Composed between 1926 and 1939, "Mikrokosmos" was Bela Bartok's attempt to solve certain technical problems in the art of piano playing, here adapted by the 5-piece Quartetski into a fascinating series of progressive exercises and etudes, oddly enough presented without a piano.

Bridging contemporary and improvised music, Montreal double bassist Nicolas Caloia wrote these pieces for textured and impossible rhythms; blending pieces by Nancarrow and Grand Master Flash; and manipulating poems by Genevieve Letarte; with supporting improv from Jean Derome & Lori Freedman.

Draksler's interest in poetry drives this 2-CD release, with a chamber octet of improvisers and orchestra players, with 2 vocalists, two reedists (inc. Ab Baars), violin, piano, double bass, drums & orchestral percussion, performing Draksler's compositions for the words of Pablo Neruda and Andriana Minou.

The 2nd release in a new series of small groups drawn from members of the Discus Music family, where the group meets, writes, rehearses and records in one single session, here developing ten compositions from all four players edited into a continuous sequence of structure and improvisation, embracing melody, texture and pure abstraction.

Three works from Canadian composer Chiyoko Szlavnics, two electroacoustic compositions incorporating sinewaves, one with a saxophone quartet and the other with two accordions, two flutes and two percussionists; and a string trio of long sustained tones and slow glissandi.

Ensemble leader and tuba player Carl Ludwig Hubsch created this musical concept inspired by the guitar player Keith Rowe, exploring one static sound in the ensemble, maintaining it and in the same time interacting with utmost care and openness for any necessary change, in a 22-piece ensemble of exceptional players.

Spring 2016 issue of Canada's premier music magazine, including a 10-track CD of musicians featured in this issue's magazine. Contents include: articles on Craig Aalders' el8dEra 3m; , Eighty-five scores celebrate Pauline Oliveros; Toronto label All-Set! Editions; Thin Edge New Music Collective; electronic composer John Mills-Cockell; and much more!

Antoine Beuger performs composer Maria De Alvear's 1995 contemplative work "Besando El Tiempo" (Kissing The Time) written using an automatic script and originally composed for the flautist Caren Levine; after hearing Beuger's interpretation she requested that he record it, the result this rendition that takes the composition on an introspective journey.

The duo of Beat Keller and Philipp Bowee on electric guitars perform 6 subtle compositions from Turkish-born sound artists and composer Cem Guney's, including 'a bas relief of a talisman' dedicated to Charles Ives and 'soft kill incubator' dedicated to Sylvia Alexandra Schimag.

American organist and composer Carson Cooman performs three sontatinas, each in three movements, and the 2014 work "drones", by German contemporary composer Eva Maria Houben, a member of the Wandelweiser group, all slowly evolving works of tone and subtle harmonics.

The MaDam Electroacoustic Improvisation Collective based in Spain performs the first in Pisaro's 34 piece Harmony Series, which attempts to create the conditions for a harmonic situation without giving any actual notes, just numbers, durations of tones, and pauses; this work is based on "swell piece (for alison knowles)" (1967) by James Tenney.

Composer Burkhard Schlothauer, co-founder of Editions Wandelweiser and a member of Zeitkratzer and the Wandwelweiser Composers Ensemble, in a five part work conceived as a single part, combining previous works into various possible versions as "events", working with spatial distribution, slow beats, noise, and pulse, superimposed from their origins.

Roman philosopher Titus Lucretius Carus named "Clinamen" the unpredictable (in time and space) swerve of atoms falling in the void, which aptly describes the unexpected directions taken in subtle free improvisation from this French trio, led by bassist Louis-Michel Marion, with Jacques Di Donato on clarinet, and Philippe Berger on viola.

Five original chamber works for saxophone and ensemble by composer and saxophonist Tim Brady for his second release on Ambiances Magnetiques.

Double CD of bleak and sinister metal-oriented improv from the duo of Jamie Saft on keys and bass and Mike Pride on drums and hostile and freakish vocals.

A four part suite bridging compositional and improvisational music from Portugese pocket trumpeter Sei Miguel in a quintet including Rafael Toral on modulated electronics.

Summer 2011 issue of Canada's premiere music magazine and CD, with articles and tracks from Gregory Oh, Grimes, Doldrums, The Vegetable Orchestra, Terri Hron, Miguel Azguime, Rachel Wadham, &c.

Multi-instrumentalist improviser Novak, who has worked with Tim Daisy and Tatsuya Nakatani, in an eclectic and complex solo release of colliding genres.

Composer Danielle Palardy Roger presents a work for a 13-voice mixed choir, two speakers, two soloists, and two percussionists in a satirical elegy that is an account of a man's last agonizing moments.

A diverse set of artist interpret a random page from Cornelius Cardew's "Treatise", using the score alone with each artist unable to hear what the other participants were playing, which Spool label-leader Daniel Kernohan assembled into these 10 incredible audio tracks, each roughly 4:35 long, in a great interpretation of Cardew's (in)famous work.

Morton Feldman's final composition, originally premiered in 1987, here performed by pianist Mark Knoop, violinist Aisha Orazbayeva, violist Bridget Carey, and cellist Anton Lukoszevieze, recording a year after their successful performance at London's Cafe Oto, maintaining focus and concentration on this large, unhurried work of micro-variations.

Recorded live in an Australian National Park on a 15-day walk, saxophonist Jim Denley performs solo on the alto saxophone in response to and in conversation with the environment around him using the natural acoustics of this rugged and awe-inspiring region.

Luis Jose Martins uses classical guitar, prepared guitar, electronics, and percussion in a solo album of incredible detail and lyrical, beautiful playing of original compositions that blend his playing with modern techniques and electronics into melodic masterpieces, performed in the natural resonance of the church of the convent of S. Bento in Avis.

The Bozzini Quartet commissioned this work from the duo Derome/Hetu, which tackles the subject of making differences cohabit, calling for the musicians to move & improvise in response to a soundtrack in 4 languages.

3 live recordings from 3 ensembles - GGRIL, Ensemble SuperMusique and ECM+ - exploring relationsips between early music and contemporary creative music; with Jean Derome, Joane Hetu, Diane Labrosse, Bernard Falaise, &c. &c.

The 1st release on the Ars Nova Classics label presents 'Eclecticism' composer Nick Vasallo in genreÐblurring avant and electro-acoustic works performed by several ensembles.

Pianist Claudia Binder presents 3 concepts for solo piano - the introspective "Room for a Sound" and it's dramatic inverse, "Sound for a Room"; "Polyphony" in 3 parts using piano preparation, one part playful, one part serious, one part peculiar; and an inexplicable "It Takes Two to Tango"--in performances revealing a curious mind and tremendous skill.

Kevin Good organized this composition from four field recordings collected near Avon, CT, isolating sounds that he found interesting and then attempting to recreate them on other instruments, finally adding the human voice sparsely utilized throughout the piece, all to promote the idea of listeners actively paying attention to the sounds of their environment.

John Cage's 1957 composition in a visceral realisation for four pianos, played by John Tilbury, Philip Thomas, Mark Knoop and Catherine Laws, using chance procedures to assign each of the pianist's five of the twenty pages of the score, the pianists agreeing on an overall duration of 40 minutes and preparing their parts independently, performed without rehearsal.

NY Composer and Zs founder Alex Mincek's first release since 2011 also launches Sound American's Young Composer Portrait series, presenting 4 chamber works--"Pendulum VII"; selected movements from "Harmonielehre"; "Pneuma"; and "Torrent"--performed by Wet Ink Ensemble, Mivos Quartet, and Yarn/Wire, in a deluxe hardcover book package with interviews and notes.

A double CD with five beautiful pieces that engage with the work of the extraordinary French-Swiss poet Gustave Roud, with performers including Dante Boon, Stefan Thut, Andrew McIntosh and Jurg Frey himself, 10 compositions that Frey wrote in the manner that Roud would, roaming with a sketchbook and developing the pieces based on impressions of his surroundings.

Two live recordings at Theatre au Clain, in Poitiers, France and at le Bistrot, in Bayonne, from the free improvising quartet of Christiane Bopp on trombone, Jean-Marc Foussat on synth & voice, Jean-Luc Petit on bass clarinet and sopranino sax, and Makoto Sato on drums, for submersive interchanges blending electronics and acoustics in remarkable ways.

An impressive triple-CD box with recordings of some late works by John Cage, including "Seventy-Four for Orchestra, 1992", "103 for Orchestra, 1991, part 1 & 2", In a Landscape fur Harfe", "Postcard From Heaven fur Eine Bis Zwanzig Harfen", and some of "The Harmony of Maine"; including a 32 page booklet with photos and liner notes by Jakob Ullmann.

Polish composer and recorder player Dominik Strycharski wrote these pieces in response to a work for the recorder by composer Louis Andriessen that he dedicated to Frans Bruggen: "Melodie"; Strycharski response is "Harmonie", performed in a duo with pianist Sebastian Zawadzki to demonstrate the impracticability of harmony in its purest forms.

Australian / Polish composer Dominik Karski presents several works for flute performed with collaborators Ewa Liebchen on piccolo, flute, alto flute, bass flute, tam tam, Rafal Jedrzejewski on flute, alto flute, bass flute and tam tam, and Zofia Dowgiatto Zynch on harp, including the 4-part "Veiled Voice", "Glimmer", and two parts of "Streamforms".

With many participants from Ensemble Musique and the Montreal Musique Actuelle scene, composer and multi-instrumentalist Jean Derome directs an ensemble into the exploration of electricity and "Resistances", blending electronics, turntable, 60 Hz hums and other electronics into an orchestra of improvisers executing his dynamic 16 movement composition.

Canada's premiere creative and new music magazine in their 129th issue, Winter 2017/18, with Geronimo Inutiq on the cover, plus articles on University of Victoria's music department, reedist Karen Ng, Hans-Joachim Roedelius, Kamancello, Quasar saxophone quartet, Biophilia, Spool, and an 11-track CD with music from those artists and more.

German pianist Dominik Blum presents his second album for the Wandelweiser label, performing a selection of compositions from Swiss composer Hermann Meier (1906-2002), whose forward-looking work with reduced scores, modern use of time and space, and graphics scores in compositions pre-dating Messiaen, Stockhausen, Boulez, &c. that are only recently being rediscovered.

Composer Eva-Maria Houben in a collaborative work with bass flutist Rebecca Lane and bass clarinetist Samuel Dunscomb, the composer performing on piano and orgran, for two renderings of "Observing Objects", a patient work of long notes and tones interspersed with silence, lower registers in the winds balanced by the piano or organ's upper register.

Composer Michael Winter uses the "maximally complex, incomputable number" known as Chaitin's Constant, plus text adapted from Gregory Chaitin's 1994 book "The Limits Of Mathematics", samples from 36 creative musicians, the voice of Muirgen Eleonore Gourgues, plus cello from Judith Hamann and piano from Winters, to create this curious and compelling narrative work.

Three compositions for voice and piano from German composer Eva-Maria Houben, also performing on piano with soprano vocalist Irene Kurka--"Adagio" in three pieces; "Lyri"; and "Lieder Fur Die Insel (Songs for the Island)--with texts from poet Felix Timmermans (adagio) and Hilde Domin (lyrik); beautiful, stark, haunting music that presents at its own pace.

Five works for harp and voice from composer Eva-Maria Houben and soprano Tatiana Kuzina, opening with a lovely "Aeolian Harp", and including two works from her "Voice and Piano" album recorded for harp--"Adagio" in 3 movements, and "Songs for the Island" in 5 movements--alongside "Hatid" and "Two Songs with Piano" in two movements.

With orchestration of harp, daxophone, idiophones, piano, cello, guitar, percussion, sampling & electronics, the Portuguese quintet Turbamulta (roughly translates to "rowdy mob", though clearly a very sophisticated mob) was born from the band Powertrio of Eduardo Raon, Joana Sa and Luis Martins, expanded to blend compositional, EA and improv approaches into something unique and beautiful.

The Canadian Council for the Arts commissioned this work by Hungarian composer Gyula Csapo, a student of Morton Feldman amd John Cage, realized by Montreal's Quatuor Bozzini quartet, "Deja? Koja?" meaning "Already? Where to?" is a three-part work with two intermissions, an epic work that references the same basic materials in a variety of perspectives.

New ensemble pieces by Jurg Frey and Magnus Granberg played by Ensemble Grizzana, commissioned by Another Timbre with the request that both start from the same two fragments of early music, one by Johannes Ockeghem, the other by William Byrd, each composer producing fascinatingly different pieces that both contain echoes of the source material.

Influenced by rock, jazz, Javanese and Balinese gamelan, NY drummer Mark Nauseef's career has embraced an inclusive blending of styles, heard in this fantastic new album embracing compositional and ea styles, recorded with previous collaborators including Tony Oxley, Bill Laswell, Walter Quintus, along with Sylvie Courvoisier, Pat Thomas, Miroslav Tadic, & Arthur Jarvinen.

In it's 40th year, the Canadian music journal Musicworks, with a reflection on their journey, alongside articles about guitarist Sam Shalabi, composer Sarah Hennies, the music series SONICBernheim in Louisville, Kentucky, electronic-music producer Vanese "VJ" Smith (Pursuit Grooves), and a 13-track CD with music from the those artists and more.

Between 2014-16 Jakob Ullmann composed the orchestral work "steine, feuer, sterne" (stones, fire, stars) based on a modular structure, such that individual sections can be played outside of a complete performance, solo or in predetermined combinations; this album presents one section for solo bassoon titled "Muntzers stern" performed by Dafne Vicente-Sandoval.

An hour-long work for an ensemble of six musicians by Swedish composer Magnus Granberg performed by Anna Lindal on baroque violin, d incise on vibraphonen electronics, Cyril Bondi on percussion, Anna Kaisa Meklin on viola da gamba, Christoph Schiller on spinet, and Magnus Granberg himself on prepared piano, transforming material from a song by Franz Schubert.

Written in 1963 for up to 15 peformers plus a conductor who may also make sound, Japanese composer and Fluxus artist Toshi Ichiyanagi's score has 16 pages marked with combinations of lines, dots and letters indicating duration, number of events, and moments of restraint, each player using a different page, with certain options of switching pages with another player during performance.

Marianne Schuppe continues to reimagine songs and their relation to tone and melody, here in a series of 11 songs realized with voice, lute, and uber bows, creating delicate accompaniment to her lucid movements between pure sound and words, singing and speaking her lyrics of succinct phrases rich in subtle intimation and evocative imagery; beautiful.

Fourteen pieces for solo guitar from Norwegian composer Johan Lindvall, sparse yet warmly spaced pieces that focus on the individual notes or simple chords in intimate ways, meditative yet warmly evocative; two sections are presented in multiple movements, with "five songs for voice and guitar", Rasten singing words written by Marianne Moore; lovely and refined.

Pianist and composer Dante Boon performs his own work "Years, Numbers", alongside Antoine Beuguer's "Pour Etre Seul(e), Sans Reserve" and Taylan Susam's "Tombeau", and Bueger's "Nov. (piano)", four works of graceful and introspective beauty using minimal approaches to tone, chord, or spaciousness, recorded live at University Of Wisconsin-Whitewater in 2014.

A sextet of Cyril Bondi (vibraphone), d'Incise (metallic objects), Magnus Granberg (piano), Anna Lindal (Baroque violin), Anna-Kaisa Meklin (viola de gamba) and Christoph Schiller (spinet) perform two works composed by Bondi and d'Incise, recorded by Simon Reynell of Another Timbre, works of repetition with distinct variations that evolve as each piece progresses.

Conservatory trained Argentinian saxophonist Sergio Merce uses a prepared tenor sax and a microtonal sax to create rich harmonics and slowly moving tonal works, layering aberrant and alluring tones in restrained configurations that allow each stratum of sound to be distinguished and appreciated, creating mesmerizing compositions of elusive and illusionistic sound.

Cinematic aesthetics and themes from the Norwegian Holy Mountain duo, performing on the uncommon pairing of two instruments--accordion played by Andreas Angell, and drums with acoustic and electronic parts and vintage synthesizer played by Aleksander Tidemann--in their 3rd release inspired by the dystopian sci-fi visions of John Carpenter, Philip Glass and Daft Punk.

A series of unusual compositions originally written by Jacques Demmiere and Vincent Barras, here reworked by Demmiere and violinist Anouck Genthon, each piece focusing on sounds, breaths, frictions, silences, vowels and consonants, weaving and complementing each other through a mix of traditional, extended and unconventional techniques; fascinating.

The second issue in the 40th anniversary year of Canada's foremost magazine exploring new music in composed, improvised, experimental and other unusual musics, articles including Peggy Lee, Circuit Bending, composer Maria de Alvear, an article on the Bug Incision label, plus a 14-track CD with tracks to accompany the articles, plus album reviews, live reviews, &c. &c.

Two ensemble works and two solo pieces by Christian Wolff's favourite contemporary composer, Cassandra Miller, who is blazing a very personal trail through the experimental music world, with brilliant performances by Apartment House, Mira Benjamin, Philip Thomas, and Charles Curtis with the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra, conducted by Ilan Volkov.

US Composer Sarah Hennies wrote these pieces for vibraphone for Lenka Novosedlíková to be performed at the church in Kyjatice, Slovokia, a medieval building the two discovered while traveling, and that they challenged each to bring life to the building while respecting it's contemplative character and using the psychoacoustic dimensions of space.

A book of scores to accompany the double CD of 56 Satoko Fujii compostions titled "Diary 2005-2015", performed by respected classical pianist and educator Yuko Yamaoka, released as part of Satoko Fujii's ambitious 60th birthday monthly album set.

The original motion picture soundtrack for a true crime documentary about the Lawson Family Murders on Christmas Day in 1929 from pianist and sonic experimenter Judson Hurd, presenting six tracks that accompany the movie through dark and mysterious passages of keys, synth and percussive tones; the profits of each copy sold will benefit victims of Hurricane Florence.

French composer and guitarist Clara De Asis composed the extended soundwork "Without" for the duo of Erik Carlson (violin) and Greg Stuart (percussion), defining a precise framework for the position and duration of each sound section and silence, with outlines for texture, volume, use of tone or noise, and percussive materials, but leaving space for many of the performers' choices.

The Italian free improv quartet The Assassins (Francesco Cusa, drums; Giulio Stermieri, piano; Flavio Zanuttini, trumpet; Giovanni Benvenuti, sax) joins together with the classical chamber string ensemble, Florence Art Quartet (Daniele Iannaccone, violin; Lorenzo Borneo, violin; Agostino Mattioni, viola; Cristiano Sacchi, cello) in a wonderful hybrid of both approaches.

Submerging the listener into the immediacy of pure perception through the economy of materials and atemporality, Catalan guitarist Ferran Fages presents the 3rd piece of his trilogy for guitar and sinteones, referencing Feldman, Lucier and Szlavnics as he specifies tunings for the guitar accompanied by pure resonating sinetones used as memory vehicles or shadows.

Works for solo piano by Mark R Taylor, beautifully played by Teodora Stepancic, the first CD release by a remarkable but neglected English composer whose piano works present a metrically rhythmicized exploration of a generative spectrum, here featuring works dating between 1979 and 2018 and performed by Serbian pianist Teodora Stepancic.

The Montreal string quartet Quatuor Bozzini of Alissa Cheung on violin, Clemens Merkel on violin, Stephanie Bozzini on viola, and Isabelle Bozzini on cello is extended with double bassist Pierre-Alexandre Maranda as they perform composer Simon Martin's work of long tones and timbres, exploring the nature and philosophy of sound, and our relationship to it.

John Cage wrote his "Number Pieces" in the last years of his life, using his time bracket technique of short fragments allowing the performer flexibility in interpretation; each piece is titled for the number of performers and its ordinal position in the series, and most pieces are dedicated to a musician; here pianist Guy Vandromme performs three of the "One", or solo, series.

The 2nd part of a trilogy for guitar and sinetones composed between 2015-18, alongside "What Might Occur (Rereadings of Triadic Memories by Morton Feldman for guitar and sinewaves)" (2015-17) and "Un Lloc Entre Dos Records" (2017); this work, originally written in 2016, and revised in 2018, is heard in a recording at GMEA, France, with guitarist Benjamin Maumus.

Two clarinetists--John McCowen, also the composer, and Madison Greenstone, both on clarinet & bass clarinet--taking the title from Boethius' (427-524 AD) printed work on ancient Greek music: "De institutione musica", as they generate long-form drones using the harmonic interactions and interference patterns of similar tones, overtones, and difference tones; impressively intense.

A beautiful rendering of French composer Eric Satie's 1918 masterwork "Socrate", originally for four sopranos and chamber orchestra, here stripped to its essence as a duo with Olalla Aleman on soprano and Guy Vandromme on piano, maintaining Satie's characterist reserve and refinement in the 3 parts: "portrait of socrates"; "banks of the ilissus"; and "death of socrates".

Pianist Laura Cole's first solo album presents 2 CDs; the first a collection of arrangements of pieces given to Cole for the album from friends and colleagues, including Robert Mitchell, Alex Wilson, Nikki Iles, Jason Yarde and Corey Mwamba; the 2nd disc, "As Warm As The Sun" is a collection of compositions and improvisations by Cole herself.

Retrospective of Terry Rusling, a Canadian composer of electronic music working for the CBC in the 60's, who was introduced to the Electronic Music Studio at the University of Toronto, where he was awarded the title of Research Associate, receiving a Canada Council Grant to travel and work in Belgium, Utrecht, Paris, &c.; 2 of his graphic scores are part of John Cage's "Notations" project.

A mysterious album of viola, viola d'amore, organ, and field recordings, merging the compositional minimal approach of Wandelweiser artist Eva-Maria Houben with Creative Sources performers Ernesto & Guilherme Rodrigues, the field recordings creating a virtual setting of environmental stillness, evoking slow motion in the unique "thisness" of haecceity.

Two meticulous works in two parts each using layered collage of acoustic instruments, objects, electronics, field recordings, voices, fragments of past compositions and early classical music samples, with A.F. Jones providing voice narration, from Venezuelan composer/artist Gil Sanson and Canadian-based composer/painter Lance Austin Olsen: "Pra Min" and "Meditations".

Istanbul composer Turgut Ercetin (Daad artists-in-Berlin 2016 award winner) completed his doctorate studies at Stanford University, developing works engaged with issues of sound as sonic entities dealing with time and space, here in a string quartet performed by Arditti Quartet, and a work for voice and live electronics performed by Neue Vocalsolisten Stuttgar.

Jakob Ullman's 5th solo work for piano is atypical for a piano performance, using electronic playback and requiring three assistants sustaining a soundscape to realize a concept of "gravity" that Ullman applies as laws in a conceptual soundscape modified by a series of abstract images, resulting in unexpected sonic environments, tones, timbres and momentum.

Two works for solo percussion from French drummer Peter Orins, a member of the Circum collective and Circum Grand Orchestra, and peer of Jean-Luc Guionnet, Satoko Fujii, &c.: the 6 part "Happened by Accident", a work of subtle, building percussive work using unusual techniques and sources; and James Tenney's "Having Never Written A Note For Percussion".

Spring 2019 issue of Canada's premier new music magazine, with articles on Montreal's Dominique Fils-Aime; Composer Linda Catlin Smith; Strasbourg-based Canadian composer and heckelphonist Samuel Andreyev; Camae Ayewa and Carmel Farabakhsh; plus a 10-track various artists CD with tracks from the above, including a work by Wadada Leo Smith, &c. &c.

New works for the accordion composed by Vinko Globokar, Toshio Hosokawa, Youghi Pagh-Paan, Rolf Riehm, and Salavatore Sciarrino and performed by Teodoro Anzellotti.

NY free jazz drummer and composer Harris Eisenstadt brings his talents to the compositional world with this four movement suite performed by the Mivos Quartet of Olivia De Prato, Josh Modney, Victor Lowrie and Mariel Roberts, a creative composition blending melodic and textural approaches to the strings in a bold rendering of Eisenstandt's work.

NYC vocalist, composer and keyboardist Judith Berkson in the debut album for her one-woman band Liederkreis (translating to "song-cycle", a reference to Schumann), taking a sharp turn from previous work through experimental synth, voice and effects in unique and often aberrant ways.