1 AlphabetA
Composed by Kaie Kellough and Jason Sharp.
Performed by Kaie Kellough (voice) and Jason Sharp (bass saxophone).
From Creole Continuum (HOWL! Records, 2014). First published in Continent, Issue 4.3, 2015.
Recorded at Treatment Room, Montreal, 2013. Mixed by Tyler Fitzmaurice and mastered by Dimitri Condax.

This audio piece is based on the alphabet. The vocal line moves backward and forward from a to z and from z back to a, while increasing and decreasing tempo and seizing opportunities for improvisation. The saxophone alternates between fluid droning lines and swirling clusters of notes. Breath can also be heard on this recording, notably the circular breathing of the saxophone player. I often think of this piece as "blowing air through the holes in letters."
-Kaie Kellough

© Kellough and Sharp
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2 Sublingua
Composed and performed by Luis El Pana Tovar (cajon, percussion), Tanya Davis (voice), Malcolm Mooney (voice), and Kaie Kellough (voice).
Recorded at the Banff Center for the Arts, 2011. Mixed by Tyler Fitzmaurice and mastered by Dimitri Condax.

This previously unreleased piece was part of an improvised session and was approached as a conversation, albeit one that operated outside the alternation of voices that structures polite conversation. The aim was to have the voices explore the sounds that underlie structured language, to rupture the order that is familiar to us, and to sound a yearning for ancestral languages that we no longer speak. The percussive work exists in and extends that rupture and grounds us in a nonverbal utterance.
-Kaie Kellough

© Tovar, Davis, Mooney, and Kellough
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3 Cloud Hands
Composed by Christine Duncan, Jean Martin, Jim Lewis, Eric Robertson, Jesse Zubot, and The Element Choir.
Performed by Christine Duncan (conduction), Jean Martin (percussion), Jim Lewis (trumpet), Eric Robertson (Casavant pipe organ), Jesse Zubot (violin), and Element Choir (voices).
From The Element Choir at Rosedale United (Barnyard Records, 2010).
Recorded at Rosedale United Church, Toronto, February 2009.

© Duncan, Martin, Robertson, Lewis, Zubot and The Element Choir, SOCAN
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4 Sigh, Me Good
Composed by Christine Duncan, Jean Martin, Justin Haynes, and Bernard Falaise.
Performed by Barnyard Drama: Christine Duncan (voice), Jean Martin (percussion), Justin Haynes (guitars), Bernard Falaise (guitars).
From I'm a Navvy (Barnyard Records, 2006).
Recorded at Chemical Sound, Toronto, by Ross Murray and James Heidebrecht. Produced by Jean Martin, March 2005.

This song was built in studio from a group improvisation. Later, Jean and I tracked some extra vocal parts to add to the original recorded voice.
-Christine Duncan

© Duncan, Martin, Haynes, and Falaise (SOCAN)
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5 Calíope (canto de las abejas)
Composed by Juan Camilo Vásquez.
Performed by Primož Sukič (guitar) and Juan Camilo Vásquez (live electronics).
Recorded in concert at the Trubar Literature House, Ljubljana, Slovenia, May 2014.

This piece was part of a cooperative project between Slovenian guitarist Primož Sukič and Colombian composer Juan Camilo Vásquez. It is based on the mathematical hypersurface called hyperbolic paraboloid, which can be defined as a tridimensional surface constructed with straight lines. In that sense, the piece can be taken as a sound sculpture created by a gesture that evolves over time, and includes some modified replications of it produced via live electronics. The guitar is taken, then, as one dimension of a constructed reality, while the replicas could be taken as variations or disturbances of this reality-a product of a curvature in time and space.
-Juan Camilo Vásquez
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6 Tatamagouche
Composed and performed by Lindsay Dobbin (guitar, degraded tape).
Recorded in Dobbin's home studio in Halifax, Nova Scotia.

Memory returned. Its texture unfolds-leaving the house one last time.
-Lindsay Dobbin

© Dobbin
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7 in dem HIMMEL benannten Darüber, excerpt
Composed by Katharina Klement and subshrubs (Angélica Castelló, Katharina Klement, Maja Osojnik, and Tamara Wilhelm).
Performed by PHACE: Walter Seebacher (clarinet, bass clarinet), Alvaro Collao León (soprano and baritone saxophones), Barbara Lüneburg (violin), Roland Schueler (cello), Maximilian Ölz (double bass), and Harald Demmer (percussion); and subshrubs: Angélica Castelló, Katharina Klement, Maja Osojnik, and Tamara Wilhelm. Conducted by Simeon Pironkoff.
Recorded at the Wien Modern festival, Berio Hall in Wiener Konzerthaus, Vienna, November 20, 2015. Produced by Austrian Broadcasting Station ORF. Mixed by Katharina Klement.

© Klement and subshrubs
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8 escalator
Composed by Katharina Klement.
From the series peripheries, a sound portrait of Belgrade.
Recorded in a concert presented by Musique & Recherches at Espace Senghor, Brussels, February 11, 2015.

© Klement
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9 Neshima / Breath
Composed by Ayelet Rose Gottlieb.
Performed by Satoshi Takeishi (percussion) and ETHEL: Cornelius Dufallo (violin), Jennifer Choi (violin), Ralph Faris (viola), and Dorothy Lawson (cello).
From the LP Shiv'a (482music 482-1090, 2016).
Recorded at Sear Sound Studio, NYC, 2011, by Brian Montgomery.

"Neshima / Breath" incorporates improvisation in a chamber ensemble form. Shiv'a reflects on the process of mourning and draws inspiration from Jewish and Buddhist rituals.

© Arogole Music (BMI)
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10 Ties
Composed by Take Toriyama.
Arranged by Ayelet Rose Gottlieb.
Performed by Ayelet Rose Gottlieb (voice), Satoshi Takeishi (percussion), Sean Conley (upright bass), and ETHEL.
From the LP Shiv'a (482music 482-1090, 2016).
Recorded at Sear Sound Studio, NYC, 2011, by Brian Montgomery.

This piece was composed by drummer Take Toriyama, a close collaborator of Ayelet's. His suicide in 2007 was the defining event that brought Ayelet to compose Shiv'a.

© Arogole Music (BMI)
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11 Jouska
Composed and performed by Ian William Craig (vocals, manipulated Sony TC 377, manipulated Audiotronics cassette deck).
Unreleased track from the sessions for his Recital LP Cradle for the Wanting.
Recorded, mixed, and engineered by Ian William Craig in Vancouver B.C.

© Craig
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12 "The Last Meeting," scene from Afterword, an opera
Composed by George Lewis. Libretto by George Lewis.
Performed by Joelle Lamarre (soprano), Gwendolyn Brown (contralto), Julian Terrell Otis (tenor) and Ostravská Banda, conducted by Rolf Gupta. Directed by Sean Griffin.
Recorded at the 2015 Ostrava Days festival, Jiří Myron Theatre, Ostrava, Czech Republic, August 28, 2015.
Recording used with permission of the Ostrava Center for New Music.

Afterword is a "Bildungsoper," a coming-of-age opera of ideas, positionality, and testament. The libretto for this scene is drawn from an audio recording of the May 1965 meeting that led to the formation of the Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians, where young African-American experimentalists debate a complex network of issues around aspiration, aesthetics, identity, representation, authority, race, and self-determination.
-George Lewis

© Lewis