Breathing – Remembering – Dissolving is a collaborative record bringing together a collection of contemporary experimental musical perspectives that all share a common interest: challenging the idea of what the human is in a musical performance. Composers, Clara Allison, Seán Ó Dálaigh, Julie Herndon, Hassan Estakhrian, Manuel Pessôa de Lima, and Marcel Zaes, contribute unique responses to themes we typically associate with being human, the body, and the larger aspects of sociality in/with/around humans. The project collects six works by composers of various backgrounds, gender and racial identities, and diverse musical styles, coming from the San Francisco Bay Area, United States, Latin America, and Europe. Each original work was created specifically for the Kuku-ruz Quartet while in residence in the Bay Area.

Based in Switzerland, the Kukuruz Quartet— 4 pianists on 4 pianos — is a close-knit group of divergent artistic personalities, all trained in disparate musical fields: Simone Keller is a versatile pianist in contemporary and classical music, Philip Bartels is an exper-imental theater stage director, Duri Collenberg studied composition in Amsterdam, and Lukas Rickli has broad experience in improvi-sation. They are equally at home on theater stages, concert halls, clubs, bars, office buildings, and studios.The ensemble was founded in 2014 in a corn field — Kukuruz means “corn” in several languages. These four pianists were first seen and heard making their contribution to a production by musician and theater director Ruedi Häusermann at the Zurich Schauspiel-haus. From the outset, the group has been engaged with classical music, jazz, and improvisation. This album is sponsored by Innova Recordings and American Composers Forum’s Bay Area Pilot program with support from Pro Hel-vetica and the Stanford Department of Music.