solo recording for Cantaloupe Music, Florent Ghys radically retools his approach with Ritournelles & Mosaïques — a wide-ranging two-part opus that pulls back the curtain on an intrepid composer, double bassist and electronics bricoleur in full sonic exploration mode. Ghys began work on the project in late 2019, but like the rest of the world, he soon found himself in the midst of a prolonged isolation period, which inspired him to expand his creative palette. On his previous album Télévision, Ghys had begun with an audio-visual idea; this time, he started at the root: with the sound. “I just wanted to make something that sounded great,” he says, “so I spent a lot of time studying the sound of my bass — analyzing it, making sample libraries, recording it — and then studying the different microphones, different rooms, different basses too. So it really started from the sound, and then adapting my audio-visual ideas to that.” Ritournelles is essentially the electro-acoustic, ambient instrumental portion of the program, while Mosaïques is more sample-based and electronic, seething with textural complexity. “Despite the differences though,” Ghys explains, “they really come from the same initial artistic impulse.”
Discover the world’s earliest music by a female composer: 9th-century nun, poet, and hymnographer Kassianí (Kassía). The same men and women of Cappella Romana who brought you the “Lost Voices of Hagia Sophia” bestseller (43 weeks on Billboard), now sing the earliest music we have by a female composer, including long-suppressed hymns recorded here for the first time. They close with two medieval versions of her beloved hymn for Orthodox Holy Week. Cappella Romana is the world’s leading ensemble in the field of medieval Byzantine chant. Building on its extensive catalogue of this repertoire, Hymns of Kassianí is its 25th release. This is the first of a planned series to record all of Kassianí’s surviving works.
CONTENTS:
1. Lamplighting Psalms, Mode 2 (arr. I. Arvanitis for choir) 05:32 2. Stichera Prosomoia of Christmas (1st set) (arr. I. Arvanitis for choir) 10:11 3. Stichera Prosomoia of Christmas (2nd Set) (arr. I. Arvanitis for choir) 06:53 4. When Augustus Reigned (arr. I. Arvanitis for choir) 04:51 5. Idiomelon from Great Vespers (arr. I. Arvanitis for choir) 03:17 6. Tetraódion (arr. I. Arvanitis for choir) 05:38 7. Idiomelon from Matins (arr. I. Arvanitis for choir) 03:06 8. Tetraódion (Odes 4 and 5) (arr. I. Arvanitis for choir) 06:04 9. On Great and Holy Wednesday at Matins, "Lord, the woman found in many sins" (arr. I. Arvanitis for choir) 08:07 10. Kálophonic stícheron, "Lord, The Woman Found in Many Sins" (arr. I. Arvanitis for choir)
REVIEWS:
Cappella Romana is transforming the dry, brittle pages of ancient Byzantine scores into living musical lyricism with a broad international appeal. Their latest album provides a stunning entrée to the work of Kassianí. This album provides a new tool not only for self-examination but for indulgence in the rich sensual heritage of Byzantine singing. Kassianí’s songs demand to be heard, and we are enriched by listening to them, especially in this authentic and deeply expressive collection.
– ConcertoNet (Linda Holt)
The performances transport the listener back in time to experience this music in stunning sound. Notes and additional information in the accompanying booklet help further bring Kassiani’s music to life by the premiere ensemble performing these ancient Byzantine music. More music from the woman canonized as Kassiani the Hymnographer is forthcoming this year. Highly Recommended!
Eric Richards: The Consent of Sound & Meaning / Ekmeles, Loadbang
New Focus Recordings
CD
$10.49$20.99Save 50%Jan 20, 2023
Composer Eric Richards approached listening as an embodied activity, an amalgamation of the auditory, psychological, and emotional experience we have hearing artistic sound. This album, produced by Andy Kozar and Jeffrey Gavett, features several of Richards's entrancing chamber works performed by Ekmeles, loadbang, Gavett, and Kozar as well as a host of New York based freelancers, and shines a light on a composer whose poetic approach to compositional, observation, and technology has been widely overlooked previously.
There is power in the written word. The words we say often go unremembered, spilling out into our world and never reaching another's ear. When words are important enough to write, they gain the power of history. When words are important enough to sing, they gain the power of humanity. On November 22, 1963, U.S. President John F. Kennedy was assassinated in Dallas, Texas, while sitting next to his wife, Jacqueline Kennedy. For years to come after this infamous day, letters were written to Jackie, expressing condolences and confusion, the spectrum of grief memorialized in the written word. This project has sought to give voice to those letters, providing community for listeners sharing in that collective grief. It is a touchstone for turning inward and experiencing grief through the lens of a national tragedy. The music of Dear Mrs. Kennedy provides a communal journey to safely explore grief and spark conversation on the importance of human connection. Rather than President Kennedy or First Lady Jackie explicitly, the central character in this music is Grief itself: the grief of a nation-and of a world. -Ryan Townsend Strand, tenor
What happens when a soundtrack is taken from a film and given a life on its own? When two Icelandic composers Páll Ragnar Pálsson and Eðvarð Egilsson finished scoring Quake, a psychological family drama, they were not ready to stop just there. What followed was a voyage of musical discoveries as they allowed for new ideas to enter the creative space. Just as a plant spread itself over the whole garden, cues from the movie scenes become independent, mature songs. The soundscape dwells on the border of acoustic and electronic and drifts from song-based to textural, from atmospheric to cinematic with lustrous cello in the foreground.
The music of this album derives from the stage work SEMMELWEIS, whose initial creation and development came about with the generous help of the American Opera Project, Budapest Operetta Theater, The Bartok Plusz Opera Festival, the Charles P. Sloan Foundation, Ensemble Studio Theater, the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, Edward Andrews, Dr. Laszlo Rosivall, Dr. Ana Berlin, Dr. Warren Widmann, and many others listed in the thank-you section. It premiered at the Bartok Plusz Opera Festival in a production directed by Martin Boross, which ran in Budapest and toured throughout Hungary. The music of SEMMELWEIS underwent significant artistic development with help from director Martin Boross, music director Dániel Dinyés, dramaturg Diána Eszter Mátrai, and assistant director Julia Jakubowska. This album has deep roots and owes it's thanks to so many who have supported it, informed it, encouraged it, critiqued it, coached it, lent a listening ear to it, brought it to stages, performed in earlier live versions of it, helped find opportunities for it, etc. Much gratitude to: Ana Berlin, Eva Berlin-Lustig, Dr. Daniel Seidman, Luigi Porto, Matt Gray, Dániel Dinyés, Mila Henry, Charity Wicks, Hans Tashjian, Peter Thall, Tara Khozein, Troy Germanow Alejandro Berlin, András Tucker, Audrey Jakab, Bartók Béla Chamber Chorus of Szolnok, Carola Timmel, Chaitanya Sangco, Charles Jarden, Conrad Cummings, Daisy Press, EMI Ferguson, Erwin Maas, Éva Molnár, György Lorinczy, Hermann Szabolcs, John Corigliano, Joy Tamayo, Karmina Šilec, Katelan Terrell, Nina Colosi, Ryan McAdams, Sandcastle New Music, Szilveszter P. Szabó, The Streaming Museum, Veronika Nádasi, Maryna Abigail Fisher, Ákos Podráczky, Alice Lustig, Amy Justman, András Juhász, Angel Orensanz Center, Balassi Institute, Bill Jones, Brett Umlauf, Brian Meece, Bryan P. Hurley, Ph.D., Carolyn Stem, Catherine Hancock, Charlotte Dobbs, Christopher Botta, Dániel Patkós, Dina Rose Rivera, Dora Halas, Dóra Tési, Dr. Bernhard Küenburg, Dr. Jonathan Miller, Dr. Sherwin Nuland, Edward Bilous, Elaine Larson, Elena Kieffer, Elena Kowalsky, Eniko Lévai, Eszter Nemethi, Evan Fein, Ferenc Kumin, Gábor Csonka, Galapagos Art Space, Gary Shapiro, Gertrúd Andrási, Glenn Fleshler, Glimmerglass Opera, Greg Knowles, Greta Berman, Guadalupe Peraza, Guy Coolen, Howard Lieberman, Ildiko Eri, Inge Ivchenko, James Paulk, James Schaeffer, Jennifer Panara, Jenny Horváth, Jessica Miller-Rausch, Jessica Savage, JoAnn Dolan, Joanna Ebenstein, Joel Kalow, Joerg Ahlgrimm, John Brown, Mary Brown, John Lustig, Joseph Keckler, Josh Mertz, Júlia Hadi, Julianne Zahl, Julie Nagel, Kate Maroney, Kelly Horsted, Kendall Briggs, Kerry B. Grennan, N.P., Kiara Duran, Laura Kaminsky, Lee Streby, Lili Raubinek, Lisa Romain, Luke Canterella, Maeve Höglund, Marcy Richardson, Marguerite French, Martin Verdrager, Matthew Curran, McGinn Educational Center at Staten Island University Hospital, Megan Schubert, Michael Marcotte, Michelle DiBucci, Miron Kováts, Moirae Ensemble, Molly and Marvin Brooks, Music Theater Now, Musiktheatertage Wien, National Arts Club, Ned Canty, New York Academy of Medicine, Nissa Kahle, Norman Ryan, Opera Grows in Brooklyn, Opera on Tap, Operadagen Rotterdam, Patricia Price, Patrick Porter, Paul Dolan, Paul Haas, Paul Schneider, Paula Mlyn, Peter Flint, Phil Simmons, Raymond Lustig Sr., Regina Lustig, Robert E. Lee III, Ryan Andes, Samantha Martin, Samuel Katz, Samuel Zyman, Sára Zalányi, Sarah Small, Sophie Delphis, Stephanie Griffin, Steven Osgood, Susan Jakab, Tamás Keller, Tara Geer, Thomas Campbell Jackson, Thomas Desi, Tünde Frankó, Zita Vadasz, Gerd Kühl, Ildikó Barabás, József Dreiszker, Kelly Guerra, Marton Szegedi, Máté Vincze, Megan Ketch, Olivia Baseman.
The lute, undoubtedly the most popular instrument of European townsfolk and aristocrats in the 16th and 17th centuries, was widely played in Prague during the reign of Emperor Rudolf II. A manuscript of lute tablatures known as the Codex Jacobides was in all likelihood written by a musically gifted student of the Prague University in the early 17th century. It features notations of period dances, intabulations of songs, and vocal polyphonic secular and sacred pieces; miniatures of German, English, French, Italian, Polish and Spanish provenience. Extremely intriguing are the intabulations of vocal villanelle by Jacob Regnart, who served as Kapellmeister at Rudolf II’s court in Prague. Originally set to German texts, these pieces had found their way from Prague Castle to the city beneath, where – furnished with Czech lyrics – they lived a life of their own. The Codex Jacobides also contains works by Michael Praetorius, John Dowland and Jean Planson. Jan Cižmár studied the lute in London and The Hague with true masters (J. Lindberg, N. North, J. Held, M. Fentross, C. Pluhar), and today he is a sought-after soloist and chamber musician, performing worldwide. On the album, eight string instruments of various sizes and tunings are heard in a number of combinations, occasionally accompanied by a flute or lute ensemble and voice. Affording a taste of the music performed in Prague under Rudolf II, the album is a true delicacy for connoisseurs and all music lovers alike. Lute music that during the reign of Rudolf II was played in Prague streets and taverns, as well as at the local university.
Kraig Grady, an American based in Australia, is a microtonal composer. He explains it thus: 'Alternative tunings are a major inspiration for my compositional explorations. The pivotal point for me was meeting with tuning theorist Ervin Wilson and witnessing Harry Partch's U.S. Highball in 1975. I was convinced that working with different instruments and tunings was going to be a major artistic movement. I began studying tuning with Wilson which continued for as long as we knew each other. I'm interested in using acoustic instruments as sound sources to explore new acoustic phenomena that cannot be mistaken for electronic manipulation.' The starting point for the works on this CD was to record each performer playing individual notes in the given microtonal tuning with extreme pitch accuracy. The recordings are edited to capture the personal expressivity of the players and the individuality of their gestures in the recordings become inseparable from the composition process. These recordings of individual notes are then weaved together to form melodic lines and combined to build harmonies and shifting textures. Liner notes by Grady with illustrated samples.
I'm a digital nomad, says Arnold Kasar. "I like to sit in the dining car in the morning, when the train is heading south from Berlin, and my eyes can take in a landscape in the morning fog. It doesn't even take five minutes, and I'm in old Europe, in a whole different mindset. With my mobile equipment I can work very well in the dining car, and also in hotels. I have my own sonic vocabulary, which no one else has, and it allows me to be independent. I listened to my album Resonanz entirely during these endless train journeys, editing and honing it gradually." Arnold Kasar has done a lot of commuting over the last few years to record with legendary figures such as Hans-Joachim Roedelius and Friedrich Liechtenstein. On these journeys he captured impressions of the day as sound recordings, his laptop became a sketchbook. In this way, several hours of extremely personal piano improvisations have accumulated, which Arnold Kasar now and then selected an individual take and processes it beyond recognition. Through the act of editing his present album Resonanz is the result. "I have a toolbox of portable synthesizers that are the source of everything. So at any time, I can go from the piano to the electronics and back to the solo piano, or mix them together." Arnold Kasar describes this process as a medial exchange, from the observation to the deconstructed melody, to the dark drone and then back to contemplation.
Simone Fontanelli: Strings of an Imaginary Theatre
Stradivarius
CD
$16.99Mar 20, 2026
All the works on this CD share a constant feature: the musical "gesture," which is at the origin of each piece. This "gesture" may appear in several ways. It may be brief and concise, as in the opening of ".a riveder le stelle," or more complex and extensive, as in the beginning of "Mosaico." In all cases, however, the "gesture" creates a "figure" and a "situation" that sets off a process of transformation. As in a theatrical scene, even a short one, the instrument is like a character who acts through this or that "gesture," expressing speech through articulated transforming figures. Just like a monologue or, in other cases, like a dialogue. A guitar, a violin, a harp, or a cello are not just musical instruments. They are "characters" with their own personality and a story to tell. Furthermore, each piece is a story where several situations occur and memories from the past return. "Narration" is another basic element of my way of composing. It can take different routes, reaching different destinations. The last part of "Youth," written for harp, rediscovers the vague memory of a 70s song that I loved when I was a teenager. The end of ".a riveder le stelle" and "Mosaico" are concluding moments of a journey where many things had happened, and where now, looking back, we can understand the sense of them and the sense of the journey itself. At no point are the direction and the destination set at the beginning. They are "found" along the way, for what is important is the journey. Simone Fontanelli
Beloved songs by Stanislaw Moniuszko are presented here in a striking new sound world, inspired by the tradition of 19th-century home music-making, where the piano gives way to plucked instruments-lutes and guitars. This bold artistic vision is further enriched by masterful spoken interpretations of poetry by writers close to the composer, delivered by acclaimed actor Krzysztof Gosztyla. Two contrasting vocal voices-a light, luminous female timbre and a strong, resonant male voice-come together to tell a story in which wit and humor intertwine with moments of tender, nostalgic reflection.
David John Pike, one of Canada's leading baritone singers, and the great English organist David Briggs present Mahler: Orchestral Songs - The Organ Transcriptions, an astounding new album offering renditions of three cycles of lieder by Gustav Mahler. The recording of these opulent scores on the phenomenal new Eule organ at the Konstantin-Basilika in Germany, has an immediate appeal. The organ's atonal spectrum and the wondrous acoustic of the basilica give a unique and thrilling dimension to the music. About this recording, Briggs wrote: "I was delighted with David Pike asked me to work with him to record these three wonderful Mahler song cycles. There are many pre-existing recordings with piano accompaniment, but the opportunity to register these opulent scores on the phenomenal new Eule organ at the Konstantin-Basilika, taking the music back to it's very core and recasting it anew, was something that had an immediate appeal..."
Scattolin: Suoni e rime sparse - Choral, Vocal and Instrumental Works
Tactus
CD
$10.99$21.99Save 50%Aug 06, 2021
The present release synthesizes some stages characterizing the composition path of Pier Paolo Scattolin: from a cappella vocality to instrumentalism with stylistic dynamics sometimes distant but all having in common the research on sound, from the linguistic phoneme to the eclectic and sometimes experimental use of instrumental emission. The path winds through almost forty years of continuous investigation and dissection of both choral and instrumental sound, the latter of a chamber/soloistic character and in some cases concerted and intersected with the voice. In the a cappella choral repertoire a varied anthology collects poetic and literary texts by Dante Alighieri, Giuseppe Ungaretti, Alda Merini, Umberto Saba, Emily Dickinson, Alessandro Striggio, Agnolo Poliziano, Alceo, Saffo, Ipponatte, Enzo Iacchetti, Agnese Troilo and the composer himself. Some choral pieces are concerted with the Ensemble of ancient instruments Circe from Bologna, whose presence stems from the search for a sound language proceeding towards the stripping and essentiality of a music and a sound coherent with the setting of the poetic texts in order to transfer their instrumental characteristics to contemporary musical expression. In some pieces the solo voices are added as an almost instrumental colour, a timbre enrichment of the sonorities of the organ, the recorders, and the trumpets.
