This collaboration with playwright David Henry Hwang and visual artist Jerome Sirlin premiered in a Viennese airport hangar in 1988, and it beats John Adams. Since Glass took to the stage and screen as his main career in the 1980s, he's repeated chord changes and arrangements to the point of hackwork. Even here, in fact, bits of dramatic musical emphasis are as fussy as his usual orchestral soundtrack work, some of them featuring Linda Ronstadt's high ooh-ing. Moments of pure schlock are crafted from the same old ostinatos, obbligatos, and harmonies once lit up by the electric Philip Glass Ensemble. But most of it works.

Composer David First has explored microtonal systems and pitch bending with instruments ranging from the Casio to the theremin to his electric guitar, and more than one reviewer has pointed out the relation of his music to that of composer Alvin Lucier. While growing up in Philadelphia, First was exposed to opera through his grandmother, a former opera singer, and learned about just intonation and overdubbing from his father. While his primary instrument is the guitar, First also plays synthesizer and EBO bass on his recordings. Some of First's compositions can be heard on the 1991 release Resolver (with Joseph Celli and the World Casio Quartet) and The Good Book's (Accurate) Jail of Escape Dust Coordinates (1995), both on O.O. Discs.

Premiere American recording of Karlheinz Stockhausen, Joseph Celli , Malcolm Goldstein, and Elliott Schwartz. Wonderful performances by Joseph Celli in this historic recording re-released on CD. Contains the only American release of Stockhausen's "Spiral" (1968) for soloists on short-wave radio and other instruments, Celli's "Sky:S for J" (1976), Elliott Schwartz' "Extended Oboe" (1973-74) for oboe and electronic tape, and Malcolm Goldstein's "A Summoning of Focus" (1977) for wind instruments.

Jarvis and Friends Volume 2 is the second release in a series of albums comprising collections of mostly improvised duos. Volume 2 includes bass trombone, electric guitar, multiple percussion, mallet percussion, drum set and vocals. As before, Peter Jarvis has teamed up with some of the finest musicians in the world, including David Taylor (bass trombone and vocals), Gene Pritsker (electric guitar), Kevin Norton (vibraphone and percussion) and Payton MacDonald (marimba.) Peter Jarvis is playing marimba, multiple percussion and drum set. The volume includes both improvisations and composed pieces. The artwork is by Mark Kostabi.

Pianist Michael Kirkendoll performs "De Profundis" and "Marriage (Mile 58)" from "The Road", by composer Frederic Rzewski. This is a full performance with complete narration and improvisations derived from the writings of Tolstoy and Oscar Wilde. This double vinyl release in a gatefold package is limited to 500 copies. Sure to become the definitive version to treasure and cherish.

These quartets are Juilliard specialties, and anyone wanting to hear this music played with a near ideal combination of virtuosity and humanity need look no further. Carter's quartets are not for the musically faint of heart: they are uncompromisingly thorny, intricate pieces that require lots of intense, dedicated listening. Very few people doubt their seriousness–or even their claims to musical greatness–but just as few people enjoy listening to them. Perhaps this spectacular set will encourage the adventurous to give them a shot. They're worth the time.

American rock singer, guitar player, record producer, and actress. Born on September 22, 1958 as Joan Marie Larkin. After the divorce of her parents she changed her surname to her mother's maiden name: Jett. At age 15, Jett co-founded The Runaways. As the leader of Joan Jett & The Blackhearts, Jett has had eight platinum and gold albums and nine Top 40 singles…

Terry Riley’s name will always be associated with his breakthrough work In C, but his influence on modern music has stretched far beyond minimalism. Both of the works on this recording reveal Riley’s spirit of exploration and his close collaboration with remarkable musicians. Commissioned by the Nashville Symphony, The Palmian Chord Ryddle is a kind of musical autobiography in which electric violin pioneer Tracy Silverman’s “one-man string quartet” sets the pace for the sparse, translucent orchestration. At the Royal Majestic is another recent example of Riley’s work with a symphony orchestra and a virtuosic soloist, in this case organist Todd Wilson. Its title refers to “the mighty Wurlitzer housed in grand movie palaces,” and the music draws on a wide variety of genres including gospel, ragtime, Baroque chorales, and boogie.

Deutsche Grammophon's budget-priced, four-CD collection of all the works by György Ligeti in its catalog has many things to commend it, beginning with the title. Clear or Cloudy is a profoundly astute description of the composer's career, encompassing both the great sound clouds of his micropolyphonic work of the 1960s, such as Atmosphères, Volumina, Lux aeterna, and Lontano, and the crystalline clarity of his early years, demonstrated in Six Bagatelles for wind quintet and his first String Quartet, as well as in his Etudes pour piano and Piano Concerto from his final period.

Three Tales is a video-opera in three acts (titled Hindenburg, Bikini and Dolly) with music by American composer Steve Reich and visuals by Beryl Korot, his wife. It is scored for two sopranos, three tenors, string quartet, percussion, keyboards, and pre-recorded audio. Its premiere was at the Vienna Festival on May 12, 2002; the BBC had commissioned a version for television broadcast four months later. The 12-minute tale Hindenburg had been written (and recorded) in 1998, while the remaining tales were completed (and recorded) in the year of the premiere.

Viola Space in Tokyo is one of the world’s most important musical festivals dedicated to the viola and the music composed for it. Founded by Nobuko Imai – well-known to BIS followers as well as to lovers of the viola – it celebrates its 10th anniversary, and BIS was invited to document some of the 150 works that have been performed over the years. The program spans over more than 70 years, and the list of composer includes Schnittke, Per Nørgård, Penderecki and Oedoen Partos. Nobuko Imai herself performs two of the most exciting works on the two discs: György Ligeti’s Sonata for Viola Solo and Toshio Hosokawa’s Voyage VI for Viola and Strings. This last piece was composed only last year, and is dedicated Nobuko Imai. It forms part of a series of concertos “in which the soloist symbolizes man while the ensemble represents the universe, nature and world that surrounds us within and without”, in the composer’s own description. Among these a modern classic such as György Kurtág’s Hommage à R. Sch. – in which violist Junji Suganuma is joined by a clarinet and a piano – may be mentioned, as well as Viola, Viola, a constantly surprising duo by George Benjamin.

Original soundtrack for the film “Embers” is released. This film is based on the story written by the Akutagawa Prize awarded novelist Fuminori Nakamura, and directed by Junpei Matsumoto, starring Yuya Yagira, with Masato Yano, Yu Hirukawa, Kenichi Takito, and Lily. This delicate film score composed by a piano and a string quartet with courtesies and sympathetic manner, are to express the emotions and feeling of the main character Keito played by Yuya Yagira and other characters in the story.

Godard/Spillane is a compilation album by American composer and saxophonist/multi-instrumentalist John Zorn consisting of music created through Zorn's file-card compositional process. He first released the composition "Godard", a tribute to French film-maker Jean-Luc Godard whose jump-cut technique inspired Zorn's compositional approach, on the French tribute album The Godard Fans: Godard Ca Vous Chante? in 1986, "Spillane was first released on Zorn's Nonesuch Records album Spillane in 1987 and "Blues Noel" was first released on the compilation album Joyeux Noel - Merry Christmas Everybody! on the French Nato label in 1987.

A holy grail among contemporary music collectors, this release on Brian Eno's Obscure label, which went out of print almost immediately, features two of the finest compositions of the late 20th century, both by Gavin Bryars. The title track had since been recorded again on two occasions, arguably to better effect on Les Disques du Crepuscule in 1990 and once, more pallidly, on Point in 1994, but this initial production was an extremely special event. Bryars' idea was to construct an aural picture of the disaster, complete with songs and hymns supposedly played by the ship's orchestra even as she was sinking.

If Steve Reich's Music for 18 Musicians is simply described in terms of its materials and organization – 11 chords followed by 11 pieces built on those chords – then it might seem utterly dry and monotonous. The actual music, though, is far from lackluster. When this recording was released in 1978, the impact on the new music scene was immediate and overwhelming. Anyone who saw potential in minimalism and had hoped for a major breakthrough piece found it here. The beauty of its pulsing added-note harmonies and the sustained power and precision of the performance were the music's salient features; and instead of the sterile, electronic sound usually associated with minimalism, the music's warm resonance was a welcome change. Yet repeated listening brought out a subtle and important shift in Reich's conception: the patterns were no longer static repetitions moving in and out of phase with each other, but were now flexible units that grew organically and changed incrementally over the course of the work.