A set of lyrical, thoughtful and sometimes whimsical works from the Scottish-based duo of Rob Hall & Chick Lyall (Green Room Trio), who have been developing their musical language since 2003, drawing from a wide range of genres from Baroque chamber music to free jazz and folk idioms, their lack of boundaries lending itself to a uniquely diverse and embraceable music.

The Montreal-based Chorale Joker ensemble directed and conducted by Joane Hétu, Danielle Palardy, and Jean Derome, who are also participants, is one of the most unusual and fascinating improvising vocal ensembles active, heard here in a concert coordinated with Productions SuperMusique at Le Vivier, Amphiteatre du Gesu, Montreal in early 2020; indescribably fascinating!

Sebastian Gottschick's adaptations of Ives' songs and short instrumental pieces pay homage to the composer and develop his work further, as conducted by Gottschick with the ensemble fur neue musik zurich.

Joker brings together 12 vocalists, many core members of the Ambiances Magnetiques/Musique Actuelle collective including Joane Hetu, Jean Derome, Diane Labrosse, Michel F Cote, Lori Freedman, &c, performing unusual works of voice and narration composed by Joane Hetu.

Pianist Stephen Clarke plays seven works for solo piano by Estonian-born, Canadian-naturalized composer Udo Kasemets that focus on specific designs of micro-detail.

Five compositions from Yoon-Ji Lee, whose work employs unconventional and nonlinear structures that focus on quick transformations of language, noise, texture, and tonal color, here with five works, one performed by JACK Quartet & Mivos Quaret, a work for solo Saenghwang, a solo piano work, a string quartet, and a mixed chamber ensemble.

Three piano works by Italian composer Giacinto Scelsi: 'Suite No.9 "Ttai"' (1953); 'Quattro illustrazioni' (1953); and 'Un Adieu' (1978/1988); performed live in Tel Aviv by Israeli pianist Shira Legmann, who found these pieces particularly fascinating as she studied Scelsi's oeuvre, impressed by his compositional method of notating improvisations to create finished pieces.

UK composer Oliver Leith presents a work in 8 movements for piano, keys and percussion performed by Siwan Rhys (keys) and George Barton, an invocation of everyday life through a personal and often idiosyncratic orchestration reflective of personal ritual & habits; our good and our irrational, often contradictory impetus, portrayed through quirky and embraceable episodes.

A large work by the Western Australian composer Josten Myburgh, using harmonies taken from the music of Australian composer Peter Sculthorpe blended with environmental field recordings, performed by Josten Myburgh on sax & electronics, Jet Kye Chong on percussion, Jameson Feakes on guitar, Djuna Lee on bass, Stuart James on piano & electronics, and Kirsten Smith on flutes.

The title referring to a condition of aural hallucinations, Anthony Pateras' composition is a work of tense motion, dissonance and resolution, commissioned by the Musica Sanae project and performed at the 17th Sacrum Profanum Festival in Krakow, 2019, using a recording improvised and assembled in Australia with his tape septet that underpins the performances in concert with his live septet.

Wandelweiser composer and pianist Anastassis Philippakopoulos presents four solo clarinet pieces performed by fellow Wandelweiser member, Swiss composer and clarinetist Jürg Frey, and three solo piano pieces performed by himself, in a beautiful album of delicately minimal and fragile music inspired by and reflecting the natural landscape of Greece.

Long-time collaborators the Quatuor Bozzini string quartet of Clemens Merkel, Alissa Cheung, Stephanie Bozzini and Isabelle Bozzini join with Slavic composer living in Montreal Ana Sokolovic, to present a series of 14 short works -- "Ghost 1" & "Ghost 2"; "Commedia dell'arte" in 10 movements; "Blanc dominant"; and "Troisieme page apres le soleil".

A 3 CD box set with a booklet and bow hair marking violinist/conceptualist Jon Rose's 60th birthday, all previously unreleased works ranging from radio documentary and radio fiction to virtuoso performances using acoustic violin and his hyperstring interactive bow system.

First recordings of composer Katharnia Rosenberger's SHIFT and other dynamic and exciting works incorporating spatialization, by an electroacoustic orchestra including Rage Thrombones, captured in 2016 at the University of California, in San Diego, California.

Pianist Steffen Schleiermacher plays six spiritual pieces by composer Dane Rudhyar that are not meant to be analyzed and thought about, but to be felt and experienced.

Pi-hsien Chen performs Arnold Schonbgergs, a small part of his oeuvre, yet significant in that they reflect the evolution and development of this great composer's compositional powers.

Alternating between Stockhausen and Beethoven, pianist Pi-Hsien Chen performs solo works including "Klavierstuck", "Sonata A-Dur Op. 101" and "Sonata C-moll Op. 111", contrasting and comparing the innovations of both composers.

Three concisely plain compositions for guitar, two solo and one trio, are played only with open strings or natural harmonics, where all the tunings are respectively irregular, written by Tokyo-based guitarist and composer Taku Sugimoto and performed and recorded in St. Petersburg, Russia by guitarists Andrey Popovsky, Denis Sorokin and Alexander Markvart.

Exploring long tones and harmonic interactions of consonance & dissonance through a slowly rotating and patiently evolving series of tones with each of the players in the Tonus trio doubling on wind instruments, as performed by Dirk Serries on soprano melodica & accordion, Martina Verhoeven on concertina & cello, and Colin Webster on clarinet & alto saxophone.

American pianist John Snijders performing the music of European composers Christopher Fox, Ivo Van Emmerik, Richard Rijnvos, James Rolfe, and Luca Francesconi.

New Pricing April 2019: Recordings from the Berlin Inventionen Festivals for New Music 2005 and 2006 featuring compositions by Edgar Barroso ("ODD"); Mario Verandi ("Comme un jeu des images"); Paul Wilson ("Trhough the Rain"); Ricardo Climent ("Wallwoodpeckers"); Vladimir Djambazov ("The Secret Life of a Snare Drum"); and Ludger Brummer ("Glasharle").

The second volume of this excellent German sound magazine and audio CD, 9 artists working in sound art, electroacoustic composition; a "listenable exhibition" of modern compositional approach.

Five chamber works from UK composer James Week performed by Explore Ensemble, developing works extending the poetic idea of a piece as an imaginary or remembered space by exploring combinations of instruments such as the mixed instrumental duos, the use of slow-moving or static background harmonics, and intimate instrumental idioms based on long, breath-length sounds.

Mike & Kate Westbrooks 1986 album of Gioacchino Rossini interpretations, with Lindsay Cooper on sopranino sax, huge works that impart improv and humor into magnificent compositions.

Working with Liminar, one of the premier new music ensembles in Mexico, German/US composer Michael Winter wrote this dynamic and extended work pursuing a method of enumerating all ways of articulating a 6-note chord with 7 instruments bound by certain constraints, using the computer science concept of "Gray Code" switches to create shifts within the piece's progressions.

Early works from avant-garde composer Christian Wolff, including pieces for prepared piano influenced by John Cage's ideas for the same instrument.

Pianist and composer Daniel N. Seel plays four pieces from four generations of different composers including Stefan Wolpe, Morton Feldman, Walter Zimmerman, and his own work.

A live recording of Julius Eastman's 1974 work "Femenine" performed by Apartment House led by cellist Anton Lukoszevieze, with Simon Limbrick on vibraphone, Kerry Yong on piano, Mark Knoop on keyboard, Mira Benjamin on violin, and Gavin Morrison and Emma Williams on flute, an ecstatic and intricate work using a repeating figure contrasted with both asynchronous and complementing backgrounds.

The 2nd live release from the duo of iconic American composer and minimalist pioneer Terry Riley and his guitarist/composer son Gyan Riley, comprised of spontaneous improvisations and compositions by both Terry and Gyan captured during three performances in Canada, Japan and the US, with Gyan performing on electric guitar and Terry Riley on piano, voice, melodica and electronics.

Three recordings from percussionist Hans Lingens in his 2nd solo album on Umlaut, working at the intersection between improvised and composed forms of experimental music: "Nacht", a montage of prerecorded layers of mostly rolls and brush sounds; and two recordings in one take using close miking as he performs on a single cymbal with mallets ("Hund") and a bass bow ("Manatee").

The complete electronic & voice works of Leo Kupper, one of the pioneers of Belgian early electronics, in a 3-CD set with a 20-page booklet, collecting recordings from 1961-1987 that use his self-developed GAME machine (Automatic Generator of Electronic Music), generating complex electronic sounds from microphones and loudspeakers, interacting with live performers.

Using custom-written software to translate prime number sequences into a tonal palette of rich, compatible sounds, Vermont-based electronic musician and sound artist Greg Davis investigates the compositional properties of those numbers by paring the representation of each sequence into a network of pure sine tones which interact with fascinating harmonic and rhythmic structures.

Fall 2022 issue of Canada's most fascinating and diverse music magazine; Montreal Violinist And Composer Jessica Moss; Musical Repatriation and Reconciliation with Canada's Indigenous Peoples; sound artist Tona Walt Ohama; Interdisciplinary Artist Chloe Alexandra Thompson; electronic artist Mariana Vieira; Jordan Dykstra; Sabarah Pilon; The London Contemporary Music Festival, &c. &c.

Working only with a cowbell from a charity shop in NYC, percussionist Sean Meehan, whose performances often take place in locations of unique resonant properties, discovered the Fort Jay powder magazine at Governor's Island--a compartment once used to store ammunition and explosives--using its sonic properties to capture these two recordings reflecting the original purpose of that space.

Using musique concrète techniques, ECM-inspired jazz, rich layers of synths and hints of pop into immersive and affecting structures, composer Eiko Ishibashi, along with collaborators including Jim O'Rourke on guitar & acoustic bass, create a musical portrayal in two parts plus a coda of the character Jack McCoy, portrayed by Sam Waterston in the TV show Law & Order.

A series of instrumental pieces and songs from Chinese-American composer, cellist, and vocalist Theresa Wong, inspired by the sounds of the natural world and a personal sense of "sonic genetic memory", her works merging composition and improvisation, the album recorded by Wong herself using specific microphone placement to bring out the warmth of her instrument and voice.

An astonishingly diverse album of solo piano works performed by pianist and composer Claudio Sanna, performing works from eight Sardinian composers including his own, weaving improvisation, acousmatic & musique concrete elements, turntablism, electronics, inside piano playing, chalk-board writing and more into lyrical and experimental pieces that flow together exquisitely.

An unusual narrative of field recordings, electronics and chamber instrumentation from composer Vanessa Rossetto, through two CDs weaving an abstracted and detailed story of recurring motifs, indescribably intertwined with spoken word, equestrian moments, environmental recordings, and melodic progressions of strings and harps; a momentous work of collaged composition.

Aside from her exceptional trumpet work in free improvisation settings, Portuguese trumpeter Susana Santos, currently based in Stockholm, is also an electro-acoustic composer, these six compelling compositions merging field recordings--particularly birds, waters and yes, a phone--along with her trumpet playing and Irish flute, the album title a reference to John Cage's book Silence.

Three chamber works in single and multiple movements by minimalist composer Jurg Frey, exploring time & duration, form & shape and a balance of material, performed by a core quartet from the UK ensemble Apartment House, orchestrated for clarinet and bass clarinet, violin and cello, the final work adding piano, viola and percussion in a septet reworking of a 2014 composition.

A remarkable, intense and startlingly virtuosic solo performance from Berlin violinist Sarah Saviet in a long-form extension of an originally 15-minute work commissioned by Saviet of UK composer Bryn Harrison, developed together to allow the score to be variable in length through performer choices to re-sequence the events and repetition of the composition.

With titles taken from different kinds of water nymphs in Greek mythology, composer Mark Iddon's four-part work is a hauntingly beautiful set of compositions of seeming siren calls and rich percussion, realized by an octet configuration of the UK ensemble Apartment House, with two pianists (Philip Thomas and Mark Knoop), three strings, clarinet, flute and percussion.

Five works from US composer often based in Amsterdam, Evan Johnson, in solo, duo and trio settings including a triptych titled "L'art de toucher" in three configurations, demonstrating his unique approach to writing using disparate musical influences from modern to Baroque, mated to anarchic experimentalism and a Wandelweiser sensibility; fascinating!

Dutch composer Michel Banabila amalgamates genres, using acoustic and electronics elements to serve his work, here in 8 recent pieces that blend electronica, world forms and soundscape in sophisticated ways, with vocal samples from all n4tural and Yuko Parris, guitar from Cok Van Vuuren, and a collaborative composition with Machinefabriek/Rutger Zuydervelt.

A collection of compositions drawn from recent works by Michel Banabila, the composer performing alongside artists Rutger Zuydervelt, Yuko Parris, ok Van Vuuren and all n4tural, showcasing his flexibility in developing a variety of works that include cinematic sweeps, ambient/fourth world, sound and noise, and rhythm-based and synthetic.

Percussionist Michel Blanc's astounding 12-part work was composed around news events that occurred between 1972-89, in a tour-de-force of music drawing from improvised music, RIO oriented rock, and concrete sound; with Marc Ducret, Annabelle Playe, Anne Gimenez, & Antonin Rayon.

With backgrounds in both improvisation and compositional music, the new trio of Cyril Bondi on harmonium, Pierre-Yves Martel on viola da gamba, and Christoph Schiller on spinet, agreed on a sequence of pitches for this 5 part improvisational work, allowing space for the players to explore pitch and melody within a contemplative and pensive framework.

During the tour in support of their "Tse" release, the quartet of Cyril Bondi on Shruti box, pipe & harmonica, Christoph Schiller on spinet & effects, Pierre-Yves Martel on Viola da Gamba, pipe & harmonica, and Angharad Davies on violin, captured this performance at London's Cafe OTO, improvised over a sequence of pitches with astonishing creativity.

Twelve pieces for guitar performed by Tim Brady, including three updated versions of previous pieces, new compositions by Brady, and four pieces composed by other artists.

Earle Brown conducts a chamber ensemble including John Tilbury on piano through a number of compositions, including versions of "October", "November", & "December", "Corroboree 1964 For Three Pianos", "Trio For Five Dances", and "Tracking Pierrot For Ensable".

A composition for solo 'modified guitar' from Swiss composer d'incise peformed by guitarist Cristian Alvear, music "at the confluence of sound, melody and rhythm. Something quiet but somehow driven by a pulse, existing somewhere between the electroacoustic and the tonal conceptions of music."

NY composer Mario Diaz de Leon, who is influenced by Scelsi, Ligeti, Dumitrescu & Radulescu, focuses on acoustic & electronic hybrids that often fuse both elements into unified meta-instruments.

A uniquely epic work in 14 parts by composer Frank Denyer, with a large ensemble of 40 musicians, many playing specially built instruments made from discarded materials, with other instrumentation including sitar, mandolin and hammered dulcimer, 4 male vocalists, 4 female vocalists, 4 players of adapted organ pipes, crumhorns, bowed wine glasses, 3 double basses, a contrabassoon, &c. &c.

A double CD of delicate music from the French composer Bruno Duplant, the first disc containing three chamber pieces exquisitely played by the Suidobashi Chamber Ensemble, the second disc a long piece for solo guitar, performed by Taku Sugimoto in a public park in Tokyo, incorporating an extraordinary variety of environmental sounds.

Nine song pieces for piano, harp, and vocal by The Giving Shapes, a Vancouver-based collaborative project between harpist/vocalist Elisa Thorn and pianist/vocalist Robyn Jacob, lovely pieces that weave their two voices with two compatibly yet uniquely timbred strings, merging contemporary popular forms with modern compositional music.

A collection of narrative and experimental sound worlds for solo trumpet, born out of improvisation and organized through thoughtful collaborations with composers from Canada to Argentina.

Six musicians from the UK Fluxus group Apartment House, including Philip Thomas (piano), Bridget Carey (voila), Anton Lukoszevieze, Simon Limbrick (percussion), present several realizations of composer Joseph Kurdirka's pieces, including text scores and fully-notated works.

For a decade, Brigitte Poulin has been commissioning and premiering works by composers who, she thought, could help better define our own piano culture.

Three works from Italian composer and pianist Federico Pozzer in his "breathing" series, compositions where the musicians follow the concept of inhaling, exhaling, and pausing, set against certain fixed actions or interactions as they devise their own musical actions, the goal to overcome both the players' freedom in decision-making and strictness in the score.

Composer, keyboardist and conceptualist David Shea continues his musical journeys through the world's ancient trading routes that began with his albums Hsi-Yu Chi, The Tower of Mirrors, Satyricon and Rituals, here in ten encompassing compositions exploring the trading route from ancient Xian to Rome, through music, stories, history and Buddhist influences.

Four new commissioned works by Chris Cutler, Andzrej Karpinski, Nick Sudnik and Alessandro Monti performed on Futurist conceptualist Luigi Russolo's "Intonarumori", unique boxes capable of mechanically creating sounds including roars, thunderings, explosions, hissing, whistling, puffing, mumbling, muttering, gurgling, screeching, creaking, buzzing, crackling and scraping.

Two compositions by John Zorn for solo cello and two works for cello and rhythm section, performed by cellists Jay Campbell (JACK Quartet) and Michael Nicolas (Brooklyn Rider, International Contemporary Ensemble (ICE)), with drummer Ches Smith and bassist Jorge Roeder taking the rhythm chairs; exciting and innovative compositions in virtuoso performances.

Dutch flautist and electronic artist Jos Zwaanenburg in a release that updates and reinvents the technology for works written by British composers for Zwaanenburg over the last 20 years.

First performed in November 2019 at the Huddersfield Contemporary Music Festival and then at the Splitter Orchester festival in Berlin, this studio recording of Magnus Granberg's delicately complex and exquisitely dream-like composition features his Skogen ensemble, including Granberg, Rhodri Davies, Toshimaru Nakamura, Erik Carlsson, Petter Wastberg, &c.

Composer Magnus Granberg took influences from Schubert's song cycle "Die Winterreise", extracting tonal material, which he merged with rhythmic influences from medieval English folk music and a song by Dowland, merging them into a temporal framework for this large and subtle composition, executed by a setpet including Angharad Davies, Erik Carlsson, Henrik Olsson, d'incise, &c.

The Smith Quartet with pianist John Tilbury perform two long works by Morton Feldman: "For John Cage" (1982) and "Piano and String Quartet" (1985) on DVD Audio.

Following their album of compositions by Alvin Lucier, the New York violin duo String Noise of Conrad Harris and Pauline Kim Harris present a series of solo and duo compositions by American avant composer Christian Wolff, a peer of Brown, Cage, and Feldman from the New York School, works composed across the span of his career through a wealth of concepts and motives.

Using four guitars tracks, each assigned to a specific melody in counterpoint, Bill Orcutt presents an assertive set of fourteen compositions in a minimalist form--think Steve Reich--each part organized through controlled freneticism that tames the wild nature inherent in each piece; a downloadable 80 page score illustrates the complex madness of the guitarist's mind.

Four distinct compositions from French electroacoustic composer Philippe Petit, each using analog synthesizers including Buchla Easel K & Buchla 200 synthesizers, EMS Synthi and a Landscape Stereofield analog synthesizer, interestingly layered and captivatingly paced against processed voices, percussion, insider piano work, broken glass, samplers and turntables.

Recording in Brussels, Rhodri Davies performs a composition for pedal harp written for and dedicated to him by composer and saxophonist Jean-Luc Guionnet, using liberal periods of space that creates hanging anticipation amidst beautiful moments of fragmented string sequence and percussive response using the frame of the harp, leaving the listener in a state of fascinated expectancy.

Elliott Sharp's opera is a visceral meditation about the universal search for a safe neutral place, told through text reflecting moments and situations in cosmic and human history that resonate with current events of great urgency, and through creative sound performed by the vocal group Voxnova Italia, and the instrumental ensemble Musikfabrik.

An outrageous interpretation of Alfred Jarry's fictional character Ubu performed with with the International Contemporary Ensemble and core Downtown New York performers Ikue Mori, Ches Smith and Zorn himself, using Zorn's quick cut approach to composition; presented along with a work inspired by French poet Charles Baudelaire and an elegy to painter Paul Gauguin.

Stepping away from his improvisational work with groups including Exploding Customer and Fire! Orchestra, Swedish trumpeter and keyboardist Tomas Hallonsten releases a solo album of analog synthesis, early electronics and drum machines, lyrically inclinded compositions with diverse influences including George Harrison, Sun Ra and Kraftwerk, plus a cover of Joe Henderson's "Earth".

Two large-scale compositions from "Through-Composer of Brutal Classical" Nandor Nevai, scored for 35 brass players and a vocalist, accomplished through 10 layers of Peter Evans (trumpet, piccolo trumpet), 9 of Steve B (tenor trombone), 7 of Ron Stabinsky (bass trombone) and 10 of Nevai himself on tenor trombone & voice; plus "Gospel Power Walls" for a chorus of 5 (bad) people.

Translating to Paths of Light and Shadows, Argentine electronic composer Beatriz Ferreyra's 16-channel piece is inspired by astrophysics, the mystery of the pre-Big Bang era and uncanny motions of the unconscious mind; a major work of exploration through electronics and acoustic transformation, presented in two parts: "Abysmal Paths" and "Forgotten Paths".

Italian electroacoustic composer and former directed of the French GMR studio Daniel Teruggi is heard in four major and spectacular acousmatic works from the 1980s into the 2000s: "Space of Mind (2004)" in four movements; "Birds (2006)" in five moments; "Transmutations (2009)" in five movements; and the earlier "Terra" exploring the four fundamental substances.

Translating her concepts from the electronic realm into acoustic, composer Eliane Radigue used an oral compositional process with the Montreal string quartet Quatuor Bozzini, for whom this work is dedicated, allowing each performance a uniqueness through sustained tones, microbeats and emerging harmonies, creating a profoundly meditative and rich work.

Trying to strike a balance between composition and the challenges of being a young parent, Rutger Zuydervelt, aka Machinefabriek, created a series of short tracks that could be developed quickly with invited collaborators, a concept that worked so well that in little time he found 52 enthusiastic and diverse musicians to develop the expanse of this impressive collection.

A double CD of Japanese pianist Miharu Ogura's performance of Karlheinz Stockhausen's Klavierstücke I-XI for solopiano, recorded at the MONOPIANO festival in 2021, bringing to a pinnacle her fascination with Stockhausen's unique approach to this set of compositions, captured in her second live performance after a concert in Tokyo in the same year.

Nine compositions from Ryoko Akama commissioned by Another Timbre while she was doing research at the Krzysztof Kieslowski archive in Poland, the scores based on fragments of notes and objects from that archive, realized here by the Apartment House ensemble as a beautiful set of floating works invoking "clouds, as shape, as light, as colour, as body, as element".

Canadian composer Martin Arnold is based in Toronto, writing melodic works that contain a meandering, psychedelic quality, as heard in these three compositions performed by Philip Thomas on piano and Mira Benjamin on violin, the first two pieces solos from each respectively, and the last a duo with both musicians.