For more than two decades, Polansky, who the Village Voice called “the heir apparent to the Cowell/Nancarrow/Tenney genius experimentalist mantle,” has been composing a series of fascinating mensuration canons (a formal concept dating back to the Renaissance) that run the sonic gamut from wildly boisterous to serenely introverted. This disc collects thirteen of these canons with widely varying instrumentations that include marimbas, gamelan, electric guitars, children's voices, computer, choir, and chamber ensemble. Performances by and collaborations with William Winant, Jody Diamond, Daniel Goode, Nathan Davis, Nick Didkovsky, and others. The Wire magazine wrote about this CD, “An unashamedly tactile approach to musical material, forging an oblique angle to tradition… cool and elegant…. [I]t’s a mark of his resourceful mind that he can adapt the basic rules into a series of such complex and varied works.... Polansky’s canons show the extreme liberties that can be born from such exacting discipline.” International Record Review commented, “The music of Larry Polansky is as much fun to listen to as it is to think or get serious about…the results are dazzling as each canon defines its individual properties and unique sound world.... The transformations are ubiquitous and compelling…. With so much on offer, this is one of the best discs Cold Blue music has issued.” And ClassicalNet wrote, “Larry Polansky is the modern dean of the mensuration canon…. These canons are clever, mysterious, and comical—part theory of relativity, part Rube Goldberg.”

‘This West Indian tragedy has remained the sole dramatic work of a heroic world in pre-Columbian times that, after a flourishing heyday, was abruptly terminated by foreign violence.’ Egon Wellesz (1925). In musical terms, the Opferung shows Egon Wellesz at the zenith of his creativity. In this music, Wellesz’ emancipation from his mentor Schoenberg and his aesthetics has progressed even further, as throughout his life Egon Wellesz was interested in evolving his own, unmistakable musical diction. The events of 12 March 1938 put a sudden end to this so successful career: As a Jew, monarchist and the writer of ‘degenerate music’, the 53-year-old musician was immediately removed from all of his posts and wanted by the police after ‘the seizure of power’. Following a long illness, Egon Wellesz died in Oxford in 1974.

Nearly all of Daniel Purcell’s surviving solo harpsichord music consists of arrangements, the only clear exception being the short Toccata, a brief essay in the style of the preludes from Henry Purcell’s harpsichord suites. The Suite is a simple but effective arrangement of movements from the composer’s own suite

BAYOU LIGHTNING

Unissued session from 1977.

Limited 180gm vinyl LP pressing. Recorded for Berry Gordy's short-lived Workshop Jazz imprint and recorded at the Hitsville USA studio, Roy Brooks (joined by fellow Detroit natives George Bohannon and Hugh Lawson, along with his Horace Silver Quintet bandmates Blue Mitchell, Junior Cook, and Eugene Taylor) injects a Motor City soul-jazz groove into the hard bop root of this engaging 1964 album. Verve By Request Series features transfers from analog tapes, remastered on 180-gram vinyl and pressed at Third Man in Detroit.