When composer Jeffrey Brooks premiered The Memory Palace at Bang on a Can's summer festival at MASS MoCA in July 2023, he'd perfected the presentation of what we now know as the Stein-o-caster - a new form of prepared piano, fitted with pickups, that he conceived and designed the previous year with electronics engineer Greg Lee. As a featured instrument on two pieces from this new recording, the Stein-o-caster sets the tone for the aural atmospherics and soundscapes that transport the music into fresh dimensions of space and time. An artist of wide-ranging musical tastes, Brooks has also held a lifelong affinity for the electric guitar (Jimi Hendrix is a personal hero), so in the context of The Memory Palace, it made sense to approach longtime collaborator Mark Stewart - in-house guitarist for the Bang on a Can All-Stars, and musical director for Paul Simon's touring band - for a specially commissioned piece. This became "Santuario," scored for double-neck electric guitar, and a mini-epic of sonic exploration in it's own right.

In celebration of their 25th year together as one of the most adventurous and influential percussion ensembles in contemporary music, So Percussion announces the release of 25x 25. In keeping with the group's forward-looking mission, this 8-disc box set is not a retrospective; more characteristically, it's a stand-alone listening experience, featuring more than 8 hours of entirely new and previously unreleased recordings, with each piece written for, in collaboration with, and premiered by So Percussion. Over the last 25 years, the members of So - Jason Treuting, Adam Sliwinski, Josh Quillen, and Eric Cha-Beach - have been hailed for their gripping performances and wildly creative collaborations. Cantaloupe Music (the label launched by the Bang on a Can collective, which released So's first-ever album in 2004), is pleased to offer this collection to longtime fans and newcomers alike. It's both a comprehensive portrait, and a forecasting of where contemporary chamber music is heading.

The invaluable electronic music advocacy organization SEAMUS releases their latest compilation, featuring path breaking works by Patrick Reed, Leah Reid, Andrew Burke, Kerem Ergener, Mickie Wadsworth, Oliver Harlan, Aleu Botelho, Paul J. Botelho, and the SEAMUS Student Commission first prize work by Liann J. Kang.

Look around at the place you are right now - yes, now. Apartment, house, subway car, tool shed, office, wherever. Now imagine this place, with all it's material elements and constituent parts, intertwined as they are, as living, with a circulatory system and a pulse. With an inner life, a memory, experiences and a story of itself to tell. Now listen. Nathan Davis's Earthworks is a unique acousmatic piece, a 40-minute conceptual and musical love child of land art, environmental activism and music concrete in which the composer orchestrates the sonic outcome of the extraction, processing and use of common commercial materials of our contemporary built environment. It is an audio tapestry of drilling, fracking, stirring, slurring, scraping, cracking, popping and hammering, with the bright thread of one very intimate human voice woven through it. This particular iteration of Earthworks, originally produced as a sound installation for the exhibit "Planetary Home Improvement: From Just-in-time to Geological Time", is immersive in nature - both a recording and a full-body experience, primordial and post-industrial. Davis collected field recordings of the raw materials and created a multi-channel sound environment using the materials themselves as speakers, soundboards, and resonators. It is musique concrete as composed through a big box store, and the effect it had on me was mysterious - compelling and even dreamy. A few times I pictured Morton Feldman walking through the enormous back aisles of a Home Depot - the "modern quarry" from which this work is drawn - with an Earthworks-like soundtrack running through his celestial head. In experiencing Davis's work I often find that in addition to composing in the traditional sense, he is also coaxing and conjuring, often in nature, and often with the most basic elements - minerals, metals, stones, water, air. Much of the power of Earthworks derives from what the exhibition artists describe as "collapsing the ancient and the instant." Of it's audience Earthworks demands close attention and attunement to the elements from which it arises. I fully understand that there is a conceptual sophistication and technological mastery at work in pieces like this - it is experimental music for grown ups - but I think I'd do Earthworks a disservice by overintellectualizing the pleasures inherent in it. By this I mean that there is something childlike about the work. At least, this is least one of the responses it summoned in me. I experience these "lifeless" materials both talking amongst themselves and speaking to me. When Sylvia Milo begins the piece by intoning the names of these orchestral instruments - Galvanized steel sheet. Foam insulation. Polycarbonate panel... - each one followed by the sounding of it's characteristic voice, I'm transported back to my early listening to Peter and the Wolf, when I first heard Boris Karloff introducing the cast of the tale by way of their instrumental voices. As a percussionist Davis possesses a deep attunement to materials and their sonic characteristics. But there are non-material aspects embedded here as well. In this case the political context of the work: it is a response to the industrial plunder of the planet. The experience of listening to these materials speak, hearing their breath and pulses, move us closer to an understanding of this, and to a relationship of awareness and reciprocity with the Earth, whose body we tear apart in order to achieve shelter or convenience, and whose riches we violently transmute into material for use. Ever since the story of Adam and Eve's ejection from the Garden, and certainly before, our human alienation from Nature has been the source of existential grief. Part of the task of poets, artists, philosophers, filmmakers, musicians is to restore us to this Edenic state, in which we are again in peaceful harmony with the Earth and it's elements.

Heliossea is an intermedia work for flutes and live electronics composed by Alessandro Grego in 2003 and premiered in Trieste on June 21 - the summer solstice - of the same year. It is a meditation on the rising of the sun, starting from the first ray of light at dawn breaking over the horizon. Astronomical data about the phenomenon, translated into sound using Grego's custom-designed software, plays a crucial role in shaping the music. In 2023, to mark the 20th anniversary of Heliossea's premiere, Alessandro Grego created a new version titled Heliossea XX. This updated rendition was performed for the first time on September 3, 2023, at the Miramare Castle Park in Trieste. The work is conceived as a tribute to Margherita Hack and her contributions to science and Italian culture. The new version of Heliossea, produced by the Prodigys Group, was realized in collaboration with inaf-oats, which oversaw the scientific aspects of the project, and the "Studio di Sonologia Computazionale" in Padua, under the direction of Alvise Vidolin, which managed the surround sound diffusion. Astronomical data provided by the National Institute for Astrophysics (thanks to it's director Fabrizio Fiore and Massimo Ramella) enhanced the work's precision and immersive quality.

FRAGMENTS II - LILI BOULANGER / VARIOUS

In December 2017, in Fribourg, mezzo-soprano Marina Viotti met lutenist Vincent Fluckiger and multi-instrumentalist, engineer and producer Fred Chappuis. Under the guidance of director Wouter Van Looy, they created a fascinating show for performances at the Lucerne Theatre the following spring, which mixed the melancholic songs of John Dowland (1563-1626) with the sounds of electronic music. All three originally came from rock/metal/punk, and Wouter Van Looy would rekindle in each of them a profound desire to explore new horizons. Following the success of the Lucerne evenings, the mezzo-soprano engaged her two colleagues, now friends, a few months later in the pursuit of a common adventure, which was sealed in the idea of Melankh�lia: Dowland's captivating songs would now be joined by well-known pop songs rearranged in the same spirit, where the archlute or the modern electric guitar coexist with a Moog, percussion or a mellotron, enveloping the voice. Two eras speak to each other, and finally merge into each other. Several themes structure this intensely lyrical journey, carried by the lascivious voice of Marina Viotti: love and it's illusions, evoked in One by U2 as well as in Fairwell, Too Fair by Dowland, hopes (Die Not Before Thy Day by Dowland or Joga by Bjork) as well as death (Born to Die by Lana Del Rey preceded by In Darkness Let Me Dwell by Dowland) or redemption (Flow My Tears by Dowland). By infusing the spirit of her youth, these early years when she wrote texts and songs for her metal band, in her present, which sees her defending the most beautiful roles of the great lyric repertoire, Marina Viotti reveals a very intimate part of herself. More than a journey across the genres and over the centuries, "In Darkness Through the Light" is in fact the story of a life journey, a fight for life and against darkness. In the spring of 2019, the mezzo-soprano was diagnosed with Hodgkin's lymphoma, of which she recovered completely. The shadows gone, Marina Viotti was able to confide her secret, with total openness. It is therefore this experience that informs "In Darkness Through the Light", a project that accompanied her healing process, and which became the album of her liberation.

Roberta Settels was a composer and industrial designer who composed electronic music for spiritual survival. She was born in New York where she received her basic artistic-musical education at the Juilliard School of Music and The Art Students League, but was mostly residing in Europe. She composed at the EMS studios in Stockholm and IRCAM in Paris and worked with computerized and concrete music. “Music in Crisis” was her first gramophone record, but she also composed for TV-films, radio, and concerts.

The French composer Thierry Lancino composed his work "Aloni" for instrumental ensemble, boys' choir, vocal soloists and the live-elctronic environment developed at IRCAM, Paris. Specially designed algorithms process the acoustic music of instrumentalists and singers in real time and create a new musical dimension of space, timbre and artistic intensity. Tamas Ungvary is one of the pioneers of digital music at EMS, Stockholm, and is currently head of the computer music program at the Music Academy in Vienna. He composed for the computer as "non-real time soloist" in "Gypsy Children's Giant Dance with Ili Fourier". The recording of a children's dance from Hungary is analyzed by the computer and put back together in a way only an artist could come up with. The result is a phantastic voyage through sounds with gypsy music shimmering on the waves of new spectral shapes.

More than 50 composers from 13 different countries contributed to this collection of music with computers. Their pieces represent major directions of how avantgarde composers utilize the potential of new technology. Savouret, Alain / Lindwall, Christer / Oppenheim, Daniel V.

More than 50 composers from 13 different countries contributed to this collection of music with computers. Their pieces represent major directions of how avantgarde composers utilize the potential of new technology. Harmen de Boer: clarinet / Taco Kooistraa: cello / Yoko Abe, Rainer Boesch, Carlos Roque Alsina, Richard Teitelbaum, Adam Wodnicki: piano.

More than 50 composers from 13 different countries contributed to this collection of music with computers. Their pieces represent major directions of how avantgarde composers utilize the potential of new technology. The Historical CD of Digital Sound Synthesis. Randall, James: Mudgett, Monologues for a Mass Murderer/ Sound examples of Jean-Claude Risset's Introductory Catalogue of Computer Synthesized Sounds.

More than 50 composers from 13 different countries contributed to this collection of music with computers. Their pieces represent major directions of how avantgarde composers utilize the potential of new technology. Andreas Gutzwiller: shakuhachi / The University of New Mexico Percusssion Ensemble / Christopher Shultis: director / Cecil Lytle, Clark Griffith, David Burge: piano.

More than 50 composers from 13 different countries contributed to this collection of music with computers. Their pieces represent major directions of how avantgarde composers utilize the potential of new technology. Wilanow Quartet / Anthony de Mare: piano.

Music for Culture Wars / Peszat

Pastoral Reflections is a contemporary exploration on what the concept of ‘Pastoral’ means to us in this time of climate crisis. It features classical string sextet alongside field recordings, electronic bass & angular beats, centered around Gabriel Prokofiev’s contemporary response to Beethoven's 250 year old Pastoral Symphony.

The Album opens with the original first movement of Beethoven’s famous symphony (arranged for sextet) - reminding listeners of our less troubled relationship with nature 250 years ago - before moving on to the modern beats of Prokofiev’s recent composition Breaking Screens, which explores ideas of consumerism, digital life and impending crisis. The programme climaxes with 5 movement 'Pastoral Reflections' which echoes Beethoven’s symphonic narrative, but from a contemporary perspective.

Danger is what drives LAAKE. After tackling an electronic symphony with "O", first album released in 2020 on Mercury and two EPs released in 2015 and 2017, french pianist and producer LAAKE returns with "VOLT", a vast and solar opus against the current tides of the electronic music scene. The piano loops, spearhead of the musician, collide with the percussions and drums - great novelties of this album - in a progressive and mastered deluge. The album's energy easily navigates through electronic and classical dimensions, flirting with organ sounds, powerful basses and polyphonic voices, all witnesses of the urgency arising from each track.

Recorded with 10 musicians from the classical and jazz worlds between Paris and Brussels, the 10 tracks that make up the album succeed one another but do not sound alike… Carried by the irresistible need for the musicians to surprise us. Yet "VOLT", LAAKE's second studio album, was initially imagined as a piano solo record, a collection of hundreds of snippets of melodies recorded and carefully preserved over the last ten years by LAAKE. History decided otherwise: "During the recording of the first piece of the album, barefoot, I suffered an electrocution, or rather an electrification, the first one being fatal, by touching with my arm a luminous sconce of doubtful confection. Expelled backwards by the shock, persuaded to live my last moments, I noticed several minutes later the multiple burns appearing on my body, bewildered. A visit to the hospital followed and a psychological trauma that would last more than a year, unable to touch a switch or screw in a light bulb. The current had gone through me but I was still there. A cure? "LAAKE" means "medicine" in Finnish. A necessity rather, that of reinventing oneself, of metamorphosing in order to be better reborn.

Born in Münster/Westphalia in 1956, Klaus Ospald is one of the most renowned German composers of contemporary music. He studied composition in Detmold and Würzburg, and as a master student with Helmut Lachenmann. His works are played by internationally renowned performers and orchestras, and premieres of them are arranged by leading promoters and contemporary music festivals. Klaus Ospald has received numerous awards – most recently the International Hanns Eisler Scholarship of the City of Leipzig 2022. - This BR-KLASSIK CD presents Ospald's "Más raíz, menos criatura" in a live recording of a performance on November 22, 2019 in a musica viva concert from the Herkulessaal of the Munich Residenz, and also his "Quintett von den entlegenen Feldern" (Quintet from the remote fields), recorded on May 25, 2019 in the Laboratory for Fluid Mechanics and Turbomachinery at Coburg University of Applied Sciences. The ten-part composition "Más raíz, menos criatura" (loosely translated: "More root than man") ("Entlegene Felder III"/”Remote Fields III”) for orchestra, piano and eight-part chamber choir, based on the poem "El niño yuntero" (“The child as draught animal") by Miguel Hernández, was written in 2014/15 and revised in 2017. Ospald composed it as a commission from the SWR for the ECLAT Festival 2017, and it received its world premiere at the ECLAT Festival on February 5, 2017 at the Theaterhaus Stuttgart, with Yukiko Sugawara (piano), the SWR Vokalensemble and the SWR Sinfonieorchester conducted by Peter Rundel. The composition is part of a triad of works that Ospald wrote between 2012 and 2016 and placed together under the title "Remote Fields". This bundling together of works of different physiognomy is a basic characteristic of Ospald's oeuvre. Musical content is more important to him than performance standards or genre conventions. Such content determines the form and structure of the works and reflects the consciousness of a critical contemporary who has preserved his independence as an artist and human being, and who uncompromisingly defends the rights of the individual. The eight-part "Quintett von den entlegenen Feldern" for string trio, clarinet, piano and live electronics was commissioned by the SWR Experimental Studio in 2012/13, and revised in 2014. It received its world premiere (without live electronics) on May 31, 2014 at the SWR Studio Freiburg, Schlossbergsaal, with the Ensemble Experimental and its world premiere with live electronics on October 3, 2015 at the same venue by the same ensemble, featuring live electronic realisation by the SWR Experimentalstudio. It is important to Ospald that extended sounds become an integral part of the composition and are given their space. This form of live electronics requires a sound director in the performance who – like the musicians – "plays" the electronics according to the score.

SEAMUS releases Volume 32 of its ongoing series featuring electro-acoustic works from its current 2023 member composers. This volume includes pieces by Kristopher Bendrick, Kyong Mee Choi, Adam Mirza, Lisa Renée Coons, Robert McClure, Carolyn Borcherding, and Eli Stine.