GRAMMY WINNER, 59TH AWARDS: Best Chamber Music/Small Ensemble Performance. Third Coast Percussion has been saluted by the Washington Post for its virtuosity and precisely timed wit, and was called by the New York Times a commandingly elegant ensemble. The group, which is ensemble-in-residence at the University of Notre Dame, teaches and performs a concert series in Chicago, and has commissioned dozens of new works. This album is the ensembles Cedille label debut, and is an 80th birthday acknowledgement to American composer Steve Reich, the founding father of musical minimalism. This recording features four of Reichs most notable percussion works.

Gatefold slipcase with 12-page booklet containing scores, photos and liner notes. One of only two CDs to bear his name at the top, Edition RZ’s Michael Von Biel collection presents a hardcore haul from the nebulous 1960s avant garde, including one blinding, 13 minute piece of electronic composition commissioned from Von Biel by Karlheinz Stockhausen - his tutor at Darmstadt - which resulted in him repeatedly breaking the sliders on the desk during its creation! No messing, it’s worth it for that one alone - you won’t find it anywhere else! (just checked youtube and discogs) - but his patent taste for noisy dynamics and twist on convention elsewhere on the CD also make this a bit of a must, if you’re into that kind of thing.

Korean pianist Sung-Soo Cho performs an intriguing recital of compositions by American composers that range from works with very progressive musical language to ones that integrate influences of folk and honky-tonk – in other words, the full spectrum of modern American classical music. The oldest work on the program was written in 1967 and the most recent in 2015. John Corigliano, Michael Ippolito, John Adams, Lowell Liebermann, Steve Reich, Elliott Carter, and David Rakowski are all represented on this recording. These composers have a strong advocate in Sung-Soo Cho, who was awarded "Best American Contemporary Performance: at the Cincinnati World Piano Competition and "Best Performance of the Commissioned Work: at the Texas State International Piano Competition. An award winner of numerous international competitions, Cho has appeared as a soloist in Asia, the U.S., and Europe. A graduate of Seoul National University and Manhattan School of Music, he is currently pursuing his D.M.A. degree at the Cleveland Institute of Music. He is on the faculty at Notre Dame College.

Luca Francesconi is one of the most prominent Italian composer of his generation with a substantial and varied output to his credit. The release under review provides a good idea of his output although all the works recorded here are already some ten or twenty years old. Da Capo (1986) for small ensemble is the earliest work here and is probably one of Francesconi’s best-known and most popular. It is not difficult to understand why. It is a brilliantly scored, colourful piece full of nice instrumental touches and lively rhythms, although it opens and ends in a rather subdued manner. The other works were all composed at about the same time: between 1994 and 1995. They, too, display a considerable variety of means and moods. Etymo is the most substantial both in length and in content. The title, Etymo (as in etymology) is about the search for the origin and development of language. It sets texts from various poems from Baudelaire’s Les Fleurs du Mal for soprano, large ensemble and electronics. The final words are drawn from Baudelaire’s Carnets intimes.

The Cathedral of St. John the Divine is a place of prayer, peace, spiritual renewal, and a temple to all who love the organ—and Zorn responds in kind with a remarkably soothing and peaceful exploration of lyricism and sonic variation. Interrupted only occasionally by a few trademark Phantom of the Opera explosions, the music is meditative, devotional, and at times achingly beautiful. Inspired by the mystical worlds of William Blake and the French organ traditions of Charles Tournemire and Olivier Messiaen, the music is an extended exploration in search of spiritual healing.

Joseph Celli's Music Eyes Video Ears is a collection of five works written to accompany multi-channel video presentations. 36 Strings (1992) is for the multi-stringed Korean komungo, played here with much expression and feeling by Jin Hi Kim. In concert performance, the music accompanies five channels of video. The composition is dedicated to the reconciliation of North and South Korean families. 8 Mallets Four Brian (1986) is for marimba, vibraphone, xylophone and orchestra bells and three channels of video.

Drawing upon traditions as varied as Messiaen, Xenakis, Ligeti, Bach, Tournemire, Ives, Korla Pandit and The Phantom of the Opera, Zorn’s organ improvisations are transcendent, inspiring, ecstatic experiences, offering a direct line to the workings of his rich compositional imagination. Performed at St. Paul’s Chapel at a time when the organ was undergoing extensive reconstruction, the limited number of stops available to him focused his imagination to new heights, resulting in Zorn’s most revelatory recital to date. The second volume documenting these legendary organ recitals is a overwhelming experience filled with moments of passion, tenderness, fragility and extraordinary power.

Enno Poppe approaches electroacoustic music with an attitude that could be called 'sympathetic skepticism'. Although he has been involved since his student days with programming and a wide variety of electroacoustic techniques and instruments (also in his role as a conductor), not one of his compositions until now has been purely' electronic. In 'Rundfunk for nine synthesizers' Enno Poppe uses historical sounds not historical instruments; the instrumentation consists of nine Computers and nine keyboards.

Jeffrey Zeigler is one of the most innovative and versatile cellists of our time. He has been described as “fiery”, and a player who performs “with unforced simplicity and beauty of tone” by the New York Times. Acclaimed for his independent streak, Zeigler has commissioned dozens of works, and is admired as a potent collaborator and unique improviser. Zeigler is the recipient of the Avery Fisher Prize, the Polar Music Prize, the President’s Merit Award from the National Academy of Recorded Arts (Grammy’s), the Chamber Music America National Service Award and The Asia Society's Cultural Achievement Award.

“Wherever we are, what we hear is mostly noise” – John Cage. We are delighted to announce our latest release in the MUTE 4.0 (1978 > TOMORROW) series: STUMM433, a box set collating an unprecedented selection of Mute artists past, present and future, out in October 2019. From The Normal, the artist that started Mute, to the label’s newest signing, K Á R Y Y N, STUMM433 will feature a huge array – over 50 – of Mute artists including Depeche Mode, Yann Tiersen, Liars, Silicon Teens, Irmin Schmidt and many more, all presenting their own interpretation of one piece of music: John Cage’s game-changing composition, 4’33”.

There were intermittent soundtrack and score contributions of varying magnitudes, as well as a couple other low-key projects, but The Drift is Scott Walker's proper follow-up to 1995's Tilt, an album that also happened to trail its predecessor by 11 years. If 1984's Climate of Hunter put the MOR in morose, Tilt avoided the road completely and went straight toward the fractured, fraught images inside Walker's nightmares. It was entirely removed from anything that could've been classified as contemporary. The Drift isn't an equally severe leap from Tilt, but it is darker, less arranged, alternately more and less dense, and ultimately more frightening. Maybe it'll make your body temperature drop a few degrees. Working with what Walker has referred to as "blocks of sound," only a few of the album's 68 minutes have any connection to rock music, and many of those minutes are part of a harrowing 9/11 song that also obliquely references "Jailhouse Rock" as Elvis Presley cries out ("I'm the only one left alive!") to his stillborn twin brother. The songs swing from hovering drones to crushing jolts.

In October 1962, John Cage and David Tudor went to Japan to present a series of historic concerts. Sensation. These are invaluable recordings, since they aren’t of a selected repertoire reconsidered in tranquility but capture the atmosphere of a time when all this was new and highly radical. And it’s a fine programme, played by the best exponents.

With two fine soloists in the Concerto grosso, this is a must for collectors of Chandos Schnittke series, and a welcome reminder of one of the later 20th-centurys most distinctive and troubling musical voices. (Gramophone)

The World’s Longest Melody is a collection of experimental music written for the guitar by composer/guitarist Larry Polansky (b. 1954). The guitar has long been an important component in Polansky’s musical explorations, and this CD has grown from the enthusiasm for his work by the musicians of the Belgian electric guitar quartet ZWERM. The acoustic and electric guitar are featured both solo and in small and large combinations; a few pieces not originally conceived for the instrument are also presented here in guitar-oriented guise.

Produced in what must surely have been a watershed year for Dave, his final recording from 2011 may well be the best of the bunch. Inspired by the infamous Lindbergh baby kidnapping and subsequent trial in the early 1930s, this exceptional 49-minute single piece was conceived for an improvising ensemble of jazz and new music musicians.