George Antheil: Piano Concerto No. 2, Serenade No. 2, and Dreams Philadelphia Virtuosi Chamber Orchestra. Daniel Spalding, conductor. Guy Livingston, piano. 'A concert pianist and vanguard composer, George Antheil (1900Ð1959) became known as the 'Bad Boy of Music.' The ultimate American in Paris, Antheil was an avant-garde provocateur of the first order who made his name composing iconoclastic compositions: the loudest and brashest classical music of his time. But this album gives us three new performancesÑtwo of them world-premiere recordingsÑwhich reveal another, forgotten side of Antheil, the incurable romantic. Written in 1926, after the height of Antheil's radical period, the Piano Concerto No. 2 (1926) is an experiment in classical form. The work contains the same sudden juxtapositions and abrupt contrasts of mood as his futurist music. But the excesses of his recent Ballet mécanique (written for 16 player pianos!) are compensated for by an almost spare, baroque orchestration and motifs that draw on Bach as much as on Stravinsky. In three movements, Antheil employs a more restrained but still exuberant style. The beautifully meditative slow movement is followed by a virtuosic and compelling toccata. Each movement ends on an overtly Bachian cadence, most obvious in the sweetly naive coda of the final movement. The ballet Dreams (1935) had a prior existence in Paris. It was called Les Songes, and Darius Milhaud wrote the original music in 1933, later discarded in favor of Antheil's score. The plot was based on a surrealist poem by the painter André Derain. And Balanchine choreographed the production for his company Les Ballets. Antheil plays sarcastically with contradictions: waltz vs. march; folk song vs. orchestral romanticism. This is marvelous ballet music, and the unexpected structural and melodic changes keep us on the edge of our seat: amused and entertained. The lack of a formal structure does not hamper Antheil; he seemed to thrive on it, both in this piece, and in many others he wrote. Despite the cut-and-paste exoticism and the predictable thematic material, this music sounds appealingly AmericanÑfolksy, populist, and engaging. Antheil's brilliant orchestration makes these works shine. Not much is known about the genesis of the Serenade No. 2 (1948). As the work neared completion, Antheil wrote, the Serenade '. . . is as important, for me, as a new symphony; indeed, it can be played by a major symphony orchestra.' It's a beautifully orchestrated, lush work. Both serenades are in three movementsÑthe first is for strings alone while the second adds a wind section and a percussionist. Some of the themes from the first serenade re-occur in the second serenade.'

'This long-awaited reissue of the CRI recording of Earle Brown's (1926Ð2002) music is the best overview of his seminal early works. 'It is obviously a great pleasure for me that CRI is re-releasing its 1974 recording of my work, and an even greater pleasure that I am able to add to the repertoire. The performance of Times Five and Novara (recorded in Holland) still seem very fine representations of the works and are performed brilliantly by the Dutch musicians. December 1952 as realized by the late, brilliant pianist and composer David Tudor is, in my opinion, the best of many performances he made of this graphic score. It is fascinating to hear the realizations by Michael Daugherty of November 1952, December 1952 and Four Systems (all published in 'Folio' (1952Ð54)Ñimmensely inventive and marvelously performed on piano, tape and computer, with the newer technology that was not available to Tudor at the time he recorded his version of December 1952. This recording of Nine Rare-Bits is one of six versions that Antoinette Vischer (who commissioned the work) and George Gruntz surprised me with when I returned to Basel after my lectures in Stockholm in 1965. Although I very specifically compose the sound events, it is an 'open-form' score, subject to innumerable formal shapes, arranged by the performers themselves. 'Music for Violin, Cello and Piano' is a very early (1952) twelve-tone serial piece in very strictly metric notation. It uses Schillinger-suggested 'serial' techniques, very similar to Messiaen, as it turned out. In contrast, 'Music for Cello and Piano' is a completely subjectively composed work, in what I called 'time notation' (contrary to metric') which is now referred to as 'Proportional Notation.' I feel this recording to be an extremely authentic and artistically fulfilled representation of these works written between 1952 and 1965 (not all that I wrote during that time, I hasten to add). I hope that future recordings will as successfully represent my work written between 1965 and 2050 as this does the early work.' Earle Brown, January 29, 2000 (from the original liner notes). Performers: Govert Jurriaanse, flute; Arthur Moore, trombone; Teresia Tieu, harp; Jaring Walta, violin; Harro Ruijsenaars, cello; Ton Hartsuiker, piano; John Floore, trumpet, Harry Sparnaay, bass clarinet; Roelof van Driesten, violin; Gerrit Oldeman, viola; Earle Brown, conductor; Matthew Raimondi, violin; David Soyer, cello; David Tudor, piano; Michael Daugherty, piano, computer, electronics; Dorothea von Albrecht, cello; Christine Olbrich, piano; Antoinette Vischer, George Gruntz, harpsichords.

'Joseph Kubera, piano. Michael Byron (b. 1953) was a pupil of James Tenney, and later, of Richard Teitelbaum. The body of music he has composed over the past thirty years has been harmonically rich, rhythmically detailed, and increasingly virtuosic. Dreamers of Pearl (2004Ð05) evinces a sensitivity for the sound of the piano, a sensibility of extended playing-listening, and an interest in repetition and change through gradual and seemingly clandestine processes that transform and extend what we hear. Despite the lyrical (and, one might assume, programmatic) titles of the three movements ('Enchanting the Stars,' 'A Bird Revealing the Unknown to the Stars,' 'It Is the Night and Dawn of Constellations Irradiated'), Dreamers of Pearl is a self-contained piece of pure ('absolute') music without obvious quotation or extra-musical references. Dreamers makes its case within a classically-balanced architectural design: three extended 'fast-slow-fast' movements of roughly equal length (263, 199, and 226 measures, respectively). The notation is meticulous, specific, precise. Much of the work's texture could be characterized as Baroque, given the perpetual motion of the consistent two-voiced polyphonic layeringÑsome of it cryptically and distortedly imitative. Dreamers belongs to a rare class of recent piano musicÑmonumental compositions of great length, beauty, and depthÑall self-consciously bound to tradition-oriented genres and their deeply ingrained structures, yet inventive and thrilling in ways that inspire a few brave pianists to dedicate themselves wholeheartedly to these often mercilessly difficult pieces. Joseph Kubera, the tremendously gifted pianist for whom Dreamers of Pearl was written, is one of those brave few.'

John Cage: 'Music for Keyboard 1935Ð1948'. Jeanne Kirstein, prepared piano, piano, and toy piano. Morton Feldman: 'The Early Years'. David Tudor, Morton Feldman, Edwin Hymovitz, Russell Sherman, pianos; Matthew Raimondi, Joseph Rabushka, violins; Walter Trampler, viola; Seymour Barab, cello. This double-CD set combines two of the key titles of Columbia Records's legendary 'Music of Our Time' series curated by David Behrman. Jeanne Kirstein's recording of Cage's early keyboard works remains a touchstone of Cagean interpretation notwithstanding the passage of time. Christian Wolff recalls, 'I remember Cage saying that Jeanne Kirstein's playing caught the spirit in which the pieces were written at the time he wrote themÑa kind of simple excitement and enthusiasm (also, surely, out of the discovery of the preparing of the piano and the great new sounds).' The seminal 1959 Columbia LP that introduced Feldman's work to the listening public features historic performances that still resonate with passion and conviction more than four decades later. The works maybe divided into three categories: the earlier, precisely notated music (Extensions 1 for Violin and Piano, Extensions 4 for Three Pianos, Two Pieces for Two Pianos, Structures for String Quartet, Three Pieces for String Quartet); the first graphic notation pieces (Intersection 3 for Piano, Projection 4 for Violin and Piano); and the first free durational composition (Piece for Four Pianos). To quote a prescient critic of the time, '[All eight works are] are full of spots, sparks and spangles of radiant color; a single note becomes an event of epical portent; the final result is to compact hours into seconds with an almost overwhelming intensity and depth of feeling.'John Cage: Two Pieces, Metamorphosis, Bacchanale, The Perilous Night, Tossed As It Is Untroubled, A Valentine Out of Season, Root of an Unfocus, Two Pieces for Piano, Prelude for Meditation, Music for Marcel Duchamp, Suite for Toy Piano, Dream. Morton Feldman: Piece for Four Pianos, Intersection 3 for Piano, Extensions 4 for Three Pianos, Two Pieces for Two Pianos, Projection 4 for Violin and Piano, Structures for String Quartet, Extensions 1 for Violin and Piano, Three Pieces for String Quartet.

With Bülent Arel “Music for a sacred service” (1961), Charles Dodge “Earth’s magnetic field” (1970), Ilhan Mimaroglu “Prelude N°8” (1966), Bülent Arel & Daria Semegen “Out of into” (1972), Ingram Marshall “Cortez” (1973), Daria Semegen “Electronic composition N°1” (1971), Alice Shields “Dance piece N°3” (1969), “Study for voice and tape” (1968).

With Robert Ashley, George Cacioppo, Gordon Mumma, Roger Reynolds, Donald Scavarda, David Behrman, George Crevoshay, Philip Krumm, Pauline Oliveros, Robert Sheff, Bruce Wise. “Ann Arbor, Michigan, seems an unlikely site for the establishment of a major avant-garde festival that would shake the new-music community. Tucked away in America’s heartland, the city is equally removed from the Eastern metropolises whose artists pride themselves on sensing the pulse of the times, and from the nonconformist West Coast. Yet during the 1960s Ann Arbor played host to one of the most extraordinary adventures in American music history: the annual ONCE Festival and its nexus of related activities. The primary aim of Once’s founders—Robert Ashley, Gordon Mumma, George Cacioppo, Roger Reynolds, and Donald Scavarda—was to create a forum for the presentation of cutting-edge music. To this end they were phenomenally successful. Performers and composers—whether little-known or renowned—embraced the endeavor, demanding almost nothing in return. Perhaps most important, however, ONCE acted as a creative stimulus for its organizers. Scavarda describes the adventure as an explosion of pent-up energy: “Suddenly we could write anything we wanted and have it heard.” And they did. The Once composers-and many guest artists-wrote a host of new works, some experimental, others more traditional. What united the Once composers was their exploration of sound, whether through the medium of extended techniques on traditional instruments, electronic (or electronically modified) timbres, or the intersection of musical sounds with those of the environment. A major slice of Once’s rich musical legacy-35 works constituting six hours of music-is presented here, almost all for the first time. These pieces are as diverse in style as they are compelling in expression. This landmark set, the most comprehensive document ever released of this legendary event, is an opportunity for anyone interested in contemporary music to hear history in the making. Included in the set is a 140-page booklet with a lengthy scholarly essay by musicologist and biographer Leta Miller and numerous rare photos of Once personages and performances.”

In 1950, the Columbia University Music Department requisitioned a tape recorder to use in teaching and for recording concerts. In 1951, the first tape recorder arrived, an Ampex 400, and Vladimir Ussachevsky, then a junior faculty member, was assigned a job that no one else wanted: the care of the tape recorder. This job was to have important consequences for Ussachevsky and the medium he developed. Electronic music was born. Over the next ten years, Ussachevsky and his collaborators established the Columbia-Princeton Electronic Music Center, which Ussachevsky directed for twenty years. It was the first large electronic music center in the United States, thanks to the path-breaking support of the Rockefeller Foundation and encouragement from two of the country's leading universities. The Center became one of the best-known and most prolific sources of electronic music in the world. All of the music on this historic reissue (originally released on CRI) is the result of the pioneering work of the Center and its composers. The guest composers and Columbia-associated composers who have produced pieces at the Center include Bülent Arel, Luciano Berio, Mario Davidovsky, Jacob Druckman, Arthur Kreiger, Daria Semegen, Pril Smiley, and Edgard Varèse. Ussachevsky's own students at the Center included Jon Appleton, Wendy Carlos, Charles Dodge, Robert Moog, Alice Shields, Harvey Sollberger, and Charles Wuorinen. Of the seven composers most closely associated with the Center from its early years, six are present on this disc.Vladimir Ussachevsky: Sonic Contours (1952), Piece for Tape Recorder (1956), Computer Piece No. 1 (1968), Two Sketches for a Computer Piece (1971); Otto Luening: Low Speed (1952), Invention in Twelve Notes (1952), Fantasy in Space (1952), Moonflight (1968); Otto LueningÐVladimir Ussachevsky, Incantation (1953); Pril Smiley: Kolyosa (1970); Bülent Arel: Stereo Electronic Music No. 2 (1970); Mario Davidovsky: Synchronisms No. 5 (1969); Alice Shields: The Transformation of Ani (1970).

'This is a long-awaited reissue of the CRI CD of the classic 1750 Arch LP. The music on this album exhibits an exciting, wide-open, freewheeling approach to the medium of electronic music which has come to be typical of this genre in the late 1970s. No longer are composers obsessively concerned with the agonizing, expressionistic, and purely 'electronic' (synthesized) sound formulas which marked much of this music composed between the mid Fifties and the late Sixties. Instead, today we have composers willing to mix media and sonic materials in thoroughly inventive ways to achieve ends which are new-sounding, and often more engaging, than that of the 'academic' avant-garde. This is the outgrowth of a fundamental change in concerns which has been evolving not only among the composers on this album but also in a growing segment of the musical avant-garde, of which these members are some of the most fecund and inspired. These new sources of inspiration certainly were not as widely shared fifteen years ago. Several composers represented here are deeply concerned with Eastern influences: meditation, healing, trance, states of serenity. Others are inspired by traditional (or 'ethnic') musics and their subsequent metamorphoses into such popular forms as rock and roll. Still others bring to bear a sense of wit and satire, rarely a prominent feature of avant-garde music in the early 1960s. This first anthology of women's electronic music demonstrates great refinement and skill at work in a variety of different styles, several of which are unfamiliar or new even to those who follow contemporary music. The fact that these pieces are more listenable than that of the Sixties avant-garde does not point to a musical regression as some critics have overeagerly assumed when discussing modern works using, say, consonant harmonic structures. Rather, and I think this is common denominator for these pieces and something which women composers and artists have been instrumental in legitimizing again for this period in time, these works signify a new consciousness of the relationship of art to human life and the important and positive interaction which can be the role of a more personalized art in our day-to-day experience.' Charles Amirkhanian, August 1977. 'Music of the Spheres' (1938) (Johanna M. Beyer), 'World Rhythms' (1975) (Annea Lockwood), 'Bye Bye Butterfly' (1965) (Pauline Oliveros), 'Appalachian Grove I' (1974) (Laurie Spiegel), 'I Could Sit Here All Day' (1976) (Megan Roberts), 'Points' (1973Ð74) (Ruth Anderson), 'New York Social Life' (1977), 'Time to Go' (1977) (Laurie Anderson).

The Barton Workshop: Jos Zwaanenburg, flute, John Anderson, clarinets, James Fulkerson, Hilary Jeffery, trombones, Nina Hitz, cello, Boris M. Visser, violin, Manuel Visser, viola, Rozemarie Heggen, contrabass, Krijn van Arnhem, bassoon-contrabassoon, Dante Oei, piano (Chopin Prelude), Tobias Liebezeit, percussion, Taylan Susam, conductor (Passionate Expanse of the Law). 'Philip Corner (b 1933) studied composition with Henry Cowell and Otto Luening and musical analysis with Oliver Messiaen. During the 1960s and 70s he was an active member of Fluxus, a founder (along with James Tenney and Malcolm Goldstein) of the Tone Roads Chamber Ensemble, the resident musician and composer for the Judson Dance Theatre, and co-founder of Gamelan Son of Lion (with Barbara Benary and Daniel Goode). The musical opportunities that these ensembles and their performances offered Corner insured that he was both prolific and had or developed a deep understanding of the important artistic influences of that time. Corner uses a variety of scoring methodsÑsome scores are conventionally written out, some are graphic scores with added commentary and some are, indeed, only text or commentary by which Corner creates an attitude to sound-making materials, the manner of eliciting sounds and the manner of responding to the activities of others. He is truly the equal of John Cage in forcing us to examine what we call music and how we understand music-making. He is a master of the art of presenting what amounts to a Zen koan to the performer or performing ensembles. He sets interpretive challenges of the highest order while often creating music which can be realized by amateur or professional musician alike. Corner has commented that being drafted into the US Army and sent to Korea was in fact a 'fortuitous' event in his life: 'One of the things I learnt in Korea was to go into the quality of sound to enter into this thing that the Orient had explored that the West hadn't.' This set of recordings includes two of the seminal pieces from this periodÑSang-teh (Situations) and Lovely MusicÑand proceeds to explore music from five decades of work under the direction of Corner's earlier collaborator, James Fulkerson, and the composer himself.' This 2-CD set is the first comprehensive overview of his work, including many of his key compositions, and is an ideal introduction to an important but overlooked figure of the American avant-garde. Disc 1: Trombones with 'For 2 Trombones No. 2' (1960). 'Calling! OM' ('from the '70s'), 'attempting whitenesses' (1964). 'Round Sound' (1963). 'One Note More Than Once' (2005) (two performances). 'An Earth Breath Trilogy' (2005). 'Big Trombone' (1963). Disc 2: Ensemble with 'Zen Om' ('from the '70s'). 'Just Another 12-Tone Piece' (1995). 'Sang-Teh, movement III' (1960Ð61). 'Passionate Expanse of the Law' (1959). 'Lovely Music' (1961Ð62). 'When They Pull the Plug' (2002). 'Chopin Prelude I: The V9 chord which begins the Chopin D Major Prelude . . . as a revelation' (1969).

'In the middle 1970s I began to formulate ideas and projects leading to the making of music outside the concert halls - often in large open and naturally beautiful sites. Ports, rivers, lakes, caves, quarries, fields, and woods, always ready sources of my musical inspiration, now became my new music theaters.' Alvin Curran
Maritime Rites is a series of ten environmental concerts for radio composed by Alvin Curran (b. 1938) in 1985. This series features the Eastern Seaboard of the United States as a musical source in collaboration with improvised musical performances by ten distinguished artists in the American new-music scene: John Cage, Joseph Celli, Clark Coolidge, Jon Gibson, Malcolm Goldstein, Steve Lacy, George Lewis, Pauline Oliveros, Leo Smith and Alvin Curran. The programs use specifically recorded natural sounds as musical counterpoint to the soloists whose improvisations are freely restructured and mixed by Curran. Featured here are the foghorns of Virginia, Maryland, Delaware, New Jersey, New York, Connecticut, Rhode Island, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Maine and New Brunswick, Canada. Also included are maritime bells, gongs, whistles and regional bird and animal life. Comments from lighthouse keepers, Coast Guard personnel and other local people are woven impressionistically throughout.
Rich in ambient detail, Maritime Rites presents the foghorn as indigenous American 'found' music par excellence and the source of one of the most enduring minimal musics around us. The series is also a comprehensive aural documentary of our regional and national maritime heritage including such historical sounds as the Nantucket II Lightship, now out of service and doing service as a museum docked in Boston Harbor. The Lightship's horn is the only one of its kind (and the loudest!) on the East coast and was recorded extensively during an exclusive session ten miles off shore with the special cooperation of the ship's crew. As the foghorn gives way to other electronic navigational aids, this work may serve as a historical document of some of the most beautiful and mysterious sounds of the sea.
As an expression of sonic geography, Maritime Rites brings together different areas of the Seaboard in a single musical moment. The series was expressly conceived for radio, the only medium that can safely accommodate over sixty foghorns at once and bring an entire coastline, seemingly live, into anyone's home! An essential document for anyone interested in sound art.

Nick Didkovsky, electric guitar, laptop; Thomas Dimuzio, sampling, live sampling, and processing; ARTE Quartett: Beat Hofstetter, soprano and baritone saxophone; Sascha Armbruster, alto and baritone saxophone; Andrea Formenti, tenor saxophone; Beat Kappeler, baritone saxophone. 'Nick Didkovsky (born 1958) is an accomplished composer, virtuoso guitarist, and computer programmer who works on the cusp between the concert hall and the rock-and-roll clubÑterritory that is only now beginning to be taken seriously.'

A relentless explorer, composer, performer and theorist, David Dunn (born 1953) uses electro-acoustic resources, voice, non-human living systems, as well as traditional instruments. This CD features four new compositions, all for electronic sound makers of one sort or another, and all four reveal his innate musicality. 'Lorenz' (2005) is a collaboration between Dunn and chaos scientist James Crutchfield. In this piece, Crutchfield's program for exploring chaos equations, MODE (Multiple Ordinary Differential Equations), is linked through an interface program called OSC into a sound synthesis program. The sound synthesis program feeds information back through OSC into MODE, so the whole thing is not only a use of chaos to control soundÑit's a feedback loop itself, embodying the principles of chaos not only in its mathematics, but also in its very structure. Another aspect of Dunn's work has been setting up interactive systems within nature, whereby humans, machines, and the environment interact with each other. In the mid-1980s, as the technology became smaller, and cheaper, he began a series of works where he tried to set up interactive systems in which the environment could interact with itself. 'Autonomous Systems: Red Rocks' (2003) is the latest in this series of works, and possibly the most elegant realization of the idea yet. In 'Nine Strange Attractors' (2006), Dunn guides us through a whole zoo of chaotic attractions. Each one has different behavior, and each produces a different sound world. This is a work that is not simply about playing with new mathematical toysÑit's a work that exemplifies the structure of those toys, placing human, computer, and sound-making machine into a feedback loop that embodies the essential characteristics of that new science (chaos), and then lets us live within it for an extended period of time. Gradients (1999) is a work Dunn made with a freeware graphics-to-sound conversion program. In this program, graphic lines become sounding sines, each single pixel-wide line being realized as one sounding pure electronic sine wave. If the sound world of Red Rocks represents nature at her messiest, and the attractor pieces show the slightly less messy world of mathematical abstractions of natural processes, in this piece we have the clean lines and simple shapes of man-made geometry. It is best heard at high volume, where the dynamism of the sound is revealedÑgloriously.

Members of Creative Associates; Jodi Beder, Sarah Carter, Barry Gold, Julie Green, Christine Gummere, Maureen Hynes, Chase Morrison, Abby Newton, Larry Rawdon, David Sabee, cellos; Frank Ferko, Janet Kattas, Patricia Martin, pianos; Julius Eastman, piano, voice, conductor. This three-disc set marks the first appearance on disc of the music of the African-American composer Julius Eastman (1940Ð1990), who died sixteen years ago under unexplained circumstances and whose musical legacy was thought lost. This comprehensive and definitive document, which comprises almost all of Eastman's signature works, will undoubtedly be a revelation for those who have thus far been unable to hear his work. In his book American Music in the Twentieth Century, composer
author Kyle Gann briefly sums up Eastman's work and its importance: 'Born in New York, he graduated from the Curtis Institute in composition and was discovered by Lukas Foss, who conducted his music, including Stay On It (1973), one of the first works to introduce pop tonal progressions and free improvisation in an art context Applying minimalism's additive process to the building of sections, he developed a composing technique he called 'organic music,' a cumulatively overlapping process in which each section of a work contains, simultaneously, all the sections which preceded it. The pieces he wrote in this style often had intentionally provocative titles intended to reinterpret the minorities Eastman belonged to in a positive light: for example, Evil Nigger, Crazy Nigger, and Gay Guerrilla (all circa 1980). These three pieces, all scored for multiple pianos, build up immense emotive power through the incessant repetition of rhythmic figures.' Eastman was an energizing underground figure, one whose forms are clear, whose methods were powerful and persuasive, and whose thinking was supremely musical. His works show different routes minimalism might have taken, and perhaps some of those will now be followed up. This set of discs is a bold beginning to restoring to history the works of one of the most important members of the first post-minimalist generation.Stay on It (1973). If You're So Smart, Why Aren't You Rich? (1977). Prelude to The Holy Presence of Joan D'Arc (1981). The Holy Presence of Joan D'Arc (1981). Gay Guerrilla (1980). Evil Nigger (1979). Crazy Nigger (1980).

'The music on this recording (reissued from CRI CD 620) illustrates the essential integrity of the work of Morton Feldman (1926Ð1987) and one of its fundamental strengthsÑits continuously unfolding unanimity of purpose. There are few composers of his generation whose first and last published work (in Feldman's case Journey to the End of Night of 1949 and Piano and String Quartet of 1986) span youth and final years with such a concentrated viewpoint. There are, however, landmarks in the music of Feldman that are largely technical and notational. There are the graphic pieces, the first from 1950 and the last from 1964, in which some parameter of composition is not specified (often pitch). There are the 'free duration pieces,' both solo and ensemble, in which there is instruction either for sections of the piece or for its entirety. False Relationships and the Extended Ending (1968) is a late example of this kind, although Why Patterns? (1978) is a variant of the principle. There are also the conventionally notated works in his oeuvre, one of which is The Viola in My Life (1970). It may be that Feldman's music will always strike a certain kind of listener as idiosyncraticÑa denial of the time-honored ways in which music articulates itself. I think that Feldman was deeply offended by this response, by this notion that his music was singular because it was, as some might say, 'missing something.' Though it is true that his values of graduation can be exceedingly fine, when one enters this scale and comprehends it, something truly new and wonderful opens up in the art of musicÑa world in which the relative and the absolute become engaged with themselves. Karen Phillips, viola; Anahid Ajemian, Matthew Raimondi, violin; Seymour Barab; cello; David Tudor, Paul Jacobs, Yuji Takahashi, pianos; Eberhard Blum, Paula Robison, flute; Arthur Bloom, clarinet; Arnold Fromme, trombone; Jan Williams, Richard Fitz, Raymond DesRoches, percussion; Morton Feldman, piano, conductor.'

Performed by the Choir of St. Ignatius of Antioch, New York City-Harold Chaney, conductor. Benjamin Ramirez, Thomas Kolor: (percussion); Stephen Foreman: (tuba). "Stefan Wolpe (1902-1972), one of the great teachers in twentieth century music, is also now recognized as one of its most significant composers. His 'Two Chinese Epitaphs', composed in Jerusalem in 1937, illustrates the composer's deep allegiance to socialist issues. He wrote the work swiftly and in anger, just after learning that the Basque town of Guernica had been bombed by the Fascists the previous week. He chose to set two poems by Louise Peter that decry, in a few short phrases of stark imagery, the atrocities committed against oppressed workers. The 'Four Pieces for Mixed Chorus' (1955) were composed for a contest sponsored by the government of Israel. It is a setting of four Hebrew texts -- three from the Bible and one from Israeli poet Gershon Shofman. All the texts express hope for the new nation of Israel. Morton Feldman (1926-1987) studied with Wolpe for several years and was deeply influenced by his modernist aesthetic, particularly his interest in the visual arts. 'For Stefan Wolpe' (1986), for chorus and two vibraphones, is Feldman's tribute to his venerated teacher. It alternates between vocal and instrumental passages. The two never intermingle, even though Feldman lets the vibraphones ring into the voices. As is characteristic of his late music, the piece combines the quiet, atonal, austere textures of his earlier music (of which Christian Wolff in Cambridge [1963] and Chorus and Instruments II [1967] are stellar examples) with several new elements -- greater duration, minimalist repetition, and bigger gestures. All five works are making their first appearance on CD. An indispensable addition to the discographies of both composers."

Five Works for Voices, Instruments, and Electronics

Thomas Howell, piccolo; James Fulkerson, bass trombone; Thomas Fredrickson, double bass; Barbara Dalheim, voice; Kenneth Gaburo, conductor; Walden String Quartet; Jack Logan, trumpet; New Music Choral Ensemble; Linda Vickerman, Elinor Barron, Philip Larson, vocals.

Kenneth Gaburo (1926–1993) composed works for instruments, voices, electronics, multi-media, theater, and a variety of other resources. Foremost among his many interests was a concern with the voice and with language—how we shape language and how we are shaped by it—and with making works that existed somewhere between the boundaries of music and language. Of the works on this CD, three are intensely concerned with what Gaburo termed “Compositional Linguistics” (Antiphony III, Antiphony IV, and Mouth-Piece), while concerns with balance and perceptual edges seem to be his foremost concern in the other two [String Quartet in One Movement and The Flow of (u)].
In Antiphony IV (1967), for three instruments and two-channel tape, the two channels are literally separate—vocal sounds (each phoneme, in order, of the source poem) on the left channel, and electronic sounds on the right channel, with the instruments in the middle. Instrumental timbres relate to vocal phonemes; electronic splats are contrasted with delicate synthetic choirs assembled from recordings of individual phonemes; tremolos, flutters, and waverings alternate among recorded voice, electronics, and instrumental sounds. String Quartet (1956) was written just after Gaburo had returned from Rome, where he studied with Goffredo Petrassi, and the quartet is dedicated to him. It’s a passionate, driving piece, where an intense concern for the quality of line is manifest in every gesture.
In Mouth-Piece (1970) the trumpeter attempts to present six contrapuntal lines simultaneously and to maintain a sense of coherent timbral identity with each. Unlike most trumpet music, where the phoneme “t” or “k” is used to articulate the trumpet, here the trumpet is used as a filter for every phoneme the voice is capable of generating. It is an amazing exposition of vocal sounds and trumpet virtuosity. For Antiphony III (1962), for sixteen voices and electronics, a poem by Virginia Hommel again provides the basis. Here, however, it is articulated contrapuntally, one word at a time, by both the chorus and the tape. Each word is clearly heard, sometimes spoken, sometimes whispered, sometimes shouted, sometimes electronically modified on the tape, in the order presented in the poem. The Flow of (u) (1974) consists of one note sung by three singers for twenty-three minutes. Here, focus is even more intense, and the attention to dynamic shaping given to the lines in the 1956 String Quartet is here transferred to the micro-level, and worked on with the singers in an “oral tradition” manner.

Malcolm Goldstein, solo violin; Radu Malfatti, trombone; Philippe Micol, bass clarinet; Philippe Racine, flute; Beat Schneider, violoncello. 'As a composer-violinist-improviser Malcolm Goldstein (b. 1936) has been active in the presentation of new music and dance since the early 1960s in New York City as a co-founder with James Tenney and Philip Corner of the Tone Roads Ensemble and as a participant in the Judson Dance Theater, the New York Festival of the Avant-Garde, and the Experimental Intermedia Foundation. His 'Soundings' improvisations have received international acclaim for having 'reinvented violin playing,' extending the range of tonal-sound-texture possibilities of the instrument and revealing new dimensions of expressivity. Since the mid-1960s he has integrated structured improvisation aspects into his compositions, exploring the rich sound-textures of new performance techniques within a variety of instrumental and vocal frameworks. Goldstein has been labeled an 'improviser' and a 'composer-violinist' (or merely a violinist). What this cd once and for all shows is that he is indeed those things, but encompassing them all is the fact that, profoundly, he is a composer. As he points out, 'At the core of Baroque music was the integration of composition and improvisation,' and Goldstein brings the perspective and focus of a seasoned performer to this undertaking. In this way his music represents a further evolution of that compositional-improvisational dialogue begun in the early 1950s in the aleatoric, 'chance' pieces of composers like John Cage, Earle Brown, Christian Wolff and Morton Feldman.'

Born in Buenos Aires, Argentina in 1941, Guillermo Gregorio has lived variously in Europe and the United States since 1986. He was an active participant on the Argentine music scene throughout the 1960s, '70s, and early '80s. 'What affects me more than any other thing,' Gregorio says, 'is my involvement in visual arts, and my architectural and design experience.' In his compositions, a reinterpretation of the fundamental and structural concepts of Constructivism converges with the historical experiences of Argentinian Conceptualism, Fluxus, intermedia synthesis, certain aspects of serialism, and graphic music. In addition to the acceptance of sound as material, constructive and geometrically generated ideas are used in scores ranging from conventionally notated statements to graphs, including planimetric projections of spatial structures. In January 2001, he founded the Madi Ensemble of Chicago, which performs original and historical scores that draw from the conceptual foundation of diverse Argentinian avant-garde currents.Madi Ensemble: Guillermo Gregorio, clarinet, alto saxophone, conductor; Kyle Bruckmann, oboe, accordion; Jen Clare Paulson, viola; Fred Lonberg-Holm, cello; Michael Cameron, contrabass; John Corbett, guitar; Jim Baker, piano, ARP synthesizer. Guests: Marc Unternhrer, tuba; Steffen Schleiermacher, piano; Warren Po, cracklebox; Jennifer Walshe, voice; Aram Shelton, E-flat clarinet; Ken Vandermark, saxophone, bass clarinet.

'Lejaren Hiller (1924Ð1994) was a musically eclectic composer, often combining several different types of techniques in the same piece. In the mid-sixties, he asserted that his 'objective in composing music by means of computer programming is not the immediate realization of an aesthetic unity, but the providing and evaluating of techniques whereby this goal can eventually be realized.' In this sense Hiller was a forward-looking composer, in that each piece was an experiment that lead toward the next piece. The three works contained in this collectionÑComputer Cantata (1963), Quartet No. 6 for Strings (1973), A Portfolio for Diverse Performers and Tape (1974)Ñdemonstrate his love of musical diversity and eclecticism. These works also exhibit other trends that are common in Hiller's music, including collaboration, an interest in microtonality, symmetrical and arch forms, and indeterminate instrumentation. The works span a little more than a decade, from 1963 to 1974, which were amongst his greatest years as a composer. The works also use a variety of instrumentations, from purely acoustic to electronic, and computer music with live ensemble. These three works are drawn from the CRI LP back catalog and will be making their first appearance on cd. Virtually none of Hiller's music is currently available on disc and this reissue restores some of his most representative works to circulation.'

'Charles Ives composed nearly 200 songs throughout his life. Wiley Hitchcock, in the thorough introduction to his 2004 critical edition 129 Songs, described the Ives song canon as 'the contents of a kind of scrapbook or commonplace book or chapbook, or even a desk drawer. Into such a receptacle Ives tossed irregularly, if not casually, his reactions Ñin the form of songsÑto memories, personalities, places, events, discoveries, ideas, visions, and fantasies in his life.' Whether popular tale or personal reflection, this concept of the songs as memorabilia is realized in a most powerful way: the songs emotionally and viscerally evoke memory. Captured memoriesÑreal or idealized, distant or nearÑare the materials for the music. From cosmopolitan incident (Ann Street) to pastoral stroll (The Housatonic at Stockbridge) Ives's songs describe a range of experience: a child's playtime, a commuter's observations, a courter's hope. His songs exhibit reverence for the populace and pop culture, daring adventure, and family devotion; life and death. This new recording of 27 songs features superlative performances by soprano Susan Narucki, renowned for her authoritative interpretations of contemporary American music, and Donald Berman, whose recordings of Ives's piano music have been critically acclaimed.' Songs my mother taught me, Tom Sails Away, The Housatonic at Stockbridge, The Greatest Man, West London, The 'Incantation', Du bist wie eine Blume, Down East, The Children's Hour, Where the eagle cannot see, General William Booth Enters into Heaven, The Things Our Fathers Loved, Two Little Flowers, August, September, December, The Light That Is Felt, Ann Street, Evening, The Sea of Sleep, Like a Sick Eagle, Swimmers, Watchman!, Feldeinsamkeit, The New River, Minnelied, Romanzo (di Central Park)

Dedalus: Didier Aschour, guitar, music director; Amélie Berson, flute; Eric Chalan, bass; Denis Chouillet, piano; Thierry Madiot, trombone; Pierre-Stéphane Meugé, saxophone; Silvia Tarozzi, violin; Fabrice Villard, clarinet; Deborah Walker, violoncello. 'I am particularly pleased, because the result is so different from the solo flute recording of Eberhard Blum and the solo clarinet recording of Roger Heaton. It is not just another interpretation, but a case where interpreters have added so much insight to the music that the music itself has grown. When I was composing this music around 1982, I really thought I was simply writing melodies, but now these little pieces, though remaining melodies, have become something much more, something I would never have imagined. They have become what you hear on this CD.' Tom Johnson 'Tom Johnson (b. 1939) belongs to a generation of American composers who founded musical minimalism. We know that this term was first applied to the visual arts, notably to Donald Judd, Robert Morris, and particularly Sol LeWitt, whom Johnson recognizes as an influence. However, it wasnt the repetition in itself that interested him, but rather the idea of music as a process. Steve Reich applied this idea brilliantly in his phase pieces. But after 1975, while the same Reich distanced himself from the radicalism of his first works, and younger American composers came out with music that was lusher, more expressive, even sentimental, Johnson insisted on the unrelenting rigor of formalized processes. The Rational Melodies, composed in 1982, may be regarded as the outcome of this research, first of all by their sheer quantity, but also by the fact that they summarize brilliantly and clearly procedures from the past, present, and future, which together characterize his work: combinations of cycles of different lengths (I, IV, XI, XVII, XVIII), permutations (VII, X), the paper-folding or dragon formula (II, XIX), other automata (XVI, XX), or self-similar structures (XIV, XV).'

John Bischoff, Jim Horton, Tim Perkis, David Behrman, Paul DeMarinis, Rich Gold. 'The League of Automatic Music Composers was a band-collective of electronic music experimentalists active in the San Francisco Bay Area between 1977 and 1983. Widely regarded as the first musicians to incorporate the newly available microcomputers of the day into live musical performance, the League created networks of interacting computers and other electronic circuits with an eye to eliciting surprising and new 'musical artificial intelligences.' We approached the computer network as one large, interactive musical instrument made up of independently programmed automatic music machines, producing a music that was noisy, difficult, often unpredictable, and occasionally beautiful. The work of the League partook of the distinctive cultural atmosphere of the San Francisco Bay Area in the seventies and eighties, a rich blend of communal ideologies, radical culture, technical innovation, intellectual ferment, and a hands-on attitude that has been a hallmark of California life since the pioneer days. In the air then there was a sense of new possibilities, and the feeling of the need to build a culture from the ground up. For music, specifically, this meant redefining everything about how it's done, from the instruments and tuning systems to the musical forms, venues, and social relations among players and audiences.' Tim Perkis and John Bischoff. 'The release of this historic compilation restores a vital link in the recorded history of live electronic music and as such is an essential document for anyone interested in the evolution of the American Experimental tradition.'

"Alvin Lucier (b. 1931) is best known for his pioneering work in the mid-sixties in the exploration of sonic environments, particularly sounds that we would never perceive under ordinary circumstances. Vespers and Other Early Works restores to the catalog several of his key works from that time. In 'Vespers' (1969) performers with Sondols (sonar-dolphin), hand-held pulse wave oscillators, explore the acoustic characteristics of given indoor or outdoor spaces by monitoring the echoes of the pulse waves off the walls, floors and ceilings, as well as any objects or obstacles in range of the sound waves. Over time, the listener receives an acoustic signature of the room. In 'Chambers' (1968), battery-operated radios, tape recorders, and electronically powered toys of various kinds are hidden in paper bags, shoes, kettles, and small suitcases and other small resonant environments. As performers carry these small 'rooms' into larger ones, such as concert halls, football stadiums and underground cisterns, the sounds, already altered by the acoustics of the small environments, are altered a second time by the acoustics of the larger ones. This version was recorded in 2002. 'North American Time Capsule' (1967), for voices and vocoder, is described metaphorically by Lucier as a message to listeners who don't know about us. '(Middletown) Memory Space' (1970) is a reenactment of the composition called '(Hartford) Memory Space', for any number of instrumental players with recordings of environmental sounds. 'Elegy for Albert Anastasia' (1961-1963) is described as composed 'for electromagnetic tape using very low sounds most of which are below human audibility.”

The Barton Workshop: John Anderson, clarinet. Frank Denyer, piano. James Fulkerson, trombone. Marieke Keser, violin. Judith van Swaay, cello. Jos Tieman, double bass.
'The music on these CDs takes us into a new realm of music making, one that Alvin Lucier (b. 1931) has defined for us and one that demands that we start to listen anew. His work has been more often described in terms of science than of art as if it were a series of quasi-scientific experiments, but to put the emphasis here is to miss the point, for its purpose is never 'explanatory' (the goal of science) but, like all art, 'revelatory.' This is not to suggest that the composer has some spiritual agenda in the usual sense of this term. On the contrary, it is the physical behavior of sound itself that he so elegantly reveals, each work unveiling an otherwise hidden or ephemeral aspect of aural phenomena and allowing us time to witness its beauty. He achieves this by ruthlessly excluding any trace of self-expression, or indeed anything extraneous to the phenomenon itself.
The Barton Workshop has been the only group to really work closely with Lucier in terms of doing 'portraits' of his work (the first in 1995), commissioning new works (40 Rooms, Bar Lazy J, and Q) and performing older/extant pieces. This 2-CD set is the fruit of this long collaborative process.
'In Memoriam Stuart Marshall (1993/rev. 2003), 40 Rooms (1996), In Memoriam Jon Higgins (1984), Letters (1992), Q (1996), A Tribute to James Tenney (1986), Bar Lazy J (2003), Fideliotrio (1987), Wind Shadows (1994)

This CD comprises the text-sound works (1974-1980) on which Ingram Marshall concentrated throughout the seventies and falls into two parts: the works from the Fragility Cycles period (Cries Upon the Mountains, Sung, Sibelius in His Radio Corner, and Ikon) and the earlier works (Cortez, Weather Report, and The Emperor’s Birthday).
“Cortez, Weather Report, and The Emperor’s Birthday form a kind of trilogy representing my work with “text-sound” in the early seventies. The techniques used to generate musical fabrics and structures out of spoken text are similar in all three works, but the source materials are all quite different. I used tape loops to create repetitive patterns from words or phrases; musical structures were developed out of the resulting fabric. It is not the original utterance or sound bit that is the building block, but the whole cloth created from it.”
Sung and Ikon are both based on poems by Swedish poet Gunnar Ekelöf. The first piece, referring to the Sung Dynasty, is scored initially as a solo/duo recitative by painter Jan Håfström and dancer Margareta Åsberg, after which the tape processes multiply their voices into a ghostly chorus as Marshall’s spectral bass appears with the English translation, to be in turn transformed into its own small chorus. IKON, Marshall’s setting of Ekelöf’s Ayiasma, is a mystical meditation on an ancient ikon seen in a Greek church. The air of apocalyptic finality in the text is enhanced by the electronics, with the pervasive soundscape being that of an entropic cosmic machine. Marshall again intones the English translation; the incantatory recitation of the Swedish original is by Ekelöf himself. “Rop på fjellet (Cries Upon the Mountains) again uses materials “collected” in Scandinavia, most significantly an ancient recording of locklåtar and rop from Swedish mountain herdinner (shepherdesses) traditionally used to call goats and cattle from great distances, although clearly also cultivated for their own intrinsic, shrill beauty. The live element is my own voice, a high keening processed through a tape delay system.” Sibelius in His Radio Corner was inspired by a photograph of the Finnish composer during his “forty years of silence,” sitting in an armchair and listening to his own work being performed on the radio. “In his old age Sibelius enjoyed pulling in distant broadcasts of his music off the short-wave. I imagined that with all the static and signal drift, some of these listening experiences might have been proleptically like a modern-day electronically processed kurzwellen piece.” Marshall’s brooding, mysterious sonic landscapes are essential listening for anyone interested in Minimalism and the musique concrète tradition in electronic music.

“Important reissue of two historic minimalist albums, originally released on LP via the Advance label and out of print for decades now. Mastered from original tapes according to the composers original specifications. Packaged with informative liner notes by Kyle Gann, including an overview discography for seminal works within the field of minimalism. "This timely CD reissue combines two LPs from the Advance label -- Richard Maxfield's Electronic Music and Harold Budd's The Oak Of The Golden Dreams -- both containing seminal works which are key to a better understanding of the complex origins of minimalism. A mostly forgotten figure, Richard Maxfield (1927-1969) exerted a powerful influence over a broad range of composers through his classes at The New School. The works here predate the minimalist movement while forecasting a wide range of developments in the future of electronic work. The prophetic 'Pastoral Symphony' (1960) is composed of continuously generated electronic tones; while 'Bacchanale' (1963) is a musique concrète collage juxtaposing jazz with Korean folk music, spoken word, and various instrumental contributions, including Terry Jennings on saxophone. 'Piano Concert for David Tudor' (1961) draws its multifarious noises from a single source -- antedating in that respect Stockhausen's 'Mikrophonie I' for amplified tam-tam (1964). Tudor plays live alongside a three-channel montage constructed from sounds made on the inside of the piano with chains, spinning a gyroscope on the strings, showering the strings with tiddlywink discs, and other unusual operations. 'Amazing Grace' (1960) mixes tape loops from two sources which are played back at various speeds, causing the fragments to overlap in complex ways, predating both Riley's and Reich's tape-loop pieces. If the Maxfield pieces represent the state of new music in the months before minimalism was born, Harold Budd's (b. 1936) works from 1970 reflect minimalism's initial impact. 'The Oak Of The Golden Dreams' was made on the Buchla Box which Budd uses here as an electric organ capable of the kind of fast modal improv, over an unchanging E-flat drone, that Terry Riley and La Monte Young had been doing on saxophone and piano. 'Coeur D'Orr' features a soprano sax improv against an electronic background on organ comprised of two tracks, one of which is another 1970 Budd work, the famous 'Candy Apple Revision'."

Documenta 9, Kassel, Germany; June 14, 1992. Christian Marclay-turntables; Lê Quan Ninh-percussion; J. A. Deane-trombone, live sampling; Martin Schütz-cellos; Günter Müller-drums, electronics. “Conducting is no longer a mere method for an interpretation, but an actual part of the process of composition. Conduction is a means by which a conductor may compose, (re)orchestrate, (re)arrange and sculpt both notated and non-notated music. Using a vocabulary of signs and gestures, many within the general glossary of traditional conducting, the conductor may alter or initiate rhythm, melody, and harmony; develop form and structure; and instantaneously change articulation, phrasing, and meter. Conduction is a viable musical tool for the improvising ensemble.”
Butch Morris

'Daan Vandewalle, piano. Gordon Mumma (b. 1935) is best known for his pioneering role in the development and evolution of electronic and live-electronic music. The piano has played a significant if underestimated role in his career. With a few notable exceptions, this collection by pianist Daan Vandewalle marks the first commercial recordings of Mumma's music for solo piano composed over more than forty years. It provides an important new perspective on his work as a composer. The spare textures, irregular rhythms, and pungent dissonances of Bartók's Mikrokosmos echo in Mumma's piano music. The keyboard music of Bach and Haydn, of Schoenberg, Webern, Ives, Ernst Krenek, Carl Ruggles, and Ruth Crawford also shaped his early piano ideal, as did the experience of superb recitalists in Detroit and Ann Arbor, including Walter Gieseking, Dame Myra Hess, and Glenn Gould. The works of the early 1960s were written for the concert hall, but much of the later piano music is more personalÑthe solitary dreams of a long musical life. And like dreams it filters memoriesÑof music of the distant and recent past, of artistic friendships and loved ones living or deadÑto create a uniquely contemporary approach to the piano. In contrast to Mumma's epic electronic works, his keyboard music is predominantly poetic in its brevity, concentration, and psychological depth. It is music of high specific gravity, each piece a microcosm of finely etched ideas that unfold without literal repetition. For Daan Vandewalle, it is also 'music of dialogue' that communicatesÑboth with the listener and within itselfÑthrough its deep concern with sound, phrasing, color, dynamic range, and rhetorical nuance.'

Gordon Mumma (born 1935) has played a pioneering role in the development and evolution of 'live-electronic' music. 'Live-electronics' as a concept and practice appears to have originated in the United States in the late 1950s, outside the few institutional electronic studios and often in the context of innovative theatre activity. From its inception, it frequently involved two processes: (1) live performance with accompanying or interacting sound materials on magnetic tape; and (2) the use of electronic circuitry as sound-modifying and sound-producing instruments. Beginning with his classic 'Megaton for Wm. Burroughs' of 1963, Mumma's live-electronic and cybersonic works of the 1960s and 1970s, especially 'Medium Size Mograph' (1963) and 'Hornpipe' (1967), display his resourceful use of both live-electronic processes. 'Cybersonic Cantilevers' (1973) extends them to include the active participation of audience members, many of them children and teenagers who were quick to grasp the artistic potential of cybersonic technology, while 'Conspiracy 8' (1969-70) is an early example of live interaction between performers and computer. A major addition to the contemporary music discography, this is essential listening for anyone interested in the history of electronic music.

This 4-CD set, covering the years 1967Ð2007, comprises the best surviving recorded documents from four decades of performances, personally curated by its three core members - Alvin Curran, Frederic Rzewski, and Richard Teitelbaum. As such, it is an invaluable historical anthology of one of the pioneering and truly legendary exponents of live-electronic music. With Alvin Curran, Frederic Rzewski, Richard Teitelbaum, Karl Berger, Allan Bryant, Steve Lacy, George Lewis, Garrett List, Carol Plantamura, Gregory Reeve, Ivan Vandor 'Musica Elettronica Viva (MEV) was begun one evening in the spring of 1966 by Allan Bryant, Alvin Curran, Jon Phetteplace, Carol Plantamura, Frederic Rzweski, Richard Teitelbaum and Ivan Vandor in a room in Rome overlooking the Pantheon. MEV's music right from the start was also totally open, allowing all and everything to come in and seeking in every way to get out beyond the heartless conventions of contemporary music. Taking its cue from Tudor and Cage, MEV began sticking contact mics to anything that sounded and amplified their raw sounds: bed springs, sheets of glass, tin cans, rubber bands, toy pianos, sex vibrators, and assorted metal junk; a crushed old trumpet, cello and tenor sax kept us within musical credibility, while a home-made synthesizer of some 48 oscillators along with the first Moog synthesizer in Europe gave our otherwise neo-primitive sound an inimitable edge. In the name of the collectivity, the group abandoned both written scores and leadership and replaced them with improvisation and critical listening. Rehearsals and concerts were begun at the appropriate time by a kind of spontaneous combustion and continued until total exhaustion set in. It mattered little who played what when or how, but the fragile bond of human trust that linked us all in every moment remained unbroken. The music could go anywhere, gliding into self-regenerating unity or lurching into irrevocable chaosÑboth were valuable goals. In the general euphoria of the times, MEV thought it had re-invented music; in any case it had certainly rediscovered it'. Alvin Curran.

Schlingen Blängen is an invaluable addition to the slender but precious discography of Charlemagne Palestine, one of the legendary figures of the amazingly fertile New York and West Coast experimental music/art scene of the sixties and seventies. He is considered to be a seminal figure of early minimalism—as important as his better-documented contemporaries. His performances on the giant bells at St. Thomas Church and his evening-length Bösendorfer shows are still spoken of with awe by those who were present. Palestine left the music scene in the mid-seventies to focus on his visual art; he eventually moved to Europe where he still resides.
Schlingen Blängen—a 70-minute long perambulation through the organ’s sonic landscape—was recorded in 1988 (ten years after its initial performance) in a small Dutch church near the North Sea. It is difficult to describe because so little happens in it, yet at the same time an immensity of activity is going on and there is so much of it that it boggles the mind. We experience sounds set into motion by the initial choosing of a chord and its timbres (the setting of the registers or stops); the melodic changes that occur are subtle and few. In short, it is a relentless and uncompromising exploration of the physicality of sound as well as its spiritual dimensions. Palestine’s music left its mark on a number of slightly younger composer-performers, among them Rhys Chatham and Glenn Branca. Absolutely essential for a comprehensive understanding of the roots of minimalism and its offshoots.

The Harry Partch Collection: Volume 1 : 'Eleven Intrusions' (1949-50), 'Plectra & Percussion Dances' (1952), Ulysses at the Edge' (1955).This newly remastered reissue marks a welcome return to the catalog of the first volume of the classic 4-CD collection that was formerly available on the CRI label. The works recorded on this disc span the first six years of what Harry Partch (1901<ETH>1974), slightly tongue-in-cheek, called the 'third period' of his creative life. They show him moving away from the obsession with 'the intrinsic music of spoken words' that had characterized his earlier output (the vocal works of 1930<ETH>33 and 1941<ETH>45) and towards an instrumental idiom, predominantly percussive in nature. This path was to take him through the 'music-dance drama' King Oedipus (1951)Ñthe culmination of his 'spoken word' mannerÑto the 'dance satire' The Bewitched (1954<ETH>55), in which his new percussive idiom manifests itself. The three works on this disc show Partch before, during, and after this period of transition.In their quiet, forlorn way, the Eleven Intrusions are among the most compelling and beautiful of Partch's works. The individual pieces were composed at various times between August 1949 and December 1950, and only later gathered together as a cycle. Nonetheless they form a unified whole, with a nucleus of eight songs framed by two instrumental preludes and an essentially instrumental postlude.Although foreshadowed by the dance sequences of King Oedipus, the Plectra and Percussion Dances (1952) are the first of Partch's major works to be wholly instrumental in conception. They stand in relation to Oedipus as a satyr play in relation to a Greek tragedyÑhence the work's subtitle, 'Satyr-Play Music for Dance Theater.' He felt that after the prolonged period of composition and production of Oedipus it was 'almost a necessity to give vent to feelings and ideas, whims and caprices, even nonsense, that seem to have no place in tragedy.'The final work on this disc is Ulysses at the Edge, written at Partch's studio at Gate 5 in July 1955. Ulysses, which Partch describes as a 'minor adventure in rhythm,' is unique among his mature compositions in that, in its original form, it did not call for any of his own instruments. The version recorded here, for alto and baritone saxophones, Diamond Marimba, Boo, Cloud-Chamber Bowls, and speaking voice, is considered the third version of the piece.

The Harry Partch Collection, Volume 2 : 'The Wayward': 'US Highball' (1943, rev. 1955), 'San Francisco' (1943, rev. 1955), 'The Letter' (1943, rev. 1972), 'Barstow' (1941, rev. 1968); 'And on The Seventh Day' (1963-64, rev. 1966).Harry Partch's compositions of the 1940sÑand to some extent his work in generalÑhave remained until recently an unwritten chapter in the history of American music. And yet it was these very piecesÑthe collection of four works he would later collectively entitle The WaywardÑthat brought him to the attention of the New York musical world. His concert of these pieces for the League of Composers (April 22, 1944) established for him a small but permanent reputation as a musical maverick who had wandered off well-worn tracks and had developed a sort of lateral extension of his art, independently of any of the main circles of American music. The musical starting point of the compositions of The Wayward is the inflections and rhythms of everyday American speech. From the beginnings of his mature output in 1930 Partch had been devoted to what he called 'the intrinsic music of spoken words,' and these four works capture something of the spontaneous musicality of the conversations of the hoboes he befriended during the Depression. In their original form these pieces used only the small collection of instruments Partch had built or customized by 1943: Adapted Viola, Adapted Guitar, Chromelodeon, and Kithara. The versions recorded here are all later reworkings, sometimes with only small changes (as in the case of San Francisco), and sometimes involving a substantial amount of recomposition (as in the case of U.S. Highball).The final work on this disc dates from twenty years later than the compositions of The Wayward, and represents one of the high points of Partch's later instrumental idiom. And on the Seventh Day Petals Fell in Petaluma was composed in Petaluma, California, in March<ETH>April 1964, and revised at various times and places until the completion of the final copy of the score in San Diego in October 1966. It marks a radical departure from the theater works he had written at the University of Illinois in the early 1960s, and shows a renewed concentration on technical innovation and on fusing his activities as composer and instrument-builder within the context of a single composition. Newly remastered.

'The four works on this newly remastered are eloquent testimony to Harry Partch's aesthetic of corporeality. The music he composed for 'The Dreamer That Remains' (1972), for 'Rotate the Body in All its Planes' (1961), for 'Windsong' (1958),and for'Water! Water!' (1961), was intended as only one component in the total artistic experience. In this works music joins with drama, with film, with dance, even gymnastics, as integral parts of the composer's vision.'

2005 remaster, from original mono master tapes (recorded in 1957). The Bewitched was Partch's first work solely intended for dance (and mime-dance at that; he was not overly enamored in his lifetime of so-called 'modern dance'). Drawing heavily from his deep affection for the music-theatrical performance traditions of Greek theater, as well as those from Africa, Bali, and Chinese opera, Partch conceived of a contemporary American music ritual-theater where musicians not only play, but also function at times as movers-singers-actors. Such is the case of The Bewitched, where the instruments are the set, in front of (and around) which dancers 'dance,' but where the onstage musicians also move and sing. Partch's masterpiece has been lovingly remastered from the original mono masters and the 24-page booklet includes never-before-published photographs from productions of The Bewitched. This is the definitive document of this very important work. The Bewitched is in the tradition of world-wide ritual theatre. It is the opposite of specialized. I conceived and wrote it in California in the period 1952-55, following the several performances of my version of Sophocles' Oedipus. In spirit, if not wholly in content, it is a satyr-play. It is a seeking for release -through satire, whimsy, magic, ribaldry -- from the catharsis of tragedy. It is an essay toward a miraculous abeyance of civilized rigidity, in the feeling that the modern spirit might thereby find some ancient and magical sense of rebirth. Each of the 12 scenes is a theatrical unfolding of nakedness, a psychological strip-tease, or - a diametric reversal, which has the effect of underlining the complementary character, the strange affinity, of seeming opposites. Harry Partch.

'Jody Diamond, Chris Mann, voice; Phil Burk and Larry Polansky, live computers; Larry Polansky, fretless electric guitars; Robin Hayward, tubas. Among the lineages of knowledge that Larry Polansky (b. 1954) has woven together in his creative work, as both a composer and theorist, have been mathematics, intonation theory, cybernetics, systems theory, artificial intelligence, musicology (both Western and non-Western), American Sign Language, and Jewish mysticism. He has combined these and many other fields of study together into some of the most important music written by anyone of his generation while retaining status as the composer who is most worthy of being called a true theorist. In many ways his compositions are themselves injunctive demonstrations of his theoretical insights that stand as critiques of the theoreticism that is now endemic to the art world. This intellectual integrity and facility has also been responsible for one of the most interesting characteristics of Polansky's compositional output. His music is one of the most successful, and rare, examples of a confluence between two, generally conflicting, twentieth-century musical streams. Like his mentor, James TenneyÑand many other late twentieth-century century experimental masters who were inspired by the aesthetic innovations of CageÑPolansky creates musical expositions of phenomenal reality. Sometimes these are based in psychoacoustic science and sometimes they are grounded in mathematical formalisms. Sometimes they explore both at once. What he also manages to doÑand this is where he succeeds at the above mentioned confluenceÑis so often reveal these concepts within an expressive musical frame that is strongly linked to more traditional musical values.'

'A free spirit, maverick par excellence, creator of a personal compositional style that has spawned entire generations of epigones, Terry Riley (b. 1935) embodies the best aspects of the American pioneer spirit, the positive and uncorrupted image of America (and California in particular) that still holds abroad: an America free from the weight of European tradition, a privileged space where a fusion of Western and Eastern cultural trends can be produced. It is interesting to note that the most significant musical influences on Riley's style - blues, jazz and Indian classical music -- share relevant common features: modal structures and improvisatory practices intended as careful treatment of a set of more or less strict, codified rules. By emphasizing common ground, Riley reconciles different cultures within the same inventive fusing process. 'Uncle Jard' (1998) (saxophone quartet, piano, harpsichord, and voice) is a particularly compelling example of this. In this piece, Indian classical music and blues
jazz elements co-exist in a stylistically coherent whole: ragtime and raga have never been so closely intertwined. The piece is divided into three parts. While in the first and second parts the texture of the saxophone ensemble is enriched by the voice and keyboard, in the third part the voice is not featured. 'Assassin Reverie' (2001), for saxophone quartet and tape, is a piece in a single movement, but structured in three different sections differentiated by sound material and stage direction. It is one of the more disturbing pieces written by Riley; the second section features an extremely aggressive audio track - gunshots and helicopter sounds are heard throughout it. Written right after 'In C, Tread on the Trail' (1965) (this version for 12 saxophones is by the ARTE Quartett) is in fact based on similar construction principles. The music in both pieces is a ludus, a game in which Riley re-injects into western music a new-found vitality. Through a free exploration of the score, musical performance recovers here its true essence as a playful collective ritual.'

David Rosenboom, Buchla Touché & 300 Series Electric Music Box, piano, violin, percussion, texts. 'David Rosenboom (born 1947) is a composer, performer, interdisciplinary artist, conductor, author, and educator. Since the 1960s he has explored ideas about spontaneously emerging musical forms, languages for improvisation, new techniques in scoring for ensembles, cross-cultural collaborations, performance art, and multimedia, the interactive music of the infosphere, an approach to compositional modeling termed propositional music, and extended musical interface...'

'David Rosenboom (b. 1947) has been widely acclaimed as an innovator in American experimental music since the 1960s. Although much of his work has been collaborative, virtually none of his large-scale collaborative works has hitherto been documented on record. How Much Better If Plymouth Rock Had Landed on the Pilgrims (1969Ð71) is considered to be one of the most important, prompting the following Washington Post review after a 1970 performance: 'If there were a device whereby one could plug into the deepest levels of human consciousness, and then translate this input into sound, what we would hear would probably resemble How Much Better if Plymouth Rock Had Landed on the Pilgrims, the radical composition by David Rosenboom... The elemental pulsations of the piece seem to echo not only our fundamental biological cycles, but those innate psychical tides that govern the flux of human thought and feeling... The listener becomes receptive to fantasy and hallucination and instants seem stretched to eternities... Rosenboom's idiom poses a new esthetic... against the ascetic, disciplined, puritanical streak that one associates in this country with the Pilgrims, this new music hurls a rejuvenated sensuality and mysticism.' This is the world-premiere recording of the complete work. Section I: Erika Duke-Kirkpatrick, cellos. Section II: David Rosenboom, electronics, computer. Section III: Vinny Golia, contrabass saxophones. Section IV: Erika Duke-Kirkpatrick, cellos; Vinny Golia, winds; David Rosenboom, field recordings. Section V: Swapan Chaudhuri, tabla; Vinny Golia, winds; Aashish Khan, sarode; Daniel Rosenboom, trumpet; David Rosenboom, piano, computer; I Nyoman Wenten, pemade. Section VI: PLOTZ! and DR. MiNT (double rock bands). Section VII: David Rosenboom, piano in expanded pelog tuning; I Nyoman Wenten, pemade; William Winant, jegog, calung. Section VIII: Daniel Rosenboom, trumpets; David Rosenboom, piano, drawbar organ, computer. Section IX: David Rosenboom, piano, computer; I Nyoman Wenten, Balinese drum; William Winant, marimba. On historical recordings in Sections II & V: Donald Buchla, Thomas McFaul, Lynn Newton, Gerald Shapiro, Michael Slevin.'

James Tenney (b. 1934) is one of the most important American composers and theorists of the past fifty years. For a very long time, his work was known mainly to other musicians and its tremendous influence was belied by its obscurity. In the past twenty years, however, as his music and writings have been more and more published, recorded, performed, and studied, his place in the context of American contemporary music has become far better understood. He has pioneered musical fields as diverse as computer music, tuning theory, and integrating ideas from acoustics and music cognition into his work. Tenney has also been important as a teacher, performer, and scholar of other radical American composers. This CD contains recordings of the complete set of his Postal Pieces, written primarily during a very brief tenure at California Institute of the Arts in the early 1970s. These works, although frequently performed over the years, have not been recorded (with a few exceptions). This recording is a natural and important companion to the recent New World reissue of Tenney's computer and electronic music from the 1960s. Both collections represent complete, highly individualistic and essential bodies of work by a major American artist.The postal pieces, which Tenney called 'Scorecards,' are a remarkable series of eleven short works printed on postcards. Each card contains a complete if minimally stated work to be performed by instrumentalists. These pieces elucidate to a large degree some of Tenney's bedrock compositional ideas. Each is a kind of meditation on acoustics, form, or hyper-attention to a single performance gesture. This set is essential listening for anyone interested in the evolution of American experimental music. Maximusic (1965), Swell Piece (1967), A Rose Is a Rose Is a Round (1970), Beast (1971), Swell Piece #2 (1971), Having Never Written a Note for Percussion (1971), Koan (1971), For Percussion Perhaps, Or . . . (night) (1971), Swell Piece #3 (1971), Cellogram (1971), August Harp (1971).The Barton Workshop (Jos Zwaanenburg, flutes; Alex Geller, cello; Nina Hitz, cello; Marieke Keser, violin; Jacob Plooij, violin; Judith van Swaaij, cello; Elisabeth Smalt, viola; John Anderson, clarinets; Gertjan Loot, trumpet; Krijn van Arnhem, bassoon, contrabassoon; Frank Denyer, melodica; Charles van Tassel, baritone; Theo van Arnhem, contrabass; Jos Tieman, contrabass; James Fulkerson, conductor).

“A collection of pioneering computer works by American Icon Tenney which includes the celebrated ur-plunderphonic piece Collage No.1 (Blue Suede).The music on the rest of the CD - like much computer music - is rather bloodless; an exception being the hurricane of sound that is Fabric for Chè. For those concerned with the early history of electronic music this is a useful CD, for those with a more general interest, the two pieces above and the 6 minute Music for Player Piano remain significant early works.”

“The Barton Workshop. James Fulkerson, Frank Denyer, co-directors. James Tenney (1934–2006) was one of the most versatile figures in contemporary American music. Apart from creating a large, wide-ranging, and fascinating body of compositions, more than a hundred of them, he was one of the key music theorists of the late twentieth century. This CD set offers complete recordings of one of the most important of Tenney’s later sets of pieces—Spectrum Pieces 1–8, the first five of which were written in Toronto in 1995 and the last three in 2001, after he moved to Valencia, California, to teach at the California Institute of the Arts. They offer a summation of much of Tenney’s compositional practice and at the same time break open new and fertile territory that he had regrettably little time to explore in subsequent compositions. The eight works were not intended to be listened to sequentially or as a whole set, nor need they be; Tenney thought of them as a “family” of pieces, with certain shared features, not as a cycle. Collectively they form a body of work in which many of Tenney’s musical and theoretical preoccupations converge, interact, and yield music of deep fascination and strange beauty.”

David Tudor, live electronics ; John Cage, voice, pre-recorded tape. “This historic release of a simultaneous performance by David Tudor and John Cage of Rainforest II and Mureau, recorded live by Radio Bremen on May 5, 1972, preserves the only surviving performance of the second of Tudor’s Rainforest series. In addition, it documents one of the precious few recorded collaborations between these two visionaries. In 1970 Cage composed the piece called Mureau, in which phrases from Thoreau’s journals (in particular, passages which touch on the subject of music) are used as the springboard for an elaborate collage. The resultant fabric combines elements of sense and nonsense, as it veers between contextual meaning and a sort of abstract, linguistic vocalise. In Cage’s public readings of Mureau, he explored a number of performance variables—differences in tempo, vocal timbre, pitch, register, and dynamics. A similar range will be apparent, in fact, when listening to this recorded performance. This simultaneous performance of Mureau and Rainforest II took place in a large concert hall before an audience, rather than privately in a recording studio. Whereas in other performance realizations (such as their legendary Indeterminacy collaboration) the two men had been placed in separate isolation booths, here the two shared the same performance space, so that each could hear and see the other person’s activity. In fact, Cage and Tudor sat quite close to one another at the center of the stage, Cage performing Mureau as a four-channel realization—one live channel against three pre-recorded tracks, all of them his own voice—and Tudor actively engaged in real-time processing of Cage’s vocal material, using it to generate electronic loudspeaker-filter events. Essential listening for anyone interested in the work of either composer.”

David Tudor (1926-1996): Rainforest (1968). 2 versions.Gordon Mumma (1935): 4 Mographs (1962-63), 2 sections from Gestures II (1960-61), and Song Without Words (1996). David Tudor and Gordon Mumma, keyboards and electronics. 'This historic recording features the first-ever release of the two earliest surviving recordings of David Tudor's seminal work, Rainforest. Sandwiched in between are six keyboard works by Gordon Mumma in recordings featuring the composer and his close collaborator, Tudor. Together, these works constitute a fascinating and historically important document of the 1960s avant-garde in America. In early 1968, Merce Cunningham created a new dance whose apparent impetus was Colin Turnbull's The Forest People, with its account of life among the Mbuti Pygmies of the Ituri Forest in Zaire. For the music, Cunningham turned to Tudor and for the first time asked him for an original work. When he learned that the dance was to be called Rainforest, Tudor said, 'Oh, then I'll put a lot of raindrops in it.' 'Raindrops were just the beginning: using audio transducers originally designed by the navy for hearing under and above water simultaneouslyÑeight small objects programmed with signals from sound generators, phonograph cartridges, and two sets of speakersÑTudor created a world of sound in perpetual but unpredictable motion, a steady state at once abstract and evocative. The first recording, made from the Teatro Novo orchestra pit on July 30, is an excellent document of the sound character of Tudor's Rainforest work when it was performed with the Cunningham Dance Company in those early years. The second recording documents the first concert performance of Rainforest, in March 1969, several months after the Rio de Janeiro dance performance. The venue was a large conference space at Cornell University, Ithaca, New York. The equipment was set on tables in the center of the space, with the audience seated around the performers. Four separate channels of sound were used and widely spaced, with two in the foreground and two in the background. The sound sources had also expanded from the earlier Cunningham performances, with Tudor now adding recordings of small sounds from insects and birds, in conjunction with the previous electronic sounds, all modified by his acoustical resonant devices. The interactive circuitry was fundamentally the same as previously, but expanded with new devices and interactive connections. Gordon Mumma's Gestures II and the Mographs are two sets of pieces for two pianists, composed between 1958 and 1964. During the 1960s Robert Ashley and Gordon Mumma toured with their concerts of New Music for Two Pianos, including parts of Gestures II and some of the Mographs. Later, some of these two works were performed in recording experiments by Mumma and David Tudor. Two sections from the Mumma and Tudor recordings, X and 7, are presented on this CD. Each of the eleven completed Mographs includes the year of composition in its title. The first two words of each title indicate the general length of that particular composition, ranging from Very Small Size Mograph 1962 to the only solo piece, Large Size Mograph 1962. The structure and activities of each Mograph were derived from seismographic recorded P-waves and S-waves of earthquakes and underground nuclear explosions. These seismograph patterns were part of 1960s cold-war research that attempted to verify the differences between their seismic disturbance sources.'

Ussachevsky was one of the most significant pioneers in the compositon of electronic music, and one of its most potent forces. He produced the first works of “tape music,” a uniquely American synthesis of the French musique-concrète and the German pure electronic schools. He co-founded the Columbia-Princeton Electronic Music Center in 1959 and directed its course for the next twenty years as the leading electronic music studio in the United States. This release couples two of his most powerful and innovative scores: Suite from No Exit (1962), from the film of Sartre’s play No Exit directed by Orson Welles, and the soundtrack for the avant-garde film, Line of Apogee (1967).

Electronic and Acoustic Works 1957-1972. 'In 1950, the Columbia University Music Department requisitioned a tape recorder to use in teaching and for recording concerts. In 1951, the first tape recorder arrived, an Ampex 400, and Vladimir Ussachevsky (1911-1990), then a junior faculty member, was assigned a job that no one else wanted: the care of the tape recorder. This job was to have important consequences for Ussachevsky and the medium he developed. Electronic music was born. Over the next ten years, Ussachevsky and his collaborators established the Columbia-Princeton Electronic Music Center, which Ussachevsky directed for twenty years. The Center became one of the best-known and most prolific sources of electronic music in the world. This composer portrait (originally issued as CRI 813) features six of his pioneering works in the medium as well as two of his choral works, an aspect of his output that was just as important to him. The final two works on this CD make extensive use of the human voice. The first of these, Three Scenes from The Creation (1960, rev. 1973), is based on texts from Ovid's Metamorphosis and the Akkadian creation epic Enuma Elish, telling the story of the primordial gods and their struggle to create order out of chaos. The recorded choral tracks were edited, assembled, and manipulated with electronic accompaniment in the studio. The Prologue was played in concert and also issued on a Columbia recording. The Interlude, originally Interlude and Conflict, dates from the same time and used recorded soprano and bass voices with electronic and concrète sounds and a live mezzo-soprano. In addition to the vocal and electronic sounds, recordings of piano, bell, and Chinese dinner plate sound are used, modified with the studio techniques that the composer had developed over the years. In the early 1970s, Ussachevsky returned to acoustic music after nearly two decades of immersion in the electronic medium. It was natural for him to use choral music as the medium of this return. The composer wrote that 'growing up as I did in the Russian Orthodox Church, serving as reader and altar boy, the sound of the choir singing the traditional service and works by all the best nineteenth-century Russian composers left an indelible impression' The Missa Brevis (1972) uses the traditional core texts of the mass -Kyrie, Sanctus, Benedictus, and Agnus Dei without any particular reference to electronic music.' Metamorphosis (1957), Linear Contrasts (1958), Wireless Fantasy (1960), Of Wood and Brass (1965), Computer Piece No. 1 (1968), Two Sketches for a Computer Piece (1971), Three Scenes from The Creation (1960; rev. 1973), Missa Brevis (1972). Macalester College Chamber Chorus, Ian Morton, conductor; Alice Shields, mezzo-soprano, University of Utah A Capella Chorus, Newell Weight, conductor (Three Scenes), Jo Ann Ottley, soprano, chorus of the University of Utah, brasses from the Utah Symphony, Newell Weight, conductor (Missa Brevis).

'The melodic and, in the case of the solo piano music, timbral materials from which Christian Wolff's (b. 1934) music is made are rarely unusual; these are ordinary, everyday things. However, Wolff's rhythmic invention is of great range and variety: complex polyrhythms, speech-like-rhythms, the music flowing at a freely fluctuating rate or proceeding in a plain, straightforward manner, silences. This mix of unusual and ordinary results in a music unlike any other. And, in a piece of such length as Long Piano, the ongoing appearance and accumulation of a great number and variety of short passages results in the constant renewing and refreshing of the listener's perception. This is the world-premiere recording of the composer's largest solo keyboard work to date. '[Long Piano] seems to me like a kind of geological agglomeration. My hope is that it forms a possible landscape on one extended canvas. At first I just started writing and kept going. My tendency is to work in smaller patches. After the piece was finished I saw Jennifer Bartlett's wonderfully engaging and cheerful work Rhapsody, first shown in 1976. It's a 154-foot sequence of an arrangement of 988 one-foot-square silk-screened and painted enamel plates running around at least three walls of a gallery space. An extreme instance of what I've got in mind. I had decided not to use the commonest procedure for long keyboard pieces, variations (e.g., Frescobaldi, Bach, Beethoven, Rzewski), but sometimes there are series of patches that use tunes (for instance, the very old standby 'L'homme armé' and the round 'Dona nobis pacem') for material. The piece has 94 numbered patches, a few of which are blank (silence) (in Bartlett's piece there are the occasional blank squares). The 57th to 67th patches refer to eleven larger sections of a square-root rhythmic structure, each of which has eleven subdivisions whose time proportions are the same as those of the larger sections. The piece also incorporates partial versions (more or less 'parodies' in the old music sense) of Schumann (the Toccata and one of the Kinderszenen) and Ives's Three-Page Sonata.' Christian Wolff

Exercises 18 (two versions), 7, 16, 8, 14b, 3, 1, 15, 10 (two versions), 11. Natacha Diels, Garrett List, Larry Polansky, Michael Riessler, Frederic Rzewski, Robyn Schulkowsky, Chiyoko Szlavnics, Christian Wolff. 'This marvelous recording of these elusive works features composer-supervised performances by a hand-picked group of renowned new-music exponents'. 'Your first encounter with the music of Christian Wolff leaves you with the impression you've just heard (or played, or read) something totally strange, unlike anything else you know. And yet, upon reflection, you realize it is at the same time something completely ordinary and normal, as familiar in its way as any number of repetitive actions characteristic of everyday life, getting up in the morning, going to school, work, church, washing the dishes, performing the daily tasks of home and family. Weird little tunes, sounding as if they had been beamed at some remote point in the universe and then bounced back again as a kind of intergalactic mutant music; recognizable melodic and rhythmic patterns, somehow sewn together in monstrous pairings, sometimes reminiscent of the demons of Hieronymus Bosch, composites of animals, fish, flowers, and common household objects: there is order, but also constant interruption, intrusions of disorderly reality upon regularity and lawfulness, combining to create an effect of both familiarity and strangeness: Shklovsky's ostranenie. You could say this music is surrealistÑnot reproducing familiar forms, but revealing, behind these, life's unpredictability. You could say it is political; improvisatory; concerned with collaborative, non-hierarchical forms of social organization; but you can't really say what it is like (although John Cage came close when he said, after a performance of the Exercises in New York, that it was like the classical music of an unknown civilization).' Frederic Rzewski

2000. Gamelan Galak Tika; Robert Black, double bass; Eric Byers, Mark Stewart, electric guitars; Yukiko Ueno, keyboard; Blake Newman, electric bass. 'What if a first-rate American musician seriously studied Balinese gamelan and started to combine it with electric bass, bowed bass and processed samples of gamelan sounds, all done with a sympathetic ear out for techno and rock? Well, one has, and his name is Evan Ziporyn. Take a listen to the third track of Amok! and elsewhere on this CD to hear the results.' Steve Reich. 'Since 1979, Evan Ziporyn, a member of the Bang on a Can All Stars, has devoted an extraordinary amount of effort toward the study and performance of traditional Balinese music. The results of his creative endeavors elude classification in cultural pigeonholes. Both works on this disc are extended pieces for full Balinese gamelan with various Western instruments. Tire Fire is written for gamelan and electric guitars while Amok! is scored for gamelan and digital sampler. In both pieces, Ziporyn explores the blurring of boundaries that results from the interaction between Western technology and Balinese gamelan. His quest for cross-cultural epiphanies never privileges one tradition over the other, but fuses both in a riot of rhythm and color that redefines the term 'world music'.'

'Arthur Russell, amplified cello and voice; Bill Ruyle, tabla, marimba; Peter Zummo, trombone; Rik Albani, trumpet; Guy Klucevsek, accordion; Mustafa Ahmed, percussion. With accuracy and humor, Peter Zummo (born 1948) often describes his unique music as 'minimalism plus a whole lot more.' He is an important exponent of the American contemporary classical tradition whose compositions explore the methodologies of not just minimalism, but also jazz, world music, and rock, while seeking to create freedom in ensemble situations. Zummo's realization of the contemporary urge to make music that behaves like 'Nature in its manner of operation' (John Cage) is to encourage spontaneous, individual decisions within a self-structuring, self-negotiating group of performers. His scores provide unique strategies (such as a 'matrix of overlapping systems,' freely modulating repetition rates, etc.) and materials for achieving that aim. 'Song IV' (1985), a trio version of the final song from the four-song suite composed for the Trisha Brown Dance Company's Lateral Pass, is a continuous tabla-and-amplified-cello groove with trombone (with voice multiphonics) and vocal (Russell) melodies and harmonies. 'Instruments' (1980) is a composition in seven movements for duet, trio and quartet. Short phrases based on intervallic jumps are repeated at individual repetition rates; the ensemble listens for a unison playing of the phrase, and reverses the phrase at that moment. Different notes sound together in unplanned ways, resulting in combination (bass) tones. The complete version of 'Lateral Pass' (1985) makes its first appearance on disc and features a previously unissued performance of Song IV for quintet. Zummo with an X is an essential document for anyone interested in the multifaceted evolution of American experimental music, especially in the vibrant downtown New York scene of the 1970s and '80s.